American Experience (1988) s25e05 Episode Script

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(Birds calling)
NARRATOR: It would come to
be called "Fordlandia,"
two and a half million acres
of virgin rainforest-
the size of Connecticut
In the heart of the Amazon.
And almost as soon as Henry Ford
had wired the $125,000
that made him the sole owner
of this vast tract of jungle,
he began transforming it.
FILM NARRATOR: The Ford Motor
Company is ever seeking
ways and materials
to improve its products.
One of the latest enterprises
of the company
is the development of a rubber
plantation in Brazil.
NARRATOR: Rubber for tires
was his stated purpose,
but as with many things
concerning Ford,
there was a grander vision.
In the primordial wilderness,
he planned to build
a modern utopia
modeled on small town America.
STEVEN WATTS:
He came to believe that he was
not only an economic
entrepreneur
but a prophet of proper living.
Henry says, "Simple, plain,
honest, hard-working people",
"that's the backbone of
not just the United States,
"it's the backbone of the world.
And I know how you have to live
in order to achieve that."
NARRATOR:
Ford practiced what he preached.
Through his own fierce
determination,
he had risen from obscurity
to become one of the most famous
and powerful men in the country.
With the Model T the most
successful car in history
And the groundbreaking
"Five Dollar a Day" wage,
Ford ushered in
the modern world.
NANCY F. KOEHN: The Model T greatly
expanded Americans' mobility,
knitting America
very close together
at the same time that it opened.
American sense
of what was possible.
So he liberated,
at the individual level,
the human spirit.
Henry Ford was a revolutionary.
He changed all
of 20th-century America.
We're living in Henry Ford's
world right now.
NARRATOR: But no matter his success,
Ford remained restless and driven,
always seeking to control
what lay just beyond his grasp.
The creator of an urban
industrial age,
he longed for the simpler era
he had helped destroy.
One of the nation's richest men,
he despised the wealthy
and feared a vast conspiracy
threatened to bring him down.
A hero to many
ordinary Americans,
he battled his workers
and bullied those who looked up
to him, including his only son.
JOHN STAUDENMAIER: What is it like
to carry around so much power
that the ordinary wear and tear
of reality
that most of us deal with
all the time,
that keep us pretty sane,
is absent?
NARRATOR: As Henry Ford liked to tell
it, his was a rags-to-riches tale.
He was a child genius
who fled an oppressive father
to become one of the most
successful entrepreneurs
the world had ever seen.
It was a great story,
but only the last part was true.
STEVEN WATTS: Since young
manhood, if not childhood,
Henry Ford felt a certain
sense of destiny,
that he was slated
to do important things.
He liked to picture himself
to others
as a kind of heroic individual
who climbed to success
against the odds.
NARRATOR: In fact, Henry
Ford was the eldest son
of a caring, successful
Michigan farm couple.
His parents expected
all their children
to work alongside them
on the land.
But when Henry
found the work tedious
and began obsessing
over the machines
that might make
farm life easier,
his parents indulged him.
They allowed him
to neglect his chores
and set up a workbench
for him in the kitchen.
Not only would he take apart
wrist watches
and put them back together,
but he would study
every machine he saw.
NARRATOR:
Henry's father, William Ford,
understood that his son longed
to learn more about machinery.
When Henry turned 16,
William arranged for him
to stay with an aunt in Detroit
and even found Henry a job.
(horse hooves clopping)
On a cold day in December 1879,
Henry walked the nine miles
from his family farm
to the city.
There, he would
reinvent himself.
NARRATOR:
For more than a decade,
Ford worked long hours
in one shop after another,
forging a career as
an expert machinist.
By the time he was 31,
he was chief engineer at the
Edison Illuminating Company,
the pioneer in providing
electricity to American cities.
As exciting as Edison was,
Ford's passion lay elsewhere.
WATTS: The notion of horseless
carriage was in the air.
And he and all of his buddies,
they just devoured magazines
and newspaper articles,
and I think Ford
just soaked that up.
Transportation in America
was terrible
once you got away
from the railroads.
Terrible!
It was an enormous burden.
I mean, if you're living
on the farm,
getting around on land
is one of the biggest
problems people have.
NARRATOR: At the dawn of the
automobile industry in the 1890s,
most people saw the car as
a luxury item for the wealthy.
Ford had a different vision.
He never forgot his feelings
of isolation living on the farm
and imagined that others
shared his longing
for greater mobility.
If he could build a reliable
horseless carriage,
Ford believed, he could
change people's lives.
BRINKLEY: He wanted to really
change the tenor of his times.
He is going to transform
the world
by building a type of cheap car
that everybody could have.
NARRATOR: All the late
nights and long weekends,
the hard-earned cash spent
on sheet iron and gasoline,
the false starts
and wrong turns,
none of it mattered
when on June 4, 1896,
Ford drove
his horseless carriage
through the streets of Detroit
for the first time.
As the rickety vehicle bounced
down Grand River Avenue,
a friend cycled ahead to warn
pedestrians out of the way.
The quadricycle, as Ford dubbed
it, had 28-inch bicycle wheels,
a top speed of 20 miles
per hour, and no brakes.
It couldn't go in reverse
and was prone to overheating.
Yet wherever he went,
the quadricycle drew crowds
of curious bystanders.
Soon he attracted the attention
of more than a dozen
of Detroit's most
prominent leaders,
including the mayor himself,
all eager to invest in Ford
and his machine.
There's some people,
when they walk into a room,
you notice them.
He has an inner self-confidence.
That means the way
he carries himself,
you're going to notice it.
NARRATOR: Within three years
of the inaugural drive,
Ford had quit
his engineering job.
In a brick building
on Cass Avenue in Detroit,
he assembled a team of 13.
The Detroit Automobile Company,
incorporated on August 5, 1899,
was one of the first car
manufacturing firms in the city,
but it wouldn't be the last.
The automobile industry
was exploding.
57 other firms were founded
the same year.
Within two years,
there would be more than 100.
There are all kinds of people
that Henry Ford knows
that are tinkering and playing
and trying to produce
a prototype.
All men, all interested
in machines,
but all without a big picture
view of what this could become.
NARRATOR: A company spokesman
hailed Ford's first model
as "near perfect,"
but when it went on sale,
it looked more like
a "horse-drawn delivery wagon
without the horse."
It was high-sided, heavy,
and due to problems with
the ignition and carburetor,
rarely ran for more than
a few minutes at a time.
His backers pushed
for a new luxury model
that was more reliable.
But Ford stalled,
determined to work out engine
and design problems
before building another car.
KOEHN: He would move parts around,
and then he would test it.
And then he would go back
and move some more parts.
There's a kind of both
breadth of vision
in that kind of activity,
but there's also a kind
of monomaniacal focus.
No detail is too small,
but the overall objective,
"make the thing better,"
is never lost sight of.
NARRATOR: As his investors
increased the pressure,
Ford bought himself time
by having his employees
make parts for vehicles
he never planned to build.
Meanwhile, he continued
to experiment.
WATTS: His investors want
to make an expensive car
to sell to wealthy people.
Ford disagrees fundamentally.
He wants to create a car
for the people.
He's trying to perfect
an invention.
In order to keep doing the trial
runs and get it better,
it's going to take
a lot of capital
to keep testing, keep testing.
NARRATOR: Finally realizing
they were being duped,
his backers pulled the plug.
In the three years that
the fledgling car industry
had existed in America,
Henry Ford had managed
to squander his chance
to be part of it.
And he knew exactly
who to blame: His investors.
"From here in," Ford declared,
"my shop is always
going to be my shop.
I'm not going to have a lot of
rich people tell me what to do."
BRINKLEY: He hated the people that
invested in him, loathed them.
These were the scum of America
to Henry Ford.
These are the people that looked
down on the slang of the farm
and the kinfolk of his that had
worked the land for generations.
He did not like these people.
(People talking excitedly)
(engine sputtering)
NARRATOR: While Ford was
stalling his investors,
he had also been working on
a secret project: A race car.
Intrigued by the challenge
of building an engine
that could achieve high speeds,
he also harbored
a greater ambition:
To make a name for himself
and start a new car company.
In October 1901,
Ford took on the most famous
driver in America
in the first automobile race
in Michigan.
Interest in the event
was intense.
Shops closed.
One judge adjourned his court
for the afternoon,
and packed streetcars ran out
to the parade ground
every 30 seconds.
Ford had no experience
driving at high speeds
and no money
to pay a professional,
but he had faith in the
superiority of his engine.
BRINKLEY: The whole art of making
it in America is about audacity.
You've got to be reckless.
You've got to take such risk
that you can't be afraid
to fail.
NARRATOR: For the first third of the
ten-mile race, Ford lagged behind,
struggling to control his car
on the curves.
Then on the sixth lap,
he started to close the gap.
After his opponent's
engine overheated,
the crowd erupted
as Ford zoomed past his rival,
winning the race
by nearly a mile.
The aspiring automaker emerged
from the victory a local hero.
"Henry Ford broke into the front
ranks of American racing,"
crowed the Detroit News,
"by the wonderful performance
of his machine yesterday."
WATTS:
Even after all the failures
that Henry Ford had,
he was convinced
that he should plunge ahead.
He wasn't convinced
that he had failed.
It was sort of a momentary
setback.
It's an absolute confidence
in your own talent
and an absolute confidence
in your own vision
of doing something important.
NARRATOR:
Ford followed his first win
with a string of highly
publicized victories.
Within months, he had attracted
a new slate of investors.
On June 16, 1903,
he incorporated
the Ford Motor Company.
Ford's audacity and courage
had won him another chance.
Within weeks, the company's
first model was unveiled:
A two-seater with a reliable
eight-horsepower engine.
The first order
came from a Chicago dentist,
and much to the delight
of company shareholders,
the orders kept coming.
Within less than two years,
the Ford Motor Company
was producing 25 vehicles a day
and had sold
more than 1,000 cars.
But the man at the top
wasn't satisfied.
In early 1907, Ford walled off
a corner of his factory
on Piquette Avenue
in downtown Detroit.
The room had a door
wide enough for a car
and a lock to keep out everyone
but his top engineers
and mechanics.
Then he set his team to work.
He had them experiment
with innovative designs
for igniting the engine
and a more flexible
suspension system.
They tried new types of steel
that would be lighter,
but tougher.
"If a suggestion appealed
to him," a colleague recalled,
"he first showed it
in a quick flash of his eyes
"and an approving smile.
"He never ran out of ideas,
and it was impossible
to keep up with him."
WATTS: He thinks nothing
of plunging down
onto the floor of the factory
and leaping in to help
do the job at hand,
getting covered with oil
and grease,
joking with the men,
working with the men.
He's very loose,
very participatory,
and they love him.
I think that mechanical
intuition that he had
created a kind of charisma
that drew people to him
and drew other
creative people to him.
He promoted people
who had a drive,
people that didn't sleep,
people that wanted
to work harder,
people that weren't in the game
because of the superficial
reasons
but really wanted
to perfect his company.
NARRATOR: Every few months,
Ford introduced a new model,
making his way through
the alphabet.
But the Model K was too heavy
and expensive;
The Model N,
though lighter and cheaper,
had an engine cast in four
pieces rather than one block.
Ford kept at it.
"He wanted to help people,
and we as young men in the shop
looked up to that,"
one worker remembered.
"We could see that
Mr. Ford's mind
"went to the farmer
and the mechanic
and to the people who lived
in the hinterland."
CASEY: Even if you were on the
factory floor assembling these cars,
you knew you were part of
something that was happening,
something that was new,
something that was changing
the country.
I think it was the same kind
of excitement
that the man-on-the-moon
mission people had.
There are a handful
of those kinds of moments
in American history
where there's a dream
that is so big in its potential,
and you think you got it,
and then you get it.
NARRATOR: In October 1908, after
two years of development,
Henry Ford introduced
the latest in his alphabet line:
The Model T.
It had a four-cylinder,
20-horsepower engine,
a vastly improved transmission
and an ingenious
magnetic generator
that provided power
for an ignition and lights.
With an open top
and an optional cover,
it came in just one color:
Green at first, later black.
Weighing only 1,200 pounds,
the Model T could go
40 miles per hour
on a smooth, straight road.
It was also remarkably durable.
They didn't break down a lot
compared to other vehicles,
and when they did, they were
very simple to repair.
This wasn't somebody just
ginning out a product.
This was a quality
to the economical car
that the world had never even
imagined could be possible.
NARRATOR: At a time when the
average car cost more than $2,000,
the Model T sold for just $850,
and the price soon
would begin to drop.
The response was immediate
and overwhelming.
Orders poured in from doctors,
traveling salesmen,
artisans and farmers
People who had never dreamed
of becoming motorists.
GRANDIN:
The Model T changed everything.
It gave people a new sense
of power and authority
and control over their lives.
You can go wherever you wanted,
and you can go by yourself.
You can get in your car,
and you have access now
to towns, to cities,
to places that were beyond your
reach just a few years earlier.
WATTS: Ford has a sense
that this is it,
that he's reached some kind
of culmination in his work.
And I think the sales of the
car, as they begin to take off,
only reinforces this notion
that he's finally got
to where he wants to go.
NARRATOR:
A farm wife from Rome, Georgia,
wrote Ford a letter
of appreciation,
one of thousands:
"Your car lifted us
out of the mud.
It brought joy into our lives."
NARRATOR: They met at a country
dance when Henry was 21.
He liked to tell people
he knew right away that Clara
Bryant was the woman for him.
After their wedding, the couple
waited five years for a baby.
Finally, a son arrived.
He would be their only child.
Edsel had a very good
relationship with his father
as a youngster.
He admired his father.
He was interested in the
automobiles his father made.
He tagged along with his dad
to work.
NARRATOR:
Henry and Clara sent Edsel
to Detroit's most prestigious
all-boys school,
where he excelled.
But Ford wasn't convinced
a prep school education
was what his son needed most.
Henry had barely completed
eighth grade.
Success, he believed,
depended on hard work.
His own life proved it.
BRINKLEY: Henry Ford was not
very high on interior life.
Sentiment rotted the soul.
You could be sentimental
if you were action-oriented,
but the main thing was to do.
"What are you doing?
"Don't tell me what you know.
What are you doing,
what have you done?"
NARRATOR: Ford wanted his son to
spend as much time as possible
in coveralls
on the factory floor,
where he was tougher on Edsel
than anyone else,
frequently creating problems
for him to solve.
Most of the time,
the bright and eager Edsel
lived up to his father's
expectations.
"I've got a boy
I can be proud of,"
Henry told a colleague.
"He's sure taking
an interest in his work."
STAUDENMAIER: When they launch the
Model T, it becomes clear pretty soon
that they have hit
a grand slam home run
and that this market is immense.
Think of a gigantic
vacuum cleaner,
right at the door of the plant,
sucking every finished vehicle
out» "Boom!" like that.
NARRATOR: On January 1, 1910,
Ford moved his production line
to a vast new factory
on the outskirts of Detroit
called Highland Park.
He declared the company would
soon achieve his ambitious goal
of producing 1,000 Model Ts
a day.
GRANDIN: His whole business model
is to sell a cheap product.
And the way that you create
cheap products
is by making more of them
in a shorter amount of time.
NARRATOR: While Ford was able to
make the machine parts quickly,
assembling the cars
bogged down the process.
KOEHN: A friend of Ford's once
compared him to a kind of boxer,
tiptoeing and dancing
round the factory floor,
all the time thinking about,
"What could we do here?
"What could we do there?
"How could we change
the production process
"to make the car
better and cheaper
and bring out
even more of them?"
CASEY: While they're groping
about for improvement,
someone begins to think about
the meat-packing plants
where the carcass of a hog
or cow is hung on a conveyor
and it moves through the plant,
past meat cutters
who cut pieces off the animal.
"What if we turned that around?
"What if we put in some machine
that we want to assemble
"and we move it past people
and we have people
put things on?"
NARRATOR:
Ford's team tried out the idea
in the flywheel
magneto department,
where the device
that generated electricity
for the ignition system
was made.
Rather than having one person
build a coil at a time,
the supervisor broke down
the individual tasks
into a sequence
driven by a conveyor.
The new system reduced the time
it took to make a magneto
from 20 minutes
to 13 minutes, ten seconds.
CASEY: And then somebody says,
"Well, if it works on magnetos,
what about transmissions?
"What about axles?
Well, what about engines?"
Productivity goes way up,
time to produce a car goes down,
and they realize, "We're
really onto something here."
(I')
NARRATOR: Under the old
stationary system,
the record time
for assembling a car
had been 12 hours
and 13 minutes.
Using the assembly line process,
it took one hour and 33 minutes.
By the fall of 1913,
Ford had established
the first automobile
assembly line in the world
and controlled nearly half
the American car market.
Henry Ford had achieved
his coveted goal:
His company was now producing
1,000 cars a day.
BRINKLEY: Efficiency becomes
a religion to Ford.
Time is a product.
You get the maximum
you can out of every hour.
BEVERLY GAGE:
Rather than being a craftsman,
rather than having
a variety of tasks
and creating a single product,
you were going to stand
in one place all day long
and do the same repetitive task
over and over and over again.
Ford had a tremendous faith
that with the principle
of assembly line production,
anyone could do it.
So he didn't require skill.
Skill was actually
engineered out of it.
GRANDIN: People describe him
as being less emotional
than he was mechanical.
He once said that it took
7,882 distinct motions
to make a Model T.
And then he goes on even further
to break that down into how many
can be done by able-bodied men,
how many can be done
by one-armed men.
So there's a certain kind
of imagining human motion
in very rote, mechanical
and dehumanizing ways.
NARRATOR: "Fancy a jungle
of wheels and belts",
of men, machinery and movement,"
one journalist noted.
"Add to it every kind of sound
you can imagine:
"The sound of a million monkeys
quarreling,
"a million lions roaring,
a million sinners groaning
as they are dragged to hell."
Many workers found
the assembly line so alien,
so monotonous
and physically exhausting,
they quit after just a few days.
Company managers calculated
that every time they wanted to
add a hundred men to the rolls,
they had to hire nearly
a thousand.
KOEHN: Now, think about what
it cost to find and train
and bring workers up to speed
in a factory,
and get them productive
and efficient
and not making many mistakes.
He desperately wanted
to reduce turnover.
That just made good strategic
and economic sense.
You cannot sustain
the speed of a line
if you have to invest
so much of your resources
in training people,
even minimally, to do the work.
So they have a huge crisis.
NARRATOR: With his company's
future on the line,
Ford would propose
an unprecedented strategy,
one that would astonish
his workforce,
confound his competitors
and lead observers to predict
the imminent ruin
of the Ford Motor Company.
NARRATOR:
In the early days of 1914,
Henry Ford convened
a top-secret meeting
with his senior managers.
He spent the first few minutes
scribbling numbers
on a blackboard.
In one column,
he wrote "$26 million"
The company's profits
for the previous year.
As his colleagues
looked on, baffled,
Ford jotted down
another number, "$2.34"
The daily wage
of an assembly line worker.
Then he wrote
three dollars a day,
four, four dollars
and fifty cents,
and finally, five dollars a day.
One member of Ford's team
vehemently protested,
while another fumed silently.
Ford stood his ground.
A wage of five dollars a day,
he insisted,
would not simply reduce
worker turnover,
it would increase business.
For most of American history,
America was a producer society.
The values of production,
primarily agricultural
production,
were the dominant ones.
And those values really give way
very, very quickly,
beginning around the turn of the
19th, into the 20th century,
into a set of values
around consumption.
And it's all about,
"What do I own?
How do I get and then spend?"
WATTS:
Ford put forward the notion
that raising wages would allow
workers to be consumers.
And whatever you may have lost
on the front end,
you would get many times over
on the back end.
And that, he knew, was where
the central action was
economically
in the modern world.
NARRATOR:
As far as Ford was concerned,
the thousands of Model Ts
hurtling off his assembly line
offered much more than
affordable transportation.
They promised leisure, abundance
and a shared prosperity.
Someday, he imagined,
every worker would be able
to buy a new Ford car.
On January 5, 1914, Ford went
public with his audacious plan.
"At one stroke, we will reduce
the hours of labor
from nine to eight,"
he told the press,
"and add to every man's pay
a share of the profits
of the house."
His fellow automakers were
appalled by Ford's announcement,
certain that higher wages
would devastate the industry.
One business leader
dismissed the idea
as "the most foolish thing
ever attempted"
in the industrial world."
But the real verdict came
next morning
when 10,000 men showed up
at the factory gates
eager for a job
at the Ford Motor Company.
Same work, just as boring, just
as repetitive, just as hard.
But you got people
who never dreamed
they could make this much money.
NARRATOR: Ford's five-dollar day did
more than solve his turnover problem.
It transformed him into
a national sensation.
The story was picked up
by papers across the country
and around the world.
Thousands of newspapers
published biographies.
The New York Times alone
ran 35 stories,
and nearly two dozen national
magazines wrote features.
BRINKLEY: He has created the
Model T, the people's car,
he's brought the first modern,
moving assembly line,
and he's revolutionized
how workers get paid.
People are saying,
"What's next for this guy?"
(crossing signal bell ringing)
KOEHN: Lots and lots of people in
America and outside of America
are fascinated by Henry Ford.
And he, seemingly
uninterested in money,
is very interested in being
in the public spotlight.
NARRATOR: A few months after his
five-dollar-day announcement,
Ford established his own
"moving picture" department.
Its first production,
How Henry Ford Makes
One Thousand Cars a Day,
was released that summer
in movie theaters
across the country.
BRINKLEY: Henry Ford was not
bashful about self-promotion.
I mean, in many ways
he's the king of it.
And film was another way
to promote himself.
NARRATOR: Journalists fell for
the carefully crafted message.
Henry Ford was one of the
richest men in the world,
the press reported,
but money had not changed him.
He still loved nothing more
than a home-cooked meal
and an afternoon
working on his farm.
He was a genius inventor
with simple tastes
despite his dramatic success.
"There is not much
outward difference
between Ford and his workmen,"
a reporter
for the Evening World wrote.
"He is just the hard-working
mechanical genius that he was
ten or 20 years ago."
Cameras captured him
with movie stars,
politicians and celebrities,
like aviator Charles Lindbergh
and Helen Keller.
His idol,
the inventor Thomas Edison,
embraced Ford as a friend
and fellow visionary.
CASEY: Ford recognizes that he
himself is being transformed
from a big-time player
in the automobile industry
to just a big-time player.
WATTS: He begins to
believe the headlines:
Henry Ford the great man;
Henry Ford the folk hero;
Henry Ford, changing the world.
He soaks all of that in,
this farm boy
from Dearborn, Michigan,
and he begins to believe
that stuff.
NARRATOR: Many of the
men who worked for Ford
were well aware of their boss's
growing ego,
and one story in particular
served as a warning
to anyone who might
challenge him.
During a summer
when Ford was in Europe,
his team had built a prototype
for a new car.
A successor to the Model T,
they believed, was long overdue.
WATTS:
Ford comes in unannounced.
He walks around the car
several times,
opens the door
on the passenger side
and literally
rips it off the hinges.
He walks around
to the other side,
rips the door
off the driver's side.
And he proceeded to demolish
the car by hand.
(glass shattering)
NARRATOR: The message was clear:
Henry Ford, and no one else,
was in charge.
NARRATOR: "The impression
had somehow got around"
that Henry Ford is
in the automobile business,"
observed a close associate.
"It isn't true.
"Cars are the byproducts
of his real business,
which is the making of men."
Ford's five-dollar day
wasn't guaranteed;
He called it an incentive wage
and it came with
strings attached.
Ford required his
immigrant workers,
who represented as many
as 53 nationalities
and spoke more than 100
different languages,
attend the company's
English Language School.
The school's curriculum relied
heavily on mass recitation
and included practical lessons
based on daily life
and routines.
After six months of study,
graduating workers participated
in a ceremony called.
"The Pageant
of the Ford Melting Pot."
STAUDENMAIER:
There's a great big pot.
The graduates, all dressed
in native costume,
climbed a ladder up and jumped
into the pot and disappeared.
Then the teachers came out
with big long wooden spoons
and stuck them in the pot
and walked back and forth,
a little choreography,
stirring the pot.
The workers come out
of the same pot, one by one,
wearing a suit, a straw hat, and
waving a little American flag.
NARRATOR: But Ford didn't limit
his reforms to the classroom;
He was determined to change
how his workers lived.
In the months following the
five-dollar day announcement,
neatly dressed men
prowled Detroit's working-class
neighborhoods
seeking out the family, friends
and landlords of Ford employees.
They were inspectors
from the new Ford
Sociological Department,
sent to probe into
the most intimate corners
of workers' lives.
STAUDENMAIER:
How clean was the house?
Did they have
drinking problems evident?
Did they send money back
to the Old Country?
Not to be done.
Were they legitimately married?
Were they keeping boarders
in the house?
Bad idea.
There was a laundry list
of what I'd call
social engineering,
and that was Henry saying,
"These peasants have got
to become Americans,
"so we're going to use
the five-dollar day
to also Americanize them."
NARRATOR:
If a worker failed inspection,
he was given time
to amend his ways
and his additional wages
were held for him.
If he failed a second time,
he was fired.
GAGE: It's a level of
invasion of privacy
that is, I think, almost
unthinkable in our world.
But Henry Ford expected
his workers
to behave in certain ways,
and he was going to enforce
that behavior.
And there were almost no laws
or institutions
that stood in his way of
exerting that kind of control.
Part of Henry is an idealist.
And part of him also thinks
that he has the insight
to teach other people
how to live.
NARRATOR: In 1915, Henry and
Clara moved into a new home,
a fenced and guarded 1,300-acre
estate named Fair Lane.
STAUDENMAIER: The level of fame and
celebrity that swoops down on him,
almost without warning
He was not ready
for that at all.
There are no neighbors
where he lives.
Fair Lane is an island,
and a protected one.
NARRATOR: The Fords had
chosen to construct
their 31,000-square-foot home
in the farming community
of Dearborn,
where they had both grown up,
rather than the elite suburb
of Grosse Point,
where most wealthy
Detroiters lived.
They kept to themselves,
rarely entertaining.
Henry preferred boxing
with the men who kept Fair
Lane's power plant running
or helping his neighbors
with their harvest.
GAGE: Henry Ford remains
really an outsider
in some very fundamental ways.
Though he is one of the richest
men in the United States
and in many ways in the world
at this point,
he thinks of himself
as a virtuous producer.
He is not like those
kind of parasitic,
in some ways rarified elite,
out-of-touch
bankers and lawyers.
BRINKLEY: He never wanted to
be part of the social elite.
He didn't want to interact
with Biff and Buff
and know the Rockefellers.
He did not care an iota
for those people.
What he cared about
were the fellow people
who could talk machinery
with him.
NARRATOR: Even though he had hated
working on the farm when he was young,
Ford embraced it now,
cutting hay and threshing wheat.
He foraged through the woods,
chopping down trees
and looking for wildlife.
He imported 600 pairs
of songbirds from England
so that he and Clara
could watch them together.
But the nuthatches,
finches and linnets flew away,
never to be seen again.
Ford didn't have much better
luck controlling his son.
He had built Fair Lane
with his family in mind:
Three large greenhouses
for Clara and her roses
and a bowling alley and indoor
swimming pool for Edsel.
But Edsel was almost never home,
preferring to socialize
on the other side of the city
with the sons and daughters
of Detroit's aristocracy.
He married into one
of the city's elite families
when he wed Eleanor Clay,
the niece of the founder
of Hudson's,
Detroit's premier
department store.
By the time Edsel was
in his early twenties,
there's a definite
class difference
between Edsel and Henry.
Henry was, in many ways,
a farmer's son.
He was very old-fashioned.
He was barely educated.
Edsel Ford is a very
kind-hearted, genteel,
quiet young man.
He hasn't come up
through the ranks
in a kind of rough-and-tumble
fashion, as his father did.
And Henry Ford wants
to make Edsel
into a carbon copy of himself.
NARRATOR: Ford insisted
that self-discipline
had been critical
to his success.
He rose at dawn
and exercised every day;
He didn't smoke, never drank
and did not allow alcohol
in his house.
And he expected the same
from everyone around him,
starting with his son.
(cows mooing)
NARRATOR: During the
spring and summer of 1915,
Henry Ford began secretly buying
up hundreds of acres of farmland
along the River Rouge
just a mile from his home.
Though few knew of it, he had
another bold plan in mind.
WATTS: Ford foresaw a factory
the scope of which,
the size of which,
the extent of which had simply
never been done before.
NARRATOR: With tens of millions
of dollars in profits a year,
Ford had plenty of cash
to fund his new endeavor.
But once again, he ran into
trouble with his investors.
On November 2, 1916,
Ford received an injunction
forbidding him from using
company funds
to build the new plant.
Two of Ford's original backers,
Horace and John Dodge,
were behind the suit.
The Dodges complained that Ford
was defrauding his investors
by not paying out dividends
that reflected huge profits.
WATTS: The Dodge brothers had
a very traditional understanding
of a corporation,
and that is, it is to make
a profit for the investors.
Ford thought differently.
He often described investors
as parasites.
They put some money in,
but they didn't really
do anything
to make the company grow.
NARRATOR:
Henry was particularly galled
by the fact that
the Dodge brothers
were planning on using
their dividends
to expand their own
rival car company.
After two years
of legal wrangling,
the judge ruled
in the Dodges' favor,
forcing Ford to pay
$20 million plus interest
to each of the seven
stockholders
who retained minority control
in his company.
STAUDENMAIER: Henry Ford believes
everybody should worship
at the shrine
that he has created.
Anybody that's been part
of his operation
is either a worshiper
or a traitor.
They turned traitors.
NARRATOR: Early in his
career as a car maker,
Ford had vowed to rid himself
of meddling investors.
Now he would make good
on that promise.
NARRATOR: The announcement began
with characteristic grandiosity.
"L am very much interested in
the future of the whole world,"
Henry Ford declared
in late 1918.
But then came the bombshell.
The 55-year-old automaker was
quitting the Ford Motor Company
to pursue other interests.
His son Edsel
would take over the company.
The thought of a 25-year-old
heading up a $250 million
business with 45,000 employees
rattled Ford's stockholders.
Two months later, the elder Ford
delivered a stinging
second punch:
He was starting a rival company.
The new company, he declared,
would produce a car
stripped down to its essentials
and priced at $300,
less than the cost of a Model T.
The automaker said
he planned on building factories
across the country
and hiring 200,000 employees.
As rumors swirled
around Detroit,
Ford Motor's investors
grew increasingly frantic.
WATTS: By this time,
he's sort of the master
of manipulating the press,
so of course this goes
all over the country.
What he was doing here was
trying to frighten
the stockholders
of the Ford Motor Company.
So this is all
a very elaborate ploy
to gain control of the stock
in the original company.
NARRATOR:
Acting on his father's orders,
Edsel secretly hired
a Boston banking firm
to approach investors.
One by one, as speculation about
Ford Motor's future intensified,
the investors sold their stock.
The takeover cost Ford
$106 million.
But for the first time
in 16 years,
he, Edsel and Clara controlled
every last share in his company.
When told his scheme had worked,
Ford danced a jig
around the room.
WATTS: Edsel Ford,
when he was appointed head
of Ford Motor Company
by his father, he was ecstatic.
CASEY: Edsel knew his father
was a pretty controlling guy.
But Henry had enough money
that he could do pretty much
anything he wanted to do.
Edsel may well have thought,
"Well, Father's going to go off
and let me run the company."
NARRATOR: By rights, Edsel should
have been at the center of the plans
to develop the massive
River Rouge complex
taking shape in Dearborn.
In reality, his father directed
every major move.
Henry oversaw the digging
of the foundation
for the Rouge's massive
power plant
and the dredging of the river
to allow ships
to load and unload.
He reviewed plans
for every street
and railroad line that was laid
and directed the construction
of blast furnaces and a foundry.
If any aspect of the project
did not meet his expectations,
the elder Ford intervened.
When an engineer admitted that
a 35-foot high coke oven wall
was half an inch out of line
from the original plans,
Ford demanded it be demolished.
Edsel was left at Highland Park
to shoulder
the day-to-day duties
of Model T production and sales.
Soon after taking over
as president,
Edsel decided to relieve
overcrowding
in the administration building
by constructing a new wing.
When Henry saw the hole for the
foundation, he confronted Edsel.
He told his son the new building
was unnecessary.
Edsel promised
to fill in the hole.
"No," his father replied,
"don't do that.
Just leave it that way."
Every day on his way to work,
Edsel had to walk by the hole.
A dejected Edsel confided
in a close friend,
"I don't know
what kick Father gets
out of humiliating me this way."
WATTS: This was a display
of Henry Ford's power.
He was the guy that was
running the show,
and there was no doubt about it.
If you didn't accept that,
you looked at that big hole
out in the ground there
and it became
abundantly clear to you.
NARRATOR:
Since forcing out his investors,
Ford had consolidated his power
at the company.
Over the course of 12 months,
he fired several high-level,
loyal employees
who had been critical
to the success of the Model T.
BRINKLEY: Many people thought,
"I perfected this transmission,
and now that it's perfect,
you're throwing me out
to the wolves?"
And Henry Ford would say, "Yes."
"Go make your way
somewhere else.
Don't be a tick
sucking the blood out of me."
LICHTENSTEIN: Ford himself
never directly fired anyone.
He let others do it,
and sometimes this was done
in a particularly
brutal fashion.
Someone would show up
at their office
and their desk would be gone,
or a whole department
in one case showed up,
and the room was bare.
Ford had a massive ego.
And he begins to put
into practice
this compulsion to grab
center stage,
to be out there
in the limelight,
to get publicity,
to give no one else credit.
(gunshots)
CASEY: The power that he
accumulated really did change him.
When he got the ability
to exercise this absolute power
over people,
he embraced it and exercised it.
NARRATOR: In early summer, 1919,
Henry Ford arrived
at the courthouse
in Mt. Clemens, Michigan,
a small town north of Detroit.
Ford had sued the Chicago
Tribune for libel
after the paper called him
an "ignorant idealist"
and an anarchist enemy
of the nation."
Now he would take the stand.
To disprove
the allegation of libel,
the Tribune set out
to prove Ford's ignorance.
"Do you know anything about
the Revolution, Mr. Ford?"
the Tribune's lawyer asked.
"Yes, sir," Ford replied.
"What revolution did you have
in mind, Mr. Ford?"
"In 1812," Ford answered
to the amazement of the people
in the courtroom.
STAUDENMAIER:
They basically asked him
you might say
high school questions.
And he was revealed to be
pathetically inarticulate
and ill informed.
The stuff he didn't know
was amazing to people.
NARRATOR: "Don't you know there
was not any revolution in 1812?"
the lawyer persisted.
"Don't you know
that this country
"was born out of a revolution
in 1776?
Did you forget that?"
"I guess I did," Ford answered.
GRANDIN: The defense
attorneys want to paint him
as someone who is semi-literate.
They ask him to read passages,
and he refuses.
The first day, he says
he forgot his glasses.
The next day,
he said that he can't read
because his eyes are watery.
And he comes across as being
out of his depth.
NARRATOR: Newspapers
from across the country
covered the trial
in breathless detail,
as Ford was subjected
to eight days of questioning.
STAUDENMAIER: He hates lawyers,
just as he hates Wall Street.
And he can't get off the stand.
He can't just get up and say,
"I don't have to take this,
I'm Henry Ford."
"No, sir, you are under oath."
NARRATOR: When the trial
finally concluded,
the jury,
made up mostly of farmers,
found that Ford had indeed
been libeled.
He may have been ignorant,
but he was no anarchist.
But despite the victory,
Ford was deeply wounded
by the experience.
The press in particular
heaped ridicule on the automaker
for his embarrassing
performance.
WATTS:
For everyone who was there,
particularly newspaper
reporters,
what this seemed to clinch was
their suspicion that Henry Ford
was a rural rube who had
stumbled into his success,
a stupid man representing
stupid ideas and stupid people.
NARRATOR: "Mr. Ford,"
wrote the New York Times,
"has been submitted
to a severe examination
"of his intellectual qualities.
He has not received a pass."
The New York Post
put it even more harshly:
"The man is a joke."
NARRATOR: A few weeks after
the libel trial ended,
Ford escaped to Upstate New York
to recover from his ordeal.
His forays into
America's wilderness
with friends Thomas Edison
and Harvey Firestone,
the tire magnate,
were an annual tradition.
This year, the trip
was particularly healing
as Ford learned
that letters to him
were pouring in
from across the country.
Upset by the coverage
of the trial,
farmers, shopkeepers, village
leaders and small-town editors
now rushed to Ford's defense.
Ministers offered prayers
to deliver Henry Ford
from his elitist persecutors.
Tens of thousands
of ordinary people
sent him heartfelt words
of support.
"You are my ideal
of a self-made man,"
wrote one admirer.
"You are loved by thousands
of people all over the world,"
gushed another.
"You have done more good and
accomplished more for the people
"than any man living.
Do not let them discourage you."
To the bewilderment of some,
the trial made Henry Ford
even more of a folk hero
than he had been before.
WATTS:
There was a kind of divide
between common people
in the country
and the intelligentsia
on the other hand,
who really loathed Ford
in a lot of ways.
And to his way of thinking,
he stood exactly
where he wanted to stand.
NARRATOR: Over the years, Ford worked
to reinforce his everyman image.
This year was no different.
As he embraced outdoor living,
Ford made sure that
journalists, photographers
and his own camera crew
were on hand
to cover his every exploit.
"The well-equipped excursions,"
wrote a colleague,
"were as private and secluded
as a Hollywood opening."
Movies of the trips
would later be shown
in theaters across the country.
WATTS: He loves to camp,
he loves to be out
in the wilderness,
he loves rural America,
but there's also
an opportunity there.
You have Henry Ford,
the manipulator of the media;
Henry Ford, the shrewd operator
who understands how
the modern world works.
GRANDIN:
Ford had a lot of ideas.
He had a lot of ideas about
how to organize society,
about the best way to live,
about proper roles
of men and women.
He had ideas about diet.
He had ideas about smoking.
He had ideas about exercise.
And he also had ideas
about Jews.
NARRATOR: In May 1920,
Ford began publishing
a series of articles
in his hometown weekly,
the Dearborn Independent,
which he had purchased
a year and a half earlier.
"If there is one quality
that attracts Jews,
"it is power," Ford wrote.
"It is not merely that
there are a few Jews
"among international
financial controllers;
"It is that these
world-controllers
are exclusively Jews."
GRANDIN:
He linked Jews to Wall Street,
he linked them to banks,
and he blamed them for war.
He basically began to blame Jews
for all of the problems
of the modern world.
HASIA R. DINER:
He lived in a culture
in which all sorts
of attributions
were made to "the Jews."
"The Jews are profiteers.
The Jews cheat you in business."
"The Jews" became the symbol
of a world
that was being manipulated
and controlled.
NARRATOR: Ford ensured that
his anti-Semitic message
would be read in households
across the nation.
In addition to subscriptions,
he distributed
the Dearborn Independent
through his more than 7,000
car dealerships.
By 1926, circulation
had reached 900,000.
DINER: There are lots of
small-town newspapers
that publish scurrilous
anti-Semitic materials,
so it wasn't unusual
in that way.
But what's notable about
the Dearborn Independent
is that there'd be
stacks of them
in a dealership in California,
a dealership in Massachusetts,
a dealership in Iowa.
NARRATOR:
The American Jewish Committee,
the Federal Council of Churches
and over 100 prominent leaders,
including President
Woodrow Wilson,
condemned Ford's attacks.
But he was undeterred.
"The Jews are the scavengers
of the world," Ford declared.
"Wherever there's anything wrong
with a country,
you'll find the Jews
on the job there."
Ford even reprinted
the notorious Protocols
of the Elders of Zion.
GRANDIN: The czars in Russia created
this total fictional account
of Jews conspiring
to take over the world.
And it's Ford
that publishes it in America.
What really matters
about Henry Ford is that just
he had so much power
and so much cultural authority.
And when a figure
like Henry Ford
sanctions this kind of thing,
it legitimizes these ideas.
NARRATOR: A defamation
suit by a Jewish lawyer
forced Henry Ford
to issue a public apology.
After eight years of publishing
the Dearborn Independent,
he shut the paper down.
Many Jewish organizations
accepted Ford's apology
as sincere,
but those who knew him best
did not.
Behind closed doors,
Ford remained convinced
that Jews were at the heart
of what he deemed
the degeneration
of American society.
(big band music playing)
NARRATOR: In 1920s America,
change was everywhere:
New forms of music and dance,
new government prohibitions,
new expectations for women.
Nowhere was change
more evident, however,
than on the nation's roadways.
The automobile boom
had fueled the expansion
of the oil, rubber
and steel industries,
spurred road construction,
stimulated
real estate development
and created new businesses
like gas stations,
roadside motels and restaurants.
Streets were no longer littered
with horse manure,
but clogged with cars.
CASEY:
People who can buy cars, do.
People who can't buy cars
want to.
NARRATOR: "The automobile,"
wrote one essayist,
"changed our dress, manners,
vacation habits,
the shape of our cities
and positions in intercourse."
The emphasis on leisure time,
the emphasis on just going out
for a drive in your car
to nowhere, to wherever.
I mean, these were new ideas,
and this was a really new
experience for Americans.
NARRATOR: Many of the changes
didn't sit well with Henry Ford.
KOEHN:
Once people have bought one car
and have learned to use it
and learned to drive it,
a different set of related wants
would set in.
What if a car
had different kind of fenders
and different kind of upholstery
and different kind of headlamps?
Markets evolve
as more and more people
buy products.
This is true of clothes,
this is true of computers,
this is true of smartphones
today.
It was no less true of the car.
GRANDIN:
It's the roaring twenties.
People want style,
they want speed,
they want flash.
Ford looked around
and he saw people
buying these luxurious vehicles,
and he seemed to think,
"That's not the way
to spend your money."
Ford is uncomfortable
in this new consumer world
that he's had a huge part
in creating.
NARRATOR: "I sometimes wonder"
if we have fallen under
the spell of salesmanship,"
Ford complained.
"The American of a generation
ago was a shrewd buyer.
But nowadays the American people
seem to listen and be sold."
Where Ford saw decadence,
the president of rival
General Motors saw opportunity.
CASEY:
Alfred P. Sloan seemed to see
what the future
of the automobile industry was
beyond the Model T.
He realized that once the market
was fairly well saturated,
you're going to have
to give people an excuse
to keep buying new cars
and get rid of a perfectly good
two- or three-year-old car.
NARRATOR: Sloan initiated
the yearly model change
and developed a wide range
of vehicles
from the modest
to the extravagant:
Chevrolets, Oldsmobiles,
Buicks and Cadillacs,
cars "for every purse
and purpose."
For the first time,
the Ford Motor Company
faced real competition.
Though the Model T had outsold
its nearest competitors
by six-to-one in 1924,
as the ten millionth
rolled off the assembly line,
sales were distinctly
beginning to slip.
Within the year,
Ford's market share
had dipped below 50%
and was continuing in free fall.
Meanwhile, sales of General
Motors' jaunty Chevrolet
Available in practically
any color except black
Had more than tripled.
Henry Ford refused
to even entertain the idea
of a new automobile.
"The Model T," he proclaimed,
"is the most perfect car
in the world."
KOEHN: He was so maniacally
committed to his vision.
The same thing
that makes him successful
now begins to create great
vulnerability for him.
NARRATOR:
Ford dealers were exasperated.
Some jumped ship to Dodge
or General Motors.
"The Model T," one complained,
"has run its course."
On January 20, 1926,
a six-page memo landed
on Henry Ford's desk.
Its author, Ernest Kanzler,
a vice president at Ford Motor
and Edsel's brother-in-law,
had fretted over the document
for weeks,
worrying that
if he didn't send it,
the company might collapse,
anxious that if he did,
the note might end his career.
"Our Ford customers,"
Kanzler wrote,
"are going to other
manufacturers.
"With every additional car
our competitors sell,
"they get stronger
and we get weaker.
"A new product is necessary.
"Practically every man
in your organization
"to whom you have entrusted
the greatest responsibility
holds this same opinion."
Ford had surrounded himself
with "yes" men.
And so when he did
encounter opposition,
he reacted in a kind
of aggressive fashion.
NARRATOR: Ford humiliated
Kanzler at every opportunity,
forcing him out of the company
within months.
"The only problem with the Ford
car," Henry insisted,
"is that we can't
produce it fast enough."
No one else in the company
agreed, least of all his son.
For once, Edsel refused
to back down.
WATTS: Edsel Ford did
not like conflict.
He did not like tension
with his father.
He did not like butting heads.
But Edsel became convinced
that times had changed,
consumers had become
more sophisticated,
and you simply needed to put
a new model out there.
NARRATOR: The fight went
on for more than a year.
Time and again,
Edsel would show up
in his father's office
with plans under his arm
for a new car;
Each time, his father
would send him away.
After one exchange,
Henry demanded that a colleague
tell Edsel
to take a trip to California.
"Make it a long stay," he said.
"I'll send for him
when I want to see him again."
"It was the old man's belief
that he knew best
what was good for the public,"
a colleague recalled.
"Edsel, on the other hand,
would try to give the public
what they wanted."
On May 26, 1927, father and son
appeared in public together
to celebrate
the 15 millionth Model
as it rolled off
the Ford assembly line.
As they posed for the cameras,
an announcement went out
to the press.
The Ford Motor Company
would discontinue the Model
and introduce
an "entirely new Ford car."
WATTS: It's impossible to pinpoint
a specific moment or a meeting
where Henry Ford decided to put
the Model T in mothballs.
Henry Ford
sort of throws in the towel.
And he reluctantly agreed
to put a team together
to start developing a new model.
NARRATOR: After shutting down
production for six months to retool,
the new Ford car was finally
ready in December 1927.
Anticipation was intense.
The company counted
more than 100,000 orders
before anyone had even seen
a prototype.
When it was unveiled, the sleek
Model A received rave reviews.
Produced in a range of colors,
it had a powerful
four-cylinder engine,
an electrical system
with a self-starter
and a shatterproof windshield.
Fast, reliable, safe,
yet still affordable,
it was available
on an installment plan.
Everyone who worked at Ford
Motor knew that it was Edsel
who was responsible
for its style and design.
To Edsel's dismay,
his father took all the credit.
WATTS: Henry Ford shamelessly
moves into the limelight
and manipulates the press,
as he had done for years,
and emerges as the great hero
in this story,
the man bringing a new car
to the people.
NARRATOR: The Model A did revive
the Ford Motor Company's fortunes,
with sales of 700,000 cars
in the first year.
But despite the success,
Ford never forgave his son.
WATTS:
Henry Ford loved the Model
more than anything
in his entire life.
It was central to his identity.
Getting rid of the Model T,
in essence,
was sort of cutting out
part of himself.
CASEY: It's almost like
giving up a child.
He didn't want to admit
that this wonderful design
that was so much part of him,
that that design
was now obsolete.
NARRATOR: By the winter of 1928,
after more than ten years
of construction,
Ford's massive factory complex
at the River Rouge
was fully operative.
Henry envisioned making
10,000 cars a day there.
KOEHN: Ford's factories
were in many ways
like mirrors into his ambition
and his drive.
We see a little of this
at Highland Park,
but we see it much more clearly
at River Rouge.
This is an empire,
a large industrial empire
that uses millions of dollars'
worth of raw materials
and ends with cars
literally rolling off
a moving assembly line.
So Ford has created a factory
that is completely under his own
control and leadership.
NARRATOR: The Rouge included
15 miles of roadways
and housed 120 miles
of conveyors
within 93 buildings.
Water pumped
from the Detroit River
supplied the complex
with 700 million gallons a day,
as much as consumed by Detroit,
Cincinnati and New Orleans
combined.
CASEY: They had 100
miles of railroad track
just to move things around
within the plant.
It had its own water system.
It had its own power system.
They had their own
security department.
They had their own
fire department.
It was, in essence, a city
where you made automobiles.
NARRATOR: Operating around the
clock in eight-hour shifts,
Ford Motor employed more than
75,000 people at the Rouge.
LICHTENSTEIN:
Here was the real guts
and the heart
of industrial civilization.
This was the vanguard,
this was the most advanced,
the most sophisticated
manufacturing facility
in the country.
It really was a Mecca.
NARRATOR: Any lingering notions
that the Ford Motor Company
was interested
in human development
and progressive reform
were a thing of the past.
There were competitors to beat
and ever-higher
production levels to reach.
"Time loves to be wasted,"
Ford wrote.
"From time wasted
there can be no salvage."
WATTS: Any hint of camaraderie,
teamwork, cooperation,
common purpose,
even the Sociological
Department,
all of that's gone
from the Rouge.
Its sole function
was to have thousands of men
working to churn out,
as efficiently as possible,
as many automobiles
as they could.
NARRATOR: Although Henry Ford
had carefully supervised
every aspect
of the Rouge's design,
no sooner was it complete
than he began to hate it.
WATTS:
Henry Ford created this monster.
The River Rouge plant
was so big, it was so heartless.
It was so removed
from everything that he had
experienced earlier.
What you find is that
as the Rouge is up and firing,
Henry Ford spends
very little time there.
NARRATOR: By the late 19205,
manufacturing was fast
surpassing agriculture
as the nation's economic driver.
Dearborn itself, which had been
dotted with barns and pastures,
was now a sprawling
industrial center,
home to not just Ford Motor
but Michigan Bell Telephone,
the Pennsylvania Railroad
and Detroit Edison.
More Americans now lived
in cities than on farms.
The rural, small-town America
of Henry Ford's childhood
was rapidly disappearing.
He felt increasingly at sea.
GRANDIN: He begins to condemn large,
sprawling, crime-ridden cities
and large concentrations
of people.
But he, more than anybody else,
has concentrated industrial
workers in large numbers
with his factory system.
He's realizing that he can't
control the forces in some ways
that he has helped unleash.
NARRATOR:
It was his tranquil antidote
to the never-ending clamor
and pollution of the Rouge.
One writer dubbed it "Henry
Ford's Village of Yesterday."
The automaker himself named it
Greenfield Village,
after his wife's hometown.
The project had begun
years earlier
with a loving restoration
of Ford's boyhood home.
When workmen recovered broken
bits of his mother's dishes,
Ford had her china reproduced
and placed on the shelves
just as it had been
when he was growing up.
He built a replica
of the workbench
where he had repaired watches
as a boy,
scoured antique shops
to find furniture
he remembered from his youth
and filled dresser drawers
with shawls
like those his mother had worn.
Then he bought 245 acres
a mile from the Rouge.
He purchased historic buildings,
had them dismantled
and sent to Dearborn
for reassembly:
The Wright Brothers'
bicycle shop,
Thomas Edison's
Menlo Park laboratory
and the garage where Ford
had built his quadricycle.
WATTS: Greenfield Village,
in a certain way,
becomes a monument
not only to the American past,
but to his past as well.
He seemed to be yearning
to somehow recapture the kind
of society and culture
that the automobile
and the River Rouge
had essentially destroyed.
You have him raising
River Rouge,
which is this enormous
cathedral to industry,
and in the shadows
of the River Rouge,
he's building this 19th-century
testament to a receding America.
STAUDENMAIER: He lives nostalgia
in excruciating detail.
Nobody else had a billion
dollars in the 1920s and said,
"I'm going to create
an alternative world.
"L can do it.
And it's all mine."
The whole thing is so
he didn't have to live
in the world that was
around him.
NARRATOR:
Ford's vision of the past
included a deep reverence
for technology.
He built a sawmill,
restored a 17th-century forge
and collected steam engines.
He banned one invention,
however: The telephone.
When his manager protested,
suggesting the boss might miss
important communications
from the factory,
Ford replied,
"Oh, forget that stuff.
I come down here to get away
from that gang."
STAUDENMAIER: This is an immense
investment of Henry's interest
as well as his money.
It clearly is increasingly
where he wants to be
and what he wants to do.
He hates the Rouge.
He loves Greenfield Village.
That's where his heart is.
He begins to pull away, even
perhaps without realizing it,
from the world he created.
NARRATOR: In Ford's hometown,
the Depression that followed
the stock market crash in 1929
hit harder than almost
anywhere else in the country.
The centerpiece
of Detroit's economy
was the manufacture
of automobiles.
During the booming 1920s,
the city's population had grown
by more than 50%.
Now, the financial crisis
devastated the industry.
GAGE:
In the course of four years,
the stock market loses
90% of its value.
And that in turn
comes hand-in-hand
with a real bottoming out
of this kind of frothy
consumer economy.
In a city like Detroit,
you've had this boom,
and then all of a sudden
your customers are gone.
And they're really gone.
NARRATOR:
Ford defiantly protected jobs,
announcing instead
that he would raise wages
to seven dollars a day.
But within months of the crash,
Model A sales stalled
and Ford was forced
to lay off workers.
Men who had flocked to Detroit
when Ford announced
the pay raise
were suddenly out of work
and destitute.
The mayor estimated that
a third of the 200,000 people
standing in breadlines
had been laid off
from Ford's factories.
"Declining sales
have changed Mr. Ford,"
noted Fortune magazine,
"from one of the greatest
U.S. money makers
to one of the greatest
money losers."
The Ford Motor Company
was staggering on its feet.
Among the Big Three,
it had moved into third place
behind Chrysler,
far behind General Motors.
NARRATOR: Three years into
the Great Depression,
with profits down by 50%,
the Ford Motor Company
was in trouble.
Ford responded to the pressure
by coming to rely more and more
on one man at his company.
Harry Bennett was
a former amateur boxer
who had first joined
Ford's company
in the motion picture department
before rising to become
security chief at the Rouge.
WATTS:
Harry Bennett had a background
very different from any
of the other Ford managers.
He was a kind of streetwise,
tough, roustabout,
uneducated basically,
a kind of tough guy,
packing a pistol literally.
NARRATOR: Bennett surrounded himself
with a group of street fighters,
athletes, ex-convicts
and underworld figures.
With their weapons
often prominently displayed,
his men roamed the factory
enforcing strict
workplace rules.
Workers were not allowed to talk
or even sit down
while on the clock.
Workers described it
as an internal Gestapo,
a kind of police force
inside the factory.
Terror and fear was pervasive
in the organization.
GRANDIN: Harry Bennett ruled
the River Rouge factory floor
with an iron grip.
He enforced discipline.
He controlled almost
every aspect of workers' lives.
The old vision of Ford
as the paternalist
by this point had given way
to a vision of extreme
conformity and discipline.
NARRATOR:
Bennett derived his power
from his close relationship
with his boss.
Ford often drove his security
chief to work in the mornings
and had a standing call
with Bennett
at 9:30 every night.
WATTS: Ford always stayed behind
the curtain as the Wizard of Oz,
pulling the levers
and manipulating the wires,
making the big decisions.
He can't relinquish control
because that's what Henry Ford
is all about.
NARRATOR: "If Mr. Ford told me to
blacken out the sun tomorrow,"
Bennett once said,
"I might have trouble fixing it,
"but you'd see 100,000
sons-of-bitches
"coming through the Rouge gates
in the morning
all wearing dark glasses."
NARRATOR:
As he drew closer to Bennett,
Ford's relationship with Edsel
grew increasingly strained.
Even newsreels couldn't hide
the growing tension
between father and son.
The United States, even when
it is running in low,
is a pretty big
business proposition.
But I believe the country
is getting ready
to make a very decided step
forward next year,
and we are doing all
that we can to help it along.
What do you think
of that, Father?
Well, I think everybody
has decided
that they've got to go to work,
and I think from now on,
there's no one can stop
this great country
from going ahead, full blast.
NARRATOR: Over the years,
Henry had grown frustrated
with Edsel's management
of the company.
Where others saw Edsel
as a progressive,
collaborative leader,
his father saw only restraint
and indecision.
"Mr. Ford,"
observed one employee,
"didn't think Edsel
was tough enough."
People who worked for Edsel
loved him
because he didn't
order people around,
he didn't throw temper tantrums,
he didn't act like a tyrant.
And it was very much a kind
of modern style of management,
but his father hated it,
and he thought it was another
sign of his son's softness.
NARRATOR: Edsel's personal life was
a constant source of irritation
to his father as well.
Everything about the way
Edsel lived-
his GO-room mansion,
his art collection,
his extravagant parties,
his wealthy friends,
the fact that he drank alcohol
Confirmed Henry's suspicions
that his son was weak.
STAUDENMAIER: Edsel says, "I am
one of the wealthy and powerful."
And that's just intolerable
for Henry.
He couldn't imagine
living like that himself.
He just can't imagine it.
NARRATOR:
Henry finally had enough
and ordered Bennett
to spy on his son.
BRINKLEY: He was a compulsive
person, Henry Ford,
and he wanted his son
not to have any vices.
When Edsel left town,
Henry Ford would break
into Edsel's house
and smash with a cane
all of the liquor bottles.
Putting spies on his son
and accusing him of being
an alcoholic
and all of these crazy things,
it was all in Henry Ford's mind.
NARRATOR:
As his family life deteriorated
and his company's fortunes
declined,
Ford turned his attention
to a new threat.
Union organizers had set their
sights on the auto industry.
The passage of the 1935 Wagner
Act, which guaranteed workers
the right to organize
and bargain collectively,
emboldened the United
Auto Workers.
Following a six-week strike,
General Motors
recognized the union.
Chrysler capitulated
three months later.
Henry Ford resolved to fight.
GRANDIN: Ford imagined himself
as elevating the living
conditions of the working class.
But he hated unions
with a passion, viscerally.
He disliked them in principle.
They were a challenge
to his power,
a challenge to the notion
that the River Rouge was his.
NARRATOR: Ford decreed
that no one at Ford Motor
was to meet with union officials
or discuss labor matters
with anyone.
Except Harry Bennett.
In April of 1937,
Ford authorized
his head of security
to "handle"
the United Auto Workers.
Bennett promptly declared
that the UAW
"was irresponsible, un-American,
and no goddamn good."
On May 26, 1937, union
organizers arrived at the Rouge
and began handing out leaflets
entitled "Unionism not Fordism."
LICHTENSTEIN: They knew
that in order for the union
to be secure in the industry,
they had to organize Ford.
And they had invited
photographers.
They wanted photographers
to come.
They wanted to show the country
that leaflets
were being distributed
and workers were being recruited
at the Ford Motor Company
to join the United
Automobile Workers.
NARRATOR:
Bennett's thugs were ready.
The Ford security force grabbed
most of the cameras,
but a few photographers
got away.
Pictures of the company's
brutality
were published in newspapers
across the country.
Through it all, the aging
carmaker remained resolute,
determined to keep the union
out of his company.
While his emotions
are pulling him into the past,
there's this almost primal urge
in his character
to keep control
of what he created.
The Ford Motor Company
is his baby.
He built it, and he's going
to hold on to it.
STAUDENMAIER: Why would he
create such a violent world
of spies and thugs?
Why do that?
Well, because he was lashing out
against a world
that had spun out of control,
as far as he was concerned.
NARRATOR: As the years went by,
Henry Ford began spending
more and more time
at Greenfield Village.
He checked in on the children
who attended
his one-room schoolhouse,
dropped by the farm where he was
experimenting with soybeans,
and enjoyed old-time dancing
at Lovett Hall,
where he had a full-time
instructor on staff.
(choral music
playing over speakers)
When he turned 75 in July 1938,
Henry watched as performers
reenacted scenes from his life.
But he kept slipping away
from his party
to check on his projects
at the Village,
preferring to be there than with
the thousands of well-wishers.
It was clear to everyone
he had slowed down.
Few knew, however, that he'd
also suffered a mild stroke.
His father's mental state
was what troubled Edsel.
Instead of mellowing with age,
Henry was growing more
controlling and paranoid.
He lashed out at employees,
accused longtime associates
of disloyalty,
or worse, didn't recognize them,
and insisted that Jews
were persecuting him.
He became convinced
there was only one man
in the company he could trust:
"My Harry."
WATTS: Harry Bennett represented
all of the qualities
that Henry had been trying
to push Edsel toward for years.
Bennett became a kind of
surrogate son for Henry Ford,
a kind of idealized son that
he always wanted Edsel to be
and Edsel could never become.
(giving impassioned speech)
NARRATOR: In the spring of 1941,
with war raging in Europe,
Ford Motor secured several
government contracts,
including a $480 million order
for B-24 bombers.
The infusion of cash
put the company back on track.
But for the 90,000 workers
inside the Rouge plant,
the threats, violence,
intimidation and terror
continued unabated.
Men discovered talking in groups
were suspected of union
activities and promptly fired,
often after a severe beating.
With large defense contracts
at stake,
union officials
were in a stronger position
to push for fair treatment.
They called for higher wages,
overtime pay and job security.
WATTS: Edsel counsels his
father, "Let's work this out."
"Let's talk to the unions.
Let's do what we need to do."
Henry will have none of it.
NARRATOR: When Ford refused
to meet his workers' demands,
thousands walked out
and went on strike.
(yelling)
Edsel stepped in
without his father's permission,
meeting with union officials
and hammering out an agreement.
When the formal contract
between the union
and Ford Motor was completed,
Henry Ford refused to sign it.
He raged at Edsel, saying he'd
rather shut down his factories
than give in to the union.
It was an empty threat.
The elder Ford knew he'd lost.
LICHTENSTEIN: Henry Ford gives in to
the union because he had no choice.
If the strike had continued,
if chaos had reigned
on the factory floor,
the government would have
unquestionably come in.
And he was told this,
even by Harry Bennett.
NARRATOR: The following day,
Ford Motor gave the UAW
everything it wanted and more:
A union shop, wages equal
to the highest in the industry
and union dues deducted
from workers' paychecks.
When asked later why he
had suddenly changed course,
Henry would say that Clara
had threatened to leave him
if he didn't.
Soon after the strike, Edsel
checked into the hospital.
Like many of the executives
at Ford,
he had suffered for years
from ulcers,
which doctors believed
were brought on by stress.
They recommended that Ford's son
have part of his stomach
removed.
But surgery didn't help.
"If there is anything the matter
with Edsel's health,"
his father told associates,
"he can correct it himself.
Edsel must mend his ways."
What Henry didn't know
was that his son had
terminal stomach cancer.
Edsel returned to work, telling
no one but his wife Eleanor.
CASEY: When Edsel's physical
condition began to deteriorate,
Henry just took it
as another sign of weakness.
"If he'd just eat right,
if he wouldn't drink any wine,"
"if he'd stop hanging out
"with those good-for-nothing
rich friends of his,
he'd fix himself."
NARRATOR: Matters came to a
head in the spring of 1943,
when Henry ordered a close
associate to demand
that Edsel reform his attitude
and behavior or else.
When he heard his father's long
list of grievances against him,
Edsel broke down in tears.
A few weeks later, he collapsed.
Eleanor revealed to Henry
what she had known for months:
Edsel was dying.
As his son lay bedridden
at home in Grosse Point,
Henry refused to believe it.
He frantically contacted
Edsel's doctors,
demanding that they restore
his son's health.
On May 26, 1943, Edsel Ford died
at the age of 49.
Henry Ford was shattered.
For months afterwards,
he wandered the grounds
of Greenfield Village
at night by himself.
WATTS: Ford knew in his heart
that his actions and his
unfair treatment of Edsel
in some way had been
responsible for his death.
And emotionally,
mentally, physically,
he was just never the same.
NARRATOR:
"Harry," he asked one day,
"do you think I was
ever cruel to Edsel?"
"Not cruel, but unfair,"
Bennett replied.
"If it had been me,
I would have got mad."
"That's what I wanted him
to do," said Ford, "get mad."
NARRATOR: After Edsel's death,
Henry Ford once again took over
the presidency of Ford Motor.
But after multiple strokes,
he was in no shape
to run the company.
WATTS: It was a period
of absolute chaos.
One observer described it as
"the years of the Mad Hatter"
because Ford
would give directives
and then contradict them
the next day.
He would call people back in
who hadn't worked at the company
for 30 years.
NARRATOR: "We have to go back to
the old days, the Model T days,"
Ford would say.
"We've got to build only
one car, just the one Ford."
Officials in the government
worried that
with Henry at the helm,
Ford Motor could not fulfill
its war contracts.
In 1945, Ford suffered
another major stroke.
Increasingly, he failed
to recognize friends,
avoided going out in public
and was afraid to let Clara
out of his sight.
On April 7, 1947, Henry Ford
died in the middle of the night,
his head rested
on his wife's shoulder.
He was 83.
Two days later,
100,000 people waited patiently
in a line a mile long
to view his body.
They came to pay their respects,
not to the author
of The International Jew,
the initiator of oppressive
labor practices,
or the father who bullied
his only son
but to the most influential
industrialist of his time,
the man who,
more than any other,
had ushered in the 20th century.
WATTS: Henry Ford,
despite all of his great success
and his great wealth,
had the soul of a common person,
the soul of a common man.
And I think people understood
that instinctively.
Somehow, Ford was one of them.
His automobile represented
this modern notion
that happiness lay
not in self-denial,
not in self-restraint,
not in scarcity,
but it lay in self-fulfillment.
KOEHN: What Henry Ford saw and
what he committed himself to
in terms of producing a durable,
affordable, effective automobile
changed American life,
changed American business
and changed Americans
one by one,
as it continues
to affect us today.
NARRATOR: For the rest of the century,
the Ford Motor Company remained
one of the three dominant
American car companies,
though it never again
controlled the market
as it had
in Henry Ford's heyday.
Shortly after Ford's death,
the company's new president,
Edsel's oldest son, Henry,
oversaw the first public
offering of company shares
on the New York Stock Exchange.
In addition to ending the Ford
family's control of Ford Motor,
Henry Ford ll also put an end
to his grandfather's experiments
in social engineering.
By then, Ford's planned utopia
in the rainforest
had become a lawless outpost
where rubber had never been
successfully produced.
In one of his first acts
as president,
Henry Ford ll sold the land
back to the Brazilian government
for a fraction of its value.
All too soon, Fordlandia
was reclaimed by the jungle.
(birds chiming)
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