I’ve been trying for years to get a clear picture of Henry Ford. He was massively complicated and entirely simple all at once. He hated FDR and accomplished the same ends as FDR. (I’m pretty sure Frank understood Hank better than Hank understood Frank.) Ford was America’s most effective and benevolent socialist and “civil rights” leader, but he hated socialism and benevolence.
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As usual, found this article while looking for something else. In a 1919 business trade journal, naturalist John Burroughs writes about one of his fishing trips with Tom Edison, Hank Ford, and Harv Firestone. Burroughs didn’t think highly of Firestone, called him a clean businessman and left it at that. He had a lot to say about Hank and Tom, who were his close friends.
First off, what did Naturalist Burroughs think about pollution?
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Pittsburgh is a city that sits with its feet in, or very near, the lake of brimstone and fire, and its head in the sweet country air of the hilltops. I think I got nearer the infernal regions there than I ever did in any other city in this country. One is fairly suffocated at times, driving along the public highways on a bright breezy August day. It might well be the devil’s laboratory. Out of such blackening and blasting fumes comes our civilization.
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Magnificently Emersonian. You can’t have civilization without dirt. You need to appreciate and savor the dirt because it provides civilization. Newer enviros think you can have one without the other. Newer enviros shovel all the dirt into China or Africa so they can have their 100.000% vegan gluten-free sugar-free GMO-free oxygen-free Kraut-pure civilization in Seattle.
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Was Ford a pacifist? Still ambiguous.
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“We must win” Mr Ford said, ‘and to do it we shall have to use up a lot of our resources. It is all waste, but it seems necessary, and we are ready to pay the price.’
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Also Emersonian, and certainly doesn’t sound like a committed pacifist or non-interventionist.
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This quote does agree with known history and shows a simple consistent attitude:
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At the time of our trip the people of Michigan were talking about sending Mr Ford to the Senate. Mr Ford said he had no ambition that way, but that if Edison would go from New Jersey they might together do something. One of the things they would do would be to move for the repeal of the patent laws. It was surprising to learn that neither of them had been benefited by the patent laws. The inventor himself, they said, rarely gets any benefit from them; it is the capitalists that make the money.
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Exactly right. Ford disdained patents and ignored the Selden patent pool. He also paid his engineers well. He understood that design needs to be harnessed inside an organization if it’s going to serve a purpose, and he always paid for value. He was correct and the conventional view of patents and copyrights is silly.
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Hank was especially interested in waterpower at the time.
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Mr Ford is more adaptive, more indifferent to places, than is Mr Edison. His interest in the stream is in its potential water-power. He races up and down its banks to see its fall, and where power could be developed. He is never tired of talking of how much power is going to waste everywhere, and says that if the streams were all harnessed, as they could easily be, farm labor everywhere, indoors and out, could be greatly lessened. He dilates upon the benefit that would accrue to every country neighborhood if the water-power that is going to waste in its valley streams were set to work in some useful industry, as it might easily be set to work, furnishing employment to the farmers and others in the winter season when their farms need comparatively little of their attention. Mr Ford always thinks in terms of the greatest good to the greatest number. He aims to place all his inventions within the reach of the great mass of the people.
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Compare with Senator Norris, godfather of the REA:
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Combinations of private corporations got large profits at the expense of the farmer, and when the Government undertook to do this work, it met with bitter opposition from these organized monopolies bent only on securing a profit for themselves. When we realize that most of the energy that goes into the homes comes from natural development of our natural resources that God has given us, we begin to realize how great must be the selfishness of the man who stands in the way of the people who live on farms, preventing them from securing the blessings of this natural element which God intended for all of us.
I have no doubt but that future years are going to bring great improvements and developments in the electric field. Every stream that flows downhill ought to be harnessed and made to contribute something toward the happiness of mankind. Most of these streams can be harnessed, if the arbitrary greed of corporate monopoly is removed. New inventions are going to cheapen this element of human happiness and bring its blessings into many homes which even now are deprived of them.
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At one point Hank proposed developing Muscle Shoals into a city based on water power. The government wasn’t interested, and later FDR did the same thing with tremendous and permanent success.
It’s odd that Edison wasn’t the waterpower fanatic. GE made turbines and generators, and still does. One of the few real products left after Jack Welch fired everyone and everything that wasn’t PURE DOW.
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A few years ago I discussed the same fishing trip from a different angle.
At that time I was noting the oddness of Ford and Edison’s approach to acetylene.
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Polistra's Mill 