Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should know. The biopic edition of Henry Ward, who plays him.
Speaker 1: HM.
Speaker 2: Well, I feel like technology is getting close to a
Speaker 2: point where we could dig him up and reanimate him
Speaker 2: and he could just play himself. So maybe we wait
Speaker 2: like five years and then do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I didn't even see a lot of
Speaker 1: pictures of this guy you have.
Speaker 2: He's very plain looking. But if you know, if you
Speaker 2: know what you're looking at, like a picture of him,
Speaker 2: he's a wily old codure.
Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna say, cuss I could have.
Speaker 2: Who would have worked this as well? But you could
Speaker 2: just you can just see it. And the more you
Speaker 2: know about him, when you see one of his pictures,
Speaker 2: you can just see all of it. It's really interesting.
Speaker 2: But he's very plain working, So I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 2: if you'd seen a picture of him just didn't recognize him.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at him now. He doesn't look super familiar,
Speaker 1: But I mean I kind of have a go to
Speaker 1: that either. Either. Michael Shannon or Sam Rockwell should play everybody? Right,
Speaker 1: And I could see Sam Rockwell gussied up here a
Speaker 1: little bit as Henry Ford.
Speaker 2: What about Danny McBride.
Speaker 1: Build a car with all the pix AND's a little
Speaker 1: east bounding down joke for the fans out there.
Speaker 2: Sure, I was more a Vice Principals fan.
Speaker 1: That was great too, Walton Goggins, he should play him,
Speaker 1: get him in there.
Speaker 2: There you go. Maybe they could just trade off halfway
Speaker 2: through the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and see who f bomb's better.
Speaker 2: So let's get this started. Yeah, let's get this started
Speaker 2: in here.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, well we're gonna talk about Henry Ford,
Speaker 1: who by the way, I feel like we don't need
Speaker 1: some big whopping intro. But I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people recognize Henry Ford as as the founder of the
Speaker 1: Ford Motor Company and not the inventor of the automobile,
Speaker 1: but certainly the gentleman who made the automobile ubiquitous, affordable
Speaker 1: kind of thing for the common person.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He's also strongly associated with the assembly line, which
Speaker 2: he did not invent, but he just like the automobile.
Speaker 2: He definitely made it a thing in doing these things
Speaker 2: like normalizing the assembly line and car ownership really had
Speaker 2: a huge impact on history, especially the history of America.
Speaker 1: For sure. Shall we talk about where he was born
Speaker 1: or you want to skip that?
Speaker 2: No, I mean he was born in Dearborn, Michigan. What's next.
Speaker 1: That was in eighteen sixty three July thirtieth, to William
Speaker 1: and Mary Ford. And his pops was an Irish immigrant
Speaker 1: farmer and his was a homemaker and had a bunch
Speaker 1: of siblings. And this is something that you can put
Speaker 1: a pin in. It's kind of very seems very key
Speaker 1: to his life, or at least his formative years, is
Speaker 1: that he went to one of those kind of old school,
Speaker 1: one room schoolhouses until he was seventeen years old.
Speaker 2: It was literally old school.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very old school. But it seemed to be a
Speaker 1: big deal to him, as we'll see later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So just kind of skipping ahead a
Speaker 2: little bit. He, like Rudolph Diesel, was fascinated by engines
Speaker 2: from a very early age and was like, I want
Speaker 2: to build one of those along the way. Before he
Speaker 2: got to the point of building things like cars and everything,
Speaker 2: he tried his own hand at farming like his old man.
Speaker 2: He got married to a woman named Clara who he
Speaker 2: would stay married to for the rest of his life,
Speaker 2: and he got a job with Thomas Edison at Thomas
Speaker 2: Edison's I believe is Menlo Park complex and had his
Speaker 2: own little shop and everything, and was very interested in
Speaker 2: trying to create a gasoline engine after reading an article
Speaker 2: in American Machinists, which is now known as Hustler.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say, is that true?
Speaker 2: Can you transformation? Though?
Speaker 1: I think one of the interesting things about his early
Speaker 1: life though, is that, And just for some reason this
Speaker 1: strikes me as hysterical, is that he had some horse
Speaker 1: riding accidents when he was a kid, and I kind
Speaker 1: of was like, you know what I want to I
Speaker 1: want to get rid of those things, like those are
Speaker 1: those are dangerous and we shouldn't be writing them or
Speaker 1: using them for work. And that seemed to be one
Speaker 1: of the strange childhood drives to start working with machinery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is very strange. It's really not at all surprising.
Speaker 2: I guess really if you think about it, that his
Speaker 2: skills at building cars is desire and drive to build
Speaker 2: cars is what he built his career on, like very much.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: He built a few cars, especially the first one called
Speaker 2: the quadricycle. It was so named because it looked like
Speaker 2: two bicycles parked next to each other. Yeah, and he
Speaker 2: built this thing, like I think he and his friends
Speaker 2: built the parts they needed or else they stripped other
Speaker 2: things like steam engines, of parts and really like built
Speaker 2: this thing from scratch. And then he would ride it
Speaker 2: around town and caught the attention of some very wealthy
Speaker 2: people in Detroit, in particularly the mayor named William Mayberry,
Speaker 2: who became his first real investor, and was like, you
Speaker 2: need to build more of thanse and we're going to
Speaker 2: sell a bunch of them. So together in eighteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: was it, they formed the Detroit Motor Company. This was
Speaker 2: Henry Ford's first car companies, his first attempt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his first couple of attempts at car companies in
Speaker 1: bringing a car that actually could be mass produced and
Speaker 1: selling the market were not successful. This one folded about
Speaker 1: a year later. He got investors for the Henry Ford
Speaker 1: Company next that also failed to bring about a car
Speaker 1: that he could sell to people. But kind of interestingly
Speaker 1: that that company went on to become once Ford was
Speaker 1: kind of shown the exit the Cadillac Automobile Company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I looked up I was always like, what is
Speaker 2: Cadillac named after. It's named after the founder of Detroit,
Speaker 2: Antoine de la Mouthe Cadillac, who established what would become
Speaker 2: Detroit in seventeen oh one. So there's where Cadillac's named after.
Speaker 2: For anybody who was wondering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe we should do a show in caddies at
Speaker 1: some point. Okay, I'm not a big car guy, but
Speaker 1: the Caddi's iconic.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean the very least outcast
Speaker 2: loves it.
Speaker 1: Right. And the thing he did next was, you know,
Speaker 1: he was always trying to raise money and always had
Speaker 1: kind of a love hate relationship with investors. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: he was like, you know, I neither money, but that's
Speaker 1: kind of all they're good for. Otherwise they just medle
Speaker 1: in my creative genius. So he set about racing cars
Speaker 1: to kind of drum up publicity and investor interest. And
Speaker 1: that's what happened when he started winning races with two cars,
Speaker 1: the Arrow and the nine to ninety nine, which is,
Speaker 1: look these things up, they're super cool looking. And that
Speaker 1: led to some investors, most notably a guy named Alexander Malcolmson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so just like building a quadricycle and riding around
Speaker 2: like setting the land speed record in one of the
Speaker 2: race cars he built. That attracted Malcolmson. Two in malcolmsm.
Speaker 2: This time it stuck. Malcolmson helped Ford launch the Ford
Speaker 2: Motor Company, which may ring a bell because it was
Speaker 2: established in nineteen oh three, and get this, it's still
Speaker 2: around today, over one hundred and twenty years later.
Speaker 1: It sure is. Yeah, so I guess you could say
Speaker 1: this one was a success, starting with the Model A,
Speaker 1: which started selling you know, I don't know, like hotcakes,
Speaker 1: but selling well enough in nineteen oh five to keep
Speaker 1: the company afloat. They were building about twenty five of
Speaker 1: them a day, had about three hundred people working for them,
Speaker 1: and started over like a five yearish period releasing you know,
Speaker 1: different models indicated by a different model letter.
Speaker 2: Did you look any of these up? The C, the F,
Speaker 2: the and the B and the K.
Speaker 1: I did. Those. B and the k's were the more
Speaker 1: luxury models, and they're just gorgeous automobiles.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're absolutely amazing, even still today. And then
Speaker 2: if you look at the more like reasonably priced cars,
Speaker 2: like the Model C and the F and the END,
Speaker 2: they're basically just like open air buggies with a motor
Speaker 2: in them, which is I mean, that's what nineteen oh
Speaker 2: five and nineteen oh seven and eight cars were in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways, But that B and that K
Speaker 2: they're just something extra special. It's really I'm not a
Speaker 2: car guy at all, and I find those alluring.
Speaker 1: For sure. Yeah, I think we're kind of the same,
Speaker 1: Like we're not big car dudes. But if you see
Speaker 1: something like that or the one that the guy did
Speaker 1: the first cross country road trip in, yeah, like I'm
Speaker 1: able to be knocked out by a car, you just.
Speaker 2: Go room room. So you said that his uh he
Speaker 2: had a love hate relationship with investors. I would posit
Speaker 2: that he had a us hate relationship with them.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: Good point to Henry Ford. He was the visionary designing
Speaker 2: and building cars. Malcolmson gave him some money and was
Speaker 2: getting money in return. He got his thing. That was
Speaker 2: their arrangement. Malcolmson was saying, Hey, you're making all these
Speaker 2: like reasonably priced cars, forget that. We need to be
Speaker 2: focusing on luxury cars. And Henry Ford bristled with his
Speaker 2: back turned at his workshop desk and resolved right then
Speaker 2: and there that he would either murder Alexander Malcolmson or
Speaker 2: force him out of the company, and he ended up
Speaker 2: going with the latter.
Speaker 1: That's right. In nineteen oh six, he had Malcolmson successfully
Speaker 1: pushed out and not murdered. He launched the Model Tea
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh eight, and this was, you know, the
Speaker 1: Model T is a is an iconic, legendary automobile because
Speaker 1: this was finally the one that had that perfect balance
Speaker 1: of a little bell and whistle action but something that
Speaker 1: was easy to fix. It was it held up well,
Speaker 1: it was, and it was affordable for the common person,
Speaker 1: which kind of cemented him as you know, a man
Speaker 1: of the people.
Speaker 2: It was an enormous like achievement the Model T was.
Speaker 2: It sold for like eight hundred and fifty bucks when
Speaker 2: it first came out in nineteen oh eight. That was
Speaker 2: the highest price it was ever charged. From what I
Speaker 2: can tell, that's about thirty thousand dollars today, So it
Speaker 2: was roughly equivalent to like a Honda Civic or like
Speaker 2: a Subaru Legacy or something like that. Right at the time,
Speaker 2: all other cars that were being built were luxury cars,
Speaker 2: and they were going for two to three thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: So anywhere from like seventy to one hundred thousand plus
Speaker 2: dollars to buy a car. Now, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: this guy's selling him for thirty thousand, the equivalent of
Speaker 2: thirty thousand dollars, and car our ownership just boomed from there.
Speaker 2: You said they were building twenty five cars a day
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh five. By nineteen thirteen they were selling
Speaker 2: or building one hundred and eighty nine thousand of them
Speaker 2: a year, which I haven't done the math, but that's
Speaker 2: a lot more than twenty five a day.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and good job on not doing maths.
Speaker 2: Thank you. First of all, you say, I speak for
Speaker 2: myself and all.
Speaker 1: Listeners, and this is a direct result of his innovation
Speaker 1: of the assembly line. Like we said kind of at
Speaker 1: the beginning, A lot of people think he invented the car.
Speaker 1: Not true, invented the assembly line also not true. There
Speaker 1: were assembly lines at other factories, like bicycle factories and stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there were conveyor belts used in farming and
Speaker 1: like cattle operations and stuff like that, candy factories, candy factories.
Speaker 1: Well put a pin in that, actually, But he actually
Speaker 1: combined those two things in a way that no one
Speaker 1: had before, where he was literally bringing the work to
Speaker 1: the people. They would stand in one spot, that conveyor
Speaker 1: belt would bring along the thing they needed to work
Speaker 1: on or finish or tinker with or whatever or inspect.
Speaker 1: First it was a rope, and then it was like
Speaker 1: a chain assembly, and then it led to definitely some
Speaker 1: I Love Lucy type moments. I mean that was first
Speaker 1: of all, the workers didn't like it at all. They
Speaker 1: thought it was really boring. But it also at times
Speaker 1: was like I'm not done with the thing that's now
Speaker 1: left me, and that was a big problem when you
Speaker 1: had to stop the assembly line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, because before these people were like part
Speaker 2: of an army assembling a car. They didn't just make
Speaker 2: this one cog over and over and over again. And
Speaker 2: like you said, it got very boring, was very repetitive.
Speaker 2: And the turnover rate for employees at Ford by nineteen
Speaker 2: thirteen was at three hundred and seventy percent. And that's
Speaker 2: just churning. That's a really high turnover rate. If that
Speaker 2: number doesn't immediately present itself as such to.
Speaker 1: You, well for sure, here's another stat off. Three hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy percent doesn't mean much to you. He was
Speaker 1: hiring fifty three thousand people every year to fill fourteen
Speaker 1: thousand jobs.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, wow.
Speaker 1: And which was no good. You know, that's never good
Speaker 1: for a company. But that also that assembly line brought
Speaker 1: the price down on that model t I think you
Speaker 1: said it it would be like thirty grand and today dollars.
Speaker 1: By nineteen twelve, they brought that cost down to what
Speaker 1: would be about nine thousand dollars plus change in today's money.
Speaker 1: I think in nineteen twelve it was five twenty five.
Speaker 1: By nineteen sixteen it was three hundred and forty five dollars.
Speaker 1: So for a car, it went down from from thirty
Speaker 1: grand to sixteen grand to about nine grand in today dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so wow, that's that's impressive. One other things that
Speaker 2: was the result of that, that streamlining of costs and
Speaker 2: the reduction in price was Henry Ford came up with
Speaker 2: an idea to keep workers around. He said, how about this,
Speaker 2: you trade your boredom for more money, and worker said,
Speaker 2: all right, I'll hear you out. And so Henry Ford
Speaker 2: came up with the five dollars work day. If you
Speaker 2: worked at Ford, you made five dollars a day at least,
Speaker 2: And that at the time is equal to about eleven
Speaker 2: hundred dollars a week. Here, I think, what is that fifty.
Speaker 1: One hundred and fifty four dollars a day and to
Speaker 1: day dollars.
Speaker 2: Okay, but times like seven days a week basically eventually six.
Speaker 2: So it was it was a pretty good wage and
Speaker 2: people were blown away by it so much so that
Speaker 2: Ford was able to basically use it as a pr
Speaker 2: campaign to it basically be like, I'm paying five dollars
Speaker 2: and I'm characterizing it as profit sharing because I take
Speaker 2: care of my workers. And this really helped establish his
Speaker 2: reputation from the outset as like a man of the people,
Speaker 2: a populace who cared about factory workers, which is not true.
Speaker 1: True to put that in perspective, when I first started
Speaker 1: working as a PA in the film industry, I made
Speaker 1: one hundred bucks a day working at least twelve hour days. Well,
Speaker 1: they were working. He actually shortened their work day to
Speaker 1: eight hours a day at one hundred and fifty four
Speaker 1: dollars a day. So that ain't bad at.
Speaker 2: All, No, it's not. So that really handled that reduced
Speaker 2: that turnover rate. It got it under under control. Productivity
Speaker 2: started to stabilize. I mean it proved that, like, if
Speaker 2: you treat employees at the very least pay them what
Speaker 2: they're worth, people will work harder for you. They'll it's
Speaker 2: just a really good way to run a company, rather
Speaker 2: than squeezing every last time that you can out of
Speaker 2: as few people as you can. Henry Ford kind of
Speaker 2: proved that that was not the way to go.
Speaker 1: That's right, but it came with some catches. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fourteen he came up with the sociological department of his company,
Speaker 1: and that was a group who, over the course of
Speaker 1: about seven years would go around and come to your
Speaker 1: house and do little home visits and say like, oh,
Speaker 1: I see alcohol in the house, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: a pig sty. So you don't qualify to get that
Speaker 1: five dollars a day. If you took in a border
Speaker 1: like looks like you're renting a room to someone, Sorry,
Speaker 1: you don't qualify. These are all, you know, pretty vast overreaches,
Speaker 1: you know, when you think about like today's standards, some
Speaker 1: of them were pretty good.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 1: If you had a domestic violence rap against you, you
Speaker 1: didn't qualify, So you know, good for him for that,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 2: Sure, And today I mean, yes, that would be crazy
Speaker 2: if somebody did that, because instead employers just spy on
Speaker 2: you through your work computer rather than dropping by your
Speaker 2: house actually, because that'd be too obvious, you know. So,
Speaker 2: I think we talked about this in the Ford Landia episode,
Speaker 2: where like the sociological department was really keeping an eye
Speaker 2: on people, and in a lot of ways, you're like,
Speaker 2: that's just insane, and it was. There's another like kind
Speaker 2: of facet to it that is worth pointing out that
Speaker 2: most of these workers whose houses were being visited lived
Speaker 2: in Ford housing that was built right near the plant,
Speaker 2: and I believe they got subsidized housing. So, based on
Speaker 2: what I know about Ford, if he paid for something
Speaker 2: even a little bit, he owned it. So he felt
Speaker 2: totally emboldened to just send people into your house to
Speaker 2: see if you were drinking or not, and then that
Speaker 2: would affect your employment. He owned you, he was paying
Speaker 2: you a really good wage. He owned you, He owned
Speaker 2: your house, you owned your family. That's just how he
Speaker 2: saw things. He could buy anything with money, and he
Speaker 2: just behaved that way as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, should we take a break, Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna We've talked about his career up into
Speaker 1: this point. We're gonna take a little slight turn to
Speaker 1: talk about his personal life right after this. All right,
Speaker 1: as promise, we're going to talk a bit about the
Speaker 1: man's personal life. We mentioned that he married his wife,
Speaker 1: Clara Bryant in nineteen eighty eight, and they stayed married,
Speaker 1: and you know, I had a very close partnership as
Speaker 1: married people go. But all while that was going on,
Speaker 1: all the while, he was having an affair. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think you'll see this printed on any Ford
Speaker 1: Motor Company like official histories or anything, but he had
Speaker 1: a long standing affair with a woman named Evangeline Coat
Speaker 1: and eventually would get one of his friends, perhaps even
Speaker 1: his personal driver to his guy named Ray Dollinger to
Speaker 1: marry her because it appears as though he had a
Speaker 1: son with her named John, and was like, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: you got to marry this lady and make it look
Speaker 1: like that's your son, and the whole time we're going
Speaker 1: to be having this kind of secret affair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the setup. And again, like he paid
Speaker 2: for Evangeline's house. In Evangeline and Ray's house, apparently they
Speaker 2: had like at least two or three estates, one of
Speaker 2: which was just like a couple miles down the road
Speaker 2: from where Ford lived with Clara. He even built a
Speaker 2: secret staircase that he could use that was away from
Speaker 2: prying eyes and went directly up to Evangeline's bedroom. That's
Speaker 2: greedy and in the seventies, John Ford, who Henry Ford's
Speaker 2: been an inordinate amount of time with. If it wasn't
Speaker 2: his actual son, he'd later in the seventies like like,
Speaker 2: I think he wrote a memoir and said like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this guy's my he was my father, like that, he
Speaker 2: was my father. Sorry, if you don't want to hear it,
Speaker 2: That's how it was. And I think still it was never.
Speaker 2: It's still never. No one ever took a paternity test.
Speaker 2: Evangeline never talked to the press about it. Like it's
Speaker 2: just not officially confirmed. But in every single way besides
Speaker 2: officially it's confirmed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. During this time, he also had a
Speaker 1: son named Edsel. He would famously name a very failed
Speaker 1: automobile after probably on purpose. Yeah, he was born in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety three. He was a good dad for about
Speaker 1: a minute, but once Edseell got to be a little
Speaker 1: bit older, they did not have a very good relationship.
Speaker 1: He thought he was kind of a weakling. He thought
Speaker 1: it was soft. He did give him a job, and
Speaker 1: he would humiliate him and belittle him. He would even
Speaker 1: back him to be the president, his son to be
Speaker 1: the president of the Ford Motor Company, but just in
Speaker 1: kind of like he didn't have any real teeth in
Speaker 1: that job because dad was still running the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a really widespread anecdote about how Henry Ford treated Edzell.
Speaker 2: Edzel could not make a step as president of Ford
Speaker 2: Motor Company without his dad's approval, and if he did,
Speaker 2: there was trouble. And in one case, the administrative offices
Speaker 2: were starting to get overcrowded, so he had a new
Speaker 2: wing built for it. New office is built, and he
Speaker 2: didn't pass it by his dad first, So when his
Speaker 2: dad found out his dead, halted work on it. By
Speaker 2: this time, they dug out the foundation and Edzel said, okay,
Speaker 2: sorry about that. I'll just fill the ground back in,
Speaker 2: and Henry Ford said, no, you won't. You will leave
Speaker 2: that there and you have to walk past it every
Speaker 2: day on your way to work and it will remind
Speaker 2: you of your humiliation. Essentially, that's how Edzel was treated
Speaker 2: by his father. It's like Henry Ford had a rich
Speaker 2: kid just by definition, but hated rich kids like kids
Speaker 2: that were born rich, right, and he treated his son
Speaker 2: that way. And from what I can tell, his son
Speaker 2: was not a bad guy and didn't deserve this at all.
Speaker 1: Now, I mean, he might as well have said, I'm
Speaker 1: going to leave that hole in the ground as a
Speaker 1: reminder of what a jerk father I've been to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's very sad. Yeah, it's real sad, like
Speaker 2: he I mean, it's also his son died young in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty three, at age forty nine. I think we
Speaker 2: talked about this in the Ford Landia episode two, that
Speaker 2: he died one of two ways, from stomach cancer or
Speaker 2: from a bad reaction to raw milk that his father
Speaker 2: made him drink. Yeah, And even as he was sick
Speaker 2: and dying, Henry Ford was like, suck it up. He was,
Speaker 2: you know, stop stop making such a big deal out
Speaker 2: of this. And as Edgel as it became clear that
Speaker 2: Edwel was very, very sick and actually dying, Henry Ford
Speaker 2: is like, oh, okay, I'm going to try to get
Speaker 2: some doctors out here and get the best of the best,
Speaker 2: and they couldn't do anything. And when Edzel died, he
Speaker 2: blamed Edgell's doctors, and then I guess eventually he blamed himself,
Speaker 2: but I don't know how he did that or how
Speaker 2: that's documented.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, all right, So back to his career in
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen. Again he's tired of the investor sort of
Speaker 1: getting in his way. In his mind, this is amazing. Actually,
Speaker 1: he lost a lawsuit that basically said you have to
Speaker 1: pay out dividends to the Dodge Brothers, two of his
Speaker 1: biggest investors at the time, and.
Speaker 2: Also his competitors who owned Dodge Motor Company.
Speaker 1: The Dodge Brothers owned Dodge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can you believe it?
Speaker 1: And by by that time, he was like, I really
Speaker 1: want to control everything. I want to be able to
Speaker 1: build a factory that basically handles everything but the tires,
Speaker 1: because the Firestones have that under wraps.
Speaker 2: Basically Andy was friends with Firestone too, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So he said, all right, here's what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do. I'm going to announce that I'm leaving
Speaker 1: the company. I'm going to announce that I'm going to
Speaker 1: build a better company that's going to produce better cars
Speaker 1: and cheaper cars. And all the stockholders freaked out because
Speaker 1: they were like, if Henry Ford's not at the helm.
Speaker 1: This company's going to go under, and so they started
Speaker 1: selling off their shares. What they did know is they
Speaker 1: were mostly selling to an investment company that was controlled
Speaker 1: by Henry Ford. So he ended up I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know if this is illegal at
Speaker 1: the time, at the very least, it was unethical. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he ended up outright owning the Ford Motor Company
Speaker 1: basically by himself with his son and wife.
Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing. I mean, say what you will about
Speaker 2: the man, but that is one of the wiliest business
Speaker 2: moves in the history of American business.
Speaker 1: Wiley is a good soft way to tell that.
Speaker 2: I read that when he was when he told when
Speaker 2: he was told that like the whole plan worked, it
Speaker 2: was done, he danced a jig in his office.
Speaker 1: Well he loved dancing, he did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that's not that surprising.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't mention that because that'll come up later too.
Speaker 1: He had a thing for square dancing, and I tried
Speaker 1: to get his employees to learn square dancing.
Speaker 2: I think we talked about that in the Ford Lanety
Speaker 2: episode two.
Speaker 1: It seems like it came up for sure.
Speaker 2: I mean, how can you can't talk about Henry Ford
Speaker 2: not talk about his weird love of square dancing?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean he loved what he loved.
Speaker 2: One of the things he did not love is war.
Speaker 2: He was an avowed pacifist and he spoke out quite publicly.
Speaker 2: One of the things he used his recognition and fame
Speaker 2: for as a man of the people was to use
Speaker 2: that to speak out against World War One. And that
Speaker 2: was really dicey because the Espionage Act of nineteen seventeen
Speaker 2: was used about two thousand times. Two thousand people were
Speaker 2: charged between nineteen seventeen and nineteen twenty for speaking out
Speaker 2: against World War One, So that was not something that
Speaker 2: you just did casually. Like, it was a big deal
Speaker 2: that he did that. He gave interviews about it. He
Speaker 2: charted a boat to ride to Europe to try to
Speaker 2: advocate for peace. It's called the Peace Ship. It was
Speaker 2: not very well received by the press. He was made
Speaker 2: fun of. But like, he was definitely a pacifist for sure,
Speaker 2: But when America entered World War One, he backed it fully.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He did the same thing with World War Two.
Speaker 1: He was against it until Pearl Harbor, and once America
Speaker 1: was in these wars, he didn't just fold his hands
Speaker 1: and say, well, you're on your own. He would, you know,
Speaker 1: of course, at the government's behest transform the Forward Motor
Speaker 1: Company into building everything from airplane engines to ambulance in
Speaker 1: military personnel vehicles.
Speaker 2: And those ambulances would go on to blow up when
Speaker 2: they were rear ended in the seventies, often with patients
Speaker 2: in them.
Speaker 1: Were they pentos, They were close.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that Henry Ford was in
Speaker 2: addition to speaking out about pacifism, he spoke out about
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff. And he was interviewed once. He
Speaker 2: was very opinionated, totally convinced that his opinion was correct,
Speaker 2: like objectively correct. From what I guess a little bit.
Speaker 2: He was interviewed in the Chicago Tribune and he said,
Speaker 2: among other things, that he basically hates art and that
Speaker 2: he quote, history is bunk, that there's nothing to be
Speaker 2: learned from history. We always just need to be looking forward.
Speaker 2: And so the same year, nineteen sixteen, the Chicago Tribune,
Speaker 2: the paper he was interviewed and also published an editorial
Speaker 2: calling him an ignorant idealist and an anarchistic enemy of
Speaker 2: the nation. And so he said, you know what, that's
Speaker 2: libel and I'm going to sue you. And it went
Speaker 2: to trial in nineteen thirteen and he won. He won
Speaker 2: six cents, which is less than five dollars today. That's
Speaker 2: how much he won from the Chicago Tribune. That's how
Speaker 2: much he was awarded. But even worse, he was just
Speaker 2: really exposed as an ignorant person on the stand. He
Speaker 2: was like quizzed about things like history and stuff and
Speaker 2: just completely got stuff wrong. And all of the papers,
Speaker 2: including the Tribune, published all this stuff, so it didn't
Speaker 2: really make him look good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was kind of like, I'll take your test,
Speaker 1: and then afterwards he's like, I shouldn't have taken this test,
Speaker 1: especially in front of everybody. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Under oath, there was also a.
Speaker 1: Rumor that he might have been illiterate. I don't think
Speaker 1: that was probably true, and it stems from the fact
Speaker 1: that he refused to read aloud. But who knows. He
Speaker 1: may have had some form of dyslexia or a learning disorder,
Speaker 1: like we just don't know. So it's poculating in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four is a little I don't know, I'm not fants.
Speaker 2: It makes it pretty ironic that one of the things
Speaker 2: he collected were McGuffey Readers, which were nineteenth century textbooks,
Speaker 2: like he collected them. That's a strange thing for a
Speaker 2: person who's not literate to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, elementary school textbooks. They were for kids, sure,
Speaker 1: so maybe that made more sense. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's like, yeah, collect these, I'm definitely not teaching
Speaker 2: myself from them.
Speaker 1: So he didn't like the press, not just because of this,
Speaker 1: but he was he was just a lightning rod for
Speaker 1: good press and bad press. But he got fed up
Speaker 1: with it. Eventually he was like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: going to start my own newspaper. So he he bought one,
Speaker 1: the Dearborn Independent in nineteen nineteen, and he you know,
Speaker 1: basically controlled it and was like, here's what I'm going
Speaker 1: to do. I'm not sure if everyone knows about my
Speaker 1: anti Semitic views, so I'm going to start making this newspaper,
Speaker 1: write lots and lots of articles about how Jewish people
Speaker 1: are in control of the world and the finances of
Speaker 1: the world and are responsible for everything bad, including these
Speaker 1: wars that are happening in jazz music that is leading
Speaker 1: to you know, drug use. So in all, they ran
Speaker 1: about ninety one stories in the paper that he would
Speaker 1: eventually collect into a four volume book called The International
Speaker 1: jew which he distributed like a half a million copies
Speaker 1: to people for free.
Speaker 2: Purposely never copyrighted it so that it could be republished,
Speaker 2: and it still is. It's a huge It's like a
Speaker 2: bookshelf must for white supremacists still today.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The fact that none of the stuff he ever said
Speaker 2: in it was ever proved or shown to be true
Speaker 2: or correct has no bearing on that whatsoever. And I
Speaker 2: don't know if this is the origin of it, but
Speaker 2: he certainly perpetuated, if he didn't create it, the idea
Speaker 2: that Jewish bankers secretly ran the world, yeah, which is
Speaker 2: still a trope today among white supremacists and racists of
Speaker 2: all stripes. One of these articles, I think it was
Speaker 2: about Jews taking over the American farming industry, mentioned one
Speaker 2: guy in particular, a Jewish activist who was a union
Speaker 2: activist trying to organize farm workers, named Aaron Sapiro, And
Speaker 2: he was named personally in this article. So he's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you like libel suits, here's one for you too, And
Speaker 2: he sued him for libel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he did, and I think he ended up settling
Speaker 1: out of court.
Speaker 2: Right, he did. And part of the settlement was that
Speaker 2: he was required to make a public apology to Jewish people,
Speaker 2: which he took the opportunity to make what seemed like
Speaker 2: a sincere apology, like he'd seen the era of his ways,
Speaker 2: but apparently privately he had all the same views. And
Speaker 2: if you want to know anything about Henry Ford and
Speaker 2: his anti Semitism, he accepted it an award from Hitler
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty eight, and this is the culmination of
Speaker 2: a long time mutual admiration between the two. Hitler cited
Speaker 2: Henry Ford as an inspiration in mind comp and I
Speaker 2: think in nineteen thirty one and a reporter from the
Speaker 2: Detroit News interviewed Hitler in his office and noted that
Speaker 2: there was a huge portrait of Henry Ford behind Hitler
Speaker 2: at his desk, and Hitler said, I regard him as
Speaker 2: my inspiration. So they definitely admired one another's views and work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's enough set on that, right. Sure
Speaker 1: it speaks for itself, Yeah, for sure. All right, Should
Speaker 1: we take a break and come back with a little
Speaker 1: more career, Yeah, all right, we'll be right.
Speaker 2: Back, all right, Chuck, So you talked about him wanting
Speaker 2: to build like a plant what's called a vertically integrated
Speaker 2: plant where ore and raw materials are brought in and
Speaker 2: everything but the car's tires are built and assembled there. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: if you have something like this, you are extraordinarily powerful
Speaker 2: in whatever industry you're in. And he built it. It
Speaker 2: was a two thousand acre plant called the River Rouge Plant,
Speaker 2: and I think it opened in nineteen eighteen, and I
Speaker 2: mean it was extraordinarily successful and just launched the company
Speaker 2: into like essentially a monopoly. Even though there were other
Speaker 2: car companies, nobody could compete with Ford, to the point
Speaker 2: where it was like, you know, he might as well
Speaker 2: have had a monopoly on it. He was just so
Speaker 2: far ahead of everybody else by this time, Yeah.
Speaker 1: For sure. And part of the success of that plant
Speaker 1: was due to the fact that he kind of caved
Speaker 1: a little bit on releasing cars that had some bells
Speaker 1: and whistles. He like, you know, I mentioned earlier, he
Speaker 1: wasn't the biggest fan of those and kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, the car for the people, but sales were
Speaker 1: declining in the mid nineteen twenties, so he said, all right,
Speaker 1: the Model T has done its work. But I think
Speaker 1: we need something a little more luxurious. So the Model
Speaker 1: A was released in nineteen twenty seven, and they also
Speaker 1: sold a lot of those.
Speaker 2: They did. That's another pretty car too. It's like the
Speaker 2: official car of like gangsters with tommy guns who robbed
Speaker 2: banks and like run along and jump on the running
Speaker 2: boards on the side.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that kind of car. It's pretty car.
Speaker 1: You can hang off the side of that thing with
Speaker 1: a tommy gun like no other car.
Speaker 2: Right. So I said earlier that Henry Ford had an
Speaker 2: enormous impact on American culture American history. One of the
Speaker 2: ironic things are funny things, it's a little ticklish, is
Speaker 2: that he despised the consumer culture that he helped create.
Speaker 2: He felt that as people got more money in their pocket,
Speaker 2: they looked to spend it in increasingly amoral ways, and
Speaker 2: that the country was turning away from the ideals of
Speaker 2: his childhood, what he considered true America, what he considered
Speaker 2: the point of life, family, square, dancing, anti Semitism, these
Speaker 2: three pillars. Right, He saw people turning away from this, right,
Speaker 2: and so I think he railed against it, for sure,
Speaker 2: But him personally, he took that as an opportunity to
Speaker 2: kind of like fade into this childhood fantasy, this idealized
Speaker 2: version of the way life was in his childhood. And
Speaker 2: he did this by building something called Greenfield Village.
Speaker 1: I thought, you're going to say Celebration Florida.
Speaker 2: I know, there's a striking resemblance. I even wrote it's
Speaker 2: like Celebration Florida.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's also a little bit like his version of
Speaker 1: Colonial Williamsburg. He started developing this in nineteen nineteen when
Speaker 1: he restored his original house, and about ten years later
Speaker 1: it would open to the public as sort of like
Speaker 1: a Williamsburg of his time. It was like a living
Speaker 1: history village. There was a museum there still is. He
Speaker 1: would he would basically like like Colonial Williamsburg would do.
Speaker 1: He would say like, hey, this is when things were
Speaker 1: the best, like when I was a kid. Totally definitely
Speaker 1: a narcissist. Yeah, I mentioned this is when things were
Speaker 1: most awesome, and here's what it was like back then.
Speaker 1: Here's what the buildings look like. You can come and
Speaker 1: walk around the village. It's even got like it functioned
Speaker 1: as a real place where people live. There was that
Speaker 1: school in that one room schoolhouse, modeled after the one
Speaker 1: that he loved growing up they had a full time
Speaker 1: dance instructor who was teaching square dancing, among other things.
Speaker 1: And he was told to seeos like, you need to
Speaker 1: get down there to Greenfield Village. I've signed you up
Speaker 1: for Tuesdays at seven.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: So, yeah, it's still there today, right, it's still a
Speaker 2: living museum open today. I've never been. It does sound interesting.
Speaker 2: In addition to the look back at history, which is
Speaker 2: ironic again because he said history's bunk, it was also
Speaker 2: a way to preserve the great technological innovations of Thomas Edison.
Speaker 2: He took buildings from Menlo Park and moved them to
Speaker 2: Greenfield Village. So he assembled his idealized version of what
Speaker 2: town would have been like in his childhood. And he
Speaker 2: just spent more and more time there and just kind
Speaker 2: of moving further and further away from the company. And
Speaker 2: as he spent less time at the company, he had
Speaker 2: to somebody had to run the company, so he grudgingly
Speaker 2: had Edzel running things. He had another guy named Charles
Speaker 2: Sorenson who ran the plant, that huge River Rouge plant.
Speaker 2: And then he had another guy, a real scumbag named
Speaker 2: Harry Bennett, who we've talked about multiple times, who ran
Speaker 2: the Ford Service Department, which was the Ford goon Squad essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and goon squad meeting they He wasn't a big
Speaker 1: fan of unionization and workers organizing, so Bennett would go
Speaker 1: in and do the heavy work. A lot of paranoia,
Speaker 1: created a lot of literal punishment for just dumb little infractions,
Speaker 1: saying they couldn't have bathroom breaks, you get fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: for lunch. I'm going to spy on the CEOs. And
Speaker 1: if you come around here, like maybe from the UAW
Speaker 1: the United Auto Workers, and you start talking about organizing,
Speaker 1: we're going to literally physically like beat you down and
Speaker 1: run you out of here. Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you read about what's called the Battle of the
Speaker 2: Overpass in nineteen thirty seven, it's we've again, I think
Speaker 2: we've talked about that before too.
Speaker 1: But the.
Speaker 2: Ford Service Department, led by Harry Bennett, who was in
Speaker 2: the mix, like, beat these people so badly. They were
Speaker 2: thrown down flights of concrete stairs. When they were knocked down,
Speaker 2: they would be picked up again so they could be
Speaker 2: beaten further. Some of the women that were there were
Speaker 2: roughed up. It was a bad jam. And then they
Speaker 2: chased their reporters down to try to get their notebooks,
Speaker 2: try to get the film out of their cameras, and
Speaker 2: only because a couple of reporters, one of them ran
Speaker 2: five miles to a police station to keep his negatives
Speaker 2: intact or his plates intact, and another one managed to
Speaker 2: hide it, hide his plates just in time and gave
Speaker 2: him fake plates or fake film essentially to go and break.
Speaker 2: And this stuff got published and it was totally contrary
Speaker 2: to Ford's version of what had happened, and it really
Speaker 2: gave a huge black eye to the Ford Motor Company
Speaker 2: because you just didn't that was just beyond the paal
Speaker 2: even for the nineteen thirties, like union busters, right, So
Speaker 2: it actually held paved the way for the UAW to
Speaker 2: make inroads and start organizing Ford and the Ford employees finally,
Speaker 2: i think, five years after the Battle of Overpass, were
Speaker 2: given the opportunity to vote whether to unionize, and they
Speaker 2: said yes, union, Yes, si sepuia all.
Speaker 1: Right, So we're at the end. He had not been,
Speaker 1: you know, some people say he was still calling the
Speaker 1: shots kind of close to the end. He was in
Speaker 1: his seventies by the time Bennett was doing his strong
Speaker 1: arm work, so there are people that say he wasn't
Speaker 1: super aware of that. Other people like you know, one
Speaker 1: of the top folks, Sorenson, said, no, he was. He
Speaker 1: was doing exactly what Ford wanted. But as he got
Speaker 1: older and older, he obviously started experiencing health issues. Throughout
Speaker 1: that last decade, he was just sort of you know,
Speaker 1: declining like we all eventually will, and that means at
Speaker 1: work as well, like not working as much. Had a
Speaker 1: lot of health issues, especially his memory. But he still
Speaker 1: wouldn't like officially give up control or just say I'm
Speaker 1: just going to go hide away from the public.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We talked about World War two and you know heat
Speaker 1: activism there in the nineteen thirties and forties. Also was
Speaker 1: not a big fan of FDR and the New Deal
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties, so he was not shutting up
Speaker 1: about that either.
Speaker 2: He would have loved social media. If you were on today,
Speaker 2: he would be huge on social media.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. We mentioned Edzel died in nineteen forty three
Speaker 1: and for a very brief time after Ford took over
Speaker 1: the company again as president. But it was you know,
Speaker 1: he shouldn't have been running a company at that point.
Speaker 2: No. One anecdote is that he would fire employees and
Speaker 2: then you know, a day or two later, ask why
Speaker 2: they weren't at the meeting because he'd forgotten. And so
Speaker 2: as more and more of the stuff mounted, the executives
Speaker 2: are like, you have to retire. Please just let us
Speaker 2: handle as we can do this, and he finally caved
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty five. Two years later he would be
Speaker 2: dead April seventh, nineteen forty seven, and I think his
Speaker 2: last day on earth really kind of illustrates him. He
Speaker 2: spent the morning with his mistress of Angeline, and he
Speaker 2: died at night when he had an aneurism while he
Speaker 2: was fluffing his wife Clara's pillow at bedtime.
Speaker 1: That's not funny, but the way you put it was funny.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's no other way to put it. I
Speaker 2: could have said it in like Italian or something, but
Speaker 2: then no one would have understood what I said, except
Speaker 2: for our Italian listeners. I don't think we have Italian
Speaker 2: listeners because you've alienated them all. Oh man, you got
Speaker 2: anything else?
Speaker 1: No, I'm looking for the compliment sandwich in that one,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's.
Speaker 2: Cone the compliment. The last part is that you do
Speaker 2: a really great Italian impression regardless, and everyone loves it.
Speaker 2: He said you had nothing else right, so that means
Speaker 2: it's time for listener maw.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is about the just released episode that part
Speaker 1: of which was about this mystery song from the nineteen
Speaker 1: it was eighties, right, yeah, eighties. Hey guys, my name
Speaker 1: is Nicole and I was just listening to this episode
Speaker 1: about the most mysterious song on the Internet. I've been
Speaker 1: listening to it now for about forty five minutes, and
Speaker 1: a couple of things stood out. Disclaimer. I am German
Speaker 1: born and raised during the eighties and have been living
Speaker 1: here almost eighteen years now. Given the fact that I
Speaker 1: grew up during the time this song was discovered, some
Speaker 1: things have become rather apparent to me. I am sure.
Speaker 1: I'm not the first one to say this, nor will
Speaker 1: I be the one cracking the code, but I find
Speaker 1: it very interesting. I'm still working on deciphering the lyrics
Speaker 1: and I have about half of it down and here
Speaker 1: are my humble observations. Number One, the song is most
Speaker 1: likely written and recorded by East Germans, given the fact
Speaker 1: of how dark and depressing the lyrics are. Two, it
Speaker 1: is somewhat difficult to make some of the lyrics out
Speaker 1: and some words have been used in the wrong form.
Speaker 1: Also very interesting. Number three. I find this utterly fascinating
Speaker 1: and it's definitely a rabbit hole guys. Number four, I
Speaker 1: wonder if this song was accidentally played smuggle in by
Speaker 1: someone unbeknownst to the radio station, since it isn't professionally recorded.
Speaker 1: I found this to be very likely to be the
Speaker 1: case at any rate. Thank you for making great shows
Speaker 1: to keep me on my toes and inspire me to
Speaker 1: think outside the box. This one, in particular will be
Speaker 1: a great one, especially because I had never heard of
Speaker 1: it before today. And that's from Nicole.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Thanks a lot, Nicole. Thanks for listening to us
Speaker 2: over there in Germany. That's awesome. And if you want
Speaker 2: to be like Nicole and send us your thoughts and
Speaker 2: observations on an episode that we've done. We love that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. You can wrap it up, spank it
Speaker 2: on the bottom, and send it off to stuff podcast
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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