WEBVTT - Fordlandia: Brazil Isn't Michigan 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:09.240 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.520 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:15.840 Chuck and Jerry's here too, So this is Stuff you 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:20.680 Should Know. The Wacky Strange History Edition. Get another one. 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:23.079 I love this one. We got a few people to 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:26.040 thank out of the gate for this, if I may sure. 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:30.040 First of all, we want to thank listener Brennan Wilson, 0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:36.559 who gave this idea to us through email. Okay, I 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:38.360 had never heard of it before, so Brennan sent this 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:41.280 in and I did a quick search, as I always 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:43.480 do when someone sends in something, unless it's like, ooh, 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:46.760 doing on shoe soles, But when it's something I hadn't 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:48.159 heard of, I always look it up. And I was like, 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:49.640 oh man, this is a really good one. I didn't 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:52.760 know about this, So big thanks to Brennan. Big thanks 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:55.400 to Livia who put this one together and helped us out. 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:58.760 And Livia actually said we should thank a couple of 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:02.800 people in particular that sort of wrote the book, well 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:07.560 literally and figuratively. On Fordlandia, Greg Grandon wrote a book 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:11.360 called Ford Landia Colin The Rise and Fall of Henry 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.720 Ford's Forgotten Jungle City Sporiler Alert. And then there was 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:17.600 a paper in the late seventies by a guy named 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:20.520 John Gaily in the Journal of Inter American Studies and 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:22.360 World Affairs. It also had a lot of good stuff. 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:25.959 So thanks to everyone involved. Here we go. 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:29.240 Wow, that was a lot. I was waiting for you 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:33.120 to tell us who Greg Grandon said we should thank Yeah, right, mom, 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:37.839 So we are talking about ford Landia. We are talking 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:41.840 about what you could call Ford's Folly. Just to kind 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:44.280 of strip a bear right out of the gate. It 0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:48.880 was Henry Ford's misadventure down in the Amazon where he 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:54.240 tried to build a model utopian society based on rural Midwestern. 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:56.560 America right in the Amazon. 0:01:56.760 --> 0:01:59.200 In the Amazon. That's a big that's a big catch 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:00.840 right there, because I didn't try to do it in 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:06.440 Omaha or Topeka. He chose the Amazon over Topeka. And 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:08.360 I think that says a lot about Topeka. 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:14.800 Yeah. Oh, we love our Kansas. I hope they know 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:19.120 that all but one. All but one? Right, all right, 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:22.200 So we should talk a little bit about the sort 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:25.840 of weirdo that was Henry Ford. Maybe we should do 0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:28.640 a hole up on him one day. I didn't know 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:31.520 a ton about the guy. It did. A lot of 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:34.200 great stuff was also not great in a lot of ways. 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:36.600 That's such a recurring theme, I know. 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:40.240 In nineteen oh three is where the Ford Motor Company 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:44.799 was born in Dearborn, Michigan, and thanks to the Model T, 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:49.040 it changed America. It was a car that was available, 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:52.520 more available than any car had ever been to like 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:56.440 regular Americans. He paid his workers a living wage, which 0:02:56.480 --> 0:03:00.040 at the time was five dollars a day, and he 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:02.639 he also had a lot of strings attached to that 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:06.880 good wage and those good jobs along the lines of like, hey, 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:09.800 I know we're a car company, but let's have a 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:13.400 sociology department in our company where we send out hundreds 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:17.480 of investigators around Dearborn into the homes of my employees 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:20.920 to make sure that the kids are going to school 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:24.160 and everything is tidy, the wife isn't working, and that 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:25.760 people aren't drinking booze. 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:30.240 Yeah. It was the Ford Motor Company equivalent of the Gestapo, 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:35.600 the secret police, who they weren't coming to your company 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:40.120 owned house that you lived in on the Ford Motor 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:44.080 Company campus. This is your house in Michigan. And these 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:47.320 people felt totally fine coming by and checking on your family, 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:49.640 to make sure that you were living up to Henry 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:54.760 Ford's personal standards of old timey, squeaky clean americanness. 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:58.080 Yeah, but at the same time he would also, like 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:00.280 I said, pay them a good wage. He would, would 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:06.560 give them great healthcare, he would he would help citizenship along. 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:09.240 If he had immigrants working for them, he would help 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:12.400 them with their applications, help them get home loans. So 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:13.960 it was one of those things where he was like, 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:16.240 I feel like I'm paying you well and I'm doing 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:18.120 a lot of good for you and your family, and 0:04:18.160 --> 0:04:22.040 that gives me the right as really just your uber boss, 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:24.960 to dictate how you should live your life as well. 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:26.680 It's insane, it is. 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:31.880 He was an anti Semite. It's pretty well trid that 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:35.320 Hitler was at least in part inspired by the writings, 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:40.520 the anti semite, anti semitic writings of Henry Ford. Yeah, 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:44.200 he was a huge fan of square dancing. You could 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:46.240 call it an obsession essentially. 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:49.640 Yeah, it's very, very weird. 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:52.040 He met his wife at a square dance and apparently 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:53.920 he thought that that was the end I'll be all 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:58.760 of rural American life, that that was a perfect pastime, 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:02.400 a perfect symbol everybody should be into square dancing. 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:05.839 I mean nothing wrong with square dancing. I'm not knocking 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:07.000 square dancing. Just to be clear. 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:08.880 Oh okay, God, I'm glad you said that, because I 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:12.400 was about to. He was also big time into soy 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:16.240 Like he apparently some of the early model t's, their 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:18.960 knobs and stuff were made out of basically a proto 0:05:18.960 --> 0:05:23.080 soy plastic. He ate soy as much as he could. 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:26.360 He seemed to have kind of fallen in the footsteps 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:29.680 of the Kellogg brothers a little bit. I get the Yeah, 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:34.200 he was that kind of old timey vegetarian cook yag exactly, 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:41.040 but he also had some His business acumen was just insane. Like, 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:43.640 he wasn't just a businessman, he was an industrialist. This 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:46.800 guy was a titan of industry because he made the 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:50.159 industry himself essentially, and what he was responsible for in 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:53.279 part was the assembly line. But also it might not 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:55.560 have come up with the concept, but he really adopted 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:57.000 something called vertical integration. 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:01.840 Yeah, that's the idea. Say let's say you're building cars 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:03.800 and you're like, oh, well, I want to make my 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:07.680 own tires instead of buying them from Firestone. So I'm 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:11.719 going to start making my tires, and uh, well, I 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:16.200 want my own rubber then to make these tires, Like 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:18.880 why pay somebody for rubber if I'm going to be 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:21.560 making all these tires for myself and these cars. And 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:24.599 so that's what inspired the idea for Landy is like, 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:27.479 let's go where the rubber is and buy up land 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:30.560 and start, you know, milking these rubber trees. You know, 0:06:30.640 --> 0:06:34.880 milk rubber trees, probably m milk. Tap them, tap them, 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:37.520 that's right, and tap these rubber trees. And then basically 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:41.040 what you're trying to do is control control the entire 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:44.400 supply chain by owning it from the from the bottom up. 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:48.640 Right, which means like buying coal mines to to fuel 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:53.680 the vulcanization process of hardening rubber, buying up railroads to 0:06:53.760 --> 0:06:56.359 deliver the coal to the factories like that. Yeah, like 0:06:56.520 --> 0:07:00.200 owning every aspect of what you need to produce use 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:03.080 your final product. That was what he was into, that 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:05.839 vertical integration. And like you said, I mean that is 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:08.120 why he ended up in Brazil. Yeah. 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:10.080 Do you know what kind of like titan of industry 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:12.360 you have to be for someone to come in and say, 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:14.920 I'll tell you what's killing us right now? These shipping 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.000 costs on the railroads, and he's like, well, let's buy 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:17.880 the railroad then. 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:20.240 Yeah, I mean it makes sense and most people might 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:22.560 even think about it, but you can't actually do it. 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:27.320 Yeah, exactly. So this idea though, of building, and as 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:29.520 you'll see, it was much more than let's go to 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:32.600 the Amazon and buy some land and grow rubber. It 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:35.800 was for him it seems like even more so, like 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:39.640 let's go down there and build this utopian society that 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:42.200 I dream of where people square dance, you know, and 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:45.840 drinks and curses and stuff like that. But this wasn't 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:48.120 a brand new thing for him. In nineteen twenty one, 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:51.160 he tried to do a similar thing in northern Alabama, 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:55.320 near Muscle Shoals, on a seventy five mile stretch of 0:07:56.400 --> 0:08:00.480 land where there were some sort of abandoned facil were 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:03.800 two nitrate facilities from World War One, and there was 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:07.920 the construction and well partial construction of the Wilson Dam. 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:10.800 And he said, you know what, let's move there, Let's 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:14.360 restart those projects and get people working and kind of 0:08:14.720 --> 0:08:19.280 found a new society there basically where no one was living. 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:22.720 He offered five million bucks to lease the dam. I 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:25.480 guess to the government, and a lot of people in 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:27.680 the government weren't down with it, and it eventually just 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:28.480 kind of fell apart. 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:32.200 Well, supposedly it was just one senator from Alabama who 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:36.040 you really opposed it, Yeah, and it was yeah, yeah, 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:40.000 that's a tradition. Apparently this senator got death threats from 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:42.480 people in Alabama, not just in the Muscle Shoals area, 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:46.640 but like all over Alabama. They had mobilized to start 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:50.959 feeding this million million person workforce that Henry Stower's gun employment. Like, 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:54.320 they changed everything they were doing and started to ramp 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:57.920 up production in anticipation of this, and this one senator 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:00.520 got in the way and said, nope, I was getting 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:03.120 too sweet a deal. And he killed it. And he 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:06.040 killed it enough that Henry Ford was like, fine, I'll 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:08.640 just go somewhere else. And the guy started getting death threats. 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:11.400 Apparently he made a visit to Muscle Shoals and had 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:14.240 to have armed bodyguards with him because he was in 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:16.760 that much in danger that many people were that mad 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:17.200 at him. 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:21.440 Holy cow. All right, so we've covered Ford. He was 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:24.760 a strange man, he was an anti Semite, he's a 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:27.400 titan of industry. And now we got to cover the 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:30.679 rubber part of this, not where the rubber meets the road, 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:36.600 but where the rubber meets the podcast. Oh man, that 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:40.120 was the saddest little grunty groan I've ever heard out 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:40.360 of you. 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:42.880 It was involunteer. I'm sorry. 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:44.880 I know you couldn't even I could tell you couldn't 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:48.880 even help it. Oh boy, Like, there's no way that 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:52.800 you're gonna die before me. But if you happen to, huh, 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:55.240 I feel like I would just And I know that 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:57.040 you're not going to have an open casket funeral either, 0:09:57.040 --> 0:09:58.960 but let's say you did, Okay, I feel like I 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:00.560 would go and lean over your by and just tell 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:02.400 you how great it was working with you all those years, 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:03.760 and you would make that same sound. 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:06.240 Why you say I'm not going to have an open 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:08.640 casket funeral? Do you know something I don't. No. 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:10.800 I thought you were going to like either be shot 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:13.120 out of a canon or cremated and scattered or sky 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:14.079 burialed or something. 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:17.520 Oh no, that's all. That's so old. No, I don't 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:19.320 know what I'm going to do yet, but I could 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:23.400 have an open casket. I can be cremated. After everybody's like, hey, 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:25.679 good respect to see you later. Good to meet you. 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:27.880 I don't know who you are, but way to go. 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:31.000 All right, that's what I expect people to say. 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:35.559 It might be that that's what today. So the world 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:38.760 is being industrialized in the early twentieth century. In the 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:42.480 nineteenth century, rubber became a very big deal. Rubber is 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:48.600 a product of South America originally, and the Amazon region 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:50.960 had a lot of rubber trees down there, so they 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:53.640 were like the dominant player. And rubber trees down there 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:56.480 grew just sort of where they wanted to grow. It 0:10:56.520 --> 0:11:00.800 wasn't like a plantation crop or something like that really grew. 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:04.560 And so along the Amazon they were building little cities 0:11:04.600 --> 0:11:07.280 and stuff to support that industry for many, many years. 0:11:07.440 --> 0:11:12.199 Yeah, they put a lot of effort into like supporting 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:15.800 this rubber trade. And Brazil was like the basically the 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.960 only player on the market. That's where the rubber trees were, 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:20.480 and if you wanted rubber, that's where you had to 0:11:20.480 --> 0:11:23.640 go because we didn't have synthetic rubber yet. Yeah, so 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:27.600 somebody some brit I don't remember, we've talked about it before. Yeah, 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:30.400 don't remember what episode. Maybe we did one on rubber, 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:34.760 I'm not sure, but brit said, hey, you know, Sri 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:40.360 Lanka has a very similar climate to the Amazon, maybe 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:42.480 those rubber trees will grow there. And not only did 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:45.000 the rubber trees grow there, the rubber trees had no 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:47.600 natural pests or. 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:50.040 Enemies. 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:54.040 Sure, predators, parasites, yeah, all of those things. It had 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:57.320 none of them, I should say. So those things flourished 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:01.200 like crazy in Sri Lanka and other parts of I 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:05.920 guess central Southeast Asia, that's right, not Central Asia. 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:09.200 Yeah, and that really put a dent in the rubber 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:14.040 economy in Brazil kind of collapsed at basically, and following 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:16.600 that in nineteen twenty two, the Stevenson Plan in Britain 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:20.079 said basically said hey, if you're a French planter or 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:23.400 a British planter in one of our Asian colonies, you 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.880 can restrict the supply of rubber. You can create a 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:29.959 false market basically to raise the rubber prices all around 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:33.280 the world. And so all of a sudden America was going, 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:38.000 we're being squeezed here by the Stevenson Plan. So at 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:42.760 the time Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover Hobalt Hoovel steps 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:46.320 up and says, all right, we gotta get some rubber 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:49.439 going on our own now and develop our supply chain, 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:53.560 So go do it. In nineteen twenty four, he sent 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:57.600 a technical mission down to Brazil to look again once 0:12:57.600 --> 0:12:59.400 again in the Amazon and see if they can bring 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:02.440 the Amazon back and make it a player again. And 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:06.040 that's what they tried to do. They were It was 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:10.199 basically like which companies would go there and which companies 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:13.280 would go elsewhere. I think Goodyear ended up going somewhere else, 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:16.040 Firestone ended up going somewhere else. They went to Liberia, 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:21.440 Goodyear went to the Philippines and Sumatra. But Ford was 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:23.640 still like, I want to make my own tires. I 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:26.320 don't want to buy from those guys. So there's like, 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:27.240 why don't we do it? 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:32.119 Yeah? He also so I get the impression after researching 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.600 this that getting rubber to make his own tires was 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:40.000 almost a pretext for him that he that's what he 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:42.160 needed to tell people, That's what he needed to spend 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:45.200 Ford Motor Company money on. But what he really wanted 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:50.840 to do was to basically tame the Amazon to I'm 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:53.320 making scare quotes all over the place here, civilize the 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:56.560 people of the Amazon, and basically turned them into world 0:13:56.640 --> 0:14:00.680 Midwestern Americans with square dancing on their mind all time, right, 0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:03.480 I know. So that's really what he wanted to do. 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:05.520 He didn't even care if he made money, he didn't 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:07.600 care if he lost tons of money. He wanted to 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:11.640 make this utopian society. And the Amazon was as great 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:14.520 a place as any because it was such a challenge. 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:17.160 And also if you went to Sumatra or he went 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:20.600 to the Philippines, like it was a different place, like 0:14:20.920 --> 0:14:24.320 there were also other colonial powers there. The Amazon was 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:27.480 right because everybody went somewhere else, and Ford said, I'm 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:28.080 going there. 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:30.680 Yeah, And they said we would like you to come here, 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:33.600 because Henry Ford was, like you said, he was a 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:38.480 business magnet. He was a worldwide, well known name, basically 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:42.640 a celebrity all around the world. And in Brazil they 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.880 were like, listen, we need someone like Henry Ford here 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:48.680 to kind of put us back on the map rubber wise. 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:52.200 And so they basically said, hey, listen, we'll give you 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:56.280 land if you come over here and start your rubber 0:14:56.320 --> 0:14:59.080 business here. And that's what they did. In nineteen twenty seven, 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:02.840 they got the Ford Motor Company got a gift of 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:08.600 two and a half million acres alongside the Tapajos river, 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:12.520 and he said, here's the deal. I made a deal 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:15.840 with the government there after twelve years, I could give 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:18.280 yourself a dozen years to get going, and then you 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:22.040 can start paying Brazil seven percent and then two percent 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.040 to the local governments. I don't now why they capped 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:26.680 it at nine percent. You know that was ten and 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:28.880 Ford talked him down like a percentage point or something. 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:29.240 Yeah. 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:32.040 Probably they got some kickbacks, about one hundred and twenty 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:34.920 five grand in kickbacks to make it happen between people 0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:38.320 who sort of negotiated the deal, which really made Ford mad, because, 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:41.160 as you know, a guy who loves great answing doesn't 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:42.400 like kickbacks, you know what I'm saying. 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:44.840 No, and one hundred and twenty five grand in kickbacks 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:48.240 in nineteen twenty seven is two point one seven million 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:51.160 dollars today, a lot of money. Yeah, one point seven 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:55.240 h nine million pounds and one point ninety seven one 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:56.640 million euros. 0:15:56.960 --> 0:15:59.280 Yeah, which he might have thought, that's very thorough. 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:02.120 Well, you called me out for not having the euro 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:05.160 conversion before, so I would made sure I was prepared today. 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:07.240 Yeah, he might have been a little rankled because he 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:09.160 might have thought he could have paid less for two 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:10.960 and a half million acres there. 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:13.720 I don't know. I think it was the moral part 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:15.800 of it. Yeah, you hit it on the head. He 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:17.160 was a square dancer. 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:17.960 That's right. 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:21.880 So but that was just part for the course, apparently. 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:24.280 I think it's changed dramatically since then. 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:27.120 Yeah, but what you were saying about his like his 0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:29.240 desire was more to make that thing. There's a quote 0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:32.440 where he said was his desire was not to make money, 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:35.400 but to develop that wonderful and fertile land. 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:37.840 Yes, the very quote I was searching for while I 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:40.720 was making that point, but couldn't object. So thank you, 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:43.520 because that's yeah, that's what he wanted to do. But 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:46.560 as far as Ford Motor companies concerned, like they're going 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:49.000 down there to start up a rubber plantation and make 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:51.000 their own rubber, to make their own tires, part of 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:55.920 the vertical integration plan, and so there were there were 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:58.760 not not everybody was on board with this. Yeah, because 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:03.280 anybody who anything about the rubber market said, hey, that 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:06.600 Stevenson planned that the Brits enacted in nineteen twenty two. 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:10.480 They shot themselves in the foot. They kept from exporting 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:14.959 rubber to try to artificially influence prices. But the Dutch 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:17.720 didn't go along with it, and they undercut the Brits, 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:20.360 and now the Dutch control most of the American market 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:24.119 and they're selling at perfectly reasonable prices. We don't actually 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:27.000 need to set up our own rubber plantations. And they 0:17:27.040 --> 0:17:29.560 said for it, said no, We're going down to the Amazon, 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:31.880 and he made it happen. He did. 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:36.760 August nineteen twenty eight. He started shipping stuff down to Brazil. 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:41.080 The problem initially, and boy, there were a lot of problems, 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:44.600 but let's call this problem number one. They chose a 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:47.520 site high up in elevation because they didn't want to 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:50.320 be involved in flooding, which sort of makes sense. But 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:54.040 it was so far inland that these steamerships pulling these barges, 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:57.640 taking all these supplies to literally build a city, essentially, 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:04.119 they couldn't get down these these shallow rivers. So it 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:07.160 took forever. It took like over like well not over 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:09.159 a year, but you know, nine to ten months for 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:11.640 the supplies to finally get there. So the timeline from 0:18:11.640 --> 0:18:13.399 the beginning was just super slow. 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:18.040 Yes, they finally did get there in early nineteen twenty nine, 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:22.080 and the steamer captain who was the captain of the 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:25.120 steamership that pulled the barge of supplies down there. Initially 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:29.520 was a Danish man named Einard Oxholm, and he is 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:33.280 a really great example of Ford and Ford Motor Company's 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:36.840 idea that if you are competent at one thing, you 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:40.240 can be competent at anything. I saw it described as 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:46.600 basically a corporate wide arrogant optimism that you could just 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:48.320 get in there and get things done. If you were 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:51.320 a smart person and you applied scientific principles, you could 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:55.240 do anything. So he appointed innerd Oxholm as the manager 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:59.280 of this plantation and settlement. This, Yeah, the steamship captain 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:01.560 is now run the entire show down there. 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:05.040 Now. Yeah, he had no experience at all and anything 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:07.760 like this. But like you said, Ford thought he's a 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:09.560 good guy. I like the cut of his jib. Have 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:11.359 you seen him? Have you seen him square dance? 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:12.760 Right exactly. 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:15.840 Let's get this guy some cloggy shoes or what. I 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:17.399 don't even know what those are called. We got to 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:18.200 do one in square dancings. 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:19.800 Oh yeah, they're called clogs. I think. 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:21.520 Okay, they're gonna be so mad at us. 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:23.320 Who the square dancers? 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:25.040 Yeah, I don't know. 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:28.359 Man, Maybe we'll find out it's actually super interesting and cool. 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:30.560 No, no, no, we'll do a podcast on it. But I'm 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:32.879 just saying we're gonna get emails. But the anger's email 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:36.000 you're gonna get from a square dancer is maybe how 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:38.960 dare you right? And that's where it's capped. 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:41.919 Yeah, yeah, in all caps. 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:46.920 So Oxholme hired a bunch of locals. Obviously, they cleared 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:50.800 out the jungle, they started setting up their buildings. The 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:54.439 initial name of the community was Boa Vista, as you 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:55.800 can tell by the name of the title. It was 0:19:55.840 --> 0:20:00.240 eventually renamed Ford Landia. This would be a great I 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:01.560 don't know why this hasn't been a movie yet. 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:02.200 It's surprising. 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:04.480 I'd say that a lot. But I think in this 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:06.119 case it would be pretty good to be. 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:10.240 In, like the the spirit of Road to Wellville. 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:11.520 Yeah, yeah, totally. 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:12.840 Okay. 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:16.760 So they're down there working these locals literally to death 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:21.879 at times. Disease was killing a lot of them, a 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:24.439 lot of these and as we'll see, there are a 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:28.080 lot of these workers would revolt given the working conditions 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:31.520 for numerous reasons that will hit on. But there there 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:34.080 were a number of riots over the period of time 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:36.240 that they tried to get Fordlandia up and off the ground, 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:39.680 and you know, things were going very slow. So Ford 0:20:39.800 --> 0:20:41.879 was like, you know what, we're tearing down this forest. 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:44.040 Why don't we at least sell this wood and we 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:47.160 can make a little scratch. But no one wanted it, 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:48.760 so there was no market for the woods. So that 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:50.600 was another thing that kind of went down the tubes. 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:57.960 What else, oh, everything else? Basically they they I don't 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:01.960 understand why, if you believe in applying scientific principles and 0:21:02.000 --> 0:21:08.480 all that to get something done, they didn't hire an agronomist, Yeah, agronomist. 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:10.119