Tonight I bring you not a book but the run of a newspaper. Available at every place where early 20th century Americans could buy a popular and useful consumer good, it helped fuel the rise of a nostalgic toxin that shaped the political and social fabric of the heartland for generations. Funded by a man whose own work had helped bring about the very change this publication decried, it eventually made its way across the sea, where it inspired a rising political leader in his own quest to restore his country's past greatness. That it might end badly did not occur to either man for a quarter century:
The Dearborn Independent, owned and overseen by Henry Ford — Henry Ford was one of the great industrial innovators of the twentieth century. Born on a farm, equipped with only a basic education, Ford made up for his disinterest in the life of the mind with a real talent for mechanical engineering. Beginning with bicycles, clocks, and farm machinery, by the time he reached adulthood Henry Ford had turned his attention to one of the great obsessions of his time: perfecting the automobile.
Ford was not alone in this. Daimler may have actually invented the modern horseless carriage, but so many Americans rushed to improve on the German machine that it's no wonder many people think that George Selden (or the Duryea brothers, take your pick) actually deserves the credit. Stanley Steamers, Willys Overlands, Packards and Oldsmobiles and DeSotos, cars that doubled as tractors, cars powered by steam and electric batteries and gasoline and even tightly coiled springs – all these and many more were available to consumers with money, mechanical aptitude, and a taste for adventure by the early 1900's, and that was before America had much in the way of paved roads or filling stations.
Henry Ford got into the business in the mid-1890's with a two-cylinder creation that could attain the shocking speed of 20 miles per hour, and it undoubtedly would have swept America if he had been able to figure out how to make it back up. No matter – Ford was nothing if not persistent, and by 1903 he'd come up with a snazzy little two number that not only could go in reverse but had two forward speeds. He also developed a Fordmobile (sic) that he boasted was “THE BOSS OF THE ROAD” thanks to its “beauty of finish,” lack of defects such as “smell, noise, jolt, etc. common to all other makes,” and an operating system “so simple that a boy of 15 can run it,” all for the low, low price only $850. That $850 was not particularly low in an era when the average family was expected to get by on about $500 may be why this wonder wagon failed and took Henry Ford's first attempt at an auto company with it.
Ford was nothing if not persistent. He'd learned to repair watches and then build engines with little to no formal training, and by George he was not going to let a little thing like corporate bankruptcy stop him! He somehow scraped together more capital, sponsored a racing car driven by legendary driver Barney Oldfield, and by 1908 he'd not only recouped his fortunes, he'd introduced the car that literally changed the world: the Model T.
The Model T was a miracle for its time, and is still a remarkably efficient, effective mode of transportation. Tough, easy to maintain and repair, and able to navigate everything from smooth macadam to rutted farm mud, what the press soon nicknamed “the Tin Lizzie” got a then-miraculous 35 miles to the gallon and was all but indestructible. Best of all, Ford's adoption of the assembly line and interchangeable parts reduced the cost to about $300, which put it well within the reach of prosperous farm families, solid working men, and the lower middle class. Soon everyone from penny pinching suburbanites to prosperous farmers had a Model T, and the flood of cheap, reliable cars not only instituted the custom of the Sunday afternoon joy ride, but forced governments to start paving roads to accommodate all the Tin Lizzies chugging about so Ma, Pa, and the young uns could have some post-church fun that didn't involve breaking an axle. By the time Henry's long-suffering son, Edsel, finally convinced his father in the late 1920's that Americans wanted a bit more luxury and a choice of colors other than black in their transportation, around 17 million Model T's were tootling around the highways, byways, and turnpikes of America and more than one foreign country.
Needless to say, soon Henry Ford was wealthy beyond the dreams of anyone who wasn't named “J.P. Morgan” or “Andrew Mellon,” and not just because his cars sold well. Ford's father had owned forty acres of good farmland near the River Rouge, and his thrifty son decided that the rolling hills and water access made the parcel the ideal site for his factory. That it was outside Detroit didn't matter since he already owned the land free and clear, and soon Henry Ford's childhood farm was home to a bustling factory that churned out cars almost as fast as the smokestacks belched out pollution. The legendary River Rouge plant has stood on the Ford homestead ever since, and its proud history includes a stint as part of the Arsenal of Democracy that churned out war materiel to defeat fascism seventy years ago.
The old Ford Farm and its owner's bank account were scarcely the only thing that changed thanks to the Model T. Increased mobility brought increased social unrest, as farm boys found themselves drawn to the glittering lights of the county seat on Saturday night instead of a wholesome game of pinochle round the Little Colonel oil heater. Teenagers borrowing the family flivver found its back seat well suited to what they used to call “petting” and now call “making out.” Women, sharecroppers, factory workers – all could now enjoy the benefits of cheap, reliable transportation instead of staying at home or on the plantation or in the company house. And since the oppressed always tend to wander when given the chance, that meant houses went untended, plantations went unplowed, and company houses fell vacant as anyone who know how to drive got in their Model T's and drove to the city, the North, or out to the suburbs in search of a better life.
As much as he appreciated his newfound wealth, Henry Ford did not appreciate these social changes. He may have turned his family homestead into a blasted wasteland, but that didn't prevent him from mourning the simple country life he'd enjoyed as a child. Alcohol, cigarettes, modern clothing, furniture, social mores – it was all a blight on America's great and bountiful land, and if there was anything this titan of industry could do to force the genie his products had uncorked back into its plain glass bottle, by George he was going to do it.
His efforts at Making American Simple Again began at home. Initial efforts included badgering poor Edsel into giving up wine with dinner, cocktails beforehand, and brandy afterwards. When that didnt work, Henry and his wife, Clara, began breaking into their son’s home and dumping the contents of his wine cellar down the kitchen sink while Edsel and his wife were on vacation. Worse, they
repeated the process every time Edsel would rebuild his collection, much to Edsel's distress and his wife's fury. It's little wonder that father and son barely spoke to each other in the end, or that years later Henry thought Edsel was faking what turned out to be his last illness.
Family relationships aside, though, Henry reserved most of his ire for modern dance and popular music. He wasn't alone in this – moralists of the time devoted much time and ink to decrying the evils of the Charleston and the sensual wail of the saxophone, which inflamed the passions of vulnerable youth and led to evils such as rouged knees, petting parties, and The Decline of America's Vigor and Manliness. Unlike the pundits and the preachers, though, Henry Ford had the money to do more than simply complain about flappers and their sheiks. He would show the dissolute, decadent youth what real dancing and music were all about, and if they didn't like it, well, they could sit down, shut up, and watch their elders cut an rug for a change.
Thus it was that Henry Ford, industrialist and collector, set out in 1925 to revive square dancing, string bands, and old-time country fiddling.
Yes. Really.
Henry and Clara had always enjoyed old time dancing, but after a successful series of dance parties at the Ford-owned Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts, Henry decided that America was ripe and ready for a full-blown assault on jazz, the Black Bottom, and every decadent fad popular with the under-30 set. He sponsored dance classes at the Dearborn Inn, complete with an old-timey string band, then invited several hundred dance teachers to Michigan to learn the minuet, the Virginia reel, the gavotte, and something called the varsovienne, which sounds like a type of motor oil but isn't.
Soon he was sponsoring live performances by his band broadcast over his own radio network, including old-time music accompanying the introduction of new Ford models in 1926 and 1927. He paid for local children to learn square dancing, sent out his favorite dance teachers to instruct students at three dozen colleges in the wholesome old/new steps, and learned to play “Turkey in the Straw” (poorly) on his very own Stradivarius. He even tried (and failed) to dance the jig while playing “Turkey in the Straw” on his Strad, which must have rivaled Shipwreck Kelley sitting on a flagpole for sheer entertainment value.
Is it any wonder that modern dance legend Ruth St. Denis could only moan “How awful! How awful!” the first (and last) time she attended one of Henry Ford's wholesome soirees?
Regardless of Ford's uncoordinated hopping and seesawing, it seemed for a few brief, shining moments that square dancing would indeed supersede the Jazz Age. “The Charleston is dying, the Black Bottom can never be king,” proclaimed the National Association of Masters of Dancing in 1926, and despite the fad peaking and fading soon after, Henry continued to hold square dances at his own home until well into the 1940's. If America preferred the horrors of jazz, swing, and alcohol-fueled dance parties, it was their loss.
Henry Ford's nostalgia-fueled love of square dancing and America's past seems quaint today, even mildly ridiculous. His museums celebrate a time that his own work helped end, and one shudders to think of what he'd think of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where he's hailed as the messiah of the industrial age and characters like Mustapha Mond take his name in vain. At the same time, square dancing is excellent light exercise, while his museums have done fine work in preserving the artifacts of America's past, including the Civil Rights Movement (the bus that Rosa Parks attempted to integrate, the Woolworth's lunch counter) and the assassination of President Kennedy (his limousine, fortunately sans the bloodstains). Had he only stopped there, his obsession with a simpler time would be a mere eccentricity.
Unfortunately for America, and the world, Henry Ford didn't stop there.
For at the very same time that Ford was promoting bird sanctuaries, acquiring folk art, and learning to play the fiddle, his car dealerships were distributing a newspaper that was perhaps the single most poisonous rag ever published in the America prior to the Internet. It was called The Dearborn Independent, and between 1919 and 1927 it became notorious for publishing a series of articles that claimed that the Great War had been caused by an insidious network of wealthy, well connected Jewish bankers.
Yes. Really.
Ford's motives in publishing some of the vilest propaganda ever set in type were principled, or so he claimed. He was a lifelong pacifist who was convinced that the Great War had been caused not by the Anglo-German arms race or the Kaiser's burning need to overcompensate for a withered arm, but by “international financiers...German Jews, French Jews, English Jews, American Jews” out to stuff their pockets, and never mind that plenty of Jewish soldiers had died in the trenches alongside their Gentile platoon mates. Worse, he was so certain that rich Jewish industrialists and financiers were behind society's ills that he even blamed inferior candy bars on unnamed Jews buying his favorite chocolate company.
That Ford himself was an uber-capitalist who presumably knew that most bankers, industrialists, and ultra-rich financiers were not Jewish made no difference. Wasn't the Federal Reserve promoted by Paul Warburg, scion of the famous Jewish banking family? Weren't the Rothschilds and the Montefiores part of the British aristocracy? Weren't the Jews behind the stock market and the gold standard? Or responsible for the “money famine” that crippled American farmers and small businessmen?
That the answer to these burning questions were, respectively, “Yes, alongside many others, “So what?” “No,” and “You really need to stop sniffing motor oil, Henry” made no difference. Ford was so convinced that International Jews were the source of all war and all evil that he refused to hire Jewish office workers or executives regardless of their qualifications, and if any of his managers, secretaries, or engineers disagreed with his anti-Semitic views, they kept it very much to themselves.
As horrible as this sounds (and dear God, I feel like I need a bath just typing this), antisemitism to one degree or another was a common and largely accepted part of American life a century ago, especially among the upper classes. Even the most genteel Christian was all but guaranteed to be at least mildly anti-Semitic, at least until the end of World War II and the discovery of the death camps, and if Ford had simply kept his views to himself it's likely that no one except his biographers would have noticed or cared.
Unfortunately for Henry Ford (and ultimately the world), he had a newspaper. And beginning in 1920 with a series imaginatively titled “The International Jew,” Ford began sharing his bigotry with anyone who'd listen. International financiers...the undermining of baseball thanks to Jewish gamblers...and other sports...Jewish plots to undermine Gentile society...the insidious influence of Eastern European Jewry on American life and culture...even the republication of the worst anti-Semitic propaganda of all, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion...the Dearborn Independent printed all this and much, much more. And since Ford dealers were required to carry the paper regardless of their own views, by 1925 circulation soared to nearly a million copies, right behind the New York Daily News.
Needless to say, the Dearborn Independent quickly became a cultural flashpoint. The newly powerful Ku Klux Klan was delighted – they hated Jews nearly as much as they hated Catholics and Blacks - while foreign editions were quickly seized upon by an obscure Bavarian political party called the NSDAP as evidence for their own anti-Semitic views. Worse, the poison began infecting people who'd never even met a Jew, thanks to all those copies available in the waiting rooms of Ford dealerships across the country.
“The International Jew” did not go unchallenged, thank goodness. The Anti-Defamation League quickly denounced it for blaming the Jews for their own persecution. So did liberal Christians, Ford dealers in Jewish areas, and nearly one hundred leading Americans of “Gentile birth and Christian faith,” including Clarence Darrow, Ida Tarbell, Robert Frost, Chief Justice William Howard Taft, and even former President Woodrow Wilson, whose own less than enlightened views on race had evidently reached their limits. They rightly pointed out that The Protocols were an ugly hoax, that the worldwide banking network was dominated by Christians, and that Henry Ford was as much a dangerous crank as an amusing old man trying to revive a long-dead dance form.
The end came in 1927, after The Dearborn Independent was sued for libel by a Jewish attorney/farm coop organizer named Aaron Sapiro. Ford closed the paper just before Christmas, disingenuously claiming that he was shocked, shocked to learn that the Independent was publishing antisemitic editorials even though each and every one was signed “Henry Ford.” That a nationwide boycott might have been impacting sales of the snazzy new Model A was dismissed with a shrug – Ford automobiles were far too popular to be effected by such trivialities! - nor did the company put much stock in reports that Ford dealers had been junking their deliveries of the Independent upon arrival. Ford swore he hadn't known what was being printed under his name and on his dime, vowed that he wasn't actually an antisemite, and that was that.
Nor did his public stance change a decade a later, when the NSDAP government in Germany presented Ford with the Grand Cross of the German Eagle for his great work as an industrialist and publisher. Their leader, Herr Adolf Hitler, was a great admirer of The Dearborn Independent and its owner, to the point of directing his own government to develop a Volkswagen, or “people's car,” that would be the cheap, reliable, and very, very Aryan equivalent of the Model T. His dear friend and close associate, Baldur von Schirach, even claimed that “The International Jew” was responsible for his own political views, meaning that Henry Ford had been as instrumental in shaping the new, vigorous Germany as he'd been to American car culture a decade earlier. Accepting the highest civilian award the Third Reich could grant a foreigner was not evidence of personal antisemitism, oh no no no. Refusing such an honor would have only insulted Herr Hitler and his government, and that of course would never do.
It wasn't until 1945, after Herr Hitler had launched a war that had eventually engulfed the entire world, that Henry Ford finally was confronted with the fruits of his work in the newspaper business. Someone – who is not entirely clear – showed him newsreel footage of what American GI's found in the German death camps, and the frail old man promptly suffered a massive stroke that led to a complete physical breakdown. He never recovered, and was gone two years later, leaving behind his company, his museums, and perhaps the most troubling legacy of any of the great American industrialists.
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Did you ever go square dancing? Try to dance a jig while playing “Turkey in the Straw”? Visit Greenfield Village or the Henry Ford Museum? Own a Ford? Were you aware that Henry Ford was a raging antisemite? Now's the time to come clean, so come up to the fire and share.....
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