The Imperial Self in American LifeStephen J. Whitfield
From Columbia Journal of American Studies Vol. 4, No. 1 2000
These ingredients combined to burnish the legend of the nation's biggest folk hero in the first third of the twentieth century, a figure whose very name Brave New World (1932) adopted for what would replace the sacred dates of the Gregorian calendar: Years of Our Ford. Perhaps no single person affected so many lives. Half a century after Huxley's novel was published, the number of auto mechanics was double that of doctors and dentists (and usually only the health care professionals need licensing). The automobile was worshipped so fervently that more divorced fathers have managed to keep up their car payments than maintain their child support payments. [23] This vehicle immeasurably affects not only the American way of life, but also the American way of death. A study done in Houston showed that between a seventh and a fourth of all traffic fatalities is in fact a suicide. More effectively than anyone else, Henry Ford undermined the more stable and village-bound society into which he himself had been born. He first won fame not as a manufacturer but with racing, helping to design the "999," which shot flames from the motor. Completed in 1902, the car was so fast that Ford himself did not dare to try it at full speed for two years, when he drove the "999" in a race against the clock across the ice. Its speed of 90 miles per hour seemed only to whet Ford's competitive appetite beyond the thrills of car racing. In 1903, capitalizing on his national reputation as a racer, he formed the Ford Motor Company, in which he owned a little over half of the stock. Eleven years later, after the world's first complete endless chain conveyor was installed, a new world's record was soon set for the assemblage of an automobile: 93 minutes. The driving force and inspiration of that process of mass production racing against the clock was a man who was largely self-made and self-taught.
Though already 50 years old in 1914, Henry Ford was still obsessed and driven by the changes in factory methods which he had wrought, arriving at the factory at 7 a.m., leaving late and sometimes not leaving at all when the crews worked through the night overhauling sections of the line. He was driving, and he was driven. When asked what his "life desire" was, Ford replied: to produce cars at the rate of one per minute. Time was an enemy that had to be defeated. He accomplished that "life desire" in 1920, but he was still insatiable. By 1925 the Ford Motor Company was producing an automobile every ten seconds. [24]
But he was the embodiment of the imperial self, obsessed with total control of the company, hungry for empire-building in a market which seemed limitless. Ford saw the minority stockholders as a drag; and he got rid of them deviously, falsely announcing in 1919 that he was leaving the Ford Motor Company to form a rival. The effect of the lie dramatically depressed sales of the Model T, and discouraged outside investors and bankers from interest in the Ford Motor Company He was able to buyout the minority shareholders, enabling him to return from his rather minimal retirement, in total control, dominating the company without any interference whatsoever. He insisted that no one else's name appeared on any press release that the company put out. Until 1945 Henry Ford took credit for all inventions and alterations in the basic models of his company's vehicles, which isn't saying much, since there was little innovation to boast of, since he was so suspicious of educated and creative associates. Even to use the name of his son, Edsel Ford, who had nominally become the president of the company, required special permission. The company was truly an extension of, an advertisement for, himself, even though the man Henry Ford was becoming increasingly remote, suspicious, sensitive to criticism, and susceptible to a persecution complex. By the public he was known primarily for the press releases and the statements which he never wrote, though his name remained magical through the 1920s, until the Great Depression eliminated the ethos of nineteenth century individualism which Ford had personified and exaggerated. [25]
Stephen J. Whitfield holds the Max Richter Chair in American Civilization at Brandeis University. He is the author of eight books, including most recently A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till (1988), The Culture of the Cold War (1996), and In Search of American Jewish Culture (1999). Professor Whitfield is also the editor of A Companion to 20th-Century America (2004).