Silver Shirts, US pro-Nazi 1930s group, uniform description and info...

[Fading Fast]

Another interesting connection was Fritz Kuhn, head of the German-American Bund. His day job was working for Ford as a chemical engineer. I don't know if he was still working for Ford by the late '30s but if he was he must have had some very generous vacation time to take time off to be the Bund's führer.

Fritz Kuhn to Henry Ford: I'd like some additional time off to lead the German-American Bund movement promoting Nazi ideology in America

Henry Ford: By all means Fritz, take all the time you need - we'll even keep you on at full pay

A Jewish worker asking for a Jewish Holiday off: Mr. Ford, I'd like to take tomorrow off to celebrate a Jewish Holiday

Henry Ford: (apoplectic to his secretary) Get me Harry Bennett!

 

[LizzieMaine]

There are those who theorize that Old Henry had "Asperger's Syndrome," which if true would explain his tendency to view the world as an engineering problem which could be solved by proper application of industrial principles, and it would also explain his utter inability to understand the human factors involved in the management of large groups of people.

Old Henry's greatest failing was that he never understood that the people working for him were not standardized, easily-interchangeable pieces of the production machinery. He viewed the idea of paying, by the standards of the time, a high wage as a way of creating the industrial equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, but he didn't understand that human beings are not a balance wheel, the rotation of which can be regulated by increasing or reducing the tension on a financial spring. He didn't understand why workers resented having their wages slashed by half in the 1920s, or why they resented having their private lives interfered with by Bennett's "Service Department," or why cutting the workforce and speeding up the line was a strategy bound to lead to rebellion. He insisted on full control of every aspect of his business according to the principles of "Fordism," and he couldn't understand why his workers held him personally responsible for the abuses rampant under that system.

That lack of simple human empathy, coupled with his increasing paranoia, was the chicken that came home to roost in Dearborn in the 1930s.

 

[Stearmen]

Before modern quick drying lacquers became available in the late twenties painting a car was a slow laborious process as Vitanola described. The finish was built up coat after coat with drying time in between. But they did not paint the chassis that way, only the body. The chassis, running boards and fenders got a quick drying, tough black paint called black japan or chassis black. Ford cut the painting bottleneck by painting the whole car with chassis black paint.

Ford never did fire Bennett. That was done by his grandson Henry II. The government pulled Henry II out of the Navy in WW2 because the Ford company was so badly run it was affecting war production.

Henry was born in 1863 which means in 1943 he was eighty years old. He had been in failing health for years and was practically senile. His son Edsel died in May 1943 of stomach ulcers and had also been ill for some time. Bennett took advantage of the situation to put himself in charge although he knew nothing about the auto business and nothing about running a business. This is why the government was so concerned. At the time, Ford was a privately owned company with no shareholders or owners outside the Ford family, and no board of directors or management team in the conventional sense. Old Henry ran the place like a country store.

He originally hired Bennett as head of security during a kidnapping scare in the early thirties. Of course the Lindbergh case was well known but there were many other kidnappings about that time and the Ford children would have been a juicy prize. As time went on Bennett played on Ford's fears to increase his own power.

There was a story I read some years ago, told by a Ford insider or secretary who was close to Henry Ford in the forties.The union was threatening to strike. Henry went off on a rant about how he was never against labor, he did everything for labor, and how unfair it was to treat him this way. Then he calmed down and said "what do they want anyway?" Bennett said "it's the checkoff system. They want you to deduct the union dues from the men's pay and give it to the union." Ford said "what's the matter with that? Why don't you give it to them?" so they did. End of strike threat.

I think you should read this, http://www.mtfca.com/encyclo/P-R.htm#paint2 ! To sum it up, "Fourth, the color black was chosen because it was cheap and it was durable. Black paints, especially those containing asphaltum, were noted for exhibiting better damp proofing properties than other colors during this period. The claim that black was chosen because it dried faster than any other color is not supported by the Ford engineering documents, the contemporary literature, nor by the first hand accounts of Ford Motor Company employees." Also, ford offered many colors before the Black Only days.

 

[vitanola]

I think you should read this, http://www.mtfca.com/encyclo/P-R.htm#paint2 ! To sum it up, "Fourth, the color black was chosen because it was cheap and it was durable. Black paints, especially those containing asphaltum, were noted for exhibiting better damp proofing properties than other colors during this period. The claim that black was chosen because it dried faster than any other color is not supported by the Ford engineering documents, the contemporary literature, nor by the first hand accounts of Ford Motor Company employees." Also, ford offered many colors before the Black Only days.

I did not claim that black dried faster than ANYother paint only that it dried faster than the body paints that had been in use before late 1914. It appears that you did not actually read my posting, or, just perhaps, that I was not entirely clear in my language, perish the thought. (I prefer to assume that you did not read it, but then den selbst-betrug is such a pleasant hobby, isn't it?) Nor did you carefull read Trent's excellent article. You must remember that Mr. Boggess wrote his excellent paper there was much misinformation which had been circulating for decades about Ford paints.

Note my mentioned of the asphaltum varnish based paints which were used on the first colored bodies which were painted at some assembly plants in 1925 and 1926. "Gilsonite" is a trade name for a variety of "asphaltum", and the Gilsonite painters that Ford used are properly termed "Asphaltum Varnishes". Yes, Ford could have used color earlier on if he felt it necessary, but that would have complicated supply somewhat, and in an environment where cutting expense and hence selling price was of paramount importance there would have been little reason to bother with color, which would have been muddy and dark at any rate, like the colors used in 1925-6, which at the time were considered no great improvement over black by many. Note that few if any restored machines of this vintage bear appropriately dark paint, more's the pity.

In fact, Ford did use some color in 1914 one eastern assembly plant, a blue so very dark that it might as well have been black. this was, of course, just a variant on the basic asphaltum varnish. The (slightly) broader color choice introduced for cars produced at some assembly plants in 1925 was concurrent with the introduction of the "Improved Ford" cars, with their all-steel bodies, crown fenders and smoother lines. These improved cars were offered into a market where the competition was just beginning to show signs of eroding Ford's great market lead.

Now to change the subject, let's discuss the color that Ford used to paint his engines in 1926 and 1927...

 

[Stearmen]

but then den selbst-betrug is such a pleasant hobby, isn't it?)

We generally refrain from insults on this forum! Especially, in a language the reader does not speak!

 

[Guttersnipe]

Anti Semitism was taught to him by his Jewish Socialist friends, believe it or not.

I've debated replying to this post for two days because (a) while it's factually untrue, (b) I really don't want to argue about this topic with a stranger on the Internet. However, I can't in good conscious not present a counterpoint. Please read this link about Ford's anti-Semitism. His views about Jewish people are only "defendable" on the grounds that they were pretty conventional in his time...which is no defense in my view.

 

[Guttersnipe]

Ford established his Sociological Department in 1913 to investigate living conditions and working conditions among Ford employees and their families, and to figure out what the company could do to help them.

One of the things their investigators or economists determined, was that to raise a family in a comfortable and respectable way cost considerably more than the typical auto worker made. This led to Ford's famous $5 day which was about twice what others were paying. They also helped workers build or buy their own homes, they provided education for new workers and other benefits.

...Also, this statement highly suspect. Perhaps The Boys in Marketing wanted the American public to think that Ford raised pay out of the kindness of his own heart, after all such a story pulls at the heart strings and helps move units. However, in reality Ford Motors raised famously doubled its pay to combat high worker turnover, which was costing the company time and money as workers gained on-the-job training on the company's dime, then took those skills elsewhere.

Citation 1
Citation 2

 

[Stanley Doble]

Sorry, your first link is a 404 error, your second requires a password and the third is so small as to be illegible.

It doesn't surprise me that a smart manager would have more than one reason for making a certain decision.

I long ago got over the tendency to group everyone into heroes and villains. I know it is easy and fun but human nature is a little more complex than a comic book or video game.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Meet Albert Kahn, the Jewish architect who did millions of dollars worth of work for Ford including the 1909 Highland Park plant with the first moving assembly line, the massive River Rouge complex that employed 120,000 workers, The Edsel and Eleanor Ford house, the Dearborn Inn, showrooms in New York, Boston, Washington and other cities. Albert Kahn worked on more than 1,000 commissions from Henry Ford.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Kahn_(architect)

 

[vitanola]

We generally refrain from insults on this forum! Especially, in a language the reader does not speak!

I was referring to my own self-deception regarding the clarity of my prose.

Are you suggesting, sir, that I may not poke fun at MYSELF?

Themes is fighting' words in these here parts!

 

[Fading Fast]

Meet Albert Kahn, the Jewish architect who did millions of dollars worth of work for Ford including the 1909 Highland Park plant with the first moving assembly line, the massive River Rouge complex that employed 120,000 workers, The Edsel and Eleanor Ford house, the Dearborn Inn, showrooms in New York, Boston, Washington and other cities. Albert Kahn worked on more than 1,000 commissions from Henry Ford.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Kahn_(architect)

Holy Cow he designed a lot of gorgeous buildings. That Packard factory is impressive - not easy to make a big, long box look that good.

 

[Stanley Doble]

...Also, this statement highly suspect. Perhaps The Boys in Marketing wanted the American public to think that Ford raised pay out of the kindness of his own heart, after all such a story pulls at the heart strings and helps move units. However, in reality Ford Motors raised famously doubled its pay to combat high worker turnover, which was costing the company time and money as workers gained on-the-job training on the company's dime, then took those skills elsewhere.

Citation 1
Citation 2

If you think Henry Ford ever employed any "Boys from Marketing", or needed them, you don't know Henry Ford.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Ford had quite a few Boys in his employ as far back as the 1910s, creating such things as the "Ford Times" magazine, and the Ford Photo and Film Department to ensure that his message got out in the way in which he wanted it gotten out. The Dearborn Independent -- which every purchaser of a Ford car in the early 1920s got every week in the mail whether he or she wanted it or not -- was his most pervasive method of promoting a specific agenda and creating a certain aura around his own person among the public.

There was very much an effort to create a "cult of personality" around Ford, and he did nothing to discourage this. Ford advertising during the 1910s focused as much on Henry, the man, as it did on his products, as did a constant stream of promotional literature emerging from the Ford offices. Even the unquestioned master of pre-WWI sentimentalist personality-building Elbert Hubbard was commissioned by Ford to contribute to these efforts, which he did in 1912 with an essay placing Ford on the same plane as Jefferson and Lincoln. It was this Hubbard piece, which was widely circulated by the company for years after, which cemented the desired public image of Benevolent Old Henry, The People's Friend.

By the early thirties, Ford was using mass media on an epic scale. His "Ford Sunday Evening Hour" radio program on CBS, featuring the music of the Detroit Symphony and the commentaries of William J. Cameron -- a member of the so-called "British Israelite" movement whose connections went straight to Berlin -- reached tens of millions of homes each week with a very specific socio-political message: that "Fordism" was the way, the truth, and the light.

 

[MisterCairo]

Possibly they keep it with the Holy Grail,which was brought to England in the 1st century by Joseph of Aramathea and last seen in the Monastery of Glastonbury in the time of King Arthur.

Actually, it was last seen by Arthur:

 

[ChiTownScion]

Ford had quite a few Boys in his employ as far back as the 1910s, creating such things as the "Ford Times" magazine, and the Ford Photo and Film Department to ensure that his message got out in the way in which he wanted it gotten out. The Dearborn Independent -- which every purchaser of a Ford car in the early 1920s got every week in the mail whether he or she wanted it or not -- was his most pervasive method of promoting a specific agenda and creating a certain aura around his own person among the public.

Education of the common man and woman is the worst nightmare of the Boys.

 

[BlueTrain]

There are those who theorize that Old Henry had "Asperger's Syndrome," which if true would explain his tendency to view the world as an engineering problem which could be solved by proper application of industrial principles, and it would also explain his utter inability to understand the human factors involved in the management of large groups of people.

Old Henry's greatest failing was that he never understood that the people working for him were not standardized, easily-interchangeable pieces of the production machinery. He viewed the idea of paying, by the standards of the time, a high wage as a way of creating the industrial equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, but he didn't understand that human beings are not a balance wheel, the rotation of which can be regulated by increasing or reducing the tension on a financial spring. He didn't understand why workers resented having their wages slashed by half in the 1920s, or why they resented having their private lives interfered with by Bennett's "Service Department," or why cutting the workforce and speeding up the line was a strategy bound to lead to rebellion. He insisted on full control of every aspect of his business according to the principles of "Fordism," and he couldn't understand why his workers held him personally responsible for the abuses rampant under that system.

That lack of simple human empathy, coupled with his increasing paranoia, was the chicken that came home to roost in Dearborn in the 1930s.

My late father-in-law was an engineer. He didn't have Asperger's Syndrome but I agree that he saw the world as an engineering problem, sometimes even when there was no problem. I think it's a characteristic of engineers, perhaps understandably. But he never worked in a factory and so never experienced personnel problems. I can only guess his reaction to anyone who didn't see things exactly the way he did. It wouldn't have been good.

The paternalistic employer has always been around, though only some carry it to the logical conclusions of company towns, company stores and so on. Coal mining company towns, villages really, are practically gone but it hasn't been that long since they were very common. They were probably only meant to be temporary housing, less so than a logging camp, but nothing like, say, Hershey, Pennsylvania. I wouldn't dare to second guess the feelings of those who lived and worked in places like that.

 

[EngProf]

As an engineer, and one who teaches young engineers, I can say that I tell all of them that the "people issues" in their future are far more difficult and important than the technical issues.
I can't guarantee that they believe me but I can guarantee that they have been warned. The way things work in the modern manufacturing environment is not like in the Industrial Revolution or even in Henry Ford's day.

 

[BlueTrain]

Things are always changing and that's about the only thing you can count on.