72 Friday, June 5, 1981 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Henry Ford Story: The Anti-Semitism, the Apology, the Tongue-in Cheek, $5-a-Day and Other Deceptions (Continued from Page 12) men . . . He was convinced that our money machinery was badly in need of atten- tion.' "If Edison was anti- Semitic, as his notes to Ford indicate, then it ap- pears to be the unique form of the disease to which Mme. Schwimmer refers in Ford's case — economic anti- Semitism." The 'following two ex- cerpts from the Lee book offer direct reference to the results of the venom: "The Ford dealers could not ignore the Dearborn In- dependent's campaign, first because it led to an unoffi- cial boycott of the purchase of Ford vehicles and sec- ondly because they were pressured into selling the nublication for Henry Ford. je -mish individuals and :inns immediately stopped buying Fords. Many gentile firms stopped buying Fords as well. some out of sym- pa by for the Jews and others to appease Jewish customers. "When a 400-car parade -rs.,-as assembled in Hartford, Connecticut, to honor Al- beit Einstein and Chaim Weizmann, the order went out that there would be 'pos- Aively no Ford machines permitted in line.' "While the boycott had little effect in rural com- munities where Ford's sales were strongest, it w: :,s clear that it was de- vastating sales in the major metropolitan areas with significant Jewish populations. There was a dramatic drop in total Ford sales in late 1920, and while some of the de- cline could be laid to a decline in the economy that year, a measure had to be attributed to the Jewish boycott. "Even the humorist Will Rogers quipped that the boycott may not be a com- plete success yet — but it will be as soon as someone learns how to make a cheaper car.' "Dealers reacted. Many of them, like Gaston Plaintiff, a New York sales manager and personal friend of Ford, wrote letters complaining of the sales decline. Henry Ford's only answer was, 'If they want our product, they'll buy it.' "Liebold was far more sarcastic in his responses to the dealers. When a Vir- ginia dealer, E.C. Lindsay, wrote to say that his Jewish landlord was threatening eviction because of the arti- cles, Liebold replied, 'Does it not appear to you that a Ford agent should own his building to place him be- yond the exertion of such pressure! We naturally ex- pect, and our agents must also feel, that the Jews will endeavor to make victims of them whenever possible.' "In an even more reveal- ing letter to Mr. Plaintiff, Liebold wrote that 'the mat- ter has gone too far for us to stop and consider now just where it is wrong. This has been carefully weighed and considered long before we started. If anything we are publishing is untruth- ful, the Jews have thus far failed to show it . . . I have found that the moment we open ourselves and extend interviews to the Jews, it is only used for the purpose of misquoting and publicity which has no bearing what- ever on the issue and at- tempts to deride the indivi- dual members of our organ- ization. So far as Mr. Ford is concerned, he has nothing to say to anybody. The mat- ter is being handled entirely by the organization of the publishing company, and so long as Mr. Ford personally keeps out of it, I am confi- dent that it can be brought to a successful end.' * * * "The fear of another court trial and the possibility of having to take the stand was, of course, an induce- ment to settle the fight. Most observers, however, thought that Ford simply wanted to sell more cars. The Model T's life had ended, and Ford was about to bring out an entirely new car. He couldn't afford to af- front any segment of the market now, especially with Chevrolet making major gains on him. "Will Rogers probably said it best: 'Ford used to have it in for the Jewish people until he saw them in Chevrolets, and then he said, 'Boys, I am all wrong." "An answer that is per- haps as good as any of these comes from William Richards, who pointed out the Astrologers' Guild of New York statement that Ford should no longer in- sult people because Jupiter and Uranus were over his Neptune, and Mercury was in his third house. "On the day the retrac- tion appeared in the Dear- born Independent, Henry Ford celebrated his 64th birthday. It appeared that now, at an age when most men retire, he was setting aside old prejudices and perhaps mellowing toward life. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The Sapiro trial and retrac- tion only served to. end Ford's public anti-Semitic attacks. It marked the end to his open hostility, intro- ducing a new period in which Ford would continue to influence the course of anti-Semitism for two more decades." * * * Louis Marshall and Henry Ford A study of the Ford role in U.S., Jewish and world his- tory is incomplete without the detailed account of the condemnations of the anti- Ford agreed to make a com- plete recantation and apol- ogy. Louis Marshall wrote out a long penitent state- ment which Ford signed without readng. "Marshall, whom the Dearborn Independent had characterized as 'short, stocky and agressive,' and as 'America's Jewish enigma,' described a meet- ing with Ford to his son, with unenigmatic enjoy- ment: " 'On Thursday morning at 9:30, Mr. Henry Ford by pre-arrangement called on me at the office and we spent a most interesting hour together. He said that he felt better now that he had relieved his mind of the burden of the 'great mistake and blunder that he had made' in his anti-Jewish publications . . "Ford also invited Mar- shall to see his new Model A `and asked me to select any of his products that I might desire.' Marshall, however, declined, saying he pre- ferred to walk." * * * LOUIS MARSHALL Semite by Louis Marshall and the story relating to the auto magnate's apology. It is detailed in "Louis Mar- shall: Selected Papers and Addresses," the two-volume historical account issued by the American Jewish Publi- cation Society. Surprisingly, many of the important aspects of the Ford case contained in the Marshall documentaries have not been fully utilized by any of the Ford biog- raphers and analysts. There is, for example, very little in any of the books and essays about the indirect involvement of the then President Warren Gamaluel Harding. Mar- shall, in an important letter in the possession of this re- viewer, credited President Harding with having been responsible for a delay of about three years in Ford's anti-Semitic enmities until President Harding's death. In her interesting book "Poor Cousins" (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan) in which she evaluates the "Yahudim," the German Jews as contrasted by the East Europeans, Ande Manners has the following about a meeting between Louis Marshall and Henry Ford: "But when Jews stopped buying Ford cars and when a Jewish lawyer in Detroit sued him for $1,000,000, 0 Charles Madison's Personal Experience An autobiographical monograph by Charles Madison, appearing in the current issue of the Michi- gan Quarterly Review, re- lates an experience with the Ford Motor Co. Madison, an eminent author of several books, an authority on Yiddish litera- ture and the Jewish press, who for more than 30 years was a book editor for Henry Holt and Co. and later Holt, Rinehart and Winston, was orphaned at 12, became the supporter of his brothers, worked at all kinds of odd jobs, shoeshining and in fac- tories, learned lathe work and earned at least as much as 22 cents an hour at the Dodge plant. In search for much needed income, he turned to the Ford Motor Co., when the notorious "$5 a Day" an- nouncement gained na- tional notoriety. In his , CHARLES MADISON self-portrait entitled "My Seven Years of Automotive Servitude," in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Madison relates the following: "Due to my YMCA courses and a speech clinic I attended the next year, my savings were very low, and the need of additional in- come gradually turned my attention to Ford's widely publicized policy of paying $5 a day for eight hours of work. Publicity about Ford's largesse had brought thousands of men from all over the country to High- land Park. "Reading about the brutal handling of these applicants and knowing of the slave-driving methods of the factory, I for a time fought back the temptation to seek work there. I liked the atmosphere at Dodge, even though it meant two more hours of work at al- most half the pay. But the urge to earn more money was soon strong enough for me to yield to temptation. "One cold Monday morn- ing I took the streetcar to Highland Park and hurried to the employment office. A long line of men was already waiting for the door to open. When it did, the crush to enter was fierce, but guards forced the men to keep in line and await their turn. Since many of them were without experience as machine or assembly oper- ators, most of them were re- jected in quick order. "When my turn came, my experience as a lathe oper- ator and my previous em- ployment with the company impressed the interviewer and he hired me. Pleased with my success, I went to see the foreman at Dodge Brothers, and explained to him my need of additional income and told him of my gratitude for his friendly behavior toward me. He shook his head in regret, told me I'd be sorry, and generously stated that when I was ready to return he'd see what he could do for me. "I found the Ford plant greatly reorganized, and I was assigned to a lathe in a new section. The harried foreman told me that my operation had been timed by an efficiency expert to pro- duce a certain number of finished parts per day. I timed myself to see what I could actually do, and realized that I might achieve the quota only if all went well and I worked without letup the entire eight hours. "No allowance was made for lunch, toilet time, or tool sharpening. I refused to dis- allow necessary delays, al- though I managed to keep the machine going while munching my sandwich. When I failed to produce the assigned quota of finished parts, the foreman scolded me. "The next day another ef- ficiency timekeeper with a stopwatch was assigned to observe my work. After an hour of making notes as I worked he told the foreman I was too slow in placing the part in the machine and was making no effort to speed up. I defended myself as best I could, asserting that it was humanly impossible to keep up the expected pace. I was annoyed enough to accept dismissal without regret, but no action was taken against me. I continued to work at a fast pace, but made no real effort to pro- duce the assigned quota. "I later concluded that the speedup policy was in- tended to get the maximum production out of the work- ers by requiring them to produce their operation -- t a high rate of speed wi• ever actually meeting trie demanded quota. Ruch as I resented a policy I consid- ered inhumane, I tried to re- sign myself to it in the hope of earning $5 a day. I was therefore shocked and angered when my first pay envelope revealed that I was being paid 25 cents an hour or $2 a day. "When I questioned the foreman about this, he told me blandly that the ar- rangement was to begin paying $5 a day only after a worker had been with the firm six months and had proved his ability to main- tain his quota requirement. "The unethical nature of this policy outraged me, and I told him I was quitting at once. Much as I wanted to earn the higher wage I re- fused to yield to the com- pany's duplicity. The deci- sion to quit gave me a feel- ing of pleasant relief, as if I had freed myself of an un- pleasant burden." Incidentally, the issue of the Michigan Quarterly re- view from which the above is culled was a 350-page edi- tion which has already gone into a second printing. This issue was edited by Dr. David L. Lewis, professor of the business history at the University of IVIichigan. There is no doubt about the total abandonment of the anti-Semitic in the Ford Empire. Edsel Ford's rejec- tion of his father's hatreds; Mrs. Edsel Ford's interest in and concern for Jewish causes, represented in her annual gifts to the United Jewish Appeal and the De- troit Allied Jewish Cam- paign; and the Edsel Fords' son Henry Ford II's deep interest in Israel and his generous gifts to the Allied Jewish Campaign — all at- test to a new era in Fordism. Interest in the Fords is never-ending. The new gen- eration is the socially- minded, denudim ; a past marked by policies tha' ‘, their effects on A.merka and world affairs. The prej- udices still linger in the legacies that were trans- ferred from Dearborn, Mich., to the anti-Semites in several countries --- in a form called Protocols — and to Saudi Arabia in the Pro- tocols as well as the revived ritual murder libel. The lessons are apparent. The facts hopefully will give light to generations benefit- ing from the errors of the past. —P.S.