The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America

Ford is aware that the assembly line forces workers to move faster in order to keep their jobs and decides to increase the men’s pay to compensate them. His reasons are both altruistic and self-interested:

It troubled his conscience, for he was an idealist, and believed in making people happy; he was also something of an economist, and in advance of the official economists he grasped the idea that if he paid men high wages, they would be able to buy Ford cars (51).

In January 1914 Ford announces that he will reduce approximately half the company’s profits; each year the Ford Motor Company will share a bonus of $10 million among the workers, with the lowest-paid workers receiving a minimum of $5 a day. He also reduces the work day from 9 hours to 8 hours. Ford immediately becomes famous, with labor activists and “social uplifters” (52) viewing him as a visionary and his fellow businessmen and some newspaper editors calling him “a self-advertiser, a man of unsound mind, a menace to the public welfare” (52).

As a result of Ford’s announcement, tens of thousands of workers immediately come to Highland Park, Michigan, where the Ford plant is located, to seek jobs. The police drive the workers away from the plant, blasting them with cold water; the workers retaliate by throwing stones at the plant windows. Abner, untroubled by the event, reasons that “this was a hard world, and a fellow who had something had to hold on to it” (53).

Ford travels to New York City with his wife, where they are greeted by constant phone calls and a pile of mail, and are pursued by paparazzi. Their lifestyle changes abruptly and dramatically, and Ford begins to travel with armed guards and secretaries to shield him from the public and the press. By the time Ford returns home, the press has published details of his personal life, and for the first time the workers know something of him as a private individual.

Although the workers had understood Ford’s bonus scheme to imply that each of them would earn at least five dollars a day, the reality turns out to be slightly different than they expected: every two weeks, those who qualify receive a bonus. To receive the bonus, workers must meet a set of material and moral conditions: married men must be “living with and taking care of their families”; single men over 22 must be “living wholesomely [and] of proved thrifty habits”; and women and men under 22 must be “the sole support of some next of kin” (55). Since the company has 14,000 employees, Ford sets up a Social Department of 50, overseen by an Episcopal pastor, to approve bonuses.

The Social Department identifies a set of behaviors it wishes to eliminate: taking in boarders, “which made the home a money-making device and undoubtedly gave opportunity for promiscuity” (55); boys’ running away from home and ceasing to support their relatives; drinking, dirtiness, and the neglect of children and sick people. Those whose lives passed the scrutiny of the Social Department would receive $25-50 bonuses every two weeks.

Abner easily receives his bonus; although his and Milly’s home is not perfectly clean, Milly’s “falling pains” (56) provide a reasonable excuse. The Social Department instructs the Shutts to use some of the bonus to hire a cleaning woman, and provides advice about nutrition and thrifty shopping. Abner views the bonus as an act of “divine compassion,” but some workers “[grumble] bitterly against having their private lives investigated, and [...] changed the name of the new department from ‘Social’ to ‘Snooping’” (57). They lie and scheme to get around the Department’s strict requirements; some people are fired, and suspicion, spying, and gossip take root.