The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (Vintage) (54 page)

A site for the new complex had been the subject of a great debate at the highest levels of the organization. Most of Ford's top managers had favored
a site on the Detroit River. But Ford was determined to build the plant at the River Rouge location, and his choice proved to be the wisest and most farsighted one. Though a manufacturing complex on the Detroit River would have made for easy water access, the Rouge site was convenient to a nearby web of railroads. Moreover, it contained hundreds of acres of flatland, which would make an expansion of the facility feasible. As one of the managers explained later, a Detroit River location would have created a hub with only half a wheel. Constructing near the River Rouge placed the factory “in the center of the wheel and you can go in all directions from that.”
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When the decision about the location was finally made public, employees were shocked that the factory was being built in the middle of nowhere. “Everybody was getting a map to find out where the Rouge was,” recalled one Ford veteran many years later. “They weren't familiar with it, when they … found out where it was, they said, 'My God! They've got us out in the country in Highland Park, but look where we're going at the Rouge!' ” Even though the location was remote, the company realized that announcement of the new factory would likely bring in real-estate speculators and drive up land prices. To forestall this impact, it downplayed the size of the factory, publicly stating that only five hundred workers would be hired.
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Development at the Rouge started during World War I, when, because they had to produce Eagle boats, the company constructed a large assembly building and did dredging work to widen and deepen the river. After the war ended, the assembly structure was reconfigured for auto-and-tractor production. By late 1918, some thirty-five hundred men were steadily building blast furnaces, coke ovens, and a foundry. Streets were laid, and railroad lines extended into the complex. In 1919, the foundation for a power plant was laid. The dredging of a “turning basin” and the creation of a slip a third of a mile in length allowed large ships to load and unload. In addition, concrete storage bins for limestone, coal, and iron ore were erected near the factory docks.
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As construction of the Rouge progressed, one man proved crucial to the enterprise. William B. Mayo, who emerged as Ford's chief design engineer, played a key role in shaping nearly every dimension of this undertaking. Mayo had been vice president of Hooven-Owens-Rentschler, a company that made steam-gas power generators, when he met Henry Ford, to whom he sold several generators for the Highland Park plant. Ford was so impressed with Mayo that he hired him to serve as his company's chief power engineer. Mayo had helped Ford secure loans to buy out the minority stockholders, and now he assumed responsibility for planning much of the Rouge complex. Ford and Mayo established a close working relationship
and collaborated in supervising the wide variety of construction projects at the Rouge. Mayo had about 250 men working under him, who dealt with architectural engineering, mechanical engineering, powerhouse design, and general construction.
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By 1920, the multifaceted production envisioned by Ford was beginning to occur at the Rouge. The coke plant was operating; the sawmill was functioning; the foundry was turning out parts; some twenty-four miles of railroad track had been put in place; railroad cars and river barges were delivering iron ore and coal to storage bins; a plant was producing eight hundred sedan and touring-car bodies a day; and thousands of tractors were coming off the assembly line in the large B Building. In the spring, the first blast furnace at the Rouge was completed. As a large crowd of company managers and workers gathered, along with reporters and members of the family, Henry Ford approached the furnace carrying his grandson, Henry II. Leaning over a pile of kindling and coke, the older man helped the boyset fire to it. “The fun of playing with matches was almost too much for Henry II, who is only three years old, and he had some difficulty, but with his grandfather's aid the blaze was started and then he sat perched on his grandfather's shoulder while everyone cheered,” reported the Detroit
News.
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As the River Rouge complex came to life, Henry Ford's central role in its creation became apparent. He envisioned making ten thousand cars a day at the Rouge by controlling the production process from beginning to end. This notion, dubbed “vertical integration” by the experts, became a hallmark of American industrial development. Whereas horizontal integration meant taking over the competition in a given area of production and sales, vertical integration extended a company's reach both backward, toward the sources of production, and forward, toward the consumer. As Ford was overheard telling one of his managers when the Rouge was nearing completion, he “wanted the raw materials coming in on one end of the Rouge plant and the finished cars going out the other end.”
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Ford's determination to sell an inexpensive car had forced the cost of production downward and inspired efficiency on all fronts. “The greatest development of all, however, is the River Rouge plant, which, when it is running to its full capacity, will cut deeply and in many directions into the price of everything we make,” Ford contended. The various productive activities connected to this complex—the waterway for shipping, the mining and transporting of coal, the railway system, the coke ovens and blast furnaces for steelmaking, the sawmill and concrete plant, the use of waste products to fire the power plant, the body plant, the assembling plant—
promised huge cost savings, because “we save in so many directions—in transportation, in the generation of our power, in the generation of gas, in the expense in casting.”
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Because of his commitment to vertical integration, Ford took a personal interest in the construction of the new factory that would embody it. In 1916, he sat for hours in Charles Sorensen's office and discussed the plats of the Rouge development that were hanging on the walls. He intervened to insist upon a uniformity of design that would encourage an efficient flow as the product moved through the successive stages of production. He became upset at the prospect of moving materials up and down through various structures. He asked, “Now why do all this building of three stories here, four stories here, two stories here, five over here, all these ups and downs? Why not build the building by putting the columns four rods apart, four rods square? We'll build an acre to a bay and make the columns four rods high.” This became the standardized plan for the construction of the main buildings. Ford once strolled into the compression room of a new coke oven and examined a huge wall, just completed, that stood about thirty-five feet high and ran some two hundred feet long. After looking at it from several angles, he said, “That wall is off.” The engineer first denied the accusation, then admitted that the wall was a half-inch out of line. “Take it down,” Ford ordered, and walked away. Although it was expensive in the short run, news of this decision reverberated throughout the construction crews and made for a renewed emphasis on quality in building the factory.
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Ultimately, the Rouge embodied Ford's commitment to the growth of a modern consumer society. Increasing the scale of production not only provided more jobs for workers but became a vehicle for getting more consumer goods to the masses. In a 1916
Ford Times,
Ford outlined his vision of the Rouge and how bigness could be used to spread material benefits more widely. “My ambition is to employ still more men; to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes,” he wrote.
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By 1920, Ford's vision of the Rouge was coming to life. A 1922article in
Industrial Management
accurately captured the rhythm and flow of this gigantic factory complex:

Perhaps the most searching analysis of the Rouge and its significance for modern American life came in the New York
Times
in 1925. Evans Clark, in a long article entitled “The Super-Trust Arrives in America,” examined several large industries and concluded that the Ford Motor Company “is probably the most completely integrated industry in the country if not the world…. Now almost the entire Ford car except the tires is pro-duced—from the basic raw materials to the finished raw product—under a single management and control.” Integration was completely realized in the Rouge, which stood as “one vast interlocking self-improvement organization” where increased efficiency in one area reverberated throughout the process. “Undreamed of standardization becomes possible” at this huge plant, the author contended.

Clark also reported that Rouge-style integration was promoting the good life in the United States through “lower prices, more prosperity all around, and the progressive elimination of the extremes of the business cycle.” In other words, the Rouge was spreading ever wider the material abundance of consumer society. Such an achievement suggested a reworking of traditional beliefs, Clark concluded. After examining the Rouge, the reasonable person must consider that “big business may not be an unmitigated evil.”
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As Ford's new factory began running nearly full-speed, one man rose to the forefront of the operation. A high-level manager since the early days of the Model T and utterly devoted to Henry Ford, this ruthless, ambitious, and highly intelligent executive saw in the building of the Rouge an opportunity for enhancing his own position and authority. His ascendancy signaled not only a personal triumph, but an important shift in the center of power within the Ford Motor Company.

In 1919, Charles Sorensen and his staff moved their operation to the new River Rouge plant. A longtime production manager at Highland Park, he had been directing the tractor division at the new facility and became involved in planning the larger parameters of the complex. Sorensen and his assistants needed offices, and the only suitable space was in the “Wash and Locker Building,” which was already occupied by engineers and draftsmen. Sorensen surveyed the situation and made a quick decision to take over the building. According to an eyewitness, “They moved in and took the two
floors over. They then threw the draftsmen out. I remember the trucks driving up outside, and they opened the windows and poured the drawings right out of the windows and into the trucks. The draftsmen moved somewhere else.”
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The clear goal, brutal tactics, and force of will were vintage Sorensen. These qualities made him the prototype of the new Ford functionary. By the early 1920s, Sorensen had schemed and bullied his way to the top of the company as head of production and de facto plant manager at the Rouge facility. He left behind a wake of bruised egos and ruined careers. Utterly devoted to indulging every whim of Henry Ford, he saw himself as an agent for bringing his patron's vision to realization. And, as he understood better than anyone else in the company, this role provided the best tactic for advancing his own career. Sorensen's brilliant achievements and personal power at Ford's new factory were undeniable. Yet his strengths and weaknesses told a larger story. His success revealed much about the nature of the Ford Motor Company—both its productive potential and its fault lines—as it re-created itself as an industrial behemoth on the Rouge.

Sorensen had first joined the company in 1905 as a pattern-maker. Born in Copenhagen in 1881, he had emigrated with his parents and grown up in Buffalo, Milwaukee, and Detroit. After being employed in young manhood by several foundry companies, Sorensen was in 1902 introduced to Henry Ford by Tom Cooper, Ford's old bicycle-racing associate. Over the next couple of years, he did some work for the new Ford Motor Company, and its owner finally offered him a position at a salary of $3.00 per day. Over the next few years, Sorensen climbed upward through the ranks, becoming head of the pattern department and then assistant production manager under P. E. Martin. He played an important part in developing the Model T, especially in terms of the innovative casting of a one-piece engine block, and then worked with Clarence W. Avery on establishing the assembly line at Highland Park. By 1915, Sorensen wielded great power in the company. During World War I, he organized the production of tractors, first in England for the Allies and then back in Dearborn at Ford's new factory.
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Sorensen made a powerful physical impression. A tall, ruggedly handsome man with light hair and chiseled features, he strode about with a determined, even stern look on his face. He had a strong personality and exuded confidence. And as everyone knew among the Ford workforce, he was given to explosive outbursts of temper. Sorensen was fond of the outdoor life, especially boating. Perhaps reflecting a Scandinavian love of the sea, he spent many summer weekends sailing the Great Lakes; by the 1930s, growing prosperity allowed him to pass several weeks each winter cruising off the Florida coast, fishing for marlin. Closer to home, Sorensen purchased
several hundred acres near Detroit and engaged in hobby farming by raising herds of cattle, sheep, and hogs. At the same time, he enjoyed a tranquil personal life, marrying Helen E. Mitchell, a bookkeeper for the Sun Stove Company in Detroit, in 1904, and becoming father to one son, Clif-ford.
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