The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (Vintage) (71 page)

Edsel Bryant Ford was a quiet, obedient son who enjoyed the love and attention of doting parents and nearby family members. “Edsel is as happy as a bird toddling around in the snow. I have been taking some pictures of him,” Clara wrote to an absent Henry in 1896. “He has been making some caves. Sam [a family friend] picks him up and throws him up and lets him down in a [snow] bank.” The boy enjoyed typical childhood activities—ice-skating, making fudge with his mother, going on family excursions to visit relatives—and engaged in his share of horseplay, such as sliding down the banister of the Ford house with his childhood playmate Faye Beebe. He also suffered the inevitable juvenile mishaps, as when he fell and broke his arm after climbing a tree with Beebe. In a letter dated December 24, 1901, eight-year-old Edsel sought advantage: “Dear Santa Claus, I haven't had any Christmas tree in 4 years and I have broken all my trimmings and I want
some more & I want a pair of roller skates and a book & can't think of any thing more I want you to think of something more. Good Bye, Edsel Ford.”
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As an only child, Edsel spent much time with his parents and was particularly close to his mother. The boy shared his father's alertness and quickness of mind, “but in practical matters he was more like his mother … [and] their interests were more alike,” noted Mrs. Stanley Ruddiman, who saw the Fords frequently. Even after he entered adulthood, acquaintances would note, “Mrs. Ford's mind and Edsel's mind were more the same … [and] on the whole his tastes and opinions more nearly coincided with his mother's than his father's.”
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But Edsel matched affection for his mother with respect for his father and his achievements. As an adult, he recalled the proud day when the mayor of Detroit visited the Ford house to see Henry's horseless carriage. Edsel also had fond memories of hanging around his father's shop a few years later, where “he built the ‘999,’ which Barney Oldfield drove.” Henry lavished attention on his only child. In 1900, when Edsel was on a trip to Kentucky with his mother, his father wrote an affectionate, joking note to “My Dear Little Son.” “I am well and hope you are all OK. Say, do they carry whiskey jugs and bandwagons in their blouse in KY? I hope you are having a good time and will be back soon for I am lonesome. From your loving, Pa Pa.” Henry frequently took Edsel to the old plants on Mack Avenue and Park Place. Usually, Henry would not allow Edsel to enter the factory floor because of safety concerns, so the boy would remain outside and play with his wagon, kneeling on the seat and pushing himself along. “I used to look at him sometimes and notice how he had his father's alert, quick way and his mother's good common sense,” noted a relative.
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Even as a boy, Edsel showed an artistic sensibility. Attracted to music, he also liked to draw detailed sketches of automobiles, making drawings of a Ford coupe and a Packard in colored crayon. By his teenage years, Edsel had graduated to more sophisticated forms—charcoal still-life drawings, landscape paintings, and watercolor portraits. The artist Irving Bacon first met Edsel with this introduction from Henry: “Edsel is the artist in our family. Art is something I know nothing about.” As an adult, Edsel and his wife would collect valuable paintings, and donate many of them to the Detroit Institute of Arts.
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As the son of a wealthy and prominent family, Edsel enjoyed a comfortable adolescence. He attended public grade schools and then enrolled in the Detroit University School, a private prep school for boys. He ran on the track team as a sprinter, and pursued hunting, boats and water sports, golf, and automobile travel. Slightly shorter than his father, but possessing an
athletic frame and dark good looks, he began to cultivate his lifelong reputation as a snappy dresser, purchasing tailored suits in New York City. After graduating in 1912, he decided to skip college and join his father's business at the Highland Park plant. Edsel later regretted his decision: “I think it was a mistake, for, whatever else college may or may not do, it helps one to meet a great many different kinds of people and also it helps one to get more enjoyment out of life.”
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From an early age, with the encouragement of his father, Edsel had cultivated an intense interest in automobiles. In 1903, at age ten, he received a new red Ford Model A Runabout from Henry. In this age before driver's licenses, the youth drove the car about the Hendrie Avenue neighborhood and transported his mother to do her shopping. He also amused his friends by pulling their sleds along behind his vehicle. A few years later, he received another car, a 1906 Model N, and started his lifelong hobby of automobile collecting. The youth applied his artistic bent to the motorcar, and an interest in design began to blossom. In 1910, he designed a sportier version of the Model T that lowered the seats and steering column, added doors to the open body, and lengthened the hood. His father was intrigued by Edsel's “Torpedo” but never authorized production of the car. In 1912, Edsel drew up plans for a low-slung six-cylinder speedster that featured bucket seats, wire wheels, and a V-shaped radiator. Company engineers built the car, and he drove it for several years.
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Partly from paternal pride and partly from a desire to keep his family company out of the hands of Wall Street, Henry began to groom his teenaged son for future leadership. He put Edsel to work in various areas of the company; the son later described “going from one department to another, and trying to absorb as much as I could.” Edsel also spent much time with his father to observe company operations and the decision-making process. George Brown, a company accountant, described how Edsel, at age thirteen, would come by the factory after school and disappear with his father into the experimental room. “We wouldn't see Mr. Ford or Edsel. When we went home the both of them would still be in the experimental room, probably with Mr. Wills,” Brown continued. “Mr. Ford and Edsel were very close.” As the father would say, “I've got one boy I can be proud of. He's sure taking an interest in this work.”
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Even as a youth, the modest, polite Edsel earned the respect and affection of his associates. He impressed Ford operatives with his considerate, respectful, low-key manner. One day, while he was learning the ropes at the motor-assembly section of Highland Park from Ed Harper, Edsel wanted to go to a formal party at three o'clock. He had packed a suit in the back of his roadster, so he changed clothes in the employment office and sneaked out of
the factory. His supervisor and fellow workers covered for him. When Henry checked on his son later that afternoon, he was informed that Edsel was working on a project in the foundry. The father discovered the white lie a few days later and chastised the conspirators, but they accepted the reprimand gladly. Engineer William C. Klann expressed the consensus about Edsel: “He was well-liked by everybody because he was what you would call a gentleman.”
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In the mid-1910s, Edsel also took an important step in his personal life. Henry and Clara had tried to keep him at home (and attract his companions) by including several special features in their new Fair Lane estate—a swimming pool, a bowling alley, and a small golf course. Increasingly, however, Edsel left the domestic nest to spend time with friends and classmates. Active and energetic, he loved driving sophisticated automobiles, dancing, and golf. He also developed an interest in boating—particularly yachts and speedboats—that would provide a hobby throughout his adult life.
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Inevitably, he met a young woman who caught his fancy. As a student at the Detroit University School, Edsel took regular dancing lessons that were attended by students from the Liggett School, an academy for girls. At one of these dances, Edsel met Eleanor Lowthian Clay, the niece of Joseph L. Hudson, the prominent Detroit businessman. After a courtship of several years, they married on November 1, 1916, when Edsel was almost twenty-three. The couple took their vows at the Hudson home in Detroit. John Dodge reaffirmed Edsel's popularity, telling the groom's father at the reception, “Henry, I don't envy you a damn thing except that boy of yours.” For their part, Edsel's parents were delighted with their son's choice of Eleanor. As Clara Ford wrote to a friend a few years later, she and Henry “could not love Edsel's wife more if we had picked her ourselves.”
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It soon became clear, however, that Edsel had entered a different social orbit from the modest one traveled by his father and mother. After honeymooning in Hawaii for several weeks, the younger Fords took up residence at a spacious home on Iroquois Avenue, in an area popular with Detroit's elite families. Several years later, they moved to the Stephens mansion, on the Detroit River. Between 1917 and 1925, Edsel and Eleanor's four children—Henry II, Benson, Josephine, and William—would be born at these residences. In the mid-1920s, Edsel began building a new estate, Gaukler Pointe, located in Grosse Pointe. In subsequent years, he would acquire homes in Seal Harbor, Maine, and Hobe Sound, Florida, as well as a two-thousand-acre farm, Haven Hill, near Milford, Michigan. Edsel and his wife became benefactors of the arts, giving generous donations to the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Symphony Society, the New York Museum of Modern Art, and many local groups.
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Meanwhile, Edsel continued to climb toward the top of the company. He became a member of the board of directors in 1915, at age twenty-two, and was appointed secretary a year later. With the onset of World War I, however, Edsel was caught up in perhaps the nastiest public controversy of his life. When the United States entered the conflict in 1917, he applied for and eventually secured a draft exemption because of his work at the Ford Motor Company, which was busy producing a variety of war commodities. Critics attacked both father and son, accusing the younger of cowardice and the elder of using his money and influence to gain special privileges for his offspring. Edsel, ever the gentleman, was appalled by the public attention and stung by the accusations hurled at him. “My action in claiming exemption on industrial grounds is for the sole reason that I believe I will be of far greater service to the country right here in the plant,” he wrote indignantly; “if the officials see fit to deny my exemption I am perfectly willing to be drafted with the rest of the young men of this community.” He also refused to pull strings to get a desk assignment in the military. “There is one job in this war I do not want and will not take, and that is the job of a rich man's son,” he asserted.
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The war's end finally brought an end to Edsel's troubles, and a few months later he reached the summit of his career. On January 1,1919, he became president of Ford Motor Company, as part of his father's move to buy out the minority stockholders. In his new position, Edsel played a key role managing construction of the River Rouge industrial complex, making decisions about production and engineering, and supervising expansion of its marketing operation. Unlike his father, he did not roam widely throughout the company, but worked quietly in his office. Only a few months after assuming the presidency, Edsel testified at the Chicago
Tribune
trial, displaying a familiarity with all operations of the company. In marked contrast to the bumbling performance of his father, he appeared well informed, thoughtful, and articulate.
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But this image of authority and control was deceptive. As observers inside the organization gradually discovered, Edsel served as president in name only. His father, though officially in the background, continued to steer the course of the company and make all major decisions. Edsel, ever the obedient and loyal son, swallowed any resentment and acquiesced. In fact, this increasingly awkward situation played to the weaknesses of both father and son—domineering tendencies in the former and excessive deference in the latter. The presidency of the company soon became the greatest ordeal of Edsel Ford's life.

During the 1920s, the situation graduated from awkward to painful.

Within a few months of Edsel's ascendancy, it became clear that Henry had no intention of handing over power to his son. The elder man often said, according to one associate, “Well, you talk that over with Edsel, and do whatever he says. I'm going to turn more of these responsibilities over to him. He's got to run this company.” Inevitably, however, Henry reversed his son's decisions and set policy. His unwillingness to act forthrightly—rather than clearly asserting his own pre-eminence, he insisted on Edsel's authority and then undermined it—poisoned the atmosphere. As a longtime Ford engineer summarized, “Every time Edsel starts to do something, the old man knocks it down.”
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Not long after Edsel assumed the presidency, William Knudsen and Frank Klingensmith appealed to him for additional office space at the Highland Park plant. After studying the issue, he concurred and had plans drawn up for a new addition on the administration building. The bulldozers arrived and began digging a hole for the foundation. At this point, Henry entered the picture and demanded an explanation. Unconvinced by his son's rationale, Henry declared, “Edsel, we don't need that extra building.” A tight-lipped Edsel surrendered and promised to fill in the construction hole. But Henry was not finished. “No, don't do that. Just leave it that way for a while,” he replied. For the next several months, thousands of company employees passed a muddy mess as they entered and left work every day, a symbol of the father's authority and the son's humiliation.

A short time later, a similar incident occurred at River Rouge. William B. Mayo met with Edsel and outlined the need for additional coke ovens tomake the steel required by the production schedule. Again, after evaluating the facts and consulting with other experts in the company, Edsel approved the project, and told Mayo to proceed with construction. Henry heard of the project and disapproved, but this time he waited until the ovens were completed before stepping in. He confided his plans to one of his henchmen, Harry Bennett: “Harry, as soon as Edsel gets those ovens built, I'm going to tear them down.” Henry did exactly that. A despondent Edsel told a friend, “I don't know what kick Father gets out of humiliating me this way.”
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