The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (Vintage) (95 page)

In 1929, Ford had established an agricultural laboratory in Greenfield Village to explore the new field of “chemurgy”—the uses of chemistry and other sciences to enhance agricultural production. He appointed Robert Boyer, a young, self-trained chemist, to manage the facility and its staff of a dozen young men from the Henry Ford Trade School. They experimented with a variety of vegetables and legumes to discover the possibilities of various plant material. Ford and Boyer would brainstorm about different possibilities, and the next morning a truckload of carrots or tomatoes would be dumped in front of the lab for processing. They examined nearly every vegetable imaginable. Ford even suggested that they try hemp, not realizing that this was another name for marijuana and one needed a special license to grow it. Once he had pulled some strings, a hundred pounds of the illegal seed arrived at Dearborn, along with a license. With seven acres of marijuana plants sprouting behind the Moir House in Greenfield Village, an hourly patrol made sure that people stayed out of the field. When Ford suggested looking at soybeans, Boyer's staff discovered that the bean had little water, high oil content, and made a high-protein meal after the oil was extracted.
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Ford ordered the planting of some three hundred varieties of soybeans on eight thousand acres on his farms. His chemists, after years of experimentation,
made steady progress on two fronts: industrial and nutritional uses. Ford began informing the public about the soybean's potential. It had great market appeal because of its many uses—oil, food for humans and animals, fiber for cloth, and plastics. “Some day chairs, desks, doors, and other things now made of wood will be made from soy beans or similar materials,” he predicted. This was only the beginning. Research would show that “many of the raw materials of industry which are today stripped from the forests and mines can be obtained from annual crops grown on farms.”
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By the late 1930s, uses for the soybean in the Ford automobile had emerged. Soybean oil, when mixed with sand, made an effective coating in foundry molds for metal casting. The oil proved useful in producing a tough, easily applied enamel for finishing Ford automobiles. The meal residue provided the basic stuff for making plastic, which found its way into the manufacturing of gearshift knobs, dash controls, door handles, window trim, accelerator pedals, and horn buttons on Ford's line of cars. Most dramatically, however, Boyer's chemists discovered that it could be made into thick, hard sheets of plastic which could be molded into automobile bodies. Prototypes were made of parts such as trunk lids.
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Soybeans' potential as a food product also drew Ford's attention. He set up another lab to investigate this angle, under the direction of Dr. Edsel Ruddiman, his boyhood chum, who had been head of the school of pharmacy at Vanderbilt University. Ruddiman experimented with the food possibilities of this legume, as did Robert Smith, who worked at another small laboratory at the Ford Farms. These scientists discovered that soybean meal was 50percent protein and 95percent digestible, thus making it an ideal feed supplement for livestock. Things were more complicated for humans, however: soybean meal had an unpalatable taste, and soybean oil turned rancid quickly. Ruddiman developed a soybean biscuit that some managed to choke down, although one of Ford's associates described it as “the most vile thing ever put in human mouths.” With varying degrees of success, experimenters flavored and shaped soybean meal to create cheese, croquettes, bread, butter, simulated meats, cookies, and ice cream. At Ford's insistence, Smith and Ruddiman even developed a form of milk. “We've gotten rid of the horse, now we've got to get rid of the cow,” he liked to say. His researchers developed a “soy milk” that pleased Ford, though others found the taste unpleasant.
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As the Depression decade wore on, Ford mounted several public displays of advances in soybean utilization. At the Chicago World's Fair in 1934, he exhibited machinery for processing the legume into oil and meal. The following year, he funded and distributed a film entitled
Farm of the Future,
which explained the importance of connecting farm commodities to
manufacturing in the modern world. In May 1935, Ford sponsored the first chemurgy conference ever held in the United States. Over three hundred prominent manufacturers, farmers, scientists, and businessmen met at the Dearborn Inn to discuss industrial uses of agricultural products. They founded the National Farm Chemurgic Council and, in the replica of Independence Hall at the Ford Museum, signed a document entitled “Declaration of Dependence upon the Soil and of the Rights of Self-Maintenance.”
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Ford used his personal flair for publicity to promote this crusade. He wore ties made from soybean fibers and, in 1941, appeared in a suit fashioned completely from such material. Before the press, he jumped up and down on the sheets of soybean plastic developed by the Ford Motor Company, noting that “had that been sheet metal it would have been all bent out of shape.” A bit later, when a plastic trunk lid had been installed on one of Ford's cars, he held a press conference. Grabbing an ax, he took a terrific swing at the plastic lid, and it bounced off, causing no dents or breaks in the surface (the ax's sharp edge had been blunted with a rubber boot). A beaming Ford told reporters that plastic-bodied cars would soon be quite common. “I wouldn't be surprised if our [soybean] laboratory comes to be the most important building in our entire plant,” he declared. In August 1941, at a festival in Dearborn, Ford proudly unveiled a car with a body made completely of plastic.
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His deep interest in agricultural experiments led him into a cherished friendship with George Washington Carver. He first made the acquaintance of the African American plant scientist in 1937, at the annual chemurgical conference in Dearborn, where Carver had been invited to speak. Over the previous three decades, Carver had significantly enhanced Southern agriculture through his work at the Tuskegee Institute, where he developed hundreds of uses for crops such as the peanut and the sweet potato. Ford met with Carver in his suite at the Dearborn Inn, and the two struck up an instant friendship. Over the next six years, they exchanged many letters and visits; Ford toured Tuskegee to observe the agricultural experiments, and Carver went to both Dearborn and the Fords' winter home in coastal Georgia. Carver invited Ford to become a trustee of his foundation, and Ford built a replica of Carver's birthplace in Greenfield Village. The two men agreed that plants, for both nutritional and manufacturing possibilities, provided many solutions to human problems. Unlike just about everyone else, Ford enjoyed Carver's “weed sandwiches” and other vegetarian delights. Upon the scientist's death in 1943, Ford told
Fortune
magazine, “I have never known a man who knew so much about everything.” In private conversation, he paid an even greater tribute. When an employee noted that Edison, in his view, was one of the greatest men who had ever lived, Ford
replied, “I don't know. He was a great man, all right, but I think that Carver was really a greater man than Edison was.”
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Tractor manufacturing provided a final Ford venture during the 1930s. Long interested in developing a sturdy, inexpensive tractor to lighten the workload of the American farmer, Ford had started a separate company, Henry Ford & Son, to manufacture the Fordson tractor in the 1910s. It enjoyed limited success with small, steady production quotas until manufacturing was transferred to Ireland, and then England, in the late 1920s. Around 1937, however, Ford's interest revived, and he declared publicly, “What the country needs right now is a good tractor that will sell for around two hundred and fifty dollars.” Working with engineers such as Howard Simpson and Karl Schultz, Ford financed and then dropped two different models. Then Harry Ferguson, an Irish entrepreneur, approached him about a collaboration. Ferguson had developed two significant mecha-nisms—a linkage system by which implements could be directly attached to the tractor rather than pulled on wheels, and a hydraulic system by which the operator could raise and lower implements to control plowing and cultivation depth. After a demonstration at Dearborn in October 1938, Ford embraced this new technology. He put up money for development and tooling, and his engineers worked with Ferguson's team to create the Ford-Ferguson tractor. It went into production in the fall of 1939.
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Ford knew that farming had declined since the turn of the century, and the Depression had devastated the agricultural economy. He wanted to help farmers produce at a profit and improve the quality of their life. “In too many cases, farming has not only ceased to be profitable; it has also ceased to be interesting,” he wrote in a publicity pamphlet for the new tractor. He and Ferguson believed that “farming can be made profitable, without increasing the cost of farm products to the consumer.” Between 1939 and 1941, the Ford-Ferguson tractor captured 20 percent of the market and moved into second place, behind International Harvester. Even though the Ford Motor Company sold the tractors at a loss for many years, Henry Ford insisted on producing the machines for the benefit of farmers.
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Ford's educational and agricultural projects shared a common emphasis on practicality, useful achievement, and bettering the life of ordinary Americans. These same principles informed a significant development in his private life—the creation of a winter residence on Georgia's coast that involved not only a new private home but several endeavors to improve the life of local residents. As noted earlier, in the 1920s, Henry and Clara had first
become acquainted with the area around Ways Station, Georgia, when traveling by train. Passing through Savannah on their trips to Florida, they were impressed by the natural beauty of the surrounding area. Ford began purchasing land in 1925 and eventually accumulated about seventy thousand acres, including several old plantations in Bryan County, about twenty miles south of Savannah.
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As the site for their new home, the Fords chose a lovely spot on the Ogeechee River that had been graced by an old plantation house in the antebellum era. They consulted with architects to draw up plans and bought The Hermitage, a dilapidated old mansion in Savannah that had been built of the famous “Savannah Gray Brick,” which was no longer being manufactured. Workmen dismantled the old wreck of a building, cleaned each brick by hand, and transferred the lot to the new site. By 1936, a large, gracious structure had been completed. Built on a model of traditional plantation homes, it featured two-story pillars in the front along with a spacious veranda looking out on the river. Most of the furnishings came from the abundant holdings of the Henry Ford Museum. Henry outfitted an old rice mill with a restored steam engine, and this new powerhouse provided electricity, heat, and water to the residence. The Fords named their new home Richmond Hill.
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Starting in 1936, the Fords made a yearly pilgrimage to Richmond Hill sometime between January and March to spend several weeks. They enjoyed the warm weather and beautiful scenery far from the frozen fields and cold of Michigan winters. Clara would walk through the grounds, read, and entertain friends from Savannah; Henry toured the countryside, talking to farmers, inspecting old machinery, and monitoring a variety of projects. In this natural bird preserve, the couple frequently indulged in their hobby of bird-watching. They also entertained themselves and others in the community by hosting dancing parties. They usually imported Benjamin Lovett and the Dearborn orchestra for a series of dances held on the front lawn of Richmond Hill. Under the large trees facing the beautiful vista of the river, dozens of couples, including many pupils from the local school, danced waltzes and quadrilles.
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Ford saw his new Georgia residence as a base from which to launch several social projects to improve life in the area. Bryan County, like much of the rural area, was economically depressed, with a significant proportion of the population suffering from poverty and disease. Ford acted to help remedy the situation. After discovering that large bodies of standing water in the area bred mosquitoes and spread malaria throughout the community, he commenced an extensive drainage project. Earthmoving machines created a network of canals and drainage ditches through some seventy-five thousand
acres. When the swampy ground had been drained sufficiently, roads were built into areas that had previously been inaccessible.
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At the same time, Ford moved to combat several diseases that were endemic among the poor citizenry. Malaria fever, which infected nearly 100 percent of the population, stood at the top of the list. He contacted the Georgia State Board of Health and the Winthrop Chemical Company, which manufactured atabrine, an antimalarial medication, to help plan a program. Twenty-one nurses were hired to visit each home in the community, examine residents, and dispense atabrine tablets to adults and quinine to children. Hookworms also were widespread, and victims of this malady received treatment. Through educational information and medication, rampant problems with syphilis, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis were also checked. John F. Gregory, Ford's superintendent at Richmond Hill, supervised much of this activity. Ford eventually funded a central facility in the county, the Ways Station Health Clinic, headed by Mrs. Constance Clark and Mrs. Sam Read, two local health workers. A pair of doctors from Savannah, C. F Holton and John Sharpley, visited the facility once a week to treat serious cases.
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