Sapiro v. Ford

The Dearborn Independent, subtitled the "Chronicler of the Neglected Truth," is a weekly magazine. Its present circulation is 383,000. It retails for five cents a copy or $1.50 a year; it contains no advertising; hence, it costs Henry Ford about $300,000 a year to publish it. It gives bits of information and advances the ideas of Mr. Ford. For example, the current issue contains such articles as: "A Preacher tells the Inside Story of Sinclair Lewis and his Preacher Book," "The Gibson Girl and Other Symbols of Yesterday" by Vachel Lindsay, "The True Story of Mary's Little Lamb," "Japan Looks to America to Prevent Wars," "Every Person Has at Least One Book in Him," and the usual "Mr. Ford's Page."

Among other things, Mr. Ford is a Hebrew-phobe. He employs no Jews in his mighty industries; he resents the grip that they have on certain U. S. businesses. And so it was natural that one of the early functions of the Dearborn Independent was to annoy the Semitic. In 1924 and 1925, 20 articles written by Newspaperman Harry Dunn, under the pseudonym Robert Morgan, appeared on the subject: "Jewish Exploitation of Farmers' Organizations." The first article said flatly: "A band of Jew bankers, lawyers, advertising agencies, fruit packers, produce buyers, professional office managers and bookkeeping experts is on the back of the American farmer. . . . Born in the fertile fortune-seeking brain of a young Jew on the Pacific Coast a little more than five years ago . . . the idea has turned millions away from the pockets of the men who till the soil, and into the hands of the Jews and their followers."

The young Jew referred to is Aaron Sapiro, now 42, a lawyer, and the organizer of farmers' co-operative associations which market $400,000,000 worth of foodstuffs annually. No doubt, Mr. Sapiro has made a tidy profit from these ventures; no doubt, other Jews as well as farmers have shared. But Mr. Sapiro believes that Mr. Ford's magazine has slandered him and hurt his business. Hence, he filed suit in 1925 to collect $1,000,000 from Mr. Ford. Last week that suit went before the U. S. District Court in Detroit. It may last five weeks or five months. Mr. Sapiro's underlying purposes are three: 1) to put Henry Ford through a thoroughgoing grilling on the witness stand;* 2) to put an end to his own and his magazine's attacks on Jews; 3) to show the merits of Mr. Sapiro's co-operative marketing of farm products.

Mr. Ford has hired able defense counsel, headed by Senator James A. Reed of Missouri (TIME, March 7), for whose sharp tongue and inquisitorial powers many a lawyer yearns. The defense contends that there is no need of Mr. Ford taking the witness stand or of dragging in the question of race prejudice. Said Mr. Reed: "Neither the principles of co-operative marketing nor the Jewish race is on trial. . , . We are accused of libeling Mr. Sapiro, and it is therefore his work and the plan which he expounded, that we seek to test. We claim that he was selfish in his motives, domineering in his tactics, and dangerous to the agricultural movement because of his attempts to control it."

It will be a queer trial. Judge Fred Raymond is a Protestant. Mr. Reed was born a Presbyterian and is a candidate for President. Mr. Ford, idealist, pacifist and manufacturing moralist, keeps his religion an enigma. William H. Gallagher, attorney for Attorney Sapiro, is a Roman Catholic. Mr. Sapiro, onetime orphanage waif and newsboy, once studied to be a rabbi.

--People recall how flustered Mr. Ford was during his cross-examination in 1919 when he sued the Chicago Tribune for $1,000,000 and received six cents.