Monday, Jan. 17, 1938
"Old Gentleman in Detroit"
Last week Ford Motor Co. announced that 1937 had been its second best year since 1930, with a total world production of 1,314,369 units. In another respect, however--public relations--1937 was perhaps the worst year in Ford history. Once universally regarded as a model employer, in 1937 Henry Ford saw himself and his company held up to hatred in a suddenly labor-conscious nation. Only fortnight ago came an adverse ruling on his labor policies by the National Labor Relations Board. But Henry Ford has not merely a genius for building machines; he also has, whenever he cares to display it, an extremely canny sense of diplomacy. Last week he cared to display it. and briefly at least the press smiled upon him once more.
Calling in reporters, the crotchety, 74-year-old tycoon outdid himself in genial interviews. First he delivered himself about the State of the Nation. Referring to "the prevailing belief that wages should he reduced and prices raised," he declared: "The people are getting a good education in the fallacy of the economic rule now in force. Whenever prices go down and wages up, benefits accrue. Eliminate the greed for money and substitute a little zeal for production and normal conditions soon will return." The liberal New York World-Telegram commented that these sentiments "just can't be matched for durable and unassailable common sense."
Not content with that. Henry Ford next led a group of reporters about his plant. He opined that the most prosperous era in U. S. history is just around the corner because industry is opening up a whole new field for agricultural byproducts. Picking up a curved sheet of a composition which he said was made from soybeans, the angular old man jumped enthusiastically up & down on it, exclaimed triumphantly: "If that was steel it would have caved in." Almost entire cars, said Henry Ford, will soon be made of such things as soybeans.
To help agriculture toward that happy day Henry Ford then trotted out for the reporters a tractor the like of which no one had ever seen. With three wheels and a Ford V-8 engine, it looks like a lopsided tricycle, will probably sell for less than $375. Said he: "It is the solution of the nation's troubles. Get agriculture and industry working hand in hand and that will mean the farmer and workingman are partners. ... I don't care if we can't make a cent of profit. The main thing is to get something started. . . ."
Meantime in Washington, Henry Ford's son Edsel, called to testify in Senator Burton Wheeler's investigation of U. S. railroads, submitted for the sake of publicity to being manhandled by a photographer (see cut). Senator Wheeler, sniffing the spoor of Pennroad Corp. (holding com-pany affiliated with Pennsylvania Rail-road), found that in 1929 Pennroad paid Henry Ford $35.000,000 for Detroit, Toledo & Ironton R.R., which Mr. Ford had bought in 1920 for only $13.000.000. He produced evidence that Pennroad Corp. was formed mainly to buy D. T. & I. and that the price it paid, in the opinion of a New York Central vice president, was three times too much. Vice President A. J. County of the Pennsylvania admitted that Pennroad had tried to get Ford officials to promise to continue sending its freight over D. T. & I. after Pennroad purchased it. But, said Mr. County, "Henry Ford wanted cash and nothing else."
This gave Senator Wheeler his cue to produce a letter from Mr. County to General W. W. Atterbury, late president of the Pennsylvania, which stated that "the old gentleman in Detroit has upset the whole arrangement by insisting upon elimination entirely of the traffic contract."
Said bashful Edsel Ford with a smile: "On this point my father was adamant. He didn't want any strings attached."
Nonetheless the deal went through because, said Mr. County: "I knew Henry Ford and I knew he would not take $35,000,000 of our money and then gut our business the next day." Mr. County was right. D. T. & I. still thrives on Ford freight.
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