first car on july 23rd, 1903. thank you very much for coming out this evening. i appreciate it. i'm going to speak for maybe 20 minutes or so. they said they would like that and then we will have lots of time for questions and the answers and we can try to answer anything then you would ask me. in in 1928, henry ford created a public uproar as he often liked to do and was asked about a pathway to success in anassoci interview with the associatedat press on the 20 anniversary of the launching of the model t and he maintains that the hard w traditional formula , w of hard staple of advice from benjamin franklin to horatio alger, was only half right. hard work, ed, was still a good idea, but thrift was useless. successful people did not save money, he said, but they spent it, as fast as they could, in his words, in order to improve themselves. within a few days, news of henry ford's gospel of spending had swept through the country, and excited much commentary, both pro and con. now, such sent amments didn't surprise those who followed ford's career very carefully. a few years earlier, he had formulated an advertisement for the ford motor company that had this message, buy a ford, and spend the difference, it said. originally his advertisers had brought a message which said, buy a ford and save the difference. he had taken a pencil, scratched out the word save, and put the word spend. and i think with that substitution of one word, much was revealed about ford, and the historical revolution that he inaugurated. here's a henry ford with whom we are little acquainted, i would like to suggest. the man we remember mass produced the model t, known as assembly line at highland park. he constructed the mammoth river rouge plant in dearborn, michigan, wheregan where based on a principle raw iron other came in and finitched automobiles came out the other. he was a manufacturer, aer of goods, and a businessman who had unprecedented scales of production. he was a producer that put america on wheels and created the automobile-centered society that precysts until today. the images of a familiar ford ring true in many ways. the familiar ford i insist is a shadow of the essential henry ford that i try to talk about in my book. the essential henry ford that preached the gospel of spending, preached the gospel of consumerism. his endid he havors, while important and far reach wrg rooted in a historical role as a visionary who first articulated a view of america as a consumer society. mass production, he understood sooner and better than everyone in this country, was rooted in mass consumption. as he noteed in one of his auto by graphical volumes, they needed to ask a simple question in his words, how can i best serve the consumer? perhaps more than any modern figure, henry ford created a blueprint for the united states that made material abundance, and a culture of self full philment similar to being a american. the model t was not just a vehicle for providing transportation, but a vehicle for taking the new vision of a good life. material plenty, leisure, contentment through purchasing into modern consciousness. it was a redefinition of the pursuit of happiness. the essential henry we forget had popularity throughout his long career in american commerce. he was probably the first billion err the world has ever known, he was not denounced as a robber baron like older figures bike van dear filt, morgan or rockefeller. he has a love affair with ordinary americans that really transsended all region. he was a genuine folk hero. he offered a kind of appeal to groups and figures all over the glope. associationists admired him and was not unusual to find portraits of him in soviet factories. hitler revealed and modeled the volkswagen, the people's car, on the example of the model t. john rockefeller acclaimed the ford operation as the industrial marvel of the age. at the same time, woodrow wilson convinced ford to run for the senate of the united states as a progress active democrat. individuals like charlie chaplin denounced it, but a survey of american workers themselves ranked ford as the american leader most helpful to labor, above franklin roosevelt, above walter ruther. ford's roll as approvity of consumer culture explained part of this appeal. his pronouncement about the automobile, enjoyment of abundance caught popular imagination in an age ready to abandon restraints of former tradition. he believed the automobile did not just provide a faster and easier mode of communication, it enhanced the quality of life for common people. his words, i will build a motor car for the great multitude, he said of the model t, so low in price that no man making a good salary will be able to unknown one and enjoy with his family the blessings of hours of pleasure in god's great open spaces. the enjoyment and pleasure of the multitude. that was the key component, i think, of ford's consumer vision. this inspires, for example, the five-dollar day. the move that doubleled the existing wage for auto workers in one swoop. he did this not so much as we regard -- reward, but triggering further consumption. as he put it, i want to make sure the men who make the model t can afford to buy one. a few years later he offered a broader, but equally folksy form lation of modern society in terms of creating and satisfaction once. these are his words. we know sooner get one satisfied in one class of society than another class bobs up to present its needs and demands. the wants keep right on increasing, and the more wants, the more business. isn't that so? but ford's status as a folk hero also stem from important characteristics that he displayed in the early decades of the 20th century. hers if emerged as one of america's first mass culture celebrities. the early 20th century, we need to remember here, witnessed the formation of a mass culture of entertainment. movies, amusement parks like conny island, popular music halls, competitive sports, along the culture of consumption. ford gained a huge boost in his early manufacturing career from his involvement with one aspect of this new commeshized culture of leisure. not many know he was heavily involved in automobile racing at the outset of his career. allying himself with the famous race car driver, barney olfield, he gained public police the -- publicity with his race car. this brought customers to his company and automobile. ford and olfield metting years later, the story goes, and ford said i guess we made each other's career. he grind and replied that is probably true, henry, but i did a hell of a better job at it than you did. ford game a master manipulator of the mechanism of culture, that is media owe blissity. he reached out to a large public audience in a skillful way by cultivating newspaper reporters, magazine editors, radio announcers and news real producers to spin his down home personality, along with his good friends, thomas he didson, and others, he periodically took off into the american country side on camping trips from the 1915 to 1925, carefully followed by a number of reporters and newspaper photographers. these journalists broadcast everything said, everything conversation, every menu item said by these four geniuses and made headlines around the country on a regular basis. so in the same kay that the model t came a prototype consumer item, the inventor was the prototype of the businessman, celebrity, fore runner of donald trump and martha stewart and others with whom we are familiar. ford's popularity spraining, i think, from his life-long support for ordinary american citizens. this populism glarified people and made their values the bench mambing american achievement. in his career he presented a couple of business failures because his partners wanted to develop a car for wealthy people, a luxury item for elites, and ford insisting on trying to make a car for the people and was not happy until he had the ford motor company under his control to do so. as he prepared to manufacturer the model t in 1908, 1909 he told an associate this. there are a lot more poor people than wealthy people. we will build just one good car for all of the poor people. fod's creed, with its suspicion of financial yam elites and bankers and those in economic power in this country, and the respect for hard-working, plain-speaking citizens in the united states inspired, as well, the five-dollar day i mentioned as an attempt to elevate the purchasing power of ordinary working folks in this country. it also created great controversy in the 1920's when it mutated into a kind of malignant, anti-semitism i write about at some length in my book as well. near the end of his life it resulted in the henry ford museum in deer born, michigan that perhaps you may have visited. at this museum he purchased with millions of his own dollars, antique items from the american past. 19th century and 18th sentence treatment interestingly, they were not the rare possessions of famous people, but artifacts of daily life. from ordinary citizens in an earlier period. a visiting journalist, i think, understood the nature of the ford museum when he noted in a newspaper story in the 1930's, that a puter bowl from a kitchen and the colonies stand side by side with one from the kitchen of george washington. ford is fascinating for many reasons at the beginning of the 21st century. his development of mass production and the assembly line demands our attention as an influence on modern society. his life span itself is remarkable. he was born in 1863, a couple of weeks after the battle of get ease berg during the civil war, and lived until 1947 and lived to witness the dropping of the atomic bomb and the opening stages of the old war. he had a private life that was marked by publicity-drenched lawsuits throughout his ca career. marked by an i will legitimate son from a decade's-long affair, and marked by a tragic tale of hounding his only son, only heir into an early grave because of the demands placed upon him. is career raged widely from a crusade against world war i to developing the soybean for the farmer in the 1930's, fighting against alcohol and tobacco consumption to denouncing franklin roosevelt in the new deal and triggering labor balts in detroit in the 1930's during the great depression. ultimately the essential henry ford took stage as a celebrity, and most importantly, the herald of consumer values. these roles came together, i think, to shape a produce found ambiguity about the world that he created and the world that he destroyed. this ambiguity, i think, i want to tell you a little about it in closing my talk here. this ambiguity about the world that he destroyed, the world he created, was reflected in the two institutions that dominated the last stage of his life. on the one hand, hen rip ford, the decree tay atore of modern americas was symbolized at the plant in deer born that covered two square miles and employed nearly enough people in facility that produced 4,000 cars each day. have you that on one hand. on the other hand, you have just a few miles away in michigan, greenfield village where henry ford spent most of his time in the 1930's and 1940's. there on 200 acres next to the henry ford museum, he constructed an american village from the 18th and 19th sentence treatment people in costume worked and made products, candles, horseshoes, homespun clothes as they would have been decades earlier. this contained a farm, an old-fashioned machine stop, a corner drug storm, the old laboratory of thomas edison, a courthouse where lincoln practiced law, a southern plantation house, and ford's own boyhood farmhouse we constructed there. it showed the world of henry ford's youth. thousands of visitors were flocking to see it. significantly, i think, they drove there in their automobiles to see it as well. you have the dichotomy of the plant and greenfield village sitting nearly side by side with one another. what this reveals, i think, fine lirks is that henry ford's special bond with ordinary americans came from the reassuring way that he was able to keep one foot anchored in a world banishing at the same place he was placing the other foot confidently in a modern world that was being created. he offered to americans, i think, a very comforting sort of imagine. henry ford, the revolutionary maker of the model t, whose favorite hoppy was folk dancing, the deciple of the work ethic who encouraged people to consume. the master of the river plant who was also the mayor of greenfield village. for millions of people struggling to come to terms with modern world of consumer capitalism in the 20th century america, henry ford offered, i think, a powerful example of how to accommodate the past and the future, of how to find contentment and happiness in the new order. he gave ordinary citizens a blueprint for prosperity and and happiness in modern america and they loved him for it. the end. [applause] that in about 20 minutes or so is the essence of my book. there are fascinating detaillights, and i will be happen to take questions about anything you might ask. >> the documentary on hank greenberg, the baseball player, and it talked about him moving to detroit. and in the anti-semitism he had a tough time. what was the reason for henry's feelings? did he ever change his mind? guest: that is a good question. the topic of anti-semitism is an important one and curious one. as i often say, i think the normal expectation is that anti-semitism is a reaction err political doctrine that people son the right tend to embrace. ford's case is different, however, and the more interesting for it. ford's anti-semitism did not come from any personal problem or any personal encounter as far as i can tell that he had with jewish people. but it came from a kind of ideological direction. ironically it was rooted in his progressivism, political progressivism. he was an old fashioned pop lift who honored ordinary working citizens and hated wall street. he hated banks, he hated big financial in the united states. if i was put it this way, he was a capitalist who hated capital. a message that the populist party was preaching. but like many of the populists before that translate nude jewish bankers and jewish financial interests in the east, the jewish interest in wall street as he saw it. so that is one, i think, sort of source of his anti-semitism. the other one, interestingly enough, is his pass is a vism. he was a pass visit in world war i, he led a crusade to stop world war ii to keep america out of the war. he funded the peace ship and so on in this period. but anti-semitism came out of this as well. ford became convinced that big international manufacturing and banking interests were behind world war i. they wanted the war to happen so they could get rich making munitions and war armor, what have you. what thistranslated into in ford's mind was jewish bankers in europe, etc., and he blamed them for world war i and war mongers. what you have is a anti-semitism that mutated out of the political instincts earlier in the century. it is curious i think. >> did he ever change his mind? guest: you may know he got in trouble in the 1920's over the anti-semitism. there was a huge show trial where someone he slandered in the deerborn area sued him for liable and it was a big public trial. ford was about to go on the stand when he thought better of it. things were going badly. he threw in the towel and made a settlement. as part of this he issued a policy about his anti-semitism and settled it in that fashion. but he never read the apology before he signed it. it was just drawn up by some of his people and signed it just to get out of this mess. through the rest of his life in the 1930's and 1940's, ford did not talk much publicly about anti-is a met particular issues. it is clear from private conversations record, that it didn't go away very much. he had a strong anti-is a met particular streak, he just put it under the table. it is a stain on his reputation to be sure. >> two questions. have you ever written a autobiography? two, others maybe think -- there was something that you said that was unexpected? guest: what was the first question again? the you a owe biography. well, sort of. there was a three-volume work, the first one came out in the early 1920's called "my life and work," and in the late 1920's, today and tomorrow was the second. the third volume in the 1930's, the title of which i can't think of, they were ghost written by a journalist who would go in to talk to ford and make notes about their conversations, and then he went out and actually wrote the books. and ford had his name on them. it is kind of a quas sigh autobiography. it is generally accurate, i think, as far as ford's views go. with regard to unusual things, he was such an interesting man in many ways. i found myself continually swatching my head. i had no idea he was a crusader against cigarettes. in the early 20th century he publiced what may be the first massed-produced, anti-smoking pamphlet, called the little white slaver, referring to white cigarettes. and ford got testimonyals from doctors and sports physician about the terrible effects of smoking. it went on and on. it was very modern in that sense as something that you know, you would see within the last 20 years. it came out in the 19 teens. he was a food reformer. i had no idea of a food fadist going from one fad to another. for example, had one point he thought carrots were a magic food for human beings and had a famous bank wet drawn up where something like a 15-course meal was made out of carrots from the appetitizer to the dessert. things that were created. and the story went that when all of the guests left they looked in the mirror as they went out of the bank wet hall, they were atrade they would turn orange from eating all of the carrots. one continues to run across strange things in his life. on a biggest scope, the thing that surprised me most and sadened me is he and his only son. a tragic story i did not know much about. old henry hounded his son into an early grave by being so demanding, essentially mean to him over decades a long period. it is a tragic story in his personal life that struck me quite a bit. >> did he ever meet hitler? guest: no, he never did. in the 1930's -- i will back up a step. henry ford was an admirer of the german people. he hated the english i think it is the irish background kicking in in a genetic way. he hated the english for ways that are not clear, but loved the germans for hard-working people from northeasterly the 20th century. when hitler came to power in the early 1930's, i think ford, like a lot of americans, was hookwinked by what was going on, and he probably, more than others because of the anti-semitism, in 1936, i believe it was, got in trouble because the german government sent people to detroit to award him a special medicinal from the gore man government which he accepted. there was a picture that ended up in the newspapers and ford was branded as a nazi spamethieser. that in probably most ways is not fair to ford. he was anti-semnism, but not a nazi. i think his eyes were open to fascism in europe, but there were dicey times with this in the 1930's. but he never met hitler personally, no. >> what was the attitude towards mass transit? did he promote it? was that a people transportation that he liked? or did it compete or ignored it? >> -- guest: he by in large ignored it. when he was developing the automobile in the 1890's and the model t near 1910, he saw the automobile as the wave of the future. gasoline was very, very cheap at that time. and ford's great, i think, contribution, his great vision, was building a car for ordinary people. an inexpensive, durable, dependable, affordable. and the model t was that vehicle. and he was convinced. and at that time, i think, probably rightly so, that this would be a liberating factor in the lives of ordinary people, farmers and trades scommen mechanics who can use the automobile to experience things in life that people on the farm that he had grown up in, had never experienced before. so for him, the automobile was the cutting edge of modern transportation and i don't recall one single thing actually with ford ever even addressing mass transit as the kind of, as a kind of issue. he probably should have. i have been in los angeles a lot recently, and i can tell you, he should have. >> did he do anything to promote road building? there wasn't much in the way of roads then. guest: he contributed some to -- what do they call that? the better road's move crusade which was in the midwest in that period when the automobile was taking the country by storm. and i know that he contributed to sort of surveying and doing the kind of prepare work for the highway system in michigan. i'm not sure if he did in other parts of the country. but the automobile, i think, certainly by the 1920's, had fostered the enormous explosion of road building around the country. and i think the model t, probably more than anything other single thing, was probably responsible for that. of course, what follows in the wake of the highway system is morn society. suburbs, gas station, service industries, all of the things that are molded around the automobile in our society these days. yes? >> greenfield village? guest: greenfield village, yes. >> is that still around? guest: yes. the henry ford museum and the greenfield village are next to each other. the museum is in four or five building, and the greenfield village is next to it. it is a reconstruction, 18th, 19th century buildings, and it is a walk-through thing. i ran across that when i wrote that on my book on wall street disney. dips knee visited in the 1940's when he was thinking of disneyland. the aspects of disneyland, i think, were inspired by greenfield village as a tourist attracts. it is still there, and i think that it is still, perhaps, the largest tourest draw in the state of michigan. i led that too long, not too long ago. it is a fascinating place to visit if you get the chance. yes? >> as a populist and supporter of the common man, how did he justify the socialio logical defendant? and the goons? guest: all right that is a very good question. sort of separate things. i will take them one up at a time. the socialio logic department was the hand maiden of the five-deloor day, doubling the wage for auto workers at one time. what most don't know, what went along with that was the socialiological department that he created of social workers within the ford motor company. to qualified for the five-dollar day, his association workers went out to visit the homes of workers at the ford factory. many were immigrants, recent immigrants of the united states. and the association workers sort of gave lessons and checked on such things as hygiene in the home, the correct raising and clothing of children, the sewer situation, the water situation, thrift, whether money was being saved in the bank, etc., etc. it was the kind of agency of what ford believed was american making auto morkers into good americans and good workers. if you did certain things, met the standard, you got the $5 wage as a result. now the interesting thing about the socialiological department i think, is progressive reformers in the early 20th century embraced it wholeheartedly at the beginning. one goes detroit and sees the socialiological department and thinks it is the best thing since sliced bresmed it is to help poor people and get them used to the united states. there is, of course, a paternal, even big brother quality to all of this, that i think rubs people the wrong way as things went further along. and by the early 1920's, workers themselves, and a lot of observers are explaining that this is intrusive, sticking your nose into the private lives of workers and you don't have any business doing that. with regard to the goons in the 1930's, sort of labor thugs of the ford company, that is also a complicated situation. the river rouge is up and firing on all sill endars, it was a massive facility. by the 1930's as well, is having physical profpbles he has had a series of strokes and will have more of the family, and the family covered most of them up. by the early 1940's he was in bad shape mentally. they kept this away from the american public. as a result, ford lost control of his company and to put it crudely, he turned it over essentially to an ex-prize fighter named harry benefit net who got into henry ford's good graces. he was an up the alley type of fighter that ford admired and was not thinking clearly. benefit anytime hired dozens and hundreds of special defective who worked for the ford special services. and there one big task was to put down the union. and the harry bennett thugs triggered a great deal of the labor violence with the u.a.w., except some of them played a role in this as well in the 1930 eafments you have an absentee landlord with henry who sort of knows what is going on, but don't have a hand on the tiller anymore. and ford himself, very, very opposed to unions, because he had the very old fashioned notion of how a company or corporation should work. he was no friend of the u.a.w. i was convinced that he didn't know a lot of what was going on with harry bennett and his thugs, and as a result his reputation took a beating in the 1930's as well. if i have one quick thing, the labor violence in the 1930's was settled finally, i think we have to thank henry ford's wife, clare i can't, for that. because henry refused to sign an agreement with the u.a.w. and said he would send his company down in flames before he would do so. clara ford told him if he didn't sign the agreement, she would leave him. there was enough bloodshed, enough violence, enough terrible things it needed to be settled. henry ford's managers could not make him do that. a day or two after that conversation,er called in his head guy, charles sore renson and said draw up the agreement. clara saved the day in that respect. >> everywhere you have worked on these -- [inaudible] guest: sort of. williamsberg, before the fathers went to john d. rockefeller, they went to henry ford and tried to get him to buy williams and turn it into a tourist attracts and ford, for business reasons, didn't want to do it. there is a kind of connection there. so -- what did you ask again? >> [inaudible] guest: oh, the foundation. actually, e.t.i.i.l. ford was more -- in the 1940's, he got this thing, but it didn't do much until after old henry died. it was really henry ford, ii, his grandson, in the 1950's that began to pour lots, millions of dollars into the organization. at the time running in the 1950's and 1960's when the foundation gets running. it is ford money but old henry did not have a great deal to do with it. yes? >> the model t, what does the name mean? what happened to the first 19 models? >> in the early 20th century after the founding of the company in 1903, began to develop prototype automobiles. and they essentially ran through the alphabet. the earliest model a was the first protoe -- prototype. they continued to develop, some remained on the table. it was the luck of the draw with the alphabet that the model they hit on that covered all of the things that ford wanted, they happened to get to t in the alphabet and that is all it signifies. nothing beyond that. >> then they dumped that and started to go with brand names? guest: ford made model t almost exclusively from 1910 give or take until 1928. the same model for 18 years. slight changes here and there. by the early 1920's, ford's son and younger managers in the company, desperately wanted to build a new car because the model t was falling behind the times. general motors was capturing more and more of the automobile market with an old fashioned clunker by the 1920's. henry ford refused. he resisted. it wasn't until 1928, really after about 10 years of internal fighting, that they finally got to develop a new model. they shut down the ford factories for about a year and a half, and fired them up again with all new machinery to create the model a. they went back to the beginning of the alphabet that debuted in 1928 that was a good automobile for the times. the model a was sort of the standard for the company through the 1930's. it was then that they began to develop new models as well. the lincoln line and others in addition. but the model t was the war horse for about 18 years in the company. yes? >> you have -- firing policy? [inaudible] -- with regard to hiring? guest: it didn't seem to so far thrass was no company policy in terms of person that he will said don't hire jews or something of that kind. they looked into that jewish people were hired in ford factories just like any other ethnic group. it doesn't seem to have filtered down into hiring policies. but an interesting thing i found, i think, that related to that, was one might have expected to be racist in his attitudes toward african-americans perhaps because of his anti-semitism. it is quite the opposite. ford was the kind of hero to black folks in detroit for many decades, because he would hire black workers in the ford factories when nobody else would. other companies would not. and in the labor battles of the 1930's, when you have the u.a.w. organizers coming at ford, it was the black workers in many cases that were kind of the backbone of his defense at the various ford factories. it is a kind of interesting situation in that regard. >> was it a saying gra gated environment? -- segregated environment? guest: you mean at the factories? well, probably some i would say insofar as i think most institutions, you know, before the 1960's, even legally were seeing regated. i think of it in a different way. the factory with the assembly line, i think that oppressed people equally, regardless of race. black or white workers didn't get much of a break from the line. they all got 15-minute luven breaks where they had to chow down their food almost instantly. they had the same sorts of problems and so son. i think segregation in that sense was almost a moot point because of the labor issues that were at the forefront and black and white workers were sort of in the same boat as far as that went. any other questions? thank you very much for your questions. i enjoyed it.