Nation: Ford Is Out

At the rate of 100,000 a day, visitors from all over the Midwest were packing into Detroit’s chromium-pillared Convention Hall last week. There was an automobile assembly line. Tight-rope walkers and acrobats performed from time to time. More than 175 companies allied to the automobile business had displays. There was a series of automobiles beginning with a steam-driven model of 1863 and ending with a super-streamlined car by Briggs Manufacturing Co. which, lacking running boards, comfortably accommodated three people on its wide front seat. Lean old Henry Ford, who never exhibits his cars with other manufacturers and who took no part in Chicago’s Century of Progress, was holding his own

Exposition of Progress to celebrate his 30 individualistic years in business.

In Washington, too, the name of Ford was on many lips. The Civilian Conservation Corps was going to buy 1,500 light trucks. A Washington Ford dealer had put in a bid $169,000 under his nearest competitor. In consternation the C. C. C., aware that although the dealer was an NRA member, Henry Ford was not, wanted to know from General Johnson’s office what to do. General Johnson took his problem to the Friday Cabinet meeting.

Newshawks caught Secretary Ickes as he left the gathering. “The Interior Department is not buying Fords.” said he. “I don’t know until when, but Ford is out.”

Back in his own office General Johnson announced at his Press conference: “Ford is not eligible for Government contracts. … A billion-dollar concern cannot hide behind a $10,000 dealer.”

Reporter—What is your attitude toward the Lincoln car?

Administrator—If you mean the Lincoln car I am riding around in. we are going to trade that in for a Cadillac.

R.—Will the President and members of his Cabinet trade in their Lincolns for Cadillacs?

A.—I do not know. You must speak to them.

R.—Is it true that the Lincoln people have signed [a code]?

A.—I saw it in the paper but I do not know when they did or how they did.

Although he maintains wages higher than, hours as short as those stipulated under the code, Henry Ford cannot stomach his workers’ unionization. This antipathy is chiefly what has kept him from flying the Blue Eagle. A strike at his Edgewater, N. J. plant, whose workers demand the right of collective bargaining guaranteed by the Recovery Act, is now in the hands of the National Labor Board.

“Edsel Ford told me he would never put into effect anything that looked like collective bargaining,” grimly remarked General Johnson. “As soon as I have a clear-cut violation of the code, I will act. I will turn the case over to the Attorney General.”

Soon all motormakers must, under their code, send in their employment statistics to the Automobile Chamber of Commerce. Refusal by Ford to do so would make his company liable to $500 fine, somebody liable to six months’ imprisonment under the Recovery Act.

When Henry Ford refused to sign the Automobile Code with the rest of the industry, he did so from the silent fastness of the Michigan woods. When the States of Pennsylvania, Maine and Tennessee announced they would not buy his cars, he remained silent. But now. cracked down on by the U. S. Government, the Master of Dearborn broke his silence with a long and bitter public statement. Excerpts:

“The Ford Motor Co. has not made any Government bids. If bids have been made by Ford dealers, it is because Government departments insist on its being done. They have used our product before; their specifications fit it and, besides, the prices usually are very easy on the department’s budget. There is no money in Government bids unless some form of favoritism is practiced, such as is now possible under the NRA. . . .

“Signing a code is not in the law. Flying the Blue Eagle is not in the law. Johnson’s daily expression of opinion is not law. . . . Not only has Johnson attempted a grave injustice upon a law-abiding American industry; he has also assumed to talk like a Dictator and the Supreme Court combined. . . .”

If the Ford-Johnson exchanges bring a Supreme Court show-down between the new National Collectivism and oldtime Rugged Individualism, Mr. Ford will not be without potent backers. Last week another rugged individual, William Randolph Hearst, tried to pluck a few feathers from the Blue Eagle’s tail. In an open letter to President Howard Davis of American Newspaper Publishers Association he described the NRA as “a handicap and not a help to recovery.” He did not specify his objections but said: “The NRA is simply a program of social betterment, nothing else; and industry can accept and endure this program on a large scale only after it has recovered, not before. … As a matter of fact, it is universally impracticable, and if persisted in will become universally detrimental. . . . It would seem to me … in view of the fact that the NRA is a menace to political rights and constitutional liberties, a danger to American ideals and institutions, a handicap to industrial recovery and a detriment to the public welfare, that the publishers of a free Press ought to tolerate it less and expose and oppose it more.”