TYCOONS: Life with Henry

One day in 1916, Hearst’s sententious Editor Arthur Brisbane was on his way to interview Henry Ford in Manhattan when he saw a policeman dragging a small, hard-faced U.S. sailor out of the Customs House. The sailor, just released from the Navy after a seven-year hitch, had got in a quarrel with customs men, and was knocking them down right & left until the cop subdued him. Editor Brisbane liked the bantam gamecock’s looks, got him released, and took him along to meet the auto magnate. On hearing Brisbane’s account of the battle, Ford told 24-year-old Harry Bennett: “I can use a young man like you at the Rouge . . . Can you shoot?”

From this chance meeting, ex-Navy Boxer Harry Bennett became Henry Ford’s closest companion for the remainder of the automaker’s life, closer even than Ford’s only son, Edsel. He was actually running the Ford empire in 1945 when young Henry Ford II stepped in and got rid of him.

For six years, at his ranch in California, Bennett has smarted at the growing legend that he was the evil genius behind everything that was criticized in the old Ford regime. Last week, in a 25¢ paper book entitled We Never Called Him Henry, co-written by Free-Lance Writer Paul Marcus, tight-lipped Harry Bennett finally broke his silence, explaining: “I want to try to set the record straight.” Nobody but Bennett knows how straight his version of the record is (several publishers in Manhattan were afraid to publish the book). In putting his best foot forward, Bennett freely knees and heels his former associates. Nevertheless, he provides the most intimate look yet given at the astonishing way the Ford empire was run for 30 years, and the compelling drive, whims and strange mental processes of the genius who ran it.

Strings & Diapers. One of the first things Ford told Bennett was: “Harry, never try to outguess me.” Said Bennett: “You mean never try to understand you?” Replied Ford: “That’s close enough.”

Like other company brass, Bennett was kept dependent on Ford, who never paid him much. Says Bennett: “I got peanuts for a salary for 28 of the 30 years.” Ford often rewarded Bennett and others with unexpected gifts (new homes, new cars, refrigerators), but often took the gifts away. “Never,” he explained to Bennett, “give anything without strings attached to it.” But Ford sought his executives within the plant: when an engineer told him he needed a metallurgist, Ford pointed to a man sweeping the floor and said: “Make one out of that fellow.” (The sweeper became a good metallurgist.)

In running the company, Ford brooked opposition from no one. Once, says Bennett, Edsel, over Ford’s objections, decided to build a row of coke ovens. Ford told Bennett: “Harry, as soon as Edsel gets those ovens built I’m going to tear them down.” And, says Bennett, Ford did.

It was Ford, says Bennett, who insisted on keeping such a close check on his workers that every third man on the assembly line was an informer; the men were even followed to the toilets. Ford often got Bennett up at 3 a.m. to walk through the plants checking up. Yet Ford was unperturbed by thievery. When Bennett lifted the hood of an employee’s car to show Ford the new engine which the worker had stolen, Ford said: “You just tell him he better bring his old motor in here or there’s going to be trouble.” When an over-zealous snooper stripped a Ford towel from a baby wearing it as a diaper, Ford sent the family a set of diapers.

Shooting Gallery. It was also Ford’s fear of robbers and kidnapers, says Bennett, plus his humane desire to rehabilitate crooks, that led the company to employ thousands of former criminals. Bennett insists he did not originate the policy, but he perfected it, made the underworld his ally, so that it would tell him of any plots against Ford or the company. He gave a Ford agency to Chester La Mare, reputed boss of Detroit’s underworld, and turned over the plant’s fruit concession to him. When a Detroit child was kidnaped, Ford, who had a great love for all children, told Bennett to get the child back. Before he could do anything, the father paid a $20,000 ransom and the child was returned. Some hoodlum acquaintances of Bennett got the money back by torturing the kidnaper. The kidnaper went to Bennett’s home, shot him in the side and fled. Bennett asked the police not to prosecute. But, he adds offhandedly: “The gunman was later shot and killed on a Detroit street—in some gang feud, I suppose.”

Ford, a crack shot, always carried a gun, and liked to shoot at a target in Bennett’s office. When this bored Ford, he would cry “Let’s wake Cowling up!” and start shooting at a metal ball in the ceiling light fixture. It always scared the daylights out of Sales Manager W. C. Cowling, who had the office above. Bennett, a sharpshooter himself, once blasted a bad-smelling cigar out of the mouth of a visitor who ignored his request to get rid of it.

In the catalogue of Ford’s dislikes, says Bennett, was a distrust of accountants. He jammed them all on one floor of his Administration Building (he kept the third floor empty) in the hope that they would be so crowded that some would leave. He had no use for most sales managers, thought cars sold themselves on their mechanical qualities. Repeatedly he fired sales managers who blamed a sales slump on the Ford car’s laggard styling, finally told Bennett: “What’s the use of having any more sales managers? We’ll just let them go.” He disliked fat men, forced 300-lb. Fred Allison, an early associate in the Ford Company but who was down on his luck, to take off weight for months before giving him a job as electrician.

Plots & Shots. All his life, says Bennett, Ford lived in fear of enemies, real and imaginary. At various times he imagined that the Jews, the Catholic Church, and above all Wilmington’s Du Ponts, were out to get him. Once he had Bennett send an agent to Wilmington to nose out what the Du Ponts were doing in, synthetic rubber. When the agent died suddenly, Bennett sent another who, by coincidence, suffered a fatal stroke. Cried Ford: “Harry, don’t send any more men down there . . . they’re killing them.”

Ford’s home was honeycombed with tunnels, where he could escape or hide in event of danger. When Bennett built a home near Ann Arbor, Ford got him to build a tower with a secret door “as an escape for the children,” and connect it with a hidden tunnel in the yard. “However,” writes Bennett, “the secret exit was never used. At the end of the tunnel, I kept my lion and tiger cages.” *

The Empty Kitty. To any visiting clergyman, of whatever denomination, Ford would say: “Well, now, you’ve got the best religion in the world.” This gave rise to reports that he leaned toward various faiths, but, Bennett says, Ford had “his own private religion.” He believed strongly in reincarnation. His proof, says Bennett, was simple. Pointing out that chickens, which used to run in front of autos and get killed, now headed for the side of the road, Ford said: “That chicken has learned, because it has been hit in the [behind] in a previous life.”

For his services, Bennett says, Ford gave him to understand that the contents of a “kitty” in a safe in his office would ultimately be Bennett’s. The kitty, “from which expenditures could be made without explanation,” sometimes held as much as $4,000,000 in cash. But in the fall of 1945, when Ford retired from the company, the kitty was cleaned out and Bennett got nothing.

When Bennett left the company for good, he concludes: “It was all I could do to keep myself from running down the hall, I wanted to get out so fast. I felt like a man being let out of prison.”