Henry Ford's Failure
Blumenberg, Ben
Henry Ford's Failure Production of the Robot Auto King's Only Accomplishment My Ben Blumenberg SEVERAL years ago a book mildly critical of Henry Ford was suppressed. What will Henry say...
...Frank devoted most of her time in recent years to work in behalf of Pioneer Youth...
...Leonard who places some of the blame on Ford's yes-men...
...Frank was held, was the resolution passed by the officers of the League for Mutual aid, Thomas J. Curtis, president...
...N rlE last bulletin of the City Affairs Committee, "A Non Partisan Committee for Civic Reconstruction" in New York City, of which Paul Ulan-shard is executive secretary and John Haynes Holmes, chairman, seems to us admirably to carry out the real function of such a body...
...And that we could save eleven bucks a year a family If we only got mad enough to do something about It, even under the present system...
...Henry Ford's Failure Production of the Robot Auto King's Only Accomplishment My Ben Blumenberg SEVERAL years ago a book mildly critical of Henry Ford was suppressed...
...To do such penance now...
...It shows that we are paying twenty million dollars a year more for electrloity than we need to In order to give the electric companies a "fair" return on their capital...
...We'll take our chances of deteriorating under the peace, plenty and freedom of Socialism...
...The Tragedy of Henry Ford, by Jonathan Norton Leonard...
...Eva Frank contributed of her means, her energies and her discerning judgment toward the building of our movement for workers' children," the resolution said...
...If you figure this Is a privilege, you can take our place any time you want it, and we reckon there are a number of Inmates of the Workhouse who will come forward enthusiastically with the same offer...
...We are beginning to feel like Napoleon right after Waterloo and Lincoln right after he got shot...
...N The real job of "Non-Partisan Committees for Civic Reconstruction" all over the country Is to make things clearer to the common sucker tottering around under the fell clutch of capitalism...
...Those familiar with his cunning and craft, his congenital suspicions and ruthlessness, will be less charitable than Mr...
...The latest was Mary Pickford...
...She served as treasurer of Pioneer Youth for three years...
...Thus step by step, you may be able to nurse the poor fish along to the point where some day he will stop saying, "You can't change human nature...
...built my lord a palace, I fed his lasying kin...
...Despite the stories In the success magazines, Ford's factories have been an Industrial Inferno...
...This Is like asking Al Smith to make faces at Raskob, or begging Jimmy Walker to resign from Tammany Hall and join the Union League...
...Now here is something that anybody can put his teeth into...
...It makes a piece for Monday morning's paper and keeps the Governor's scrap-basket filled up, but It's carrying anthracite to WIlkes-Barre, just the same...
...The labor turnover even In dull times exceeded that of other Industrial establishments...
...There it nothing now to say...
...There are a lot of boys and girls over In the Workhouse on Welfare Island, not many miles from where this is being written, who are in the Workhouse mainly because they haven't any work to do...
...The Blessed Privilege Of Poverty For Eva Prank ADOOR is elated...
...All the way through the bulletin there is a marching argument for public ownership of power...
...Well, Mary we are not la the hoosegow yet, but just the same, this depression has got us muscle-bound...
...I gave my master leisure, Laughter, love and play...
...No more my lord zvill lasy Within the palace halls . . . Nor will I be content to keep My own in beastly stalls...
...The Utopia he has built up is fashioned in his own image and its gospel is work...
...Inn warkcr The Chatterbox Spring Song—1932 WHAT was your crime, O worker...
...The subject of the biography Is pictured as a failure in everything save in the field of mass production: a rural Bourbon masquerading as a prophet of the New Era...
...You're getting spiritual exercise for your muscles...
...She was active in recent months in helping the league establish its recreation huts for unemployed workers...
...The utterances of this "semi-literate" billionaire, says Mr...
...What will Henry say about this book...
...Those who had the good fortune to work with her knew a woman of rare generosity and sympathy coupled with a practical genius for advancing their mutual ideals...
...Death of Eva Frank Saddens Her Friends In Labor Movement AWIDE circle of friends and co-workers In the New York Socialist and liberal movement were shocked this week to learn of the death of Eva A. Frank...
...We don't wnnt to act hoggish about this suffering business, nor continue to hold an iron-clad monopoly on poverty...
...M.M by Martin An««r»n Ntu, tn« ramana aratotorlan n»trll»l, an Mto at Ifca BaaS Baakatora...
...It was for her a focus of idealistic effort and she was to us an inspiring co-worker...
...1,000 PS...
...Ford, says the author, has the mind of the Middle West village dweller of the early seventies, the product of a dying frontier...
...Mrs Frank was a member of the Chelsea branch of the Socialist party...
...Let the poor go to the rich and say, "Lords and Masters, we don't want to stand in tip-way of your spiritual development...
...He loves birds and flowers...
...Mrs...
...Leonard, are similar to those expressed around the cracker-box in a cross-roads store...
...You arc too troubled, worker If that be all your sin . . . Or do I see upon your face A wrath that burns within . . .? / have been slow to anger As a god himself might oil* . . . And I have bome my burdfn With ilie patience of a stone...
...His yesmen and sycophantic biographers have been dazzled by his material success...
...But today my master 'wade mc An edict strangely new . . . "Begone" he said, "begone and find Some oilier work to do...
...It was prepared by Henry J. Rosner and E. Michael White and it presents a compelling argument for the immediate reduction of New York's electric rates, written in plain English that hits every one of us minions of the Consolidated Cas Company in what Is left of our pocket book...
...But always and ever, we shall be remembering How once we came upon * Integrity, blithe towage, And a faith that could move Her beloved mountains In the sweet heart ol one woman...
...They all seem to agree with Mary that it Is a blessed privilege for the poor to be that way, and that the depresslonvis hotcha for our spiritual development and that through suffering, we shall achieve salvation...
...Now If all this Is so, here's our proposition...
...You take the depression and all the mystic blessing * that it involves...
...I mean to own them ifbw...
...In the jargon of the professional reviewers, "The Tragedy of Henry Ford" is a full length portrait: an ex-ray portrait of one who Is rapidly slipping as the god of Mo-ronla...
...We who are in darkness Strike our hands together In impotent grief...
...The mansions and the comforts, The fruit of tool and plough, have been my master's long enough...
...And tf my hands are idle, Then let the master rue ^.Because my mind has found a dream Hl And righteous work to do...
...He Is the shrewd Yankee tipkerer— narrow, bigoted, prejudiced, auspicious, intolerant, vindictive, dour and domipeering...
...All the facts Indicate that they are responsible for the massacre at Ford's River Rouge Plant...
...Once that Idea begins to percolate, who knows, perhaps said sucker will begin to roll his eyes around the landscapes and let them fall on such places as Los Angeles, Jamestown, N. Y., Springfield, 111., and other spots where public ownership, which, by the way is not to be confused with socialisation, is working out pretty well...
...The rtawt Lskw Ntrclf of lb* An— r«Ut Tha Con.nfr.r...
...At that, however, Mary's cute Hollywood philosophy is no more weak-minded than the wind-jamming of our great minds of the pulpit and the rostrum which fill the columns of the Monday paper next to Mary's speech...
...The League for Industrial Democracy knew Mrs...
...I made myself a hovel For my own to hunger in I made my lord rich raiment, I delved his warmth and goldt Myself, I gave this shoddy Atjdinst the rain and cold...
...His contribution to the field of manufacturing science has been the development of a new species, a species of robots...
...It brings out the finer things- Napoleon and Lincoln were made by hard tunes...
...Begone," he said, "begone and find Some other work to do . . ." * ? * What will you do now, worker, With idle hands and mind...
...If, the City Affairs Committee can put a burr under the complacent seat of our Public Service Commission, more power to it It seems to us again that a whole lot of time and energy has been squandered by this committee in writing long letters to Governor Roosevelt asking him to remove Tammany cronies because they had too much loose change hanging around the house In tin boxes or whatever...
...You've built enough of mansions, Enough of robe and shoe, I have enough for ail my needs, And have no need of you...
...His creed is "a rear-guard battle to preserve the outward observances of religion long after they have become meaningless and dead—a sort of moral dandruff no longer nourished by the scalp and brains within...
...And one way to do it is to somehow get It under his skin that he is being pilfered, looted and sandbagged by every hijacker, porch-climber and baby-snatcher masquerading as a "public utility magnate...
...Frank concentrated her activities In a few sections of the movement...
...Mary said: "I look on the depression and set-backs such as you boys and girls havs had here as a privilege...
...1,200 M 11.60 Ditto, DMfktot ol Man...
...More recently ^she was chairman of the organization's committee on Southern Mill Village play schools and camps...
...Myself I gave the drudging chores And grovelling for my pay...
...Spies and stool-pigeons are everywhere...
...One of the toughest jobs they have Is to listen to speakers who go over on Sundays to tell them that God's In His Heaven...
...Frank as a member of the executive committee of the New York chapter...
...Indicative of the regard in which Mrs...
...If a system of this kind had been applied to other groups of workers, coal miners for instance—the results would have been volcanic...
...The widely heralded sociological department inaugurated sixteen years ago, consisting- of an espionage system of his employees m their, homes and at their work, is the most ruthless ever inflicted by an Industrial despot...
...And the world so wide and deep in dread, And tasks so few to find . . .? My hands will not beadle, My brain is on a plan To take the wealth that I have made And keep it like a man...
...There is no frown from heaven, No brand upon your brow...
...Punams...
...Fannla Cohn, A. J. Muste, Henry R. Llnvllle and Walter Ludwig...
...We don't know how It is with- you but right now eleven dollars looks as big to us aa the Empire State Building...
...A strong, brave light is quenched...
...Ford's publicity staff may continue to use large scale production methods but the intelligent part of the public has no Illusions as to the quality of the product...
Vol. 13 • March 1932 • No. 13
