The Tragedy of Edsel Ford - Death by a Thousand Cuts

Edsel Ford

Unlike Edsel Ford's children, Edsel was not born in the lap of luxury. His father and mother, Henry and Clara, lived on the cusp of poverty while Henry invested every spare cent he could earn at the Edison Illumination Company in Detroit to develop his horseless carriage made of four bicycle wheels, a carriage frame, a tiller steering lever, an upholstered bench seat, and a two-cylinder, four horsepower, chain driven engine. He called his contraption the Quadricycle.

On June 4th, 1896 at the age of thirty-two, Henry Ford took the first of many test drives. Although he had no memory of it, his four-year-old son Edsel took his first ride in a self-powered vehicle. Ford quit his job at Edison in 1899 to focus on building automobiles and formed the Detroit Automobile Company. Two years later [1901], he formed the Henry Ford Company, and two years after that, he founded the Ford Motor Company [1903]. While Henry struggled to dominate the early automobile business, he and Clara lived in twelve different places before he had Fair Lane manor built in 1913 through 1915. Edsel was in his early twenties when the mansion was completed.

Ford's original quadricycle

Although his parents doted on him, Edsel's home life was anything but stable. As a child, Edsel went to a private grammar school in Connecticut and then attended Detroit University School, a local private college preparatory school. The family company was the most stability Edsel had in his young life. He grew up with the Ford Motor Company (FoMoCo) and would hang around the design and pattern shops on his school vacations where he became acquainted with master model-maker and Ford engineer Charles "Cast Iron Charlie" Sorensen. Sorensen, who over the course of his forty-year career with Henry Ford and his company, would become young Edsel's lifelong friend and mentor.

Rather than take the next step into a university education, Edsel made the decision to enter the family business at age eighteen. I'm sure his father prompted him to make this decision. Henry Ford was a no-nonsense, self-made man who was distrustful of university educated types. All of the early, key people in the company had come up the hard way like Ford did. But rather than break Edsel in on the grimy foundry floor or the assembly line, Ford sent his son to work in the business end of the operation in financing. Edsel never dressed less than sartorial [well-tailored]. His personal taste in clothing was impeccable in stark contrast to those he worked with, but his work ethic and integrity soon won over most people.

In 1915, James Couzens resigned as secretary/treasurer of FoMoCo in protest of Henry Ford's public, pacifist statements and pro-German sentiments while on a European "peace ship" mission. Edsel was the heir apparent and succeeded Couzens becoming the company's first finance director--a title made especially for Edsel. His father did not like titles for his excutives and preferred they be called simply "Ford Men." Henry Ford felt he could utilize and control them better if there was ambiguity in the management ranks.

The company's great chain of being had room for only one person at the top--Henry Ford. Despite that, Henry stepped aside in 1919, and Edsel became the president of the company while Henry remained on his company's board of directors. The elder Ford held over 50% of the company's stock. That was his trump card. With his son, Henry began a secret project which resulted in the development of a small block V-8 engine and the Model A, which saved the company from bankrupcy and the General Motors Corporation whose Chevrolet division was eating away at FoMoCo's dominance in the low priced market.

Here is where the plot thickens: A year after Edsel's management promotion, he married Eleanor Lowthian Clay [19], a socialite who was the niece of J.L. Hudson, the department store founder. The newlyweds did not want to live at the Fair Lane manor with Edsel's parents. The elder Fords were crestfallen. They had Fair Lane built especially with the thought of keeping Edsel under their wing. The manor was built near the banks of the Rouge River with a built-in swimming pool, a game room, a bowling alley, a billiards room, a boathouse, and a riding stable all designed with their son in mind.

According to Charles Sorensen in his autobiography My Forty Years with Ford, "Father and mother wanted to keep their only son close to them and guide his every thought.... Like all normal young people, Edsel wanted to be on his own to see and experience the world." Important people began to admire and respect the young executive which rankled his father who was jealous of anyone who seemed to wield influence with his son. "Henry Ford's greatest failure was expecting his son to be like him," Sorensen wrote. "Edsel's greatest victory, despite all obstacles, was in being himself."

The Edsel Fords made their first home in Detroit's Indian Village neighborhood on Iroquois Street where all four of their children were born: Henry II [1917], Benson [1919], Josephine [1923], and William Clay [1925]. In 1929, the Edsel Fords moved to Gaukler Point in Grosse Pointe with 3,000 feet of shoreline on Lake St. Clair and a walled-off, massive estate. Grosse Pointe was where wealthy and influential Detroiters lived, some residents with ties to Ford's arch competitor General Motors.

Henry II [the Deuce], Benson, Josephine, William Clay

The Henry Fords were nonsmoking teetolalers who disapproved of rumors of Edsel's riotous living, like attending cocktail parties and joining a country club. Edsel was being surveilled by Harry Bennett's men. It was being reported that Edsel was being corrupted by alcohol. The Edsel Ford's always kept a fully stocked bar in their home, even during Prohibition. Henry was distrustful of Edsel's new friends in Grosse Pointe, but Edsel chose his own friends and adopted a modernist sensibility apart from the fundamentalism of his parents.

With the help of his wife Eleanor, Edsel educated himself in the arts and literature and became an art collector. In contrast, Henry Ford was raised a farm boy with a sixth grade, rural education who was fond of saying, "A Ford can take you anywhere, except into society." He was wrong. This was the beginning of a serious riff between Edsel and his father.

Henry Ford put his controversial henchman Harry Bennett on Edsel's neck to disabuse him of the notion that he was actually the president of FoMoCo. It was clear to everyone that Edsel wore the mantle, but his father was the power behind the throne. Edsel had the title but not the scepter that went with it. Sorensen noted that "Henry could not let go, and Edsel did not know how to take over."

Harry Bennett with Henry Ford

Edsel always deferred to his father's edicts and allowed him to trample on his dignity, first with the company and later by tampering with the private lives of Edsel's family and inlaws, usually through the efforts of Harry Bennett. The elder Ford was primarily responsible for crushing his son's spirit. Ford believed his son was weak, and he blamed himself for overprotecting Edsel with the "cushion of advantage." For the sake of the company, Henry felt he needed to toughen the boy up.

Of his many transgressions against his son, the elder Ford found fault with anything Edsel wanted to do to make FoMoCo more competitive. Edsel wanted to modernize the company with college-educated executives, but Henry would not stand for that. He wanted his executives to start at the bottom and work themselves up the corporate ladder.

In 1919, Henry Ford bought the Dearborn Independent newspaper. At his personal direction, Ford instructed his editor William Cameron and his FoMoCo administrative assistant Ernest Liebold to begin a journalist rampage against the Jews and the International Banking Conspiracy. Edsel had many Jewish friends and implored his father to shut down his antisemitic screed. To compound matters, Henry Ford required his dealers to include a copy of the newspaper in every new vehicle sold resulting in lost sales. American Jews would not be caught dead buying a Ford car.

In 1922, many of the articles were compiled into a book called The International Jew, which sold well in the United States and found an enthusiastic audience in Germany. Thirty-three-year-old German militant Adolf Hitler kept a well-read, dog-eared copy of the book on his desk and had a signed photo of Henry Ford on the wall of his office. After losing a very public and expensive lawsuit, Henry Ford was forced to shut down the paper in 1927, but the damage had been done, much to the personal embarrassment of Edsel and Eleanor.

Another tramatic event for FoMoCo was the Battle of the Overpass on May 26, 1937 between underworld thugs hired by Harry Bennett and the United Auto Workers (UAW), who were distributing pro-union literature on the Miller Road pedestrian bridge leading into the Rouge Plant. Detroit News photographer James J. Kilpatrick, snapped a few quick photos and jumped into a waiting car to avoid a beating and a busted up camera. The photos appeared in the evening edition of the Detroit News, and by morning, it was picked up nationally and internationally.

Edsel was struggling with his health and wanted the company to settle the contract which had already been settled at General Motors and Chrysler Corporation. Henry Ford wanted to dig in and bust more heads. He gave Harry Bennett free reign and unlimited funds to break the UAW, which Ford believed was communist-inspired socialism. Clara Ford summoned Charles Sorensen to Fair Lane to ask, "Who is this [Harry] Bennett, that has so much control of my husband?" She did not like what she heard from Sorensen.

Clara Ford threatened her husband Henry with divorce and selling off her FoMoCo stock if a contract settlement was not reached immediately. That got the old man's attention, but Edsel was in no condition to negotiate, so in a stroke of twisted irony, Ford had Harry Bennett represent the company and settle the contract.

Clara Bryant Ford

In another blunder of epic proportions, Henry Ford was awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle for his 50th birthday in 1936 as a token of Adolph Hitler's admiration. The medal made of gold was replete with four Nazi swastikas. Mindful of its propaganda value, Hitler's two German representatives stood on each side of Henry Ford with the medal hanging prominately around his neck and had a publicity photo taken. The photo appeared in newspapers worldwide. Ford appeared sympathetic with the Nazi cause in Europe, prompting many Americans to again question whose side Ford was on and consequently losing FoMoCo business. Edsel Ford pleaded with his father to denounce Hitler publicly, but he would not relent.

Edsel was friends with Democrat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who Henry Ford despised as a socialist. When President Roosevelt asked Edsel Ford to get behind the World War II war effort, Edsel agreed to put the might of FoMoCo behind the war effort and vowed to do anything he could. Henry did everything he could to undermine the Willow Run bomber project fearing the government would take over his company, but after Hitler invaded Poland, Ford was forced to admit that Hitler was a dictator and enemy of the United States.

Along with plant manager Charles Sorensen and architect Albert Kahn, Edsel Ford dedicated the last years of his life to designing and constructing the largest bomber plant in the world which became the cornerstone of the United States' Arsenal of Democracy. The stress and strain of the job and the harassment by his father and Harry Bennett finally caught up with Edsel. In January of 1942, Edsel was operated on for stomach ulcers. The elder Ford believed his son only needed to "change his way of living." He thought his chiropractor could cure him. When surgeons opened Edsel up, they discovered incurable metastatic stomach cancer. Edsel Ford hung on for eighteen months but died at one-ten a.m. on May 26, 1943 from cancer and undulant fever brought on by drinking unpasteurized milk from Ford Farms.

B-24 Liberator Bomber

Although Edsel did not live to see the end of World War II, his boast of producing a complete B-24 bomber every hour was achieved. The Willow Run Bomber Plant and adjoining airport represent Edsel's greatest achievement against overwhelming odds where the stakes could not have been higher. His father's fame plateaued after the construction of the Rouge Plant; Edsel's fame rests squarely upon the miracle of the B-24 Bomber Plant. The elder Ford may have put America on wheels, but his son was instrumental in making the world safe for democracy and preserving the American way of life.

The Willow Run Story 

"We Never Called Him Henry"-- Harry Bennett Polishes His Own Apple--Part Two

Harry Bennett with Henry Ford in Willow Run.

Much of Harry Bennett's "tell-all" memoir of his time with Henry Ford reads like a tattletale, supermarket tabloid about people within the Ford empire and the Ford family. I chose to write about several provocative sections of the book: how Bennett met Henry Ford and the open employment of gangsters at the Rouge plant, Henry Ford's anti-Semitism and ties to Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany, how Bennett was paid, and Bennet's severance from the Ford Motor Company in 1945.

***

When Harry Bennett first met Henry Ford in 1916, the automobile mogul was fifty-three years old and Bennett was twenty-four. Bennett was on shore leave in New York City between Navy enlistments with a sailor friend. The two young sailors were brawling with some civilians and about to get arrested.

Well-known New York journalist Arthur Brisbane saw the fight and vouched for the sailors telling the police they acted in self-defense after they were set upon. The reporter convinced the patrolmen to release the sailors into his custody. Brisbane was on his way to interview Henry Ford and asked Bennett if he would like to meet the famous industrialist. 

Brisbane introduced Ford to Bennett and began giving an account of the brawl he just witnessed where this five foot-seven inch/145 pound, former Navy boxer handled himself bravely. Ford listened with rapt attention and then offered Bennett a job, "I can use a young man like you out at the Rouge [plant]." 

Bennett remembers refusing because he wanted to re-enlist in the Navy. Civilian life was not exciting enough for him, he told Ford.

"It's a rough lot out at the Rouge. I need some eyes and ears in the plant. I haven't got any policemen out there. Can you shoot?"

"Sure, I can!"

After some further coaxing, Ford convinced Bennett to give the job a try. "But I won't work for the company, I'll work for you." It was that relationship that ultimately caused problems for both men. Ford was looking for someone tough enough to manage plant security, but he also needed someone to protect him and his family from kidnappers, which was a serious problem for wealthy industrialists in the 1920s and 1930s.

"Mr. Ford's grandchildren were pushovers for kidnappers," Bennett wrote. "Mr. Ford told me to take care of the problem and hire anybody I wanted." Bennett justified his open hiring of underworld figures because they gave him "a capacity for protecting Ford and his family from criminal molestation." A number of Mafia dons were granted lucrative Ford concession contracts which were little more than payoffs for protection inside-and-outside of the plant.

Regarding Henry Ford's concern for his personal safety, Bennett says Mr. Ford was a good marksman and always carried a .32 cal pistol on his person. "In the early 1920s, Ford was getting an average of five threatening letters a week. Ford's [bodyguard] driver had a shoulder holster under each arm, and Mr. Ford had two, loaded Magnum revolvers with holsters built into the back seat of his car."

With over 500 former convicts on the Ford company payroll under the guise of rehabilitation, these gangsters were a good source of information forming an extensive intelligence network throughout the plant complex, reporting on United Automobile Workers labor activities and informing on Ford employees.

An additional benefit of having some hired muscle in the plant gave Bennett a ready source of manpower to unleash against UAW organizers when called upon. "Mr. Ford made me his agent with the underworld," he bragged. "I kept them obligated to me but [I was] never obligated to them." It took a bulletproof ego for Bennett to believe that. More likely, Bennett carried around Henry Ford's wallet so why kill off the golden calf?

***

Another of Bennett's jobs was to protect Mr. Ford from himself when he could, and barring that, it was his job to pick up the pieces from Ford's bad judgements. In May of 1920, a Ford-owned newspaper called The Dearborn Independent began publishing anti-Semitic articles based on the spurious Protocols of Zion written surreptitiously in 1905 by Czarist propagandist Serge Nilus, to incite Russian civil onrest and polgroms against their Jewish population. The four small volumes carried the title The International Jew, each with its own subtitle.

A series of anti-Semitic articles ran ninety-one weeks in the Dearborn Independent, each with a run of 200,000 copies that was distributed and sold worldwide. A copy of the newspaper came with the sale of every Ford car during this period. In March of 1927 when the Independent named Chicago attorney Aaron Sapiro the "Jewish ring leader" and organizer of socialist farm cooperatives to gain control of American agriculture, Sapiro brought a libel suit against Henry Ford for a million dollars.

Typical provocative front page.

 

Bennett blamed Dearborn Independent editor Bill Cameron and Dearborn Publishing Company general manager Ernest Liebold for "constantly stirring up Mr. Ford" with anti-Semitic slanders and propaganda. Every time Ford had trouble getting a loan, he complained it was a Jewish plot. At first, Ford wanted to fight this case to the finish, but it was a public relations nightmare in the press.

After five days on the stand, Bill Cameron fell on the sword and took responsibility for everything that ever happened in the Dearborn Independent. Cameron testified that Mr. Ford had no connection whatsoever with the editorial policy of the paper.

Ford was subpoened to testify in court the following Monday, but a Ford spokesperson reported to the local newspapers that while driving home on Sunday night, Mr. Ford's car was run off the road by a touring car driven by two men. A FoMoCo spokesperson stated that after the accident, Ford was treated for his injuries at Henry Ford Hospital and released under a doctor's care to his home for recovery.

As soon as Bennett found out about the attempt on Ford's life, he rushed to the Ford residence at Fairlane to see who his vengeance should fall upon. Ford said he felt fine and acted uncommonly calm about the accident. "It was probably kids on a joy ride," he said. "Forget about it, Harry." But Bennett wouldn't let it go, so Ford finally admitted, "I wasn't in that car when it went down the hill."

Then it struck Bennett that Ford was terrified of testifying in open court and the "accident" was a cover story. An earlier court appearance years before for another case revealed in cross-examination that Ford was poorly educated, had a limited vocabulary, was not well-read, and had little grasp of American history. It was humiliating and Ford vowed he would never testify in open court again. He would rather settle the Sapiro lawsuit out of court rather than subject himself to public riducule again.

Mr. Ford's lawyers drew up a formal apology as the basis for a settlement. Ford agreed to cease the publication of "anti-Setimic material circulated in his name, and he would call in all undistributed copies of The International Jew."

The apology further stated that "Mr. Ford had no knowledge of what had been published in his Dearborn Independent and was 'shocked' and 'mortified' to learn about it." The apology was printed on the front page of the Dearborn Independent, which shut down shortly afterwards in 1928. Mr. Ford paid everyone's court costs and stayed in his mansion licking his wounds.

But Henry Ford was a proud and stubborn man. Ten years later, his name became linked with Nazi Germany when he accepted the "Grand Cross of the German Eagle" from two German engineers on behalf of Adolph Hitler's admiration of Ford's industrial achievements.

A propaganda photo was taken in Dearborn, Michigan to commemorate the presentation, with Ford wearing the medal and sash around his neck with the German engineers flanking him on either side. By the next day, the photo appeared in newspapers across the country; by the following day, it was printed worldwide. The timing could not have been worse. In 1938, anti-German sentiment  was growing in America.

On a petty, personal note, Ford had a grudge against Winston Churchill and hated him for a perceived, personal affront at a dinner party in London. On the other hand, Ford was pro-German. He and Adolph Hitler had a shared admiration for one another. After all, they were both poorly educated, self-made men. In addition, FoMoCo had a successful truck factory in Cologne, Germany that was very profitable for the corporation.

Ford went on to say that stories of Nazi brutality against their own people were British propaganda to drive America into another World War. The result of Ford's German diplomacy resulted in a serious drop in Ford sales at home. Mr. Ford did change his views about Herr Hitler after watching battlefront films of the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. Once again, Ford humiliated himself in the American press and there was little anyone could do about it.

*** 

Bennett asserts in his autobiography that he never received a large salary from the FoMoCo, probably low grade executive pay due to his lack of management credentials. But Henry Ford had a private office in the Dearborn Engineering Laboratory where he kept a floor safe with a "kitty" [contingency account] from two million to four million cash dollars that Ford and Bennett would access without any red tape or company oversight.

Henry Ford also paid Bennett indirectly through real estate. Over the years, Ford bestowed upon his righthand man a lodge on Harsen's Island, the castle off Geddes Road in Washtenaw County, 2,800 acres in Clare County, and the Pagoda House on Grosse Ile. among others.

As Bennett tells the story, Mr. Ford had the Pagoda House built in the early 1930s for his family, but Mrs. Ford did not like the swift running current of the Detroit River. She feared for her grandchildren's lives. "Ford was disgusted and asked me if I had a dollar. I said, 'yes.'

"Give it to me and the place is yours."

Bennett did not like the mosquito infested property either. "No matter," he revealed, "I was glad to trade the Grosse Ile property for the ranch [290 acres of Arizona desert].... It was good for my sinus and arthritis."

Bennett made a fortune in real estate speculation to supplement his modest salary. This arrangement was clearly a money laundering scam to funnel money to Bennett for services rendered.

***

In the opening section of We Never Called Him Henry, Bennett wanted to correct the widespread notion that he was fired by twenty-eight-year-old Henry Ford II, grandson of the man he served for close to thirty years.

In a face-saving move, Bennett writes that young Henry Ford II said to him, "I don't know what I would have done without you. You don't have to leave--you can stay [at Ford's] for the rest of your life." Bennett maintains he always said, "When Mr. Ford retires, so do I." But, his employment records show Bennett did not officially resign from the corporation for weeks after Mr. Ford's death.

Henry Ford II with Harry Bennett in Bennett's office.

Edsel Ford's wife and mother of Henry Ford II, Eleanor Clay Ford, was instrumental in Bennett's departure from Ford. She believed Bennett helped destroy her husband and vowed she would not let him destroy her son. There was a long history of bad blood between the Ford family and Bennett.

The newly christened Ford president's first duty was to fire Bennett. A man who had time for corporate intrigues was little use to the company as an executive. Bennett had to go, but he was the Ford patriarch's partner in crime, so he had to be handled carefully to avoid further scandal. Henry the Second, arranged to get Bennett a $424/month retirement check [not bad for 1945] and a Ford benefits package to simply walk away.

Bennett describes walking away from FoMoCo like "a man being let out of prison." Henry Ford II remembers it differently. Many years later, he told Detroit reporters that "Bennett stole plenty from the company, so I fired him. He was the dirtiest, lousiest, son-of-a [expletive deleted] I ever met in my life, except for Lee Iacocca."

We Never Called Him Henry--Part One