Our book club selection for this month was The Vagabonds by Jeff Guinn. According to Simon & Schuster Inc., in 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on.
It is difficult to imagine now, but the roads in the early 1900s were in terrible shape. There was not a federal interstate highway system until 1956. According to NPR, accommodations for motorists were nonexistent. Breakdowns were frequent. And garages for repairs? Good luck.Some of the most striking anecdotes in the book come when Henry Ford, captain of industry, borrows tools on roadsides to repair their fleet of cars himself. He usually provided all the Model T’s for the road trips and paid all the expenses.
The NPR review states the road trips were carefully planned publicity stunts, carried out before a press corps that followed the men from stop to stop. Ford and Edison on their own were famous enough to command headlines. And like modern Instagram tourists, the "Vagabonds," as they were dubbed, calculated their trips to look great in photographs. Scenes of the men "roughing it," chopping wood or drinking water from a dipper, were posed for the media. The wealthy Vagabonds received much admiration for their love for the rustic life, while enjoying hot meals prepared by the chef in their entourage and stopping at luxe hotels when weather turned foul.
According to Publisher’s Weekly, the Vagabonds wanted to join “their countrymen’s burgeoning enthusiasm for gypsying in automobiles.” Wandering the countryside in a convoy filled with servants and supplies, they used the trips as much for pleasure as publicity, generating massive press coverage about the curious excursions of the famous millionaires who wanted to “demonstrate how much they had in common with other Americans.”
According to Simon & Schuster Inc., although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of chefs, butlers, and others, this elite fraternity also had a serious purpose: to examine the conditions of America’s roadways and improve the practicality of automobile travel. At the time they traveled, it was common practice to pull over into a farmer's private land and set up camp. There were no motels. Eventually, farmers complained enough that the first motel was built in 1925. Newspaper coverage of these trips was extensive, and as cars and roads improved, the summer trip by automobile soon became a desired element of American life.
In ”The Vagabonds” Jeff Guinn shares the story of this pivotal moment in American history. But he also examines the important relationship between the older Edison and the younger Ford, who once worked for the famous inventor. The road trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford’s reputation, even as Edison’s diminished. The automobile had come of age and it would transform the American landscape, the American economy, and the American way of life.
According to Wikipedia, Henry Ford’s introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. As the owner of the Ford Motor Co., he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with "Fordism”: mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put dealerships throughout most of North America and in major cities on six continents. Ford left most of his vast wealth to the Ford Foundation and arranged for his family to control the company permanently.
Ford was a pioneer of "welfare capitalism", designed to improve the lot of his workers and especially to reduce the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers.
Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage — $130 today — which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers. A Cleveland, Ohio, newspaper editorialized that the announcement "shot like a blinding rocket through the dark clouds of the present industrial depression." The move proved extremely profitable; instead of constant turnover of employees, the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to Ford, bringing their human capital and expertise, raising productivity and lowering training costs. Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying male workers.
Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to raise wages or lose their best workers. Ford's policy proved, however, that paying people more would enable Ford workers to afford the cars they were producing and be good for the local economy. He viewed the increased wages as profit-sharing linked with rewarding those who were most productive and of good character. It may have been Ford Motor Co. vice president and general manager James Couzens who convinced Ford to adopt the $5-day wage.
Real profit-sharing was offered to employees who had worked at the company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a manner of which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They frowned on heavy drinking, gambling, and what today are called deadbeat dads. The Social Department used 50 investigators, plus support staff, to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for this "profit-sharing."
Ford's incursion into his employees' private lives was highly controversial, and he soon backed off from the most intrusive aspects. By the time he wrote his 1922 memoir, he spoke of the Social Department and of the private conditions for profit-sharing in the past tense, and admitted that “paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, often special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and strengthen organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment.”
Ford’s paternalism extended to the Vagabonds. He paid for all the trips and provided all the vehicles they used. According to Glen C. Artschuler’s article “Review: ‘The Vagabonds’ by Jeff Guinn” for the Star Tribune, Mina Edison complained that with the Fords “everything is comfortable and luxurious, but you have no say as to what you can do.” Firestone seethed when Ford, who loathed sugary soft drinks and candy, smashed Firestone’s box of confections and flung it into the street.
Ford, Edison, Firestone and Burroughs were complicated human beings, capable of pettiness, self-absorption and generosity. Ford bought a home for the financially strapped Burroughs. Edison delivered advice to the combative car manufacturer through intermediaries. Firestone agreed to serve as a willing lieutenant and logistics coordinator for the auto campers, rather than a fellow general. Burroughs genuinely admired his travel companions. And the Vagabonds tried to cater to the personal preferences of Edison, who preferred rough, hilly dirt roads and Burroughs, who found fault with food temperatures and meal times.
According to Lewis Brett Smiler’s Sept. 21, 2016 post “Was Thomas Edison anti-Semitic?” in Edison Findings, Henry Ford built an “entire worldview” around anti-Semitism, and his publications helped popularize the idea of a “Jewish world conspiracy.” Ford stated in 1923, “Jews are the scavengers of the world. Wherever there’s anything wrong with a country, you’ll find the Jews on the job there.” Abraham Foxman, former National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote that it was a popular myth that “powerful Jews practically dominate and control the world of business.” Edison seemed to believe this was true in Germany during World War I. In a 1914 interview with the Detroit Free Press, the inventor stated that the Jews “. . . have control over the business of Germany, and the military gang which governs the country does their bidding.”
According to Glen C. Artschuler’s article “Review: ‘The Vagabonds’ by Jeff Guinn” for the Star Tribune, the Vagabonds had actively sought publicity. They even invited President Warren Harding to join them, and “dropped in” on President Calvin Coolidge. However, by 1925, auto camping was common. The Vagabonds were competing with a new generation of celebrities, whose ranks included movie stars and athletes. There was nothing sufficiently special about three friends, “even such well-known men, driving and camping to warrant national attention.” So, the road trips ended.
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