The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America

Abner’s youngest son Tom is now 15, and Abner finds his way of thinking “annoying”: “He did not share the family sense of gratitude to Henry Ford, but insisted that Henry had got more out of his workers than they had ever got out of him. He had no respect for the Klan, but on the contrary referred to it as a ‘racket’” (116). Abner decides to let his children speak as they please and blames the teachers at school.

Meanwhile, the Klan have come to support Henry Ford, now a billionaire, as their candidate for President: “It was a strange kind of political campaign, for nobody knew whether the candidate was a Democrat or a Republican; the candidate wouldn’t say, and probably didn’t know” (117).

Abner, like many Americans, supports Ford’s candidacy. Newspaper polls show Ford far ahead of all the other candidates, and the campaign is well financed (though the source of the funds remains well hidden). Ford will benefit no matter what the outcome of the election: “there could be no better way to advertise a car than on the ballots in a national election” (118).

When President Harding dies unexpectedly and Vice-President Calvin Coolidge succeeds him, the Klan and Ford view him as “their man already in office, a white Protestant Gentile hundred per cent Vermont Yankee, close-fisted, close-mouthed, the strong, silent statesman, Cautious Cal,” ready to “take charge of a nation imperiled by grafters, speculators, Jews, Negroes, Catholics, and Bolsheviki” (118).