The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America

In his eighteen years as a “model employer,” Ford has published four books and countless magazine articles and interviews advertising himself as “a guide and instructor to all other American employers” (158). Now, however, his workers hate him: when they read about “the ideal conditions in his plant” (158), they respond with disgust.

Although Ford has always maintained that machine tools do not put people out of work, each new machine at the River Rouge plant is putting nineteen out of twenty men out of work. However, the men are not openly laid off; instead, they are reassigned to new positions, whose foreman “rides” them, or are fired on the pretext of violating “a thousand petty regulations” (159) such as forgetting to wear one’s badge, staying too long in the toilet, or talking to the men on the next shift coming on. The company employs “spotters” to catch violations, and even men who have committed no violation can be fired if the “service department” accuses them.

Those who keep their jobs are not luckier: Ford drives them so hard that they work in a half-delirious state. With the new drive to work faster, accidents increase, and “there [is] a saying in the plant that it [takes] one life a day” (160).