The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America

Tom Shutt graduates from the University of Michigan. His graduation is an elegant affair that, of all the Shutts, only Daisy attends. Tom introduces Daisy to “a lovely co-ed in pale blue chiffon, the daughter of a manufacturer, who gazed upon him with what appeared to be doglike devotion; so Daisy understood the meaning of a college education” (191). Daisy is so impressed that she tries to leave early so that Tom won’t have to “introduce his poor ignorant sister to his rich and learned friends” (191).

However, Tom insists on riding home with Daisy that night, and spends the ride trying to convince Daisy that everything she has seen is “the bunk” (192). The speaker “whose eloquent idealism had so moved her was a hireling of the power corporations” (192), and the manufacturer’s daughter was not his ideal. Rather:

the girl he might hit it off with was that cute little one with large spectacles and slightly stooped shoulders; she had got that way bending over a study-table preparing a set of graphs showing the relationship of profits and wages in depressions throughout American history. Real wages always dropped quicker than profits, she had proved, and they never came back so fast (192).