The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America

Abner views Ford’s aspiration to end the war as “most proper and sensible”; having “long ago decided that his employer was the greatest man in the world,” he finds the notion that “Mr. Ford would show [the rulers of Europe] how to run things” a realistic and hopeful one (74).

Abner reads about the ship’s departure in the newspaper. Ford’s friend Thomas Edison comes with Bryan to see him off, and the mood is one of optimism and celebration. A band plays, various utopians present their ideas, and two of the peace activists plan to hold their wedding ceremony on board. The passengers on the ship include women’s suffragists, labor activists, and progressive government leaders such as “a judge who had spent his life establishing the first children’s court [...] the first woman senator of the United States, and [...] the first farmer-labour governor of a state,” but also a few shadier characters such as “a man who had once mounted a soapbox in Central Park and called upon the unemployed to follow him in a march to overthrow the government” (75).

Ford, stricken with the flu, spends the voyage confined to his cabin. Newspaper reporters insist on speaking with him and publish stories about “secret conferences in his cabin” (75).

Among Ford’s guests on the ship are fifty-four reporters from newspapers and magazines; Ford invites them because he “believe[s] in freedom of discussion, and in the rights of the people to know what [is] going on” (76). One of these journalists is from the Daily Mail, a yellow publication with which the “naïve” Ford is unfamiliar. The Daily Mail publishes “detailed accounts of quarrelling and fighting among the pacifists, and all kinds of ridiculous inventions about what was going on,” including that “Ford was ‘a prisoner in his stateroom, tied to his bed by Dean Marquis and guarded by an armed gunman’” (76).

Meanwhile, in the U.S., President Wilson has just called for a strengthening of American military capabilities. The pacifists on board the ship, led by Schwimmer, compose a resolution against Wilson’s proposal and insist that those who do not sign it will not be allowed to continue the voyage. However, some of those on board consider it unwise for the U.S. to “remain weak in the face of the [German] submarine menace” (77) and dislike that Schwimmer, who was born in Hungary, is attempting to change American foreign policy. The reporters on board present the ensuing discussions as “a cat and dog fight” (77).

When the ship docks at Christiania, Ford, who is still ill, goes home at the urging of his wife and a close associate. The pacifists continue their mission to the neutral countries without him, but the press ignores them, choosing instead to focus on Ford. At home, Ford publishes anti-war advertisements and the Navy League sues him for libel.