The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America

Roosevelt wins the election “and almost at once there began a breakdown of finance and industry, the worst yet experienced” (185). Whether the crash is due to Hoover’s policies or the people’s lack of confidence in Roosevelt is unclear. Abner worries that Ford will have to close the plant again and that he will lose his job.

Roosevelt’s plan is to give money directly to farmers and workers, who will use it right away and revive the economy, instead of giving it to banks. Once the plan goes into effect, the people start to buy goods and industry revives. For the next few years, the government borrows billions of dollars and gives them to the people. Although industry and banks succeed again, they also “[begin] to turn against the man who had saved them, to call him a dictator and spendthrift, and other things too bad to print” (186).

Ford is one of these businessmen. In 1934, a year and a half into the New Deal, he announces that the Depression is over, he will be manufacturing a million cars that year, and he will re-hire workers and raise the minimum wage. At the same time, the Roosevelt administration creates the National Recovery Administration, “which would compel manufacturers to abolish wage-cutting and blind over-production, and all the wastes of anarchy in industry” (187). Ford refuses to comply, risking a government boycott of his goods. Abner pays no attention to these developments, content to work 40 hours each week in exchange for the paycheck he deposits in a newly government-guaranteed bank.

Around this time, Abner’s son, Tommy, is called a “professional agitator” (188) by the local paper after he helps to organize an anti-war, anti-fascist demonstration at the university. Abner, who no longer reads the paper, learns of these events when some of his ex-Klansmen friends visit to tell him he should have beaten Tommy “rather than let the Reds get hold of him” (188). They threaten to beat him themselves, and tell Abner about the Black Legion, a new organization “even stronger than the Klan” (189), that is focused on rooting out Communism in the community and is funded by big corporations.

Abner knows nothing about Tommy’s political activities but feels guilty about his involvement in the march on the Ford plant. Afraid for Tommy’s safety after hearing “terrifying hints” about the Black Legion, he writes his son a letter, “a badly confused one, which filled Tom’s heart with pity, but did not change his ideas” (189).

The Black Legion grows in political power, recruiting not only poor white workers but also “judges, prosecutors, mayors, councilmen, policemen, militiamen, and members of the American Legion” (190) who serve as its leaders. The organization has a racist, nationalist, anti-Semitic and anti-Communist ideology. Abner regrets allowing Tommy to go to college, where he has learned dangerous ideas that make him a target for the Black Legion.

In Dearborn, the Ford Company has also organized a group called the Knights of Dearborn who do political work, including spying and “rough stuff.” Inside the factory, “three men standing together talking [are] enough to constitute a conspiracy” (190).