Like a Dream

Not the least of mankind's fanatic fractions is that vanishing fraternity of motorists who still drive a Model T. Not the kast among them is septuagenarian Ernest A. Franke. a retired baker of Washington, D. C. One day last week Mr. Franke and his 1921 Ford chattered down Pennsylvania Avenue, wheeled into the semicircular White House driveway, and astounded White House police by pausing hard by the Executive Office.

"Where's Henry?" cackled Gaffer Franke. "I want him to see this old car."

Assured that Henry Ford had not yet arrived, and that citizens' cars could not be parked there, Motorist Franke banged decorously away, returned after a while and again toured the grounds, again missed Mr. Ford.

At the moment of Mr. Franke's first appearance on the White House scene, septuagenarian Mr. Ford was trying out Attorney General Homer S. Cummings' bullet-proof Lincoln. With Mr. Ford on a breeze through the tortuous roadways of Rock Creek Park were his son Edsel and two Washington correspondents, Clifford Prevost of the Detroit Free Press and Jay G. Hayden of the Detroit News. Both Mr. Prevost and Mr. Hayden have developed excellent news contacts with Ford Motor Co., and they later were to serve as the only authoritative reporters of a historic two hours in the life of Mr. Ford and in the Administration of Franklin Roosevelt.

The advisers who ordinarily arrange extraordinary conferences with Mr. Roosevelt were already complaining that the occasion had become uncomfortably historic. According to this somewhat jaundiced view, the President's brother-in-law, Gracie Hall Roosevelt, had bungled at a crucial stage in the Administration's Second Recovery Program. By arranging a White House invitation to Henry Ford, moaned these counselors, this onetime Detroit comptroller had also arranged a White House dramatization for the stiffest and most nonresilient member of the Opposition; had, indeed, obliterated the effects of the friendly pronouncement from SECommissioner John Hanes's Sixteen Businessmen (see p. 55).

Be that as it may, the event was legitimately historic. More than any other man, Motorman Ford personifies to millions the triumph of the rugged virtues of the American Way. He had consistently and successfully resisted NRA. He is currently doing battle with the National Labor Relations Board and C. I. O. And for the romantic touch dear to the reading American, this was to be his first meeting with the President since the World War days when Henry Ford manufactured submarine chasers for Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt.

Mr. Ford's arrival in Washington last week was ruggedly simple. His wife, with whom he recently celebrated his golden wedding anniversary, was using his private car, Glen Ridge, in Massachusetts, and at 8:40 a. m. the Guest of the Day stepped from a Pullman compartment into Washington's Union Station. In his wake was his son Edsel. Awaiting them was a sole and unofficial host. Major H. M. Cunningham, superintendent of the Ford assembly plant alongside the Potomac in nearby Alexandria, Va. In Major Cunningham's Lincoln, the party purred past the Alexandria home of John L. Lewis, through the plant grounds, and back to Washington's swank Shoreham hotel, where Mr. Ford was lodged at $16 for the day in a two-room suite done in modernistic grey and yellow.

The Cummings Lincoln, provided by White House order, was by then ready for them. The drive through the park ended at the White House at 12:55 p.m. Meantime, the White House police had been busy with six Johnny Jones Exposition midgets and a pressagent who were shooed away before they could emulate the little lady who perched on J. Pierpont Morgan's knee at a Senate hearing five years ago (TIME, June 12, 1933).

First out at the White House door was hatless Edsel Ford. Behind trotted stooped but spry Henry Ford and Publicist William J. Cameron who usually speaks for Henry Ford and usually is at hand on those rare occasions when Mr. Ford speaks for himself. A throng of newsmen and Government clerks, idly curious during lunch hour, had been given to understand that Hosts Franklin & G. Hall Roosevelt and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Marriner S. Eccles would lunch with the Fords on the secluded terrace at the rear of the White House. But the party was shifted inside to the family dining room.

What passed between Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Ford, no man present would say for quotation. It was clear, however, that the meeting was not so historic as to have caused any great rapprochement between Messrs. Ford & Roosevelt. In fact, it seemed to have had no point at all. When Mr. Ford emerged at 2:55 p. m., he b-r-r-d gently at hungry newshawks and hopped into the Lincoln. Cried a reporter: "Did you have a pleasant visit?" Said Mr. Ford: "Sure!"

Said Mr. Eccles, an original proponent of the spending program: "Mr. Ford didn't clash with me. I guess he said he didn't agree, and shook his head in dissent." Said Hall Roosevelt: "There was nothing that smacked of commercialism in any way. ... In fact, it reminded me very much of a family conversation at Wayside Inn."

Enjoined to silence about the precise discussions, White House mouthpieces assiduously cultivated the impression that Mr. Ford had heard Chairman Eccles read off a prepared apologia for the spending spurt, had said little about it, had in general been about as talkative as a clam. Whatever he said to the President, canny Mr. Ford spoke his mind to Correspondents Prevost and Hayden on the way to New York. On his mind, if not on his tongue at the White House, were these appraisals of Franklin Roosevelt and of Roosevelt policy:

P: "I believe he [the President] is entitled to great credit for arousing the people to think. There is more public interest in National problems today than ever before. . . ."

P:"If finance would get out of Government and Government would get out of business, everything would go again. . . . Financiers may claim that they want lower wages and lower prices, but actually they are trying to create a system whereby they can manipulate wages down and profits up."

P:On automobile production control, suggested by Mr. Roosevelt last year: "When there is a demand, we should produce as many cars as can be sold. . . ."

P:"The lower the debt the better the business, and that goes for government."

P:"The Government should be the policeman to exercise only that power necessary to maintain an orderly method of living. . . . Unfortunately the Government is not functioning as a policeman, and that is because the Government is in the hands of finance."

Had any doubt of Mr. Ford's post-visit attitude toward the New Deal remained, he would have removed it by his subsequent performances in New York. This, too, was a rare occasion for him. Not since 1932, when he boomed Herbert Hoover for reelection, had Henry Ford delivered a formal address, and he was in New York to address the Bureau of Advertising of the American Newspaper Publishers Association. Beforehand, he again yielded to clamorous newsmen and received them in a private dining room at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Someone remarked that Mr. Ford seemed to have enjoyed his White House visit. Said Mr. Ford: "You never heard me say anything against him, did you? What's the use, what's the use? He's like all the rest of us, trying to do the best he can. Don't you think so?"

A moment later: "People are looking for a leader. They ought to be their own leaders, but they're looking for a leader. And they've got a leader who is putting something over on them, and they deserve it."

At another turn in the interchange, Mr. Ford volunteered: "When we wake up and go to work, we shall be beginning to approach civilization. . . ."

One of the questioners asked, and Mr. Ford refused, comment upon a copyrighted series of Ford interviews in the Boston Evening American which included a complimentary reference to Vice President Garner, another to the Federal debt:

"That debt? That debt will fade like a dream! That little bit of a debt!"

That night the Fords and Mr. Cameron repaired to the Hotel Waldorf-Astoria, where a host of sympathetic publishers expected sympathetic and telling words. Samuel Emory Thomason, publisher of Chicago's lone pro-New Deal newspaper, the tabloid Daily Times, proudly introduced "the epitome of American business ... a great man and a great American, Mr. Henry Ford of Dearborn, Mich."

Mr. Ford folded his fists, leaned on the table, and said 30 words:

"Mr. Toastmaster, and gentlemen, we are all on the spot. Stick to your guns, and I will help you, with the assistance of my son [Edsel], all I can. Thank you."

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