The Last of an American

In the days when automobiles first clattered through cobbled streets, Europe finally had to face America. Europe never got over it. In the eyes of the frightened, fascinated Old World, one man symbolized this new historic force. The man was Motormaker Henry Ford, who would have traded in Europe for a slightly used Model T. Through watching him, two generations of Europeans caught a glimpse--however distorted--of U.S. capitalism's great adventure. When he died last week (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), the event showed sharply what had happened to Europe's picture of him and of America.

Bank Account in Heaven. In Britain, they still gaped at the facts & fable of his wealth and power. "Henry bloody Ford," said a Glaswegian. "I am a cheap Ford salesman and Ford's a gentleman. He captured the world. Head of the atomic energy he is too. Mon! He's a fine chap." But Socialist conservatism also spoke. Said a taxi driver: "No, we can't afford Henry Ford today. It's a good thing all that big business is finished over here."

In Stockholm, Union Leader Yngve Moller said: "He was reactionary. This hardly appeals to a Swede. But he will likely find a credit account in heaven for the magnificence of his achievements." In Paris, the Socialists were harder on him. Said Pierre Mignot, a biology teacher: "His Taylor* system marks the beginning of modern slavery." Paris youngsters (who belong to the jeep, not the tin-Lizzie era) did not even know his name, and many an oldster shuddered at it. Said grey-haired Gaston, headwaiter at Lavrue's: " Voyez-vous, Monsieur Ford gave us speed. In the old days, Parisians drove their four-in-hands around the boulevards at a civilized ten kilometers an hour. That was happiness. Are we to thank M. Ford?"

The Flight of the Birds. To the Germans, dreamers of efficient dreams, Ford had always been a special hero. One of the innumerable books about him (which usually found a place of honor near Mein Kampf) declared: "It is magnificent how the Aryan, the Teuton, the Saxon, the true masterman comes to life in Ford."

In Vienna, where they don't care for machines anyway, the Socialist Arbeiterzeitung declared: "His creation, the production line . . . reminds us of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, which showed the ridiculous and tragic power of Fordismus over man. . . . Thus Ford was not a friend but an enemy of the worker."

In Budapest, a businessman whose factory is being run as a joint Soviet-Hungarian enterprise rallied from his end-of-an-era sorrow to observe, with a peculiarly Budapestian wistfulness: "He would have made a great partner."

To Italians, Ford was no anachronism. Said Bricklayer Luigi Breschi: "If all owners had poured back the profits in their company like Ford, there would be no need for nationalization." Socialist Leader Giuseppe Saragat warned, through his paper: "Ford loved birds, and built for them an immense natural park--foreign birds wanted none of his artificial freedoms, and flew off. . . ."

"Dear Little Fordson." Nowhere was Europe's changed picture of Ford (and the U.S.) more poignantly illustrated than in Russia. In the '20s, Ford was one of the Soviet Union's first-string heroes. He was considered the great revolutionist in production methods and a drive was on to "Fordize" Russian plants. Workers were exhorted to "Do it the Ford way, it is the best way." His name was better known than Stalin's at the time. Villages held festivals in honor of the Fordson tractor. Wrote Leon Trotsky: "The most popular word among our forward-looking peasantry is Fordson. The peasant speaks of the Fordzonishko (dear little Fordson) gently and lovingly. . . ."

Since then, Stalin has become somewhat better known. Last week, all that Pravda and Izvestia printed on the end of Fordzonishko's father was: "A correspondent of Reuters Agency reports from Detroit the death of the well-known owner of automobile plants, Henry Ford."

*Named after Frederick Winslow Taylor, a Philadelphia mechanic who in the '90s devised "scientific management." In The Big Money, John Dos Passos wrote this epitaph:

"Fred Taylor

inventor of efficiency. . . .

he filled the shop with college students with stopwatches and diagrams, tabulating, standardizing. ... on the morning of his fiftyninth birthday, when the nurse went into his room to look at him at fourthirty,

he was dead with his watch in his hand."

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