My Forty Years with Ford

2. What Was Henry Ford Really Like?

CHAPTER What Was Henry Ford Really Like? JLLE was unorthodox in thought but puritanical in personal conduct. He had a restless mind but was capable of prolonged, concentrated work. He hated indolence but had to be confronted by a challenging problem before his interest was aroused. He was contemptuous of money-making, of money-makers and profit seekers, yet he made more money and greater profits than those he despised. He defied accepted economic principles, yet he is the foremost exemplar of American free enterprise. He abhorred ostentation and display, yet he reveled in the spotlight of publicity. He was ruthless in getting his own way, yet he had a deep sense of public responsibility. He demanded efficient production, yet made place in his plant for the physically handicapped, reformed criminals, and human misfits in the American industrial system. h 2 12 MY FORTY YEARS WITH FORD He couldn't read a blueprint, yet had greater mechanical ability than those who could. He would have gone nowhere without his associates, we did the work while he took the bows, yet none of us would have gone far without him. He has been describedascomplex,contradictory, a dreamer, a grown-up boy, an intuitive genius, a dictator, yet essentially he was a very simpleman. He lived a life so secluded that few ever saw him in his own home. I know of only two members of the Ford staff who ever spent a night with the Fords. One was our English manager, the present Lord Perry. I was the other. On their first trip abroad, the Henry Fords visited the Perrys and traveled over England with them. Mrs. Ford became very fond of Lady Perry, and the two corresponded for years. When the Perrys came to Detroit they stayed with the Fords, first at their home on Edison Avenue in Detroit and later at Fair Lane in Dearborn. Sometimes a boyhood friend or two would see him at his office, but I never knew him to look them up. His closest friend when a boy was his neighbor and schoolmate Edsel Ruddiman, for whom Henry and Clara Ford named their only son. Ruddiman went on to college, became a distinguished organic chemist, and later with his son Stanley joined Ford Motor Company to carry on soybean experimentation, in which they minded their own business without any pretense of Henry Ford's sponsoring them. I knew all of Henry Ford's immediate family except his father, who died a few months before I joined the company. His sister Margaret married Edsel Ruddiman's brother John. I knew histwo brothers William and John but never saw them in his home. They hated him, either because they envied him or because they expected him to do more for them. But Henry Ford's philosophy of "help others to help themselves" WHAT WAS HENRY FORD REALLY LIKE? 13 applied to his family as well as to all who sought his help, and he warned me not to do his relatives any favors. Two brothers -in-law had Ford agencies but were not allowed to use his name in any way to build up their prestige in the sales department . I, too, lived up to this philosophy. No one related to me ever sought or gained favors in the Ford organization. I was astonished how poor Henry Ford was at spelling. I never saw him write or dictate a letter. His secretaries, Ernest G. Liebold and Frank Campsall, prepared replies to communications which he had not even read. I have seen Liebold hold letters that had to be answered on his desk for daysbefore he could catch Mr. Ford and read them to him. Ford didn't sign a letter very often—even left that to his secretaries. He did enjoy autographing books and souvenir cards and he would hand out a signed photograph to anyone who asked for it. He signed his name in the Spencerian handwriting he acquired in a Detroit night school business course. As a farm boy, he had no chance to go beyond the rural school, where reading and writing and arithmetic in simplest form were all a pupil could get. Even at that, he passed up much education that such a school could have offered. He was not too serious about his schooling; tinkering with watches and with machinery around the farm appealed to him more. In engineering work...