Friends, Families & Forays: Scenes from the Life and Times of Henry Ford

31. Dearborn Flour Mill

31 Dearborn Flour Mill When Henry Ford was growing up on the farm, he was fascinated with mills operated by waterpower. Streams throughout the countryside were spotted with small sawmills sawing logs into lumber and gristmills grinding grain into flour. In those horse-and-wagon days, there was need especially for a gristmill within a very few miles of the farm in order to have wheat flour and corn meal for daily bread. Ford’s admiration for the waterpowered gristmill led him eventually to restore several such picturesque mills, one at Wayside Inn in Massachusetts, one at Berry College in Georgia, and others in southeastern Michigan. After becoming wealthy from the automobile business, fully satisfied with the Model T automobile, and well along with development of the Fordson tractor, Ford became a gentleman farmer himself. By 1915, he was building his elaborate Dearborn home, Fair Lane, and had already accumulated 2,843 acres of farm land in the Dearborn area. These were known as Henry Ford Farms, managed by Raymond Dahlinger, with specific, almost daily, directions provided by Ford. Although he had a dairy farm, his major crops were grains, particularly wheat.This was fifteen years before he discovered the phenomenal value of soybeans. With scores of Fordson tractors working the land, pulling the binders, and threshing the wheat in the fields with machines powered by Fordsons, Ford was proving he did not need horses. But where was he going to put the wheat from his growing number of acres until it was sold? As part of Ford Farms operations, he decided he should have his own grain elevator in Dearborn to store the wheat produced. On October 13, 1917, Ford made an agreement with S. J. McQueen & Co. of Fort William, Ontario, for the construction of a concrete grain elevator on the Michigan Central Railroad at Oakwood Boulevard. The elevator, costing $74,448, was to have fifteen circular bins, each 65 feet high, and a conveyor to handle 2,000 bushels per hour. Capacity of the elevator was estimated to be 99,800 bushels. In order to carry grain processing further, on March 2, 1920, Ford made an agreement with his own Dearborn Realty & Construction Company for the erection of a four-story, fireproof, reinforced concrete 235 flour mill adjacent to the grain elevator. Dearborn Realty & Construction had been organized by Ford in the spring of 1919 to construct housing in Dearborn for Ford employees. Ernest Liebold, general secretary to Ford and holding power of attorney, was also president of Dearborn Realty & Construction. So only Liebold’s signatures appear on the agreement. The cost of the flour mill without the milling machinery was about $48,000. Machinery was purchased from the Nordyke & Harmon Company of Indianapolis, bringing the total cost of the flour mill to $120,117. In December 1920, the milling machinery was first started. On that date, Ford’s old friend John Burroughs happened to be in Dearborn, and Ford had him push the button to start the machinery. At the beginning of operations, the Ford Flour Mill obtained its electricity from the Rouge power plant of Ford Motor Company at no charge. Ralph Shackleton was in charge of the mill, with Mrs. Raymond Dahlinger as treasurer and Liebold representing Ford. A dozen or so white-smocked employees kept the place running and the building 236 Ford Farms elevator and grain mill. The mill is the four-story building to the right of the elevator. The long, low building in the foreground is the barn housing the Fair Lane, the private railroad car used by the Fords. (Photograph courtesy of Dearborn Historical Museum.) clean. Dust collectors and vacuum cleaners were in constant use, the fear of explosion being always in mind. In operation, the wheat was never allowed to stand long in one bin but was kept almost constantly moving from one bin to another. A cleaning separator removed straws, husks, dirt, and weed seed; next came a scouring machine and an application of heat and moisture. Instead of the old-fashioned grinding stones, the process used several sets of rollers, which produced a series of diminishing particle sizes, or “breaks,” leading to the finest flour. Ford had a means of selling his flour directly to his employees. In 1920, he had begun operating commissaries that provided groceries, meats, clothing, shoes, coal, coke, and plant fertilizer to employee families at prices very little above cost. Ford...