Henry Ford: An Interpretation

Introduction to New Edition

INTRODUCTION David L. Lewis Seven books on Henry Ford were published in 1922and 1923.Three were extremely eulogistic , one was a scathing attack, and another was reasonably objective, although inaccurate and cursory. Then there were Ford's My Life and Work and Samuel S. Marquis's Henry Ford: An Interpretation. In 1976I described the latter as "one of the finest and most dispassionate character studies of Ford ever written." I think the same today. Of the seven, only Ford's ghostwritten autobiography was a best-seller. Marquis's book would have been widely read had not the Ford organization been fairly successful in buying up copies and persuading book dealers not to sell it. A second printing was forestalled by Ford's purchase of book rights vii INTRODUCTION from Little, Brown, and Company in order to destroy the plates. The Marquis book "became more or less a collector's item," William C. Richards states in his 1948 biography, The Last Billionaire: Henry Ford. "Copies stocked by the Detroit Public Library disappeared strangely and with such rapidity that there was much wondering as to whether [Fordmen] had withdrawn them and forgotten to bring them back. So many vanished in such a short time that the library retired remaining copies to its non-circulating shelves." In his book Marquis writes sparingly of his personal life and pre-Ford career. Before proceeding, a few salient facts. He was born on a farm near Sharon, Ohio, on June 8, 1866, thus was three years younger than Henry Ford. A descendant of several generations of Episcopalian ministers, he was sent to Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania , to pursue ecclesiastical studies. Twice he was expelled because of "intense doubts" about religion. Subsequently reinstated, he graduated with a bachelor of arts degree and viii INTRODUCTION honors in 1890. He then earned a bachelor of divinity degree at Cambridge Theology School in Massachusetts in 1893. Ordained as an Episcopalian priest, he served in churches in Woburn and Bridgewater, Massachusetts. In 1899 Marquis was called to St. Joseph's Church in Detroit. Under his rectorship, the parish prospered, and he became one of the city's better known churchmen. In 1905 he was awarded a doctor of divinity degree by his alma mater, Allegheny. The next year he was assigned to St. Paul's parish, Detroit. As dean of St. Paul's he spearheaded the building of a handsome cathedral at 4800 Woodward Avenue. Meantime, in 1894 he was married to Gertrude Lee Snyder in Warren, Ohio. The couple had four children: Dorothy, born in 1895, Barbara Lee, 1897, Rogers Israel, 1901, and Gertrude Lee, 1907. Marquis's duties at St. Paul's led to his exhaustion in 1915. His physician prescribed a year's leave of absence. The clergyman remonstrated, saying that a change of work would benefit him more than idleness. He became a volunteer in the two-year-old Socioix INTRODUCTION logical Department at Ford's Highland Park, Michigan, plant. A parishioner and friend, Henry Ford was elated, and in October 1915 invited the clergyman to join the department "and put Jesus Christ in my factory." In December , at the request of Ford's wife, Clara, Marquis accompanied Henry on the ill-fated voyage of the auto maker's "peace ship." At the plant Marquis reported to the department's first head, John R. Lee. When Lee resigned in 1919 to join the Wills-Sainte Claire Company in Marysville, Michigan, Marquis took charge of the unit, subsequently renamed the Educational Department. Marquis's social work is fully discussed in his book and also in Alan Nevins's and Frank Ernest Hill's Ford: Expansion and Challenge , 1915-1933, which draws extensively on An Interpretation. During Marquis's deanship at St. Paul's, the Marquises and Fords socialized. "Mother's and dad's and the Fords' relationship was very fine, friendly and simple," stated Barbara Marquis Carritte in 1952. "The Fords were very quiet and cordial people. They X INTRODUCTION were satisfied to spend a quiet, yet stimulating , evening with mother and dad at any time that they could. They spent many evenings together." An assistant secretary in Henry Ford's office, Harold M. Cordell, similarly recalled that "The Marquises had entree to the Fords' home and family circle." The Marquises were invited aboard the Fords' yacht and also accompanied the Fords and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas A. Edison on a chartered train that took...