The American Automotive Industry Between WWI and WWII: The Independents, the Rickenbacker, and the Jordan

 images from Detroit Public Library Digital Collections

The Independents

            To place the entire focus of the discussion on Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler would distort the nature of the automobile industry’s history during the 1920s, for there were many other automobile manufacturers during the decade. The industry was not quite yet mature, and consequently entry was still possible, and a number of marques were both innovative and popular. A shakeout would take place with the onset of the Great Depression, but even during the grim 1930s a number of smaller prodders hung on. The following chart lists a number of American car manufacturers⁴⁴, although two electric car manufacturers – Detroit and Rauch & Lang, are excluded.

Auburn	Franklin	Peerless
Buick	Gardner	Pierce Arrow
Cadillac	Hertz	Pontiac
Case	Hudson	Reo
Chandler	Hupmobile	Rickenbacker
Chevrolet	Jordan	Roamer
Chrysler	Kleiber	Rolls Royce
Cunningham	Lincoln	Star
Davis	Locomobile	Stearns
Diana	Marmon	Studebaker
Dodge Brothers	McFarlan	Stutz
DuPont	Moon	Vehie
Elcar	Nash	Wills St. Clair
Erskine	Oakland	Willis Knight
Essex	Oldsmobile
Falcon-Knight	Overland
Flint	Packard
Ford	Paige

 

            Given the complexity of the automobile market during the 1920s, it is impossible here to discuss the corporate histories of each of these firms. However, case studies of a few of these “orphan” marques may be instructive.

Innovation at the Periphery:  The Cracker Jacker, Rickenbacker

View of Eddie Rickenbacker posing with Rickenbacker car. Two unidentified men sit in car; spectators watch from grandstand in background. "AAA Contest Board" painted on side of car

            The Rickenbacker automobile, advertised as “a car worthy of its name,” was manufactured in Detroit between 1921 and 1927.⁴⁵ Named after Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, America’s “ace of aces” during World War I and the commander of the “Hat in the Ring” squadron, the Rickenbacker was designed along the lines outlined by former auto racer “Captain Eddie’s” specifications. In 1919 Rickenbacker decided that he would build a car that incorporated such race-proven advanced features as a rigid frame, 4-wheel brakes, and a high standard of construction. Envisioned as fitting in the market somewhere between the low-end Ford Model T and the far higher priced Cadillac and Packard, it was to be affordable to white-collar workers, prosperous farmers, and “women of taste.”

            Rickenbacker sold his ideas to Maxwell executive Harry L. Cunningham, who subsequently recruited an impressive management team. Among the new firm’s executives were coach builder Barney F. Everitt and Walter E. Flanders, formerly the production manager at Ford. With Cunningham as Secretary and Treasurer and Rickenbacker as Vice President and Sales Manager, the Rickenbacker Motor Company was initially well positioned.

            During 1921 a six-cylinder prototype was built and tested, $5 million worth of stock was sold, and a plant with a 12,000 unit capacity was acquired. Three Rickenbacker models debuted in 1922 – a Tourer, Opera Coupe, and Closed Sedan – and more than 3,700 cars were sold, resulting in a 5 percent stock dividend.

            Rickenbacker six- and eight-cylinder models gained a reputation for innovative technology and enhanced safety features. For example, while not the first American automobile to offer 4-wheel brakes, the Rickenbacker was the first moderately-priced car to do so. Other advances not found in less expensive models included a low vibration flywheel engine, ignition and transmission locks, and an ingenious system to purify engine oil and avoid crankcase dilution, a carburetor air cleaner, and automatic windshield washer. The proud owner of a Rickenbacker could sing along to the popular tune “Merrily I roll along and there’s nothing wrong . . . in my cracker jacker, Rickenbacker.”⁴⁶

            But in fact storm clouds soon passed over the fledgling firm, and it began to experience production and financial difficulties. By then, Walter Flanders had died the result of an unfortunate accident. Handicapped with small profit margins, Everitt cut prices without consulting dealers and stockholders. Marginal dealers went bankrupt, stockholders and management squabbled, and in 1926 Captain Eddie resigned. Everitt was now on his own and on borrowed time, and the company closed its doors in February 1927. Its machinery and engines were later sold to German industrialist J. A. Rassmussen, who used Rickenbacker engines in his Audi Dresden Sixes and Zwickau Eights between 1928 and 1932.

            Like the Richelieu, Saxon, Dort, Flint, Winton, King Jewett, Wills Ste. Clair and numerous other Midwestern automobile companies, the Rickenbacker could not survive competition from more highly capitalized and cost-efficient firms, even during America’s prosperity decade of the 1920s.

The Jordan and Advertising the Dream

Advertisement for Jordan cars from the Saturday Evening Post. Text reads: "Somewhere west of Laramie. Somewhere west of Laramie there's a broncho-busting, steer-roping girl who knows what I'm talking about. She can tell what a sassy pony, that's a cross between greased lightning and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he's going high, wide and handsome. The truth is -- the Playboy was built for her. Built for the lass whose face is brown with the sun when the day is one of revel and romp and race. She loves the cross of the wild and the tame. There's a savor of links about that car -- of laughter and lilt and light -- a hint of old loves -- and saddle and quirt. It's a brawny thing -- yet a graceful thing for the sweep o' the Avenue. Step into the Playboy when the hour grows dull with things gone dead and stale. Then start for the land of real living with the spirit of the lass who rides, lean and rangy, into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight. Jordan Motor Car Company, Inc. Cleveland, Ohio." Typed on front: "Edward S. Jordan."

View of 1930 Jordan car in showroom. "Jordan" sign on back wall. Stamped on back: "Lazarnick, photographic illustrations, 230 Park Avenue, New York Central Building, New York City, Tel. Vanderbilt 3-0011-2-3-4." Handwritten on back: "Jordan, 1930."

            The Jordan automobile presents a different story but with a similar ending. The Jordon was the result of the vision and energy of Edward S. “Ned” Jordan. Born in 1881 and educated at the University of Wisconsin, Jordan’s career included a stint in advertising at the National Cash Register Company in Dayton and in a similar position with the Jeffery Automobile Company, located in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In 1916, Jordan organized his own automobile company, located in Cleveland, Ohio, with the idea that the firm’s vehicles would manufacture cars that cost not quite as much as a Cadillac but more than a Buick. Always relatively expensive and assembled from parts, engines, and bodies made elsewhere, about 80,000 units were sold between 1916 and 1931. Normally priced over $2,000, the Jordan was marketed at the well-to-do.

            The Jordon was noteworthy for several reasons. Ned Jordan had an uncanny understanding of well-to-do American consumers from the point of view of color, and from the firm’s origins, his cars could be ordered in a number of unusual shades, long before the color revolution of the late 1920s. Thus, as early as 1917 Jordan cars could be purchased in colors such as Liberty Blue, Pershing Gray, Italian Tan, Jordan Maroon, Mercedes Red, and Venetian Green. And when the “True Blue” Oakland was introduced in 1923, Jordan quickly followed with its 1923 Blue Boy model. Secondly, Jordan understood the post-WWI youth market and responded with the marque’s most famous model, the Playboy. Supposedly, the Playboy idea was the result of Ned’s dance with a 19-year old Philadelphia socialite, who quipped, “Mr. Jordan, why don’t you build a car for the girl who loves to swim, paddle and shoot and for the boy who loves the roar of a cut out?”⁴⁷ Ned would later refer to this as a million dollar idea, and the Playboy was born. Finally, Jordan was a flamboyant advertising copywriter, and it would be in his Playboy ad copy written in 1923, “Somewhere West of Laramie,” that American automobile advertising would be transformed.

While there is little doubt that twentieth century advertisements serve as important cultural documents, there is considerable debate as to their meaning.⁴⁸ In his Understanding Media (1964), Marshall McLuhan asserted that “historians . . . will one day discover that the ads of our times are the richest and most faithful daily reflections that any society ever made of its entire range of activities.” This is especially true in a capitalist economy, where consumption and persuasion are so important. Raymond Williams insightfully labeled advertising as capitalism’s “official art.” With regard to advertising, the work of Judith Williamson, Roland Marchand and William O’Barr all significantly contribute to an understanding of its meaning. Williamson’s Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising provides the reader with a step-by-step guide in the dissection of an advertisement. Marchand’s Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity is a powerful example of how a cultural historian can employ advertising to reconstruct the past. And O’ Barr’s work, while primarily aimed at using advertising to illuminate discursive themes in social history that include hierarchy, power, relationships, and dominance, has an excellent synthetic theoretical introduction. O’Barr follows along the lines of Marchand in arguing that social and cultural values appearing in advertisements are more a refraction than a representation. The two scholars also agree that audience response, while important to copywriters, is beyond the scope of the historian, and at any rate problematic. Past audience responses are simply impossible to accurately reconstruct. In the present, there is no simple way to ascertain meaning, for meaning involves the interplay of the naive with the critical, and thus there is an ultimate variance among interpreters. The problems associated with the use of advertising, however, can be extended to many, if not all of the various manuscript, textual, visual, and oral sources used by the historian.

            In the early days of automobile advertising, the features of an automobile were often emphasized. For example an ad for the new 1917 seven passenger Oldsmobile claimed that

            This light weight, eight cylinder car combines power, acceleration, speed, economy, comfort, beauty, and luxury in a measure hitherto undreamed of in alight car. The eight-cylinder motor, developing 58 horsepower at 2,6000 r.p.m., with the light weight of the car – 3,000 pounds – presents a proportion of power to total car weight of approximately one horsepower to every 51 pounds – an unusually favorable ratio. The comfort of the car is beyond description. Long, flat, flexible springs and perfect balance of chassis insure easy riding under any kind of going. The seats, upholstered with fine, long grain French leather stuffed with pliant springs encased in linen sacks, increase comfort to the point of luxury.

            This style of advertising was swept aside by the mid-1920s. In 1923, Edward S. Jordan created the most famous auto ad of all time to move his colorful Playboy Roadsters.⁴⁹ Jordan had a gift for writing advertising copy; in 1920 a Playboy ad suggested a visit to a local bordello:

            Somewhere far beyond the place where man and motors race through canyons of the town – there lies the Port of Missing Men.

            It may be in the valley of our dreams of youth, or the heights of future happy days.

            Go there in November when logs are blazing in the grate. Go there in a Jordan Playboy if you love the spirit of youth.

            Escape the drab of dull winter’s coming – leave the roar of city streets and spend an hour in Eldorado.⁵⁰

            While traveling on a train across the flat and monotonous Wyoming plains, a tall, tan, and athletic horsewoman suddenly appeared, racing her horse toward Jordan’s window. For a brief moment the two were rather close as the woman smiled at him; then she turned and was gone. Jordan asked a fellow traveler where they were: “Oh, somewhere west of Laramie,” was the desultory reply. Within minutes he composed an immortal ad that later appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. Beneath an illustration of a cowgirl racing a sporty Jordan roadster against a cowboy straining to push his fleet-looking steed to catch up with her, there appeared these words: 

Somewhere west of Laramie there’s a bronco-busting, steer roping girl who knows what I am talking about. She can tell what a sassy pony, that’s a cross between greased lightning and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he’s going high, wide and handsome.

The truth is the Playboy was built for her.

Built for the lass whose face is brown with the sun when the day is done of revel and romp and race.

Step into the Playboy when the hour grows dull with things gone dead and stale.

Then start for the land of real living with the spirit of the lass who rides, lean and rangy, into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight.

The Playboy sold like hot cakes, and this ad galvanized the auto industry. Soon Chevrolet and Rickenbacker responded with ad lines “All outdoors can be yours,” and “The American Beauty,” respectively.⁵¹

            Previously ads mentioned the features of the car, but with the Jordan ad new parameters came into play – freedom, speed, and romance. Emblematic was the fact that the practical Model T's life had come to an end. Now it would be art and color that was the key to auto sales.

            The prosperity decade of the 1920s resulted in a remarkable restructuring of the American automobile industry and a drive towards consolidation as numerous small manufacturers dropped out of the marketplace. Given the drive towards efficiencies in production and distribution, intense pressures were placed not only on the workmen who assembled the cars, but also the consumers who bought them, increasingly on credit and after being exposed to more subtle and suggestive advertising. With more wealth and disposable income, consumers wanted more – more horsepower, more size, more colors and style, and more conveniences. The automobile was now an object of desire among all classes of Americans, and as such it transformed our personal and social habits, as well as the road and roadside.

Automobile Theft During the 1920s in America

 

Gone in Sixty Seconds: Joyriders and Criminals

            With Ford’s “democratization” of the automobile and an explosion in the number of vehicles came an epidemic of automobile theft. Machines produced in mass quantities made easy prey for “joy-riders” and professional criminals. Moreover, the automobile was valuable, mobile, and its parts were interchangeable. Lucrative domestic and international markets for stolen automobiles and stolen parts yielded high profits. Interchangeable parts also gave thieves the opportunity to quickly reconstruct and disguise stolen automobiles. As evinced by thieves’ ability to alter serial numbers, duplicate registration papers, switch radiators, and replace entire engine blocks, a nascent uniformity welcomed theft. Moreover, thieves sought out and stole the most ubiquitous automobile; popular, mid-priced models were most likely to be stolen, along with the easy to steal Model T. As early as 1910 joyriding and automobile theft were problems for the automobilist. Major concerns centered on the unauthorized use of an owner’s vehicle by a chauffeur or a parking attendant. To that end a number of devices were marketed, from a gear shift lever lock to recorders that kept tabs on when a vehicle was actually being driven.⁸⁴

            Until the introduction of the electric self-starter in 1912, automobiles employed a battery/magneto switch along with a crank.⁸⁵ The automobilist turned the switch to B (battery), got outside the car, cranked the engine, and then once it started, moved the lever to M (magneto) and adjusted the carburetor. On early Ford Model T’s, the battery/magneto switch had a brass lever key, but there were only two types, with either a round or square shank. Later, in 1919, Ford offered an optional lockable electric starter, but only used twenty-four key patterns. To make things easy for the thief, each pattern was stamped with a code on both the key and the starter plate. Would-be joy-riders needed only a little luck to drive off with any unguarded Model T.

            Unlike other stolen goods, the automobile enabled its own escape. As one author observed in 1919:

            Not only is the motor vehicle a particularly valuable piece of property . . . but it furnishes at the same time an almost ideal getaway . . . With the automobile there is no planning to be done. With a thousand divergent roads open to him and a vehicle possessing almost unlimited speed, escape is practically automatic.⁸⁶

            A New York Police official commented in 1916 that, “the automobile is a very easy thing to steal and a hard thing to find.”⁸⁷ As early as 1915, 401 automobiles were stolen in New York and only 338 were recovered.⁸⁸ By 1920, it was estimated that one-tenth of cars manufactured annually were eventually stolen. Astonishingly, perhaps, in 1925 it was estimated that 200,000 to 250,000 cars were stolen annually.⁸⁹ Table 2 provides theft data for major American cities.

Table 2.  Automobile Thefts in Major American Cities, 1922-1925

City	Year
	1922	1923	1924	1925
New York	7,107	7,959	10,064	11,895
Chicago	3,636	2,334	4,946	7,587
Detroit	3,194	4,428	7,187	11,750
Los Angeles	4,802	4,218	7,326	8,392
San Francisco	1,960	2,154	3,257	3,746
Dayton	249	313	366	485

Source:  Automotive Industries, 56 (February 19, 1927), 283.

            Further, the automobile created new opportunities for criminals and confronted legal authorities with a myriad of problems. One author noted that, “as automobile thefts increase burglaries and robberies increase.”⁹⁰ The automobile itself was stolen, but the automobile also played a central role in kidnapping, rum running, larceny, burglary, traffic crimes, robberies, and the deadly accidents of the “lawless years.”⁹¹ The Baltimore Criminal Justice Commission reported that 

In August, 1922, one of Baltimore’s well known and highly respected citizens was held up, robbed of $7000 and brutally murdered in broad daylight on the busy thoroughfares of the city. The bandits perpetrating this carefully planned crime escaped in a high powered car bearing stolen license plates.⁹²

            In 1924, Arch Mandel of the Dayton Research Association observed, “The motor vehicle has ushered in a new era of crime and police problems, and apparently a new type of offender.”⁹³ “To cope with this problem” Mandel wrote, “police departments have been obliged to detail special squads and to establish special bureaus for recovering stolen automobiles . . . this has added to the cost of operating police departments.”⁹⁴ Consequently, the increase in mobility was matched with a growth in government. The cost of police work in cities with populations over 30,000 rose steadily from approximately $38 million in 1903 to $184.5 million in 1927.⁹⁵ Automobile theft added new categories of crimes, and as a piece of technology became a central part of burglary and housebreaking. In Philadelphia, 8,896 people were arrested for assault and battery by the automobile.⁹⁶ In response, police began to patrol with the automobile. In 1922, Chicago police complained that their worn-out “tin lizzies” should be scrapped; they could not catch the high powered hold-up car that traveled at sixty miles an hour.⁹⁷ Even with the growth of government and the advent of patrolling, police forces were out-maneuvered by mobile criminals. Contrary to the iconic Prohibition image of police forces smashing barrels of alcohol, municipal police forces may have dealt with automobiles on a more regular basis. 

            Automobile theft was most acute in Detroit and Los Angeles. “Naturally Detroit is peculiarly liable to this trouble because it has such a large floating population of men trained in mechanical expertise in the various factories.”⁹⁸ It stood to reason that Ford’s workers stole Ford’s Cars. In Detroit, in 1928, a total of 11,259 cars were stolen.⁹⁹ The same year in Los Angeles 10,813 automobiles were stolen.¹⁰⁰ By the 1920s, Los Angeles had the most automobiles per resident in the United States. Historian Scott Bottles pointed out, “By 1925, every other Angelino owned an automobile as opposed to the rest of the country where there was only one car for every six people.”¹⁰¹ Angelinos had more opportunities to steal cars. Baltimore, New York City, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Omaha, St. Louis, and many other cities also experienced major problems related to automobile theft. In an article published in Country Life, Alexander Johnson revealed the problem was not just endemic to urban America:  “We who live in the country are not quite as subject as our urban brethren to this abominable outrage, but automobile stealing is carried on even in the rural districts.”¹⁰² 

            The cost of police work in state governments also rose from approximately $98 million in 1915 to $117 million in 1927.¹⁰³ To combat auto theft, state governments created license, registration, title, and statistical bureaus and urged the federal government to become involved. E. Austin Baughman, Commissioner of Motor Vehicles of Maryland, cited 1919 as “the climax of an epidemic of car stealing” with 922 cars stolen, 709 recovered, and 213 missing.¹⁰⁴ Baughman urged the country to adopt a Title Law which would assure all motor vehicles could be identified and located through the name and address of the owner on record. ¹⁰⁵ The bureau helped Maryland to gather statistics:

. . . one can in a comparatively short time find anything from how many 1912 Cadillacs are still in existence in this state, to how many more Fords were stolen than Chevrolets in 1923 or 1922; and from how many six- and seven-ton trucks are still in use in Maryland and to what percentage of cars stolen in 1923 are still missing.¹⁰⁶

In 1920, Massachusetts developed a similar program under the used-car department of the Department of Public Works.¹⁰⁷ States that did not pass title laws were a nationwide liability and became alleged “dumping grounds” by neighboring states.¹⁰⁸

            The inter-state nature of automobile theft demanded federal intervention. The automobile nullified state boundaries and contributed to the nationalization of crime fighting. Arch Mandel wrote in 1924 that, “State lines have been eliminated by the automobile” and the “detection of criminals is becoming more and more a nation-wide task.”¹⁰⁹ 

            In 1919, Congress passed the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act, which received the appellation of its sponsor, Senator Leonidus Dyer. The Dyer Act promulgated that thieves receive fines of $5,000 and 10 years in prison, or both. The American Automobile Association lobbied congress to pass the Dyer Act.¹¹⁰ Consequently, between 1922-1933 auto thefts were the most prominent federal prosecution of interstate commerce.¹¹¹

            During the first two decades of the twentieth century, of auto theft was blamed on the owner negligence. A 1916 insurance company pamphlet entitled “Emergency Instructions,” warned owners that “when dining in a public restaurant the driver of the car should be seated in such a position that he can observe his car.”¹¹² Basic instructions also warned to “not leave your car unprotected on the street or any place at any time.”¹¹³ However, in 1922 many automobile owners left keys in their unlocked cars.¹¹⁴ An article in Popular Mechanics Magazine observed, “Approximately seventy-five percent of all the cars that were not stolen were not locked at all.”¹¹⁵ One author chastised drivers for leaving automobiles unattended for an hour or more.¹¹⁶ Beyond common-sense precautions, automobile owners were advised to take preventive measures to stop early car thieves. Owners were advised to lock their doors or “garage” their automobiles. In his 1917 article “Automobile Thefts,” John Brennan proposed one countermeasure:  “If owners would only take steps to put private identification marks on their cars, the problem of automobile thievery would be a simple one to solve.”¹¹⁷ It was suggested that the owner bore holes into the underside of the running boards, scratch their name somewhere secret, or tape an identification card inside the upholstery.¹¹⁸ A 1926 article in Popular Mechanics passed on to readers one motorist’s intricate plan of fake coils and pseudo ignition connections.¹¹⁹ Other articles proposed that owners disconnect the magneto. In any case, the prevailing attitude of the day was that automobile theft was usually the owner’s fault. In 1929, E. L. Rickards, manager of the Automobile Protective and Information Bureau in Chicago, stated: “A man or woman who leaves his car unlocked and unattended is committing an offense against society.”¹²⁰

            Thieves were recognized as frauds, joy-riders, professionals, and gangs. They stole a range of models, but mostly low-priced Chevrolets, Plymouths, Chryslers, and Fords.¹²¹ Furthermore, automobiles were most likely to be stolen in business or entertainment districts, where individuals parked the same models in the same place. Often a thief caught red-handed simply claimed that they had hopped into the wrong car. When interrogated by a judge, one thief explained why he was in the wrong Ford: “Because both cars are Fords, and all Fords look alike, not only to me but to their owners.”¹²² Charges were dropped. Despite preferences to steal commonplace vehicles, elite and unusual automobiles were not exempt from the threat of theft. Expensive cars were stolen, disassembled and repainted.

            Early automobile thefts were performed by owners who would, “steal their own car.” To collect on insurance, owners would strip the car of accessories and move it to an out of the way location. The owner would work with a thief: . . . the owner is in partnership with the thief. An auto, for instance, that is insured for $2,000 is reported by the owner as having been stolen. The machine is worth $1,500. So the owner, collecting his theft insurance, makes a clean profit of $500.¹²³

            Owners in debt often defrauded insurance companies as well: “an automobile owner, after using his insured car for nine or ten months, discovers that its market value is 40 percent lower than when first purchased; also the cost of maintaining the machine, oil, gasoline, tires, repairs, etc., is considerably in excess of the figure on which his first maintenance costs were based.”¹²⁴

            Quite different in terms of criminal intent were the activities of the so-called joy-rider. Joy-riders stole for thrills. In 1917, Secretary to the Detroit Chief of Police, George A. Walters estimated that 90 percent of Detroit’s auto thefts were performed by joy-riders.¹²⁵ Joy-riders were often groups of young men in pursuit of fun, and had a “taste for motoring.”¹²⁶ One author argued that joy-riders (in all cases male) had a sexual motivation, “Some young fellow with sporty tendencies and a slim pocketbook wants to make a hit with some charming member of the opposite sex . . . he thinks an automobile would help him in the pursuit of her affections.”¹²⁷ After a joy-ride, automobiles were often found damaged and out of gas. Historian David Wolcott has noted that in Los Angeles, “Boys approached auto theft with a surprisingly casual attitude – they often just took vehicles that they found unattended, drove them around for an evening and abandoned them when they were done – but the LAPD treated auto theft very seriously.”¹²⁸ In the early period of automobility, authorities considered “joy-riding” a serious societal problem. Joy-riding was an action of a delinquent. Joy-riding was so serious that young boys were prosecuted under the Dyer Act of 1919. The federal government did not draw a distinction between joy-riding and professional auto theft until 1930.¹²⁹ Congressmen Dyer called for the repeal of his own law, and to convince the U.S. House of Representatives of the need for repeal, he read a letter from the superintendent of a penitentiary:

Of the 450 Federal Boys in the National Training School here in Washington, nearly 200 are violators of the Dyer Act, with the ages distributed as follows: Two boys 12 years of age, 6 boys 13 years of age, 19 boys 14 years of age, 31 boys of 15 years of age, 64 boys 16 years of age, 48 boys 17 years of age, 19 boys of 18 years of age, 1 boy 19 years of age, and 1 boy 22 years of age.¹³⁰

Due to the capricious nature of theft for a joy-ride, policemen and journalists surmised that it could be easily prevented: “It is against this class of thief that the various types of automobile-locking devices and hidden puzzles are effective . . . since the joy-rider does more than half the stealing it follows that car-locks are more than 50 percent effective in protecting a car.”¹³¹ However, more elaborate means would be necessary to stop the professional thief.

            Writers who addressed auto theft from 1915 to 1938 admitted that the professional thief could not be stopped. Professional thieves employed an array of tactics to steal automobiles. Often chauffeurs, mechanics, and garage men became thieves. Even though locks supposedly prevented theft by joy-riders, thieves would simply cut padlocks and chains with bolt-cutters.¹³² Often this was not necessary, since keys to early Fords were easy to obtain. In 1917, Edward C. Crossman described the naïve Ford owner:

Ford owners take out the switch key on the coil box and go strutting off as if they’d [sic] locked the car in the safe deposit box. The first half-baked auto mechanic who needs a Ford can slip in another key and depart via the jitney route without paying his fair.¹³³

Crossman’s solution was to lock a heavy metal band around the front wheel of the automobile.¹³⁴ In a May 1929 article “Tricks of the Auto Thief,” Popular Mechanics described the array of tactics open to the automobile thief. Thieves stole accessories, unlocked and started cars with duplicate keys, “jumped” the ignition by placing a wire across the ignition coil to the spark plugs, ripped-off car dealerships, and towed cars away.¹³⁵ “Some thieves make a specialty of buying wrecked or burned cars as junk . . . they receive a bill of sale, salvage parts which they place on stolen cars, and so disguise the finished automobile as a legitimate car for which they have the bill of sale.”¹³⁶ One method called “kissing them away” involved an individual breaking into a car, and being unable to start the ignition, a “confederate,” would push the stolen car with his car from behind. The car would be moved into a garage or alley and promptly dismantled.¹³⁷ Thieves used interchangeable parts to confuse authorities. In 1925, Joe Newell, head of the automobile theft bureau in Des Moines, Iowa, stated, “the greatest transformation that takes place in the stolen machine is in the clever doctoring of motor serial numbers . . . this is the first thing a thief does to a car.”¹³⁸ Automobiles were branded with a serial number that corresponded to a factory record, but thieves used several tactics to change the numbers. The “doctoring” of numbers involved filing down numbers and branding a new numbers into the car, or changing single numbers. In a detailed article entitled “Stolen Automobile Investigation,” William J. Davis noted, “It is possible for a thief to restamp a 4 over a 1; an 8 over a 3 where the 3 is a round top 3; a 5 over a 3; to change a 6 to an 8, or a 9 to an 8, or an 0 to an 8.”¹³⁹

            Apparently the joy-riding problem declined in the 1930s, but organized gangs emerged as a more serious threat to steal automobiles and, in the process, vex authorities. In Popular Science Monthy, Edward Teale noted:

. . . the automobile stealing racket in the United States has mounted to a $50,000,000-a-year business. During the first six months of 1932, 36,000 machines disappeared in seventy-two American cities alone. In New York City, $2,000,000 worth of cars was reported stolen in 1931.¹⁴⁰

Gangs developed sophisticated automobile theft operations from the expert driver to expert mechanic. Gangs even developed their own vernacular.¹⁴¹ A stolen car was a “kinky,” or a “hot short.” The “clouter” actually stole the car and the “wheeler” drove it to the “dog house.” The thieves were concerned with stealing the popular, mid-priced, widely-used makes. Gangs often specialized in a certain make or model. One New York gang “scrambled” the stolen automobiles: “a number of machines of the same make and model are stolen at the same time . . . wheels are switched, transmissions shifted, bodies’ changed, and engines transferred from one car to another.”¹⁴²

            At other times, gangs would use the “mother system.” Under this system, thieves stole a certain make, had a fake bill of sale made, and changed all of the serial numbers to be identical to the bill of sale. Ultimately, four or five of the same car, with the same serial numbers and bills of sale would exist.¹⁴³ In 1936, J. Edgar Hoover penned an article about gangster and international car thief named Gabriel Vigorito (a.k.a. Bla-Bla Blackman), who had amassed a $1 million fortune from automobile theft.¹⁴⁴ “The “hot car” depots of a dozen states dealt in his goods . . . In Persia, Russia, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and even China, the American car business included many automobiles stolen from the streets of Brooklyn.” Authorities convicted Bla-Bla to ten years in prison. Historically, the point is poignant: the automobile trumped not only state lines, but national lines. The rise of an industrial and global industry also rose with a global theft ring. In 1936, the Roosevelt Administration entered a treaty with Mexico for “the recovery and return of stolen or embezzled motor vehicles, trailers, airplanes or the component parts of any of them.”¹⁴⁵ The treaty prompted a convention with Mexico in 1937 to address the stolen automobile problem.¹⁴⁶

            To control rampant automobile crimes, authorities developed scientific means to fight crime. As early as 1919, a system of fingerprints to identify automobile owners was proposed.¹⁴⁷ Throughout the 1920s, law enforcement of automobile theft remained ineffective. By 1934, police developed sophisticated means to monitor a more mobile public. In 1936 it was urged that “every city join the nation-wide network of inter-city radio-telegraph service provided for by the Federal Communications Commission.”¹⁴⁸ Police developed processes using chemicals and torches to identify fake serial numbers. Los Angeles police department officers departed the station for their shift with a list of stolen automobiles printed the night before.¹⁴⁹ Developments in communication aided police officers. “Chattering teletype machines and short-wave radio messages outdistance the fleetest car, while police encircle a fleeing criminal in an effort to make escape impossible.”¹⁵⁰ Radio communication made auto theft difficult. By 1934, “auto thieves found their racket a losing one.”¹⁵¹ In response to mobile crime, Governments at all levels grew more sophisticated. Insurance companies also grew more sophisticated: “In Chicago, a central salvage bureau, maintained by insurance companies is being established in an effort to wipe out a 10,000,000-a-year racket in stolen parts.”¹⁵² Automobile manufacturers invested in a “pick-proof” lock.¹⁵³ From 1933 to 1936, insurance companies and the government destroyed the market for stolen automobiles and stolen parts. In 1934 Popular Science Monthly reported, “figures compiled by the National Automobile Underwriters Association show that eighty-six percent of the cars stolen in 1930 were recovered while in 1931 eighty-two percent were recovered and eighty-nine percent in 1932.”¹⁵⁴

 What the above paragraphs suggest is that the automobile placed unprecedented challenges before local, state, and federal government agencies, and in response the responsibilities and scale of government changed as a consequence. Indeed, the law itself changed, and that included the area of tort law during the 1920s, as sorting out negligence as a consequence of automobile accidents also posed new problems that demanded innovative structural solutions.

85 Years Ago: Rudolf Cracciola sets a World Speed Record, 432.7 km/hr

 

28 January 1938, Rudolf Caracciola sets a world speed record for public roads on the Frankfurt–Darmstadt motorway at 432.7 km/h in the record-breaking Mercedes-Benz W 125 V12 car. Photo during the record run, in the background the Zeppelin hangar near Frankfurt am Main. (Photo signature of the Mercedes-Benz Classic Archives: R5682)

28 January 1938 – 85 years ago

World record: Rudolf Caracciola reaches 432.7 km/h on the Frankfurt–Darmstadt motorway

• Mercedes-Benz V12 supercharged engine with 541 kW (736 hp)
• Drag coefficient of only cW= 157
• The world speed record holds for 79 years

In the 1930s, world record runs are as important as Grand Prix races. Mercedes-Benz and other leading manufacturers are chasing after new records. On 28 January 1938, there is a climax: the record-breaking cars from Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union compete against each other on a section of the Frankfurt–Darmstadt motorway. Rudolf Caracciola, the most successful driver of an entire era, starts for the brand with the three-pointed star. He becomes European champion three times in the 1930s. The title can be compared to that of today’s Formula One world champion. For the world speed record on public roads over the flying kilometre, the average value of the outward and return journey is determined. Caracciola reaches 432.7 km/h. This record holds for 79 years: it isn’t until 2017 that another vehicle is faster. The record-breaking Mercedes-Benz car based on the W 125 Grand Prix racing car has a drag coefficient of only cW = 0.157. It is powered by a 5.6-litre twelve-cylinder engine. Two Roots superchargers increase the output to 541 kW (736 hp). Today, the record-breaking car is part of the permanent exhibition of the Mercedes-Benz Museum. During the record attempts, a tragic accident occurs: Bernd Rosemeyer is at the starting line for the competing Auto Union – and has a fatal accident during his record attempt.

Level 3 conditional automated driving approved in Nevada to Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot System

 

DRIVE PILOT builds on the surround sensors of the Driving Assistance Package and comprises additional sensors that Mercedes-Benz considers indispensable for safe conditionally automated driving. These include LiDAR, as well as a camera in the rear window and microphones, especially for detecting blue lights and other signals from emergency vehicles. There is also a wetness sensor in the wheel well. The S-Class with optional DRIVE PILOT also has redundant steering and braking systems and a redundant on-board electrical system. This ensures that it remains maneuverable even if one of these systems fails and enables safe handover to the driver.

Mercedes‑Benz is the world’s first automotive company to bring SAE Level 3[1] conditionally automated driving to the U.S., with Nevada being the first state to confirm the compliance of the system with state regulations. This significant milestone sets the ground-breaking Mercedes‑Benz DRIVE PILOT system apart as the first and only SAE Level 3 system in a standard-production vehicle authorized for use on U.S. public freeways. Complying with the requirements of Nevada Chapter 482A for Autonomous Vehicles, DRIVE PILOT will allow the driver to hand over the dynamic driving task to the vehicle under certain conditions. Mercedes‑Benz has the ambition to continue to expand to California later this year with the certification documents already filed with state authorities. DRIVE PILOT will be available in the U.S. market as an option for model year 2024 Mercedes‑Benz S-Class and EQS Sedan models, with the first cars delivered to customers in the second half of 2023.

“In the modern world, time is one of the most precious commodities, and giving back time to our customers is a core element in our strategy to build the world’s most desirable cars. Our DRIVE PILOT takes a major step forward in achieving that, and places us at the very forefront of innovation in the crucially important field of automated driving. DRIVE PILOT demonstrates once more that our pioneering spirit is part of our DNA. Certification in Nevada marks the start of its international rollout and, with it, the dawning of a new era.”
Markus Schäfer, Member of the Board of Management of Mercedes‑Benz Group AG, Chief Technology Officer, responsible for Development and Procurement.

On suitable freeway sections and where there is high traffic density, DRIVE PILOT can offer to take over the dynamic driving task, up to the speed of 40 mph. The control buttons needed for this are located in the steering wheel rim, on the left and right above the thumb recesses. Once conditions are suitable, the system indicates availability on the control buttons. When the driver activates DRIVE PILOT, the system controls the speed and distance, and effortlessly guides the vehicle within its lane. The route profile, events occurring on the route and traffic signs are correspondingly taken into consideration. The system also reacts to unexpected traffic situations and handles them independently, e.g., by evasive maneuvers within the lane or by braking maneuvers.

“An unwavering commitment to innovation has consistently guided Mercedes‑Benz from the very beginning. It is a very proud moment for everyone to continue this leadership and celebrate this monumental achievement as the first automotive company to be certified for Level 3 conditionally automated driving in the U.S. market.”
Dimitris Psillakis, President and CEO of MBUSA.

LiDAR sensor and redundant systems

The top priority for Mercedes‑Benz when introducing such a system is safety, which includes high demands on operational reliability. DRIVE PILOT builds on the surround sensors of the Driving Assistance Package and comprises additional sensors that Mercedes‑Benz considers indispensable for safe conditionally automated driving. These include LiDAR, as well as a camera in the rear window and microphones for detecting emergency vehicles, as well as a road wetness sensor in the wheel well. A vehicle equipped with the optional DRIVE PILOT system also has redundant steering and braking actuators and a redundant on-board electrical system, so that it remains maneuverable even if one of these systems fails and a safe handover to the driver can be ensured.

If the driver fails to take back control even after increasingly urgent prompting and expiration of the takeover time (e.g., due to a severe health problem), the system brakes the vehicle to a standstill in a controlled manner while engaging the hazard warning lights. Once the vehicle has come to a standstill, the Mercedes‑Benz emergency call system is activated and the doors are unlocked to make the interior accessible for first responders.

High-precision positioning system

The exact location of a Mercedes‑Benz equipped with DRIVE PILOT is determined using a high-precision positioning system that is much more powerful than conventional GPS systems. In addition to the anonymised data collected by LiDAR, camera, radar and ultrasound sensors, a digital HD map provides a three-dimensional image of the road and the surroundings with information on road geometry, route characteristics, traffic signs and special traffic events (e.g. accidents or road works). This is made available and updated via a backend connection.

This high-precision map differs from maps for navigation devices by, among other things, its higher accuracy in the centimetre rather than metre range and its detailed junction and route model. The map data is stored in backend data centres and updated constantly. Each vehicle also stores an image of this map information on board, constantly compares it with the backend data and updates the local dataset as required. All of this enables stable and accurate positioning through a representation of the surroundings that is independent of factors such as shadows or dirty sensors.

A powerful chipset inside the central control unit provides the necessary sophisticated software functions for conditionally automated driving while important algorithms are calculated redundantly within the framework of a modern security architecture.

Conditionally automated driving on suitable freeway sections

During the conditionally automated journey, DRIVE PILOT allows the driver to take their mind off the traffic and focus on certain secondary activities[2]. When DRIVE PILOT is active, applications can be enabled on the vehicle's integrated central display that are otherwise blocked while driving.

Initially introduced in Germany in May 2022, the highly sophisticated Mercedes‑Benz DRIVE PILOT system was the first SAE Level 3 system in the world to meet the demanding legal requirements of UN‑R157. The German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) first granted system approval based on the regulation UN‑R157, paving the way for offering DRIVE PILOT internationally[3], where legislation allows.

Henry Ford: The Social Complexities of the Assembly Line In Detroit

View of assembly line workers with Ford car chassis at the River Rouge Plant. Printed on front: "An assembly line of the Ford Motor Company." Printed on back: "An assembly line of the Ford Motor Company. The assembly line is always a point of interest to visitors of the Rouge Plant. Here, on a moving conveyor, Ford cars are completely assembled, from chassis to finished car, and driven off the line under their own power. In addition to the Rouge plant, there are 31 assembly lines in company branches throughout the United States. The Garraway Company, Rutherford, New Jersey.” Photograph from Detroit Public Library

The Genesis of Mass Production at Highland Park

The offshoot of scientific management – mass production – was put into practice for the first time around 1913. Only later in 1926 did Ford articulate it as “focusing upon … the principles of power, accuracy, economy, system, continuity, and speed.” How mass production fit in with organization and the market was further articulated by Ford in this way:

The interpretation of these principles, through studies of operation and machine development and their coordination, is the conspicuous task of management. And the normal result is a productive organization that delivers in quantities a useful commodity of standard materials, workmanship and design at a minimal cost. The necessary, precedent condition of mass production is a capacity, latent or developed, of mass consumption, the ability to absorb large production. The two go together, and in the latter may be traced the reasons for the former.¹⁷

            The assembly line that followed, contrary to popular thought both then and now, was not simply the idea or the result of the efforts of Henry Ford alone. During a tour of Henry Ford’s Rouge, I watched a film on the history of mass production that gave total credit to Henry Ford for both the concept and implementation of this system of manufacturing. The film, shown every day to thousands of visitors, perpetuates a lie; for there were many unnamed individuals who contributed to what became mass production at the Ford Motor Company. 

            Indeed, James Flink summarized the story as one in which mass production developed upward from the shop floor rather than downward from Henry, with key individuals that included skilled tool makers like Carl Emde and staff members C. Harold Wills, Joseph Galamb, Charles Sorenson, Clarence Avery, William C. Klann, and P. E. Martin.¹⁸ It was this group and others, who through experiment and trial and error gradually perfected a way of making automobiles at the Highland Park factory. Fixed work benches, where the assembly of component parts took place, gave way to a series of positions along a moving line where one small component after another was added.¹⁹

            Scientific management had an enormous influence on the nature of American life during the early twentieth century, and nowhere was that more obvious than at the Ford’s Highland Park factory. It was there that by trial and error Ford and his team of engineers and mechanics developed the system of dragging a car chassis across the floor to stations where parts, brought by pulley, conveyor, or inclined plane were bolted on. Unlike the Model T itself, the assembly line took time to develop to a level of perfection, as numerous improvements to the line were implemented during the T’s 18-year production run. Ford applied four basic principles to increase efficiency:  the work must be brought to the man; the work should be done waist high to eliminate lifting; waste motion, human or mechanical, must be minimized; and finally, each task must be reduced to utmost simplicity.²⁰

            The impact of the assembly line at Ford was staggering, as the volume of production was unprecedented and cost reductions unparalleled. Once governed by skilled mechanics, the shop floor was conquered by scientific management and the assembly line. This process was nearly completed by 1914. 

            Joyce Shaw Peterson has described the creation of the assembly line as a series of processes that began with arranging production in an orderly sequence and ended with the development of overhead conveyors. By 1913 an assembly line operated at Ford, and by 1916, helped by Ford’s openness to journalists and visitors, it was institutionalized in various forms throughout the automobile industry. The gradual perfection of the assembly line inaugurated a second phase of automobile production between 1908 and 1925, and which produced the Model T in volume. It entailed rigid standardization, extensive division and subdivision of tasks, and progressive line production. It was an inflexible process, as opposed to a more flexible mass production system that emerged in the late 1920s. Under Fordism, semiskilled/unskilled workers operated highly specialized machines. In 1910, nearly 75 percent of all jobs were classified as skilled work, but by 1924 expert work declined to 5 to 10 percent.²¹ The development of machine technology was crucial to control of the production process because it eliminated the need for strength or training. James Flink explained that, “Fordism meant that neither physical strength nor the long apprenticeship required for becoming a competent craftsmen were any long prerequisites for industrial employment. The creativity and experience on the job that had been valued in the craftsmen were considered liabilities in the assembly-line worker.”²² Furthermore, Flink lamented that “the American myth of unlimited individual social mobility, based on ability and the ideal of the self-made man, became a frustrating impossibility for the assembly-line worker.”²³ Dexterity, speed, and concentration replaced craft and experience. 

            By 1913, a majority of workers were semiskilled or unskilled and operated a highly specialized machine that nearly eliminated the “human element.” The process is evinced in Arnold and Faroute’s observations in Ford Methods and the Ford Shops:  “When the moving-assembly line was placed in work with 29 men, splitting the one man operations into 29 operations, the 29 men began turning out 132 magneto assemblies per hour, or 1,188 per 9-hour day, one man’s time producing one fly-wheel magneto assembly in 13 minutes 10 seconds, a saving of 7 minutes time on each assembly or more than one-third of the best one-man time.”²⁴

            In addition to descriptions of the production process, Arnold and Faroute took iconic photographs of Ford’s workers, but their “classic” observations were about machines, not laborers. In a description of “Assembling the Steering and Front Axle,” they wrote, “there are two operations to be performed: (1) to press the arm in its seat in the sub-axle hub boss; (2) to screw the nut on the threaded end of the steering arm.”²⁵ No attempt was made to describe the three men in the photograph.

            The assembly line initiated what scholar Harry Braverman has called the “degradation of work.”²⁶ Braverman’s thesis was subsequently modified and pursued by sociologist David Gartman in Auto Slavery: The Labor Process in the American Automobile Industry, 1897-1950.²⁷ Gartman asserted that the assembly line was born of class antagonisms rather than a technological rationality. Motivated by the “narcotic” of profit, capitalists wrestled production away from the craftsman. The craftsmen, having lost the ability to control pace and accuracy, became vulnerable to exploitation. Labor was reduced to repetitive, mindless motions. To vindicate his thesis, Garman distinguished between “repressive” capitalist and “non-repressive” natural controls of labor. Finally, bureaucracy and occupations were created to buttress the capitalist order, and gave birth to the modern corporation. 

            Marxist sociologists have enhanced the view of the assembly line, but historians have revealed that what happened at Ford’s plants was a complex social process. The reactions of workers to monotonous labor defy simple Marxist explanations. Historian Joyce Shaw Peterson wrote:

Scholars analyzing the labor process in capitalist industry have sometimes seen the progressive deskilling of jobs as synonymous with the degradation of labor. There is no question that deskilling characterized the development of the automobile industry during its successful emergence as a “giant enterprise.” The question concerns how that deskilling was experienced by the workers themselves, whether as progress, or loss, or something else entirely. No single answer to this question is possible. Those workers for whom deskilling was experienced as degradation . . . were those who personally lost the need for their particular skills and saw their pride in workmanship diminished as machines took over their jobs and their own autonomy was diminished by a division of skills and increased management planning. For these auto workers degradation was very real, diminishing their pride and status and undoubtedly contributed to making them the most militant and union conscious of their fellows. Such workers comprised a minority of the workforce. Much more common was the experience of the auto worker for whom machine tending replaced simple heavy labor or the semi variegation of farm work. Not only could such workers make more money as automobile workers, but they also experienced their work itself as more modern and sometimes identified with the skill of their machines and indeed with their own skill in running them.²⁸

            Personal responses to working on the assembly line are difficult to assess historically, but whatever took place on the microscopic scale, Fordism transformed the social relations of the macroscopic work place. The individual became anonymous, and the division of labor reduced tasks to mindless repetitive actions. Peterson noted that visitors lamented at the monotonous labor, but the worker’s response was “complicated, as it could not be a simple choice between monotonous, repetitive tasks, and challenging interesting work . . . no such choice was offered.”²⁹

            While the assembly line contributed to the “degradation of work,” the opportunity to labor brought workers from Southern and Eastern Europe, the American South, and Mexico to the Midwestern United States. This opportunity was particularly powerful for Mexicans and African Americans.³⁰ In 1900, the population of Detroit was half native-born Whites, and half immigrants from northern and western Europe.³¹ By 1913, the workforce included Russians, Poles, Croats, Hungarians, and Italians.³² The workforce also came to include social outcasts. In 1919, “the Ford Motor Company employed hundreds of ex-convicts and 9,563 ‘substandard men’ – a group that included amputees, the blind, deaf-mutes, epileptics, and about 1,000 tubercular employees.”³³ In contrast to Gartman, Meyer argued that “between 1908^‑1913 Ford officials gradually discovered that workers required just as much attention as machines and the flow of materials.”³⁴ The droves of workers were not “completely plastic and malleable,” and “as Ford mass production became a reality, Ford officials and managers gradually uncovered a massive labor problem.”³⁵

            To stabilize his workforce, Ford announced the $5 dollar day. “This was not a simple wage increase,” wrote Stephen Meyer “but a sophisticated profit-sharing scheme to transform the social and cultural lives of immigrant workers and to inculcate the life-style, personal habits, and social discipline for modern factory life.”³⁶ Ford used methods inspired by the Progressivism of the early twentieth century to stipulate how families should take care of their homes and how single men should take care of themselves.³⁷ From 1914 to 1921 Ford embarked on a social experiment steeped in a paternalism that aimed to “Americanize” the immigrant workforce. While immigrants were willing to work in coal mines, iron and steel mills, meatpacking plants, and tanneries, in addition to automobile factories, they lacked industrial experience. When WWI ended the flow of European immigrants into Ford factories, recruitment of Black and White rural Americans became the norm. 

            Ford aimed to eliminate the lackluster “dude employee,” who talked and walked more than he worked. The application of scientific management to achieve mass production required a regulated “human element.” From 1920-1923 the assembly line underwent a “speed-up.” The pace of the assembly line was grueling, and in addition, smiling, laughing, and sitting were prohibited. But factories were safe, ventilated, and well lit. Nevins and Hill observed that, “as in all mass production industries of the time, they were the rules of an army, not of a cooperative community.”³⁸ Joyce Shaw Peterson argued that while Ford was union free from 1903 to 1933, workers used turnover rates, absenteeism, restriction of output, and walkouts to convey disapproval.³⁹ Autoworkers accepted the high wages, adopted the new habits, and endured the degraded labor. 

            Historians have given a fair amount of attention to Black labor in the automobile industry.⁴⁰ The demographic shift inspired by Ford’s factories provided reason for Blacks to migrate to Northern industrial centers. In 1917 Packard employed 1,100 Blacks, but Ford quickly overtook Packard and employed 5,000 Blacks in 1923 and 10,000 by 1926.⁴¹Despite Henry Ford’s personal racial outlook that Blacks were racially inferior and should remain segregated, his factories were interpreted as places of inspired racial uplift. Ford felt that the superior race was obligated to facilitate the uplift of subordinate races with philanthropic services, and this earned him a reputation as a friend of the Black race. Yet, life for Black workers in Detroit remained mixed.

            Joyce Shaw Peterson historicized the new Black industrial community forged in Detroit. Despite high wages, most African Americans were segregated at the plant and in life outside of it.⁴² When Peterson inquired, “Apart from their existence inside the factory walls, what kind of life did black auto workers find in Detroit?” she answered with frustrating segregation, higher rates of disease, and overcrowded housing. In an industrial city the comforts of the home were paramount to the ability to endure monotonous and dirty work. Peterson noted that “migrants confronted the ironic situation of earning much better wages than they ever had before and still being unable to rent decent lodgings.”⁴³ For Blacks, “segregated housing patterns . . . not only were blows to comfort, pride, self-esteem and family life; they could also kill.”⁴⁴ Peterson concluded that more racial tension existed in Detroit due to residential patterns and competition for housing than over jobs. Beyond the factory and housing, entertainment facilities, and recreational activities provided by the companies, such as sports leagues; were segregated. Peterson noted that, “by far the most important social institutions were black churches,” which “became the most vital institution trying to both integrate rural blacks into the urban atmosphere and cement and develop a sense of racial community.”⁴⁵

            In Black Detroit August Meier and Elliot Rudwick noted, “the income of Ford’s Black workers was the cornerstone for the prosperity of the black community’s business and professional people.”⁴⁶ Blacks “were employed in the laboratories and drafting rooms; as bricklayers, crane operators, and mechanics; and . . . as electricians and tool-and-die makers.”⁴⁷ James C. Price became an expert in purchasing abrasives and diamonds.⁴⁸ Eugene J. Collins became head of the die casting department in 1924, and was later named the first Negro foreman.⁴⁹ Meier and Rudwick point out that, “Ford established his own contacts among key black leaders, especially among the clergy.”⁵⁰ Ford’s paternalism extended to local African American communities. This won Ford praise from African Americans, so much so that “black workers at Ford felt themselves superior, and wore their company badges to church on Sunday.”⁵¹

            African Americans comprised a significant portion of Ford’s workforce. James Flink pointed out that, “Ford’s black workers were concentrated at the Rouge, where by 1926 they number 10,000 and constituted about 10 percent of the work force.” At the Rouge, African-Americans were concentrated in “the most dangerous, dirty, and disagreeable jobs – chiefly in paint spraying and foundry work.”⁵² Blacks were employed in positions that required the greatest physical exertion, the highest accident rates, and most exposure to health hazards. Despite the racial victories of foremen like Eugene J. Collins, most Blacks were forced into hazardous jobs in separate parts of the factory. 

View of men working on assembly line in Packard Motor Company factory. Handwritten on back: "Manufacturing scenes. Factories--Packard, 1939” Photograph from Detroit Public Library

            Ford countered the critics of mass production in his own time in his 1926 article on the topic in Encyclopedia Britannica. He argued that

            The need for skilled artisans and creative genius is greater under mass production than without it. In entering the shops of the Ford Motor Co., for example, one passes through great departments of skilled mechanics who are not engaged in production, but in the construction and maintenance of the machinery of production. Details of from 5,000 to 10,000 highly skilled artisans at strategic points throughout the shops were not commonly witnessed in the days preceding mass production. It has been debated whether there is less or more skill as a consequence of mass production. The present writer’s opinion [Ford’s] is that there is more. The common work of the world has always been done by unskilled labor, but the common work of the world in modern times is not as common as it was formerly.⁵³

            Fordism completed a revolution in the making of things that originated with the notion of interchangeable parts first proposed by Eli Whitney in 1798. Combining the practice of interchangeable parts as employed in nineteenth century armories with that of the moving disassembly line in the meat packing industry and techniques involving metal stamping from the bicycle industry, the assembly line led to what is called deskilling and monotony. But Fordism had its advantages. Fifteen million Model Ts were produced by 1927, and profits exceeded $7 billion.⁵⁴ The following chart shows the actual production volume at Ford from 1903 through 1927.⁵⁵

Year	Number of Cars	Year	Number of Cars
1903	1,708	1916	734,811
1904	1,695	1917	622,351
1905	1,599	1918	435,898
1906	8,729	1919	820,445
1907	14,887	1920	419,517
1908	120,202	1921	903,814
1909	17,771	1922	1,173,745
1910	32,053	1923	1,817,891
1911	69,762	1924	1,749,827
1912	170,211	1925	1,643,295
1913	202,667	1926	1,368,383
1914	308,162	1927	352,288
1915	501,462

 

            Ford and the Ford Motor Company’s accomplishments were more than simply making complex mechanical things in quantity, however. As Anthony Patrick O’Brien has demonstrated, beginning around 1910 or 1911 Ford also pioneered controls on mass distribution in the automobile industry.⁵⁶ “Telegraphic ten day reports” were sent by branch managers to Detroit summarizing current dealer stocks, production levels, and dates of customer purchases. Later data that also included the number of salesmen employed and live prospects on file came from dealers. This accounting system was in part responsible for Ford weathering recessions in 1910-11 and 1920-21 far better than its competitors. And contrary to the interpretation that it was General Motors that developed a tight connection between production and distribution by the mid-to-late 1920s, it appears that Ford did it first. Ultimately then, GM’s eclipse of Ford by the late 1920s was not due a process control and distribution network advantage, but rather to the fact that GM offered more products in more price ranges. After all, while GM during the 1920s was trying to anticipate what customers wanted in a car, Henry Ford staunchly remained convinced that only he had the right idea about what a car should be.

            By the early 1920s, there would be not just one Ford Model T assembly line, but many, in factories all over America. Surprisingly, perhaps, the factory with the largest output during the 1920s was not the Highland Park facility, but one located in Kearny, Nebraska. Large facilities were also located in Atlanta, Buffalo, Cambridge, Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dallas, Des Moines, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Louisville, Memphis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Seattle, and St. Louis.⁵⁷

            Henry Ford also demonstrated his genius by implementing the $5 day in 1914. While economists and industry experts asserted that Ford’s $5 day would lead to his bankruptcy, Ford’s motives were based on common sense mixed with a vision of the firm in which returns on investment were not maximized, but rather acceptable. It was both good business and an expression of concern for the common man. The assembly line in its early days had already led to an unacceptable labor turnover rate; in response, Ford raised hourly wages so that workers would stay despite the repetitive and exhausting nature of the job. And if a worker didn’t like conditions, there were many – Poles, African Americans, and other minorities – outside the gates waiting to replace anyone dissatisfied. The $5 day was just another reason why many viewed Ford as a hero. As Ford correctly recognized, the $5 day resulted in more business, not only as his own workers bought Model Ts, but also for service industries that provided for line workers and their families. Ford had envisioned and then implemented a giant technological and economic feedback loop that accelerated his own profits while stabilizing his labor force.