This page comes from the Detroit area where, as it was 100 years ago, the Ford family and company wield enormous power. It seems as if half of all things bear the name ‘Henry Ford’ here, a constant reminder of who the boss is. And what a boss. Even in the very crowded field in U.S. history of vile, vulgarian ruling class figures, Henry Ford stands out. Robert W. Dunn explains just a few of the reasons why.

‘Mr. Ford Hunts Reds, Aliens and Trade Unions’ by Robert W. Dunn from the Daily Worker. Vol. 3 No. 227. October 8, 1926.

SOMEONE remarked recently that the writings of Henry Ford are read with great interest in Soviet Russia. This is true. All books dealing with the organization of industry, scientific management and kindred topics are devoured by the students in the workers faculties and the universities there. Taylor, Gannt and others are read with the greatest interest. And what Ford says and does is studied by the workers in the Soviet Union.

Pays Black Hundred Head.

IN recognizing this fact one must not forget that had Mr. Ford had his way there would be no Soviet Union. Mr. Ford contributed long and generously to the overthrow of the Soviet government. On his payroll, for example, worked the notorious Boris L. Brazol, former leader of the Russian Black Hundred, and the leading spirit in the monarchist restoration movement in America. While he was working for Mr. Ford for $1,000 a month ($200 extra for expenses), Mr. Brazol, pal of Admiral Kolchak, boasted that he had written two books that would do the Jews–particularly Russian Jews–more injury than ten pogroms.

Anti-Jew Crusade.

MR. FORD’S excursions into the field of Jew-baiting are familiar to the American workers. In the minds of Mr. Ford a Jew and a radical were synonyms. Hence the famous Spider Web Chart published in the Dearborn Independent–a chart prepared in the office of the Chemical Service of the War Department attempting to show Moscow control over every American society to promote peace, disarmament and christian fellowship! Hence the republication by the Beckwith Press Inc. of New York, a Ford enterprise, of the Protocols of Zion.

The Beckwith press also published “The Reds in America” by the late R.M. Whitney and other literature inciting folks against all reds and progressives from Captain Paxton Hibben and John Haynes Holmes to Father Ryan and Senator Robert M. La Follette. In fact Mr. Ford and his propaganda organization literally swallowed all the pretty tales that were invented and sold to them for fancy figures by the Brazols and Spiridovitches and Dr. Houghtons and Dr. Rodinoffs and the others who deal in red menaces and old world political scandal. Henry, it is admitted even by his friends, fell for the most lurid of their tales. Had these plotters succeeded in their schemes Henry might have been crowned king of the restored Russian monarchy.

On Fingerprinting and Registering Aliens.

FORD is hot for the bill to register all the aliens in our midst so that all the “radicals” may be properly segregated and deported. He subscribes wholeheartedly to the alien fingerprinting bills proposed by Secretary of Labor Davis and opposed by the American Federation of Labor, the American Civil Liberties Union and other progressive organizations. Ford lines up with the chamber of commerce of the United States, the American Defense Society and other tory organizations in furthering legislation to crush agitation for better working conditions among the foreign-born workers. Both the Dearborn Independent and Ford personally have boosted the anti-alien legislation which organized labor succeeded in defeating in the last congress.

On Industrial Democracy.

FORD was not the first employer to discover that the well-paid worker, under certain conditions, like the well-fed horse may prove the most profitable in the end, particularly under a body-wrecking speed-up system. Ford, however, will have nothing to do with unions of any kind. Even company unions with their illusory “participation” in “consultation and conference” with management, make Henry tired. He prefers to be the sole father and despot to his workers. What right have they to express themselves collectively about the conditions of their work? What right have they to butt in on management? Ford can see but one answer to this question. The workers are to be regarded an individual unit in the productive machine. They have no problems of work concerning which their co-operative action would do them any good.

Beats Forstmann.

THUS Ford displays himself as a century or two more feudal in his human relations than is Mr. Julius Forstmann, textile tyrant of Passaic, N.J., who at least makes the pretense of believing in “employe representation” thru company unions. Ford is thoroly hard-boiled and cynical when it comes to matters touching on the employe-employer relationship. “It is not necessary for people to love each other in order to work together” is one of his typical remarks on the subject. He contends that he gives his workers the best wages and the best conditions, so there is nothing left to bargain about! Hence there is no necessity for a union or even a company-fixed “shop committee.” He thus constitutes himself the sole judge and dictator of what is good for his workers. And he spies upon them and fires them instanter if he catches them talking about trade unions or labor organizations.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n227-NY-oct-08-1926-DW-LOC.pdf