Henry Ford, the most famed tycoon alive, was up a tree this week. The old 'coon had been treed before, but this time not only Organized Labor but the U. S.
Government was after him. C. I. O.'s tough young United Automobile Workers had given formal notice of their intent to strike Ford's River Rouge, Highland Park and Lincoln plants. In Dearborn, Mich., in the vast River Rouge plant, mounted policemen patrolled the grounds. There was no trouble yet, but no one could say when there might be.
Mr. Ford had either to deal with the union or fight the fight of his life.
Both sides were adamant. U. A. W. was confident that it had the strength to cripple Ford's production, if not stop it completely. And Henry Ford seemed determined not to budge from his lifelong position. Said he: "We do not intend to submit to any union, and those who belong to one are being fooled. . . . The men in our plants are satisfied generally with wages and conditions. Occasionally agitators try to keep our employes stirred up, but the men know they will be treated fairly by the company, without outside intervention."
Most of the limbs on Henry Ford's tree have been lopped off—one of the last ones by the Supreme Court. An NLRB ruling that Mr. Ford had violated the Wagner Act was upheld by the Circuit Court. The Supreme Court declined to review the case when Ford appealed. About the only limb left was delay. Toward that limb Mr. Ford was edging. Said his hardfisted, right-hand man, Harry Bennett: "If the NLRB orders an election, of course we will hold one, because Mr. Ford will observe the law. C. I. O. will win it, of course, because it always wins these farcical elections, and we will bargain with it because the law says so. We will bargain until Hell freezes over, but they won't get anything." There was small hope that a respite proclaimed by Michigan's Governor Murray D. Van Wagoner would accomplish anything. Governor Van Wagoner last week invoked a State law, declared that both sides must observe a "cooling-off" period of 30 days, allow time to mediate.
But at week's end a State mediation commission had accomplished nothing. Tension heightened.
The Public Interest. Governor Van Wagoner proclaimed that the public interest was involved. It certainly was. Not only were the jobs and wages of thousands of Michiganders involved; at River Rouge, whose buildings sprawl across 1,200 acres of Michigan land, their chimneys, tanks, furnaces, conveyors, cranes sprouting into the cold Michigan sky, men were beating ploughshares into swords—$122,000,000 worth. Already rolling off the bus assembly line were ugly, buglike reconnaissance cars ("Blitz Buggies") for the Army. Already in limited operation was a magnesium alloy foundry, turning out lightweight castings for airplane engines.
Greatest preparation of all was centred around the building for making airplane engines. Over its steel framework contractors had first built a fibreboard shell, so that workmen, sheltered inside, could lay brick and pour concrete through winter weather. Last week the building, almost a fifth of a mile long, was hatching, pink and raw, out of its cocoon. By June, Pratt & Whitney double Wasp engines should be rolling out of it, 15 a day.