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Soon the car crowded out the horse. As the company became the No. 1 carmaker, Ford quarreled so bitterly with his stockholders that he decided to buy them out. In 1919 he paid them off with $75 million.* By 1923 he was able to turn out 2,201,188 cars—a record his company did not better until 1950's 2,364,508. Ford went everywhere, met everyone, and had opinions on everything. He became such a national hero that millions urged him to run for President. When he refused in 1923, Cal Coolidge, who wanted the job, sent him a telegram of thanks: IT is
NATURALLY A GREAT GRATIFICATION . . .
Anarchist to Anarchist. By 1927, slipping sales made Ford realize that his model T was out of fashion, and he shifted to the snappier, more powerful model A in time to avert disaster. But he could still find time to interest himself in others' troubles. Ford, who had been called an anarchist by the Chicago Tribune in 1916, spoke out against a death sentence for the Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Two days before the execution in Boston, Vanzetti wrote Ford: "I have always claimed my intire innocence and I will die affirming it. We have an extraordinary mass of newly discovered evidence of such weight and nature to impose our release ... I beg your pardon for my so many words .'. ."
Later, after Ford changed over to a more powerful V-8 engine, he got another kind of note from Public Enemy No. i, John Dillinger, who made his getaways in Fords. Wrote Dillinger, passing through Detroit: "Hello Old Pal. Arrived here at 10 a.m. today. Would like to drop in and see you. You have a wonderful car . . . It's a treat to drive one. Your slogan should be: 'Drive a Ford and watch the other cars fall behind you.' I can make any other car take a Ford's dust. Bye-bye."
Ford, who thought the best government was that which governed the least, bitterly fought all the New Deal's works as well as the unions. His bodyguard and aide, Harry Bennett, onetime boxer who had become a top power in the company, was the man who barred the doors. But it was Ford himself who was responsible for the union-busting as his veteran secretary, Ernest Liebold, made clear in a tape recording for the archives: "Nobody was doing anything around Dearborn . . . that Mr. Ford didn't agree with 100%." In 1941, when the C.I.O. had ringed the Rouge plant with pickets and barricaded the entrances, the unpredictable Henry Ford suddenly sent word that he would not only deal with the union but give it everything it wanted—closed shop, checkoff and all. In another tape-recorded interview, a friend of the Fords explained why: "His wife Clara refused to let him fight it out. She didn't want to see a lot of rioting and bloodshed because of the strike."
The Troubles. It was a dramatic gesture, but no single change could save the ailing Ford Motor Co. The Ford car was second to Chevrolet, and the company had fallen far behind the industry in engineering and styling. World War II, with its big military orders, gave the company a breather. But at war's end, after the death of Edsel Ford and with the rapid aging of Old Henry, the tough job of saving the company was handed to young Henry (who signs his office memos HF II).