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It was Ford, says Bennett, who insisted on keeping such a close check on his workers that every third man on the assembly line was an informer; the men were even followed to the toilets. Ford often got Bennett up at 3 a.m. to walk through the plants checking up. Yet Ford was unperturbed by thievery. When Bennett lifted the hood of an employee's car to show Ford the new engine which the worker had stolen, Ford said: "You just tell him he better bring his old motor in here or there's going to be trouble." When an over-zealous snooper stripped a Ford towel from a baby wearing it as a diaper, Ford sent the family a set of diapers.
Shooting Gallery. It was also Ford's fear of robbers and kidnapers, says Bennett, plus his humane desire to rehabilitate crooks, that led the company to employ thousands of former criminals. Bennett insists he did not originate the policy, but he perfected it, made the underworld his ally, so that it would tell him of any plots against Ford or the company. He gave a Ford agency to Chester La Mare, reputed boss of Detroit's underworld, and turned over the plant's fruit concession to him. When a Detroit child was kidnaped, Ford, who had a great love for all children, told Bennett to get the child back. Before he could do anything, the father paid a $20,000 ransom and the child was returned. Some hoodlum acquaintances of Bennett got the money back by torturing the kidnaper. The kidnaper went to Bennett's home, shot him in the side and fled. Bennett asked the police not to prosecute. But, he adds offhandedly: "The gunman was later shot and killed on a Detroit street—in some gang feud, I suppose."
Ford, a crack shot, always carried a gun, and liked to shoot at a target in Bennett's office. When this bored Ford, he would cry "Let's wake Cowling up!" and start shooting at a metal ball in the ceiling light fixture. It always scared the daylights out of Sales Manager W. C. Cowling, who had the office above. Bennett, a sharpshooter himself, once blasted a bad-smelling cigar out of the mouth of a visitor who ignored his request to get rid of it.
In the catalogue of Ford's dislikes, says Bennett, was a distrust of accountants. He jammed them all on one floor of his Administration Building (he kept the third floor empty) in the hope that they would be so crowded that some would leave. He had no use for most sales managers, thought cars sold themselves on their mechanical qualities. Repeatedly he fired sales managers who blamed a sales slump on the Ford car's laggard styling, finally told Bennett: "What's the use of having any more sales managers? We'll just let them go." He disliked fat men, forced 300-lb. Fred Allison, an early associate in the Ford Company but who was down on his luck, to take off weight for months before giving him a job as electrician.