The Great Depression; Interview with Ford Bryan; Interview with Ray Smith. Part 1

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

Take nine.

INTERVIEWER:

I'm going to pick up where we left off. Did Henry Ford have fears for his grandchildren? If so, why and what did he do about it?

FORD BRYAN:

Yes, I imagine some of the kidnappings that he had heard about made him feel that he'd better watch out for his grandchildren. When his grandchildren ever visited Fair Lane I gather that the chauffeur was armed and there was always somebody ready to take care of them there. I think one of the chief responsibilities of Harry Bennett, and maybe one of the reasons he was associated with gangsters to quite an extent, was probably Henry's instructions to Bennett to take care of Edsel's children, make certain that they were safe.

INTERVIEWER:

I want to get back to, go ahead into 1930, '31, '32, right around there, which I know you were away at college, but did you ever hear anything about Frank Murphy?

FORD BRYAN:

Not a great deal.

INTERVIEWER:

Did you ever read anything good about him, anything bad about him?

FORD BRYAN:

What I heard good about him was that he was from a little town where I used to teach school, and even though it was a Republican neighborhood they thought Murphy was fine. I never heard anything detrimental about him in Detroit.

INTERVIEWER:

Good. Around the time when Murphy was mayor there was the Ford Hunger March.

FORD BRYAN:

Yes.

INTERVIEWER:

How did you hear about that and what was your response?

FORD BRYAN:

At the time, all I heard about it was through newspapers. Since that time I've heard more and maybe from biased sources, but it was spoken of as a march of communists and they wondered what they thought they were going to do with Henry Ford's property. It was a little bit doubtful whether they really wanted to come...They said they needed jobs, but some thought, \"Well, they really didn't want work. They wanted money, but they didn't really want to work.\" That I think was an attitude that was harbored in the Dearborn area, anyway.

INTERVIEWER:

What do you suppose they wanted from Henry Ford?

FORD BRYAN:

Well, that's it. One would have thought they'd known that Henry Ford was,

if he couldn't sell his cars, what was he, is he going to continue to make cars and then disassemble them and assemble them and disassemble them and that sort of thing? I mean, where were the jobs going to come from?

He was hiring as many as he could right then. So I can't quite see the reasoning behind attacking the Rouge plant or coming to try...Henry wasn't there anyways, they knew that. What were they really trying to do? One can feel sorry for them but I don't think that was the tactic that would really benefit them.

INTERVIEWER:

Could Henry Ford have stopped the Great Depression?

FORD BRYAN:

Oh, no. No, he couldn't have stopped the Depression, but he tried hard. He tried to rectify things in all Western Wayne County, anyway. He had a tremendous impact on the shallowness of the Depression. In Dearborn, in Highland Park, in St. Clair Shores, in areas where Ford had some influence and could be of some help, the unemployment rate varied. It was about nine percent in Dearborn, nine percent in Highland Park. It went as high as twenty-nine in some. Outside Bay City, for instance, was about twenty-nine. Clausen was high. A lot of towns around the area, Oakland County, were high. I think Dearborn was the lowest of the group indicated in the tabulation.

INTERVIEWER:

Good. Let's cut for a minute.

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

Take ten.

FORD BRYAN:

It seems to me that Henry Ford is perhaps recognized and appreciated more outside of the Detroit area than he is in Detroit. In other places in the United States, like Richmond Hill, Georgia, Berry College, places like that where he made tremendous contributions to the community and to the college. And in Europe I think his outstanding capabilities in manufacturing were recognized there because there were courses given in Fordism at the universities. Fordism here I think is interpreted as meaning working people too hard, mass production and the evil things that go with it. But in Europe, in Germany, Latvia, I know, some of those countries and perhaps in Russia Fordism was considered something that was an economic theory. It was economic, not only theory but practice, that if you could make enough things cheaply enough and get them out to the population that that would raise the standard of living to a tremendous degree. So I think Henry's attitude toward mass production and his efficiency in operations were recognized and appreciated more outside the United States, perhaps, than in.

INTERVIEWER:

His drive to produce more and to produce more efficiently, was that driven because he wanted to make profits? What drove that?

FORD BRYAN:

I think he's telling the truth when he says he doesn't do this for money. Money isn't the object. Money is the wherewithal to get things done, but the object is to have things for people and have people enjoy getting these things and having a higher standard of living.

INTERVIEWER:

Speaking of money and political systems, do you have any memories of your own about how you might have heard of communism in the 1920s, 1930s, and what that might have conjured up for you?

FORD BRYAN:

To me, in school, I guess I was rather naive. Communism was a bad word, but I didn't know really what it meant, how the system worked. I do know that about the time of the Hunger March there were groups of communists that were meeting in Detroit and its said that they were the ones behind the hunger march. I don't think communism was recognized where I was. It wasn't debated. It was just something that seemed to be very localized as far as I know in the city of Detroit. I don't know if there were communists all over the United States having get-togethers and plans to take over some plant or get after some rich person. I don't know.

INTERVIEWER:

Let's cut.

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

Take eleven.

FORD BRYAN:

Henry Ford's brother Will Ford had tractor distributorships in the very beginning when the Ford tractor was put on the market here in the United States. And he had the distributorship for Michigan, part of Ohio, part of Indiana, quite a large dealership territory. He also, on his own, sold implements because Henry Ford only sold the tractor. He didn't sell any plows, carburetors, that sort of thing, so Will Ford went into the business of supplying Ford dealers with these implements. It was a nice business. He was going well. About 1927 he built himself a factory over near the Highland Park Ford Motor Company to build cranes, hoes, rather large implements based on using the Fordson Tractor Power Plant. These instruments were trademarked \"Wilford.\"

INTERVIEWER:

I'm going to have you move ahead to the part where he goes bankrupt.

FORD BRYAN:

Oh, yeah. In 1928, Will didn't know about this, Henry Ford shifted his tractor manufacturing to Ireland and so Will was without his power plants or his equipment, and he went broke.

[End of Bryan interview; beginning of Smith interview]

JON ELSE:

OK. Let's begin by—

RAY SMITH:

Good.

JON ELSE:

Why don't you begin by just telling me any memories you have of Henry Ford. Did you ever see Henry Ford?

RAY SMITH:

Oh, most certainly I, I used to see him. Both, Mr. and Mrs. Ford liked to come out to receptions, wedding receptions, and then, I never saw him too closely, I mean, but then he'd have these parties down at Dearborn. First, it was in the, really in the main part, the part of the museum, and then they built Edison Institute, and then the parties were there. I can't remember how we were invited, whether they, either it was a telephone, to see, or a written invitation. And then the people would go, and they'd, the Fords would greet you when you, when we came in graciously. And then they'd do the square dances. Mr. Lovett would call off the, the dances, and some people were crazy about them. Other people weren't too enthusiastic about the square dances. But Mr. Ford and Mrs. Ford you could tell thoroughly enjoyed them. And he, if there was a very attractive girl came in in an old-fashioned dress, we'd all, we'd joke that he'd be dancing with her before the evening was over. And usually that was the case. We were not supposed to have even, we were not supposed to have liquor on our breath, and we weren't supposed to smoke their either. I got caught once smoking on the deck with a friend of mine, and we came out and Mr. Ford caught us, and we thought we'd never be invited again. But nothing resulted from it.

JON ELSE:

What, what did he say when he caught you?

RAY SMITH:

I can't recall what he said, but maybe he just looked at us, I can't remember. [laughs] But, he, I mean, they, they were very much opposed to both drinking and smoking.

JON ELSE:

Was he a pretty conservative guy?

RAY SMITH:

Oh, I would say so, yes, wiry, small, and very, he was a very, he loved to join in on that dancing. He went in there. Both of them did.

JON ELSE:

Was that dancing considered kind of old-fashioned at that time?

RAY SMITH:

Well, there was square-dancing, well, they were all old-fashioned dances, I mean, the Virginia reel and all those things like that, I forget the, I forget the other names.

JON ELSE:

Were those, were they different from the dances that people were doing in the rest of Detroit?

RAY SMITH:

Oh yes, oh yes. Detroit at one time had a great deal of dancing, a great deal of coming-out parties, so that was very different. These were old-fashioned, I mean, they'd be what you considered, compared, I mean, to the, to the dances. We didn't do anything like the fox trot or any of that down there. It all the square dances where, where the things were called off.

JON ELSE:

I've heard that some Ford employees were required to come to the dances. Did you know anything about that?

RAY SMITH:

I don't know, I don't believe it, I don't know. We all, we went, as I remember very definitely we went with a black tie, and then they had valet service parking the cars. That's my recollection, that he had all that kind of service. And then after the, and that's pretty good exercise, too, and after we danced, why then they served a nice, little light refreshments. Then we all said goodnight to Mr. and Mrs. Ford, went on our way.

JON ELSE:

Great. Excellent description. Can you tell me if, if, if you were at the dance, looked around the hall, can you just describe to me what it would look like, what kinds of people you would see and what they would be doing?

RAY SMITH:

Oh, there were mostly, I'd say the big majority would be from out here. But, I mean, that wasn't necessary at all, because the Fords had friends in Bloomfield, several from Bloomfield, and up northward, there were different ages, too. Now my group, the few that I went with, were the, were the younger group, really. And then, but there were a very, very nice selection of people, generally.

JON ELSE:

Were some people trying to sneak into the men's room with a little hip flask? Or—

RAY SMITH:

Not to my knowledge. No, I think they all quite followed the, the requests of the Fords.

JON ELSE:

I see. Great, great.

RAY SMITH:

There would, no—I'm sure they wouldn't be invited if they didn't.

JON ELSE:

Let's talk about, in the 1920s and the early 1930s, what was, what was your profession? What did you do for a living?

RAY SMITH:

Well, I was with the Detroit Trust Company. I started with them. I graduated from college in 1920, and I went with Paine-Webber for a short time, and then I went with Detroit Trust Company. And, in those, I was very interested in real estate. I had different jobs there, and then I had, and then we got into real estate financing, bong issues, so forth.

JON ELSE:

In the, when the Depression hit, 1930, 1931, were there problems for people in real estate? What sort of problems were you facing?

RAY SMITH:

Oh, the problems were desperate here, the real estate situation. Now, for instance, our own real estate that were, the leases, they had to foreclose on the leases. You were left with unpaid taxes, all kinds of problems. And all the hotels here, I think the Statler was the only one that didn't go through foreclosure during that, that period. Of course, that was after the banks closed.

JON ELSE:

In the early days of the Depression, were people able to, to pay their rents, tenants?

RAY SMITH:

Well, no, some weren't able to pay. That's where, that's where the problem was. And people would work for you for almost nothing, I mean, if you'd give them quarters to live. In our own experience, we had a, back here, we owned the property back there, and our gardener, we were so short of cash, too, but he was getting before $140 a month plus his quarters and stuff, and then after the banks closed and they grabbed everything, why, he was very pleased to work for $40 a month.

JON ELSE:

This was your gardener?

RAY SMITH:

Yeah. And it was, it was hard work, too, here. That was just during the, for, for a period after the banks closed. See, cash, nobody had, see, with 90% of the banks closed, see, everybody was so short of cash. Some people had some connections in New York and got money.

JON ELSE:

If you were a landlord and you owned a building, and you had, say, fifty or sixty tenants, and they could pay their rent, what would you do?

RAY SMITH:

Well, you were stuck. You couldn't have a vacant building, either. So you just work it out that that's, you don't know what you'd do. I mean, the same way quite a few people that invest their money in land contracts, of course, those are subject to mortgages. Those land, the mortgages were foreclosed, so that wiped out the, the land contract interest. And that hit many people hard. There were so many vacant properties and it was, it was, it, it was just terrible. And of course the food lines. A lot of people didn't have food.

JON ELSE:

Was it occasionally necessary to have people evicted from properties?

RAY SMITH:

Oh, sure.

JON ELSE:

Can you tell me about that?

RAY SMITH:

Well, they, I don't know too much, I didn't have much to do with that, really, but I know lots of people were evicted during that period. I mean, you see were they were evicted by different ways, either by, if they were tenants, they'd be evicted, or they were evicted if they were buying on the contract and the people foreclosed on the contract. Many were evicted, and lots of your big houses were for sale for almost, very, very reasonable prices.

JON ELSE:

What sort of, what sort of place was Grosse Pointe in those days?

RAY SMITH:

Well, Grosse Pointe was kind of a little different from now, wasn't built up so much. You see, these, these, along here particularly, the big places have all been cut up and subdivided.

JON ELSE:

Back in, back in those days, what was it, compared to the rest of Detroit, let's say? What was it like?

RAY SMITH:

Oh, well, it was just a lovely residential suburban area, although there were a lot of little small houses out here, too, which there should be. And, of course, in those days we always had the, the big shots, they, they lived pretty well, too. They had all their big houses and their chauffeurs, butlers, and stuff like that. There were quite a few of those. That—times have certainly changed. Now—

JON ELSE:

Hold on one second. We have to change film, here. You're doing great.