The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America

Ford, who deplores contemporary social dances and prefers “the clean and jolly ‘square dances’ which the farm-people had known when he was a boy” (127), hires a dancing master to teach the people of Dearborn dances of which he approves. He also sponsors fiddling contests and has fiddlers teach old songs to schoolchildren.

Since Ford considers it patriotic to dance old-fashioned dances like the Virginia Reel, Abner and Milly go dancing for the first time since their marriage. However, Milly’s health is too poor for her to make a habit of dancing, and Abner is too tired at night, so their first time dancing as a married couple is also their last.

Abner, who has worked for the Ford Company for twenty-two years and has read Ford’s statements that “merit and faithful service never [go] unrewarded in the Ford shops” (129), approaches the superintendent of the assembly line where he works and asks for a promotion back to sub-foreman: “Alas, Abner was breaking one of the strictest rules of the military discipline which governs these modern armies of production” (130); Abner’s sub-foreman thinks Abner is trying to steal his job and begins to find fault with everything Abner does at work. One day, Abner answers the sub-foreman back and is fired:

There he was, after twenty-two years of merit and faithful service, deprived of all his honours and emoluments by a miserable straw-boss who had been with the company only a couple of years, and had never had so much as a nod from Henry Ford in his life. When Abner, in horrified protest, mentioned that he knew Mr. Ford, the man laughed in his face and told him to go straight to Henry’s home on the River Rouge and complain! (130)