The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America

Tom works at the plant all summer and saves his money; there is full-time work for the other men in the family, too. Milly’s illness turns out to be stomach cancer, and Daisy stays home to care for her. After a period of intense suffering, Milly dies.

Abner continues his work on the assembly line and enjoys the small pleasures of householding at home in the evenings. Though he disagrees with Tom’s political ideas, he is proud of him for having finished college.

John has regained his salaried position and he and Annabelle are buying a house again, though this one is more modest: “What they had got out of the depression was a dreadful scare, and the grimmest determination never to be caught again” (200). They focus on remaining upwardly mobile, “worshipping the Ford machine and everybody in it with such fervour that they were intolerable to their youngest brother” (201).

John and Annabelle find Tom and his highbrow friends irritating and distance themselves from him. Annabelle, in particular, “wanted labour agitation put down promptly, before it got out of hand, and she took its continuance as a personal affront to herself” (201).

Hank Shutt has his own reasons for disdaining Tom’s political activities and ideas. The two have been at odds since childhood. Moreover, Hank, finally “on the side of law and order [with] the powerful Ford organization behind him,” sees Tom as risking “spoiling it all” (202). From Hank’s perspective, Tom’s ideas are naïve: he got them from people who are not themselves workers, and he is unaware of the criminal element that exists among the working classes or of “the dangers of stirring them up to violence” (202).

Hank asks Daisy to approach Tom and convince him to give up his organizing or change his place of work. He fears that he will be forced either to turn in his own brother or to be accused of treachery by Ford’s service department. Daisy attempts to explain that the two brothers are in equally-awkward positions, each loyal to his own cause and compromised, to some extent, by his refusal to mark his brother as belonging to the opposing side of the conflict, but Hank insists she talk to Tom. He tells her to offer Tom as much as $200 to go to work for GM.

Tom responds to the offer by laughing and turning the tables: he offers Hank $100 for information about which “agitators” are actually spies for the Ford service department. This frightens Hank: “Don’t you see how I’m on the spot? The very thing that’ll be in the boss’s mind. How’ll I manage to persuade him I didn’t fall for it?” (204). Daisy asks whether Hank might eventually accept Tom’s offer, and Hank responds that doing so would likely cost him his life.

Daisy tells Hank Tom’s message for him: “do your duty” (204). Hank, however, is unwilling to place Tom in danger: he is convinced that, if Tom is found out as a “Red,” his life will be in danger. Daisy agrees and adds that Tom knows of the danger.