Friday, February 27, 2015

Just the Facts: Book Discussion Recap from February 26

Many thanks to the eleven people who braved cold and icy roads to attend the book discussion this month. Their presence, as always, was much appreciated.

Our book last night was Fordlandia: the rise and fall of Henry Ford’s forgotten jungle city by Greg Grandin. Americans have long assumed that our system of government, our culture and our customs were the best for people living anywhere on the globe. No one believed this more than Henry Ford. His attempt to create a mid-western town in the middle of the Amazon jungle was as big a failure as the attempts to Americanize the Native Americans, our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the American experience in the Middle East.

Ford Motor Company, in the early years, was a vertically integrated organization. It controlled everything it needed to produce cars, from the iron ore in the ground to the smelting of steel to the growing of trees and the milling of lumber. Ford controlled the lives of its workers, how and where they lived and what they ate and drank. But it could not produce its own rubber. Henry Ford decided to change that by acquiring and building a huge rubber plantation in the Amazon jungle and then proceeded to introduce “Fordism” to the native population. It didn’t work. The people there were used to living off the bounty of the river and the jungle, not punching a time clock. The insects refused not to spread disease and the rubber trees, planted in neat rows, succumbed to blight. The result was an almost comic failure. Our discussion was animated, covering racism, vertical integration, industrial vs. agricultural time, the nature of fathers and sons, Americanism, and much more.

Our next meeting will be March 26, 2015. The book to be discussed, A Disposition to be Rich: how a small-time pastor’s son ruined an American President, brought on a Wall Street crash, and made himself the best-hated man in the United States by Geoffrey C, Ward, is available at the Circulation Desk. All are welcome.

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