The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America

A real estate agent contacts Abner and Milly, promising that the six-room house he has found for them is “the last great bargain available in Highland Park” (59). The Shutts buy the house for $3150, taking out an 11-year mortgage, putting down their entire savings, and agreeing to pay $33 a month. The estate agent does not mention the property tax, which comes as a surprise to the Shutts, who have never before owned property.

Rents and other prices continue to rise as a result of World War I, which begins in Europe just as Abner and Milly buy the house. Abner, along with everyone he knows, “congratulate[s] himself that he lived in a free country, where people had too much sense to behave in such a crazy fashion” (60) as going to war.

Ford, who declares that if people want to become wealthy they should work instead of seizing others’ wealth, denounces the war and announces that his company will not do business with any country that is involved in the fighting. A group of British government officials travel to Highland Park to buy Ford cars and Ford refuses them; still, someone in the company sells to them anyway via a middleman in Canada: “It could not be expected that Henry Ford would personally follow all the cars that were purchased from him” (61-62). Ford is extremely successful during the war, selling increasingly enormous numbers of cars each year, “but the increase may have been because other motor-manufacturers, supplying the warring nations, left a larger share of the American market to Henry” (62).

The Shutts move into their new home, a fixer-upper into which both parents and children pour their energy. They regard Ford’s bonus program as “benevolent” and “a complete success” (62) and, because they use their money “for exactly the purposes which Mr. Ford approved” (62), the agent from the Social Department makes favorable reports about them.

Abner works the first shift at the factory, and spends his afternoons gardening, making repairs, painting the house, and spending time with the children. The oldest child, Johnny, is “a serious and sturdy youngster, interested in everything his father did and said. [...] He had a quick mind, and no one would doubt that he was going to get along” (63). The Shutts’ second son, Henry Ford or “Hank,” is their problem child. He resents rules and breaks them, ignores his mother’s scoldings, and responds to his father’s spankings by lying and hiding his activities from his parents. The Shutts’ daughter, Daisy, is a capable and gentle eight-year-old who delights in taking care of the family’s brood of chicks.

The children all learn quickly, but they learn different things according to their interests: Johnny’s interests are mechanical, while Tommy enjoys managing others and has “a keen sense of justice which was going to cause him a lot of trouble in the world” (64).