The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America is a book by Upton Sinclair. It is a historical fiction that elaborates the story of American inventor and industrialist Henry Ford and his company's interaction with a fictitious character Abner Shutt and his family. Abner and a majority of his children end up working for Ford in different capacities (Sinclair, 1937).
The book is set against the backdrop of a fast-industrializing America in the early 19th century at a time when labor rights were not as expansive as they are at the moment. It follows the story of the growth of Ford, its successes but most importantly its treatment of workers. The major themes covered by Sinclair in the book are capitalism, exploitation of labor and greed.
The rise of capitalism at the time is widely covered in the book. Sinclair illustrates how Henry Ford, a budding inventor, and business magnate started his automobile business with a vision of welfare capitalism. He envisaged his business as having a close relationship with its employees who would have high wages and humane working conditions. However, Ford lost focus in his vision as the company grew and instead prioritized profits and growth of the company over employees' welfare (Sinclair, 1937).
Sinclair opines that the only hope for the workers would be to unionize and as well as the passage of supportive legislation by the federal government. Such a move, he was sure would face the fiercest of opposition from Henry Ford as an illustration of his growing capitalist nature. The clamor for deregulation is the hallmark of capitalism and as such would enable Henry Ford to have complete control over all aspects of the business.
The exploitation of labor is also widely covered by Sinclair in the book. Perhaps it was as a representation of the situation in which workers faced not just in the Ford Motor Company, but across the entire industrial sector. He had experienced the same in the meat processing industry. Furthermore, it is the clamor for improved terms for workers by Abner and his son Tom Shutt that help expose the downside to extreme capitalism as practiced by Ford.
In the founding years of the company, Ford had set the stage for other companies to offer high wages for their workers something that attracted the admiration of the company from the likes of Abner Shutt (Sinclair, 1937). However, with the growth of the company and the desire for more profits, it abandoned its core welfare values. Many of the workers at the time were immigrants to America and were mistreated through low wages, long working hours and poor safety conditions in the company (Zieger & Gall, 2002).
Sinclair offers an illustration of how the company, in a bid to lower wages, split jobs requiring high skills into numerous bits that could be undertaken by semi-skilled or non-skilled workers for lower pay. According to him, the only certain way in which the workers' dignity and bargaining power could be restored was through the formation of a union. He, however, had a great admiration for the company and Henry Ford himself and as such could not bring himself to initiate the call for unionism.
The dream of the union was actualized through the efforts of Abner's son, Tom Shutt, a graduate of the University of Michigan who joined the company as an employee. He organized for the formation of the union by visiting communities in which Ford facilities were located and urged them to unionize. As a testament to Henry Ford's greed, Tom Shutt was ousted from the company due to his activist stance on workers' rights (Sinclair, 1937). He had, however, sowed the seeds for the formation of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW).
Greed is the other major theme explored by Sinclair in the book. Abner Shutt paints a picture of Henry Ford, who initially holds workers' concerns at heart. It later changes as the company grows and he becomes corrupted by power and money. He uses the power of his money to buy off politicians and influence voters at the same time. Politicians sponsored by Ford could, therefore, dare not legislate in support of labor unions or the protection of workers' rights.
He evolves from the revolutionary inventor Abner grew up to admire to a power hungry business mogul. An illustration of his changed nature and the clamor for more even if it meant trashing workers’ rights was the company's service department. The department, in which one of Abner's sons, Hank Abner worked was Ford's private police and was often used to break workers' protests violently. Henry Ford had become imprisoned by his money and power (Sinclair, 1937).
The labor issues exposed by Abner were reflective of the issues that existed at the time (Zieger & Gall, 2002). However, they served to raise the clamor for strong labor unions to advocate for workers' rights that eventually led to the emergence and mergers of numerous labor unions. Such actions forced the federal government to act by passing legislation to support workers' rights. It was especially the case with the passage of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 that served to improve the working hours as well as forcing companies to address safety hazards for workers.
The book is a reliable source to obtain historical information on the state of employees. It is mainly because it was never published with a commercial aim but was rather intended for internal use by employees under UAW. It, therefore, does not suffer from the bias that a commercial publication might hold for the sake of raising sales. Furthermore, it offers both the perspectives of the workers and that of Ford as seen through the admiration that Abner has for the company.
The drawback to using the book is that it may lead one to have a bias judgment against the company given that a greater part of its theme is drawn from the exploitation of labor. The theme is espoused by an interested party, Abner; who is the main protagonist and a worker at the company. Despite being a historical fiction, the book offers an accurate illustration of the events in the early 20th century and as such its authority as a source of historical readings cannot be disputed. Therefore, the usefulness of the book as an historical source is accurate and it is recommended for other students and scholars interested in understanding the working conditions during the early 20th century.
In conclusion, the book offers a vivid account of the conflict that was brought about by the rise in corporate America in the early 20th century and the rising agitation for workers' rights. It further lays bare the ills of the capitalist system which implicitly advocated for the accumulation of wealth (Zieger & Gall, 2002) at any expense including the oppression of fellow human beings as was the case with Henry Ford and his company's employees. The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America is a critical book if one intends to have a thorough understanding of the history of labor and corporate relations in the 20th century.
References
Sinclair, U (1937). The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America. Detroit. United Auto workers (UAW). Project Gutenberg. 07 Mar. 2016 h ttp://self.gutenberg.org/articles/the_flivver_king
Zieger, R., and Gall, G. (2002). American Workers, American Unions: The Twentieth Century. Baltimore. John Hopkins University Press
