Henry Ford, Elon Musk, and Proverbs 16:18

The moment you think you can walk on water is the moment you start to drown

Henry Ford fundamentally changed the car, manufacturing, the United States, and the world. In doing so, he became fantastically rich. And adored. In the early teens of the last century, Henry Ford was venerated as an American genius possessed of a love for the common man and a vision for humanity’s future. Americans hung on his every word.

This worship was not healthy for Henry Ford.

With millions of people convinced that Ford could solve any problem — from capitalism to poverty to war — Henry Ford came to agree. His interest in making cars waned and he increasingly poured his abundant energies into saving the world.

That was the watershed. From that moment on, both Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company began a long, slow decline.

Now, I could say I am recounting this tale from the distant past because it sounds eerily similar to what we are now witnessing with a certain multi-billionaire who was, until recently, widely venerated for his many accomplishments. But this is history. Take it for what it is. Use it how you wish. If you want to say, “wow, that sure sounds like Elon Musk,” that’s your business. I’ll be over here silently nodding.

Anyway, back to Henry Ford.

In the very earliest years of the 20th century, The Ford Motor Company was only one among dozens of small American car companies. These cars were assembled by craftsmen and they were expensive. To almost everyone, cars were little more than toys for the rich.

By the early 1920s, that had completely changed thanks to Henry Ford and the Model T, which Ford had designed Model T to be a simple, reliable car so inexpensive that even working men could afford it. American roads were suddenly full of cars — and fully half the cars in America were Fords.

That much is famous. But much less well known is that Henry Ford did not build this empire single-handedly. Early on, Ford met James Couzens, a Canadian businessman. Ford and Couzens forged a partnership as successful as Lennon and McCartney, except theirs was built on a division of labour: Henry Ford focussed on the design and manufacturing of cars while James Couzens led the business side. (I suppose the better analogy is Elton John and Bernie Taupin, the former doing the music, the latter the lyrics.)

It was the Ford-Couzens partnership that took Ford from being just another small car-maker to a world-dominating colossus in less than a decade.

But that wasn’t enough for Ford. He was a genius, after all. Everyone said so. It would be selfish of him to not put his wisdom to work solving humanity’s many problems.

From Steven Watts’ superb biography of Ford, The People’s Tycoon:

In the spring of 1917, business journalist B.C. Forbes examined Henry Ford as part of his series on men who are making America. Writing in Leslie’s magazine. He reported that although Ford had earned the admiration of the world for his achievements in reshaping American industrial life, he had recently demonstrated a troubling penchant for overreaching his talents. In Forbes’ words, Ford's “intoxicating success went through his head and he became obsessed with the notion that there was nothing human or superhuman, he and his money could not accomplish.” Some of Ford's colleagues agreed. Samuel F Marquis, for example, wrote that the industrialist had succumbed to a temptation facing many wealthy men by “assuming that because they have made a great success and shown exceptional ability in one field of action, therefore their opinions are of equal weight in all others.” In Marquis’ view, for that begun commenting and acting upon issues “for which he is not the special fitness that distinguished him in his own particular field.”

This portrait of a man stretching beyond his intellectual means had been inspired by Ford's controversial entry into public affairs. With the tremendous acclaim for the Model T, the $5 day, and the company's social programs, Ford saw himself moving about on a larger stage. With the whole country taking him seriously, he felt compelled to do likewise. In the mid 1910s, Ford moved out into the public arena. Around 1915, he began to speak out on controversial issues, lending and support to political movements, and even run for public office.

When Ford made this shift to all-purpose sage, he had a problem. There was no Twitter. And aside from reporters who asked him for his deep thoughts, Ford had no outlet for his many opinions. So he decided to turn the company’s in-house newspaper, The Ford Times, into that outlet.

In October, 1915, a Ford employee brought page proofs of the latest edition of the company paper into the office of James Couzens for his approval. Couzens nodded his approval to one article after another — but stopped cold when he came across a column under the name of Henry Ford.

Then his face began to redden and his muscles clenched. “You cannot publish this,” he exclaimed. When Brownell assured him Ford had given his personal approval, Couzens grew even more emphatic. “This is the company paper. He cannot use the Ford Times for his personal views,” he burst out. “I will talk to Mr. Ford tomorrow.”

Couzens did. And Ford blew up at him. “You cannot stop anything here!” Ford shouted. That was technically correct. Ford was top of the hierarchy, as well as the publicly traded company’s largest shareholder.

But Couzens understood the folly of what Ford was doing. And he always put the good of the company first. “Well, then, I quit,” he said.

Ford asked him to reconsider but Couzens insisted that this was too important and Ford must stop. Ford refused to budge. So Couzens quit.

The partnership that built the Ford empire was ended by Henry Ford’s pig-headed insistence that the world needed to hear his opinions about more than car manufacturing.

I won't summarize the following decades, except to say it was a long, slow, gradual decline.

Ford anointed himself the man who would single-handedly end the First World War — and his farcical efforts produced nothing but ridicule. He repeatedly ran for office but declined to campaign in the belief that the great multitude would weep with gratitude and anoint him. He repeatedly lost. Worse, Ford bought a newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, and turned it into a mouthpiece for his views — including increasingly strident and anti-Semitic attacks on bankers and other nefarious powers. The Independent even republished The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious forgery that purported to be evidence of a vast Jewish conspiracy.

In a little more than a decade, Ford went from being one of the most venerated men in America, acclaimed across the political spectrum, to one whose image ranged from populist hero to harmless crank to dangerous demagogue. And as time passed, perceptions increasingly shifted toward the bad end of that spectrum.

But perhaps worst of all, Ford let his company stagnate. While his factories kept cranking out the Model T, his competitors learned and innovated and started producing cars better than the Tin Lizzie. Ford’s huge lead diminished. For years, Ford’s executives all but begged him to design a new model but Henry Ford only listened to Henry Ford. The company’s decline accelerated.

When the numbers and the trajectory were impossible to deny, Ford finally agreed to develop a successor to the Model T. The company had to act fast, so rather than smoothly develop a new model and retool, the whole vast empire had to shut down production for half a year to make the change.

The new Model A was relatively successful, but it didn’t halt the company’s decline. Under a leadership regime that was effectively dictatorial, Ford’s dominance of the industry slowly but steadily ebbed.

It was the perfect 20th century iteration of an old story. A very old story.

As it says in Proverbs 16:18, “pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”

Not that I know anyone who needs to hear that today.

REMINDER: If you’d like to discuss anything at all related to my new book, How Big Things Get Done, this thread is the place to share. Also, if you’d like to order How Big Things Get Done — and you’re such a wise and discerning reader, I’m sure you’ve been considering it — this will point you in the right direction.