by Greg Grandin
5. “Fordlandia, Brazil”; “No Business Depression Here,” New York Times, December 27, 1931; “Life in Fordlandia!” Iron Mountain Daily News, May 18, 1932.
6. Washington Post, February 15, 1942; “Sober Second Thoughts on Things and Kings,” New York Times, April 27, 1930.
7. National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 1472, roll 40, 832.6176/58, Drew to State, February 14, 1930.
8. BFRC, accession 23, box 17, “Rubber Plantation,” “Ford Summer Hour,” Sunday, August 24, 1941.
9. BFRC, accession 38, box 68, February 1931.
10. BFRC, vertical file, “Rubber Plantation; Brazil Correspondence,” Letter to H. G. Moore, September 26, 1934.
11. Meyer, The Five Dollar Day, p. 176; Nevins and Hill, Ford, p. 537; “Report on Visit of Messrs. W. E. Carnegie and V. J. Perini.”
12. Esch, “Fordtown,” p. 120; “Ford Voyagers,” Detroit News, July 28, 1928.
13. Folha do Norte, September 16, 1934.
14. “Report on Visit of Messrs. W. E. Carnegie and V. J. Perini.”
15. “Report on Visit of Messrs. W. E. Carnegie and V. J. Perini”; BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Johnston to Wibel, October 9, 1933.
16. BFRC, accession 74, box 13, “Black Binder,” “Brazil Rubber Plantation”; Levine, Internal Combustion, pp. 16–18; Nevins and Hill, Ford, p. 348; Joyce Shaw Peterson, “Black Automobile Workers in Detroit, 1910–1930,” Journal of Negro History 64 (Summer 1979).
17. BFRC, accession 74, box 14, Johnston to Carnegie, May 25, 1932; Johnston to Carnegie, August 25, 1932; box 16, Johnston to Roberge, May 5, 1939.
18. BFRC, Reminiscences, E. G. Liebold, p. 626; Charles Morrow Wilson, “Mr. Ford in the Jungle,” Harper’s, July 1941.
19. “Ford’s Dream Lies in Decay,” Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1992; Wilson, “Mr. Ford in the Jungle”; Brian Kelly and Mark London, Amazon, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983, p. 287.
Chapter 18: Mountains of the Moon
1. BFRC, accession 65, Reminiscences, Victor J. Perini (as told by Constance Perini).
2. Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 218; BFRC, vertical file, Village Industries, General, “One Foot in Industry and One Foot in Soil” (Ford Motor Co. Program).
3. BFRC, accession 74, box 16, Stallard to Johnston, January 13, 1940.
4. BFRC, accession 74, box 16, Johnston to Roberge, October 23, 1930.
5. Morgan Schmidt, “Farming and Patterns of Agrobiodiversity on the Amazon Floodplan,” MS thesis, University of Florida, 2003.
6. Ioris, “A Forest of Disputes.”
7. Ioris, “A Forest of Disputes”; Schmidt, “Farming and Patterns of Agrobiodiversity”; BFRC, accession 74, box 16, Groth to Johnston, April 27, 1940.
8. BFRC, accession 74, box 16, “To the Members of the Belterra Garden Club.”
9. BFRC, accession 74, box 17, “Interplant Correspondence.”
10. Ibid.
11. BFRC, accession 74, box 16, McClure to Edsel, August 3, 1939.
12. Ibid.
13. “Golf as Molder of Men,” Dearborn Independent, August 2, 1924.
14. BFRC, accession 390, box 83.
15. BFRC, accession 74, box 14, Johnston to Roberge, March 14, 1939.
16. Wik, Henry Ford and Grass-Roots America, p. 224; Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 86; BFRC, accession 65, Reminiscences, Oscar G. Olsen.
17. Dearborn Independent, August 6, 1921.
18. Watts, People’s Tycoon, p. 421; Nevins and Hill, Ford, p. 605; Dempsey, “Henry Ford’s Amazonian Suburbia,” p. 44; Marx, The Machine in the Garden, p. 18.
19. BFRC, accession 74, box 14, Roberge to Johnston, May 5, 1939; BFRC, accession 74, box 17, “Film and Projectors,” Johnston to Roberge, March 29, 1937; Edward Tomlinson, “Jungle Gold,” Collier’s Weekly, December 12, 1936.
20. BFRC, accession 74, box 16, Pringle to Johnston, November 16, 1937. Fordlandia footage can be found in the National Archives, Special Media Archives Services Division, College Park, Md.; BFRC, accession 74, box 16, Johnston to Roberge, October 23, 1930.
21. New York Times, June 27, 1931.
22. Ford News, June 1, 1928.
23. Phillips, Brazil, p. 54.
24. BFRC, accession 74, box 16, McClure to Edsel Ford, August 3, 1939; Johnston to Roberge, August 10, 1939; box 15, Johnston to Black, September 18, 1941; Esch, “Fordtown,” p. 119.
25. BFRC, accession 74, box 13, “Black Binder,” Meadowcroft to Rogge, March 17, 1931.
Chapter 19: Only God Can Grow a Tree
1. Henry Ford, with Samuel Crowther, My Life and Work, New York: Doubleday, Page, 1922, p. 108.
2. David Campbell, Land of Ghosts: The Braided Lives of People and the Forest in Far Western Amazonia, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005, p. 12; Stone, Dreams of Amazonia, p. 28; Harald Sioli, “My Life in the Amazon,” Biotropica 11 (1979): 244–45.
3. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Johnston to Sorensen, November 17, 1931.
4. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Sorensen to Johnston, December 17, 1931.
5. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Johnston to Heller, October 22, 1932.
6. BFRC, accession 38, box 61, “Distinctive Brazilian Hardwoods.”
7. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Wibel to Johnston, March 13, 1933; Wilkins and Hill, American Business Abroad, p. 176.
8. Nevins and Hill, Ford, p. 614; Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 138.
9. BFRC, accession 74, box 14, Johnston to Sorensen, October 18, 1937.
10. “With Ford on the Amazon: The Story of the Ford Plantation, an Eye-Witness,” Planter, January 1931, in BFRC, vertical file, “Rubber Plantations.”
11. Joseph A. Russell, “Fordlandia and Belterra, Rubber Plantations on the Tapajós River, Brazil,” Economic Geography 18 (1942): 127; Joseph A. Russell, “Alternative Sources of Rubber,” Economic Geography 17 (1941): 399–408.
12. BFRC, accession 74, box 6.
13. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Johnston to Sorensen, February 2, 1932.
14. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Carnegie to Johnston, February 16, 1932.
15. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals, p. 710.
16. Nevins, Ford, p. 447, for “edict engineering.”
17. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Johnston to Sorensen, February 2, 1932.
18. BFRC, accession 390, box 83, Wibel to Johnston, July 17, 1934.
19. BFRC, accession 390, box 83, Wibel to Johnston, May 21, 1931.
Chapter 20: Standard Practices
1. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Weir to Johnston, March 31, 1933.
2. BFRC, accession 1514, box 1, Roberge to Weir, July 29, 1937.
3. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Johnston to Carnegie, September 16, 1932, in Dean, Struggle for Rubber, p. 75.
4. Dean, Struggle for Rubber, p. 64; BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Johnston to Wibel, December 31, 1932.
5. BFRC, accession 38, box 71, Department of Agriculture to Rogge, November 8, 1932.
6. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Johnston to Wibel, March 13, 1933.
7. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Johnston to Wibel, December 31, 1932.
8. BFRC, accession 1514, box 1, Johnston to Weir, May 9, 1933.
9. BFRC, accession 1514, box 1, letters in “1928–1933.”
10. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Weir to Johnston, March 31, 1933.
11. Dean, Struggle for Rubber, pp. 76–77; BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Johnston to Roberge, September 6, 1937.
12. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Johnston to Roberge, September 6, 1937.
13. BFRC, accession 390, box 83, Johnston to Wibel, September 6, 1937.
14. BFRC, accession 74, box 14, Johnston to Roberge, October 16, 1936.
15. BFRC, accession 390, box 83, Johnston to Wibel, September 6, 1937; BFRC, accession 74, box 1, Johnston to Roberge, July 1, 1936.
16. BFRC, accession 74, box 1, Johnston to Roberge, July 1, 1936.
17. Dean, Struggle for Rubber, p. 78.
18. BFRC, accession 74, box 14, Johnston to Wibel, September 6, 1937;
Johnston to Roberge, September 28, 1936, and October 16, 1936.
19. BFRC, accession 390, box 83, Johnston to Wibel, September 6, 1937.
Chapter 21: Bonfire of the Caterpillars
1. Dean, Struggle for Rubber, pp. 53–62, 78.
2. Phillips, Brazil, p. 54.
3. BFRC, vertical file, Village Industries, General, 1920s, “Henry Ford Says, Farmer-Workmen Will Build Automobile of the Future,” published in Automotive Industry, August 28, 1924.
4. Brian E. Cleven, “Pequaming and Alberta: Henry Ford’s Model Towns,” master’s thesis, Department of Social Sciences, Michigan Technological University, 1997, p. 131.
5. Gastão Cruls, “Impressões de Uma Visita a Companhia Ford Industrial do Brasil,” Revista Brasileira de Geografia, October 1939, pp. 3–25.
6. “Fourteen-Year Effort to Produce Plantation Rubber in Brazil Is Showing Progress,” Washington Post, January 31, 1943.
7. Kelly and London, Amazon, p. 290; Wilson, “Mr. Ford in the Jungle.”
8. Dempsey, “Henry Ford’s Amazonian Suburbia.”
9. BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Johnston to Wibel, March 4, 1935.
10. BFRC, accession 390, box 83, “Insect Census of Fordlandia,” March 29, 1935.
11. Galey, “Industrialist in the Wilderness,” p. 275; BFRC, accession 74, box 13, “Rubber Production in Amazon Valley.”
12. BFRC, accession 74, box 1, cited in Johnston to Roberge, April 23, 1937.
13. Author’s interview with Charles Townsend, grandson of the entomologist and son of Charles Townsend, James Weir’s assistant, June 20, 2008.
14. BFRC, accession 390, box 83, Johnston to Wibel, February 10, 1937.
15. BFRC, accession 74, box 14, Johnston to Roberge, November 30, 1938; BFRC, accession 38, box 91.
16. BFRC, accession 74, box 5, clipping; BFRC, Henry Ford Office, accession 285, box 2155, “Hun-Hunt.”
Chapter 22: Fallen Empire of Rubber
1. Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 426.
2. Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 129; Nye, Henry Ford, p. 93.
3. BFRC, accession 390, box 83, Johnston to Wibel, June 8, 1937.
4. BFRC, accession 74, box 12, correspondence.
5. BFRC, accession 390, box 83, August Report, Johnston to Sorensen; Franco, O Tapajós, p. 84; author’s interview with Eimar Franco, March 16, 2008.
6. Andrew Revkin, The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest, Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2004, p. 88.
7. BFRC, accession 74, box 12; Galey, “Industrialist in the Wilderness,” p. 282.
8. Alexander Cockburn and Suzanna Hecht, The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers, and Defenders of the Amazon, London: Verso, 1989, p. 105.
9. Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 430.
10. Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews, p. 284.
11. Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 433.
12. Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 201.
13. H. G. Sorensen, “Crown Budding for Healthy Hevea,” Agriculture in the Americas, October 1942.
14. “Ford Plantations a Chapter in Romance of Rubber,” Christian Science Monitor, February 5, 1942; Wilkins and Hill, American Business Abroad, pp. 181–82.
15. BFRC, accession 74, box 6, “Plantation Report.”
16. Ibid.; Wilkins and Hill, American Business Abroad, p. 182.
Chapter 23: Tomorrow Land
1. Seth Garfield, “Tapping Masculinity: Labor Recruitment to the Brazilian Amazon during World War II,” Hispanic American Historical Review 86 (2006): 275–308; Pedro Martinello, A “Batalha da Borracha” na Segunda Guerra Mundial e suas consequências para o vale amazônico, Rio Branco: Universidade Federal do Acre, 1988; Frank D. McCann, The Brazilian-American Alliance, 1937–1945, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974.
2. Dean, Struggle for Rubber, p. 97; BFRC, accession 6, box 74, May 13, 1942; Charles H. T. Townsend, “Progress in Developing Superior Hevea Clones in Brazil,” Economic Botany 14 (1958): 189–96.
3. Roland Hall Sharp, South America Uncensored: Jungles of Fascism, Genuine Good-Neighborliness, Portrait of a Continent, in Search of Frontiers, New York: Longmans, Green, 1945, p. 270; Phillips, Brazil, p. 57; Karl Brandt, Reconstruction of World Agriculture, New York: Longmans, Green, 1945.
4. Dean, Struggle for Rubber, p. 97; BFRC, accession 134, box 4, Camargo to Stallard, December 1, 1944; BFRC, accession 74, box 12, Plantation Reports, January 1942–December 1943; BFRC, accession 7, box 5, Belterra Monthly Progress Reports, 1941 to 1945. See also the reports in accession 74, box 13, related to Belterra.
5. Steve Mannheim, Walt Disney and the Quest for Community, New York: Ashgate Publishing, 1983, p. 26; Barbara Weinstein, “Modernidade tropical: Visões norteamericanas da Amazônia nas vésperas da Guerra Fria,” Revista do IEB 45, September 2007, pp. 153–76; “Film to Cite Riches of South America,” New York Times, December 30, 1941.
6. BFRC, accession 285, box 2629.
7. André Luiz Vieira de Campos, “International Health Policies in Brazil: The Serviço Especial de Saúde Pública, 1942–1960,” PhD dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 1997, p. 75; BFRC, accession 6, box 74, Johnston to Wooley, October 26, 1942.
8. Columbia University, Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, “James G. McDonald,” “Confidential memorandum of McDonald-Ford Negotiations in Dearborn,” April 1, 1941.
9. Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 501; Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 161.
10. Bennett, We Never Called Him Henry, p. 285; Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 478.
11. Howard Segal, “What Bill Ford Is Learning from Great-Grandpa,” History News Network, http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/20940.html, January 23, 2006; Earl L. Doyle and Ruth MacFarlane, The History of Pequaming, Ontonagon, Mich.: Ontonagon County Historical Society, 2002, p. 167; Cleven, “Pequaming and Alberta,” p. 109.
Epilogue: Still Waiting for Henry Ford
1. “Amazonia—A Granary Out of the Jungle,” New York Times, July 31, 1949; Felisberto Camargo, “Report on the Amazon Region,” Problems of Humid Tropical Regions, Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, 1958, pp. 11–22; “Wait for the Weeping Wood,” Time, July 26, 1948.
2. Dean, Struggle for Rubber, pp. 102, 115.
3. Ibid., p. 115.
4. “Brazil’s Famous City of Folly,” Washington Post, February 15, 1914.
5. “Brazil’s Famous City of Folly”; Joseph Novitsky, “Boom, Bust, and Now Boom Again in Amazon Town,” New York Times, July 1, 1969.
6. “Jungle Trade Zone Tries to Survive, Far from Markets in a Changing World,” Associated Press, July 5, 2005; “Brazil’s Resurgent Amazon Powerhouse,” BBC News, August 29, 2006.
7. “Race to the Bottom: Mexico Lowers Wages to Snag International Auto Production,” International Herald Tribune, June 8, 2008; “Half of World’s Population Will Live in Cities Next Year, UN Report Says,” International Herald Tribune, June 27, 2007.
8. Jeb Blount, “Ford’s Dream Lies in Decay,” Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1993.
9. Rhett A. Butler, “Deforestation in the Amazon,” http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html#cattle (accessed May 8, 2008).
10. “Amazon’s Rescue Reversed,” Guardian, January 25, 2008; Alexei Barrionuevo, “With Guns and Fines, Brazil Takes on Loggers,” New York Times, April 19, 2008.
11. Monte Reel, “Brazil Pursues Crackdown on Loggers,” Washington Post, March 21, 2008; Tim Hirsch, “Brazilian Town at Centre of Crackdown,” Telegraph, March 3, 2008.
12. Michael Smith and David Voreacos, “The Secret World of Modern Slavery,” Bloomberg.com, December 2006, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/marketsmag/modern_slavery1.html (accessed May 12, 2008).
13. Woods Hole Research Center Press Release, “World’s Largest Rainforest Drying Experiment Completes First Phase,” http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-03/whrc-wlr032105.php.
14. Heidi Sopinka, “Spilling the Beans o
n Soy,” http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/26/4832/.
15. Alex Bellos, “Blood Crop,” Telegraph, October 13, 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml/earth/2007/10/13/sm_soya.xml&page=1 (accessed May 12, 2008).
16. Scott Wallace, “Last of the Amazon,” National Geographic, January 2007, p. 70; Bellos, “Blood Crop”; Indira Lakshmanan, “Amazon Highway Is Route to Strife in Brazil,” Boston Globe, December 27, 2005.
17. http://cps.aena.br/cps_arquivos/fg/provasanteriores_arquivos/provadiscursivaturismo.pdf (accessed May 8, 2008).
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following individuals and institutions for permission to publish images from their collections: Stephanie Lucas, Carol Whittaker, and Jim Orr of the Benson Ford Research Center at The Henry Ford (Dearborn, Michigan); Melanie Bazil of the Henry Ford Hospital; Silvia Inwood of the Detroit Institute of Arts; Matthew Westerby of The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Karen Hass of The Lane Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Jill Slaight of The New-York Historical Society; Jim Detlefsen at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum; James Dompier at Baraga County Historical Society (Michigan); John Brunton of the Devon County Council Devon Record Office (UK); and Leonardo F. Freitas.
The material appears on the following pages:
From the collection of The Henry Ford: 36, 59, 129, 137, 139, 141, 154, 172, 174, 184, 187, 190, 195, 197, 200, 207, 221, 224, 231, 255, 270, 271, 273, 274–75, 281, 282, 283, 284, 287, 288, 297, 317, 321, 322, 326
Conrad R. Lam Archives & Historical Collections of the Henry Ford Hospital: 297
Daniel Schoepf, George Huebner 1862–1935: Un Photographe à Manaus: 27, 29
Collection of the The New-York Historical Society: 67
Devon Record Office (reproduced by permission of the owners of the Luxmoore papers [D.5121M]): 91, 131, 215
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, with permission from the Lane Collection: 248
Diego Rivera, Detroit Industry, North Wall (detail, 1932–1933); Gift of Edsel B. Ford, photograph © 2001, The Detroit Institute of Arts: 250
James R. Weir, Pathological Survey of the Para Rubber Tree: 328