No second thoughts beset Henry Ford. “We believe that the automobile is in itself, both directly and indirectly, an important wealth-producing instrument,” he observed in 1930. On the heels of hard times, Ford was still mouthing the enthusiasm of good ones. The next year, production stopped at his Model A plant; the following year, unemployed workers demonstrated at the formidable River Rouge facility, seeking the number-one capitalist in his lair. Four men were killed in the ensuing violence.
