What's new
What's new

Fordlandia Pictures

Clownshoes

Aluminum
Joined
Apr 22, 2009
Location
NC, USA
I saw a show the other night on Fordlandia, the small town Henry Ford built in the Amazon during the thirties to produce rubber until the workers revolted and the whole operation was abandoned. They never actually made any rubber but there was a working power plant and what appeared to be a very well equipped machine shop that I did some searching around the net for and found a few interesting photos. The lathe looks huge, the show had a better view of it but still not sure what kind it was, it also looks like there is a cylindrical surface grinder of some type, a horizontal mill and something that looks to me like a large pipe threading machine. In the old photo you can see a young man operating the lathe and it looks like they also had a VTL near the mill. The truck in the background also may still be there (at least the body) as it turned up in some other photos. The site was eventually sold back to the Brazilian goverment by Henry Ford's son at a huge loss and it sounds like locals have been moving back into the area recently and occupying some of the structures, The equipment doesn't look in bad shape for being in a humid jungle for over 80 years.

Brazil_Amazon_Fordlândia_Factory-interior.jpg
Fordlania remenants 2.jpg
fordlandia-820x477.jpg
 
Yeah I saw it on Mysteries of the Abandoned, not quite as infuriating as What on Earth but most of the sites they feature aren't all that mysterious. I was about yelling at the TV when they did Eastern State Penitentiary.

The wikipedia page (Fordlandia - Wikipedia) has more info on the background of the town, I guess it actually started in the late twenties which might help put a date on some of that equipment.

Basically rubber trees are a pain in the ass to cultivate, the workers didn't like american food, not being able to drink alcohol and being forced to attend church socials so they cut the telegraph lines and chased the managers and the cook into the jungle.

They ended up starting another town downstream but synthetic rubber was soon invented and that operation was scrapped as well.
 
I had found an in-depth write=up about Fordlandia a few years ago. As I recall it, the facts were as follows:

1. Fordlandia was based on Henry Ford's idea of controlling all aspects of automobile manufacture including controlling sources of raw materials. Frod wanted to have his own source of rubber, so invested in a huge tract of land in Brazil to start a rubber plantation and rubber production plant. Unfortunately, no one at Ford did their homework, as it turned out the climate & soil conditions in that part of Brazil were absolutely wrong for any growth of rubber trees. Despite their best efforts at clearing the forests and planting rubber trees, there was little real yield of the sap needed to produce rubber.

2. Henry Ford was a very opinionated and hard headed individual. He was suspicious of "foreigners", and in his plants, did his best to "Americanize" the workforce. In the case of Fordlandia, Ford was up against established Brazilian culture. The Brazilian workforce was used to working in the early morning hours, then taking a lunch break and siesta until the afternoon. This was to avoid working in the hottest part of the days, and using their system, the Brazilians would put in a full day of work and then some. Ford would not hear of this and had required the local workforce to work on the same sort of clock as the workforce in the Rouge was on. This caused quite a bit of discontent.

3. Ford insisted on a cafeteria style of mess hall to feed the workers at Fordlandia, and insisted the kitchens serve only American style foods. In Ford's case, this was about as bland and unimaginative a diet as could be had. It was a stark contrast to the Brazilian diet (and having worked in South America and ate with the crews, I can say the local diet was a whole lot better than white bread and mayonnaise and processed lunch meat). Needless to say, the insistence on this bland American diet in the cafeteria was one of the final straws. The rebellion at Fordlandia is said to have started in the mess hall as the workforce was plainly fed up with Ford's ideas as to working hours and food. In addition, Ford insisted the workforce be "Americanized" and aside from requiring them to take classes to learn English, he went so far as to dictate what sort or recreation and social activities were going to happen in Fordlandia. Henry Ford had almost Puritanical ideas about many things, and modern music and dancing (for the times he lived in) were something he looked upon as causing moral decay. Ford insisted people learn to do the kinds of dances that might have been popular when he was a boy or young man. The result was Brazilians were being told that in their free time, they were going to learn to square dance. The Brazilians have their own lively music and folk dances as well as more modern dances, but Ford's people banned them. Ford's people insisted the children in Fordlandia learn English, learn American folk songs, and similar. When a local workforce is told their culture is all wrong and another culture is forced upon them, this does not go over too well for too long.

Ford was always a controlling man, and he had no sense of the Brazilian spirit and culture. He had his management try to Americanize the Brazilian workforce IN BRAZIL to suit his ideas. Between picking some of the worst possible country to try to start a rubber plantation and his efforts to Americanize the Brazilians, his Fordlandia idea failed entirely in a relatively short time.

As I said, I worked "in country" on jobs in South America, and lived and ate with crews of local mechanics and other crafts. Simple fare, imaginatively cooked with some good seasonings was usually the order of the day. To this day, when my wife and I are wanting a quick meal for supper, my wife will ask me to make some black beans and rice. The Brazilians, as do the other peoples in South America have a developed culture and have their own social customs, music, and much else. Henry Ford refused to accept or respect it, claiming his idea of "Americanization" was the best and only way. He got his when the workforce at Fordlandia rebelled, and a sure way to ignite simmering tensions into a full blown riot is to serve people slop they can't stand after riding roughshod on them. Reportedly, from what I'd read, there was a full blown riot in the mess hall, with people throwing the food back at the American Ford management, followed by mass resignations. After that, the workforce quit en mass. That, combined with no success at cultivating rubber trees spelled the end of Fordlandia. It was stillborn for all practical purposes.


Henry Ford had a deep mistrust of anyone who was not his idea of a person. Eastern Europeans, Southern Europeans, and people from places other than England, Scotland, Ireland, or Northern Europe were people Ford not only mis trusted, but looked down upon. In the Ford plants, he had a whole set of departments to work on Americanizing these groups of people. Investigations into how an employee lived at home, what their personal habits were, what church they went to, what groups they were members of were all investigated by Ford's snoops. If an employee was of the "wrong" ethnicity, they tried to Americanize him, and if his personal habits in his off hours did not coincide with Ford's ideas, the employee was fired. Ford brought this mentality to Brazil and it backfired on him. With his mistrust of "Foreigners", Ford would never have done the logical thing before starting on Fordlandia: hire a few South American agronomists or experts in the field of cultivating rubber trees and producing raw rubber.

Ford got his, and he had it coming. Having worked amongst South Americans and gone up and back over the border between Paraguay and Brazil and lived amongst the people, my sympathies are with the workforce at Fordlandia.
 
Very nice write up Joe.

I always wondered when/why the change in 'ole Henry happened ?

I recall a quote something like "I want to pay my workers a good
enough wage, so they can afford to buy the cars they build every day".

And then there are the writings about the above listed bias's.

Maybe he felt betrayed when his workers tried to unionize ?
 
That is the quote and myth of the man made famous by history.
It was not the way he was.
Bob

That 'Splains things.

On another note, too bad JRIowa is gone, IIRC his BIL runs
a shop down there. He has mentioned some of the challenges.

I wonder if someone could ask him to join us here ?
 
Very nice write up Joe.

I always wondered when/why the change in 'ole Henry happened ?

I recall a quote something like "I want to pay my workers a good
enough wage, so they can afford to buy the cars they build every day".

And then there are the writings about the above listed bias's.

Maybe he felt betrayed when his workers tried to unionize ?

Henry was no fan of the unions. I'm sure that he paid the $5.00 per day wage in an attempt to keep the unions out. A man such as Henry Ford who wanted to control all aspect of his business would have no love for unionization of his plant, especially when it ultimately occurred. It was a terrible time in Detroit in 1932 when the Ford Hunger March occurred.


Ford Hunger March - Wikipedia
 
I had found an in-depth write=up about Fordlandia a few years ago. As I recall it, the facts were as follows:

1. Fordlandia was based on Henry Ford's idea of controlling all aspects of automobile manufacture including controlling sources of raw materials. Frod wanted to have his own source of rubber, so invested in a huge tract of land in Brazil to start a rubber plantation and rubber production plant. Unfortunately, no one at Ford did their homework, as it turned out the climate & soil conditions in that part of Brazil were absolutely wrong for any growth of rubber trees. Despite their best efforts at clearing the forests and planting rubber trees, there was little real yield of the sap needed to produce rubber.

2. Henry Ford was a very opinionated and hard headed individual. He was suspicious of "foreigners", and in his plants, did his best to "Americanize" the workforce. In the case of Fordlandia, Ford was up against established Brazilian culture. The Brazilian workforce was used to working in the early morning hours, then taking a lunch break and siesta until the afternoon. This was to avoid working in the hottest part of the days, and using their system, the Brazilians would put in a full day of work and then some. Ford would not hear of this and had required the local workforce to work on the same sort of clock as the workforce in the Rouge was on. This caused quite a bit of discontent.

3. Ford insisted on a cafeteria style of mess hall to feed the workers at Fordlandia, and insisted the kitchens serve only American style foods. In Ford's case, this was about as bland and unimaginative a diet as could be had. It was a stark contrast to the Brazilian diet (and having worked in South America and ate with the crews, I can say the local diet was a whole lot better than white bread and mayonnaise and processed lunch meat). Needless to say, the insistence on this bland American diet in the cafeteria was one of the final straws. The rebellion at Fordlandia is said to have started in the mess hall as the workforce was plainly fed up with Ford's ideas as to working hours and food. In addition, Ford insisted the workforce be "Americanized" and aside from requiring them to take classes to learn English, he went so far as to dictate what sort or recreation and social activities were going to happen in Fordlandia. Henry Ford had almost Puritanical ideas about many things, and modern music and dancing (for the times he lived in) were something he looked upon as causing moral decay. Ford insisted people learn to do the kinds of dances that might have been popular when he was a boy or young man. The result was Brazilians were being told that in their free time, they were going to learn to square dance. The Brazilians have their own lively music and folk dances as well as more modern dances, but Ford's people banned them. Ford's people insisted the children in Fordlandia learn English, learn American folk songs, and similar. When a local workforce is told their culture is all wrong and another culture is forced upon them, this does not go over too well for too long.

Ford was always a controlling man, and he had no sense of the Brazilian spirit and culture. He had his management try to Americanize the Brazilian workforce IN BRAZIL to suit his ideas. Between picking some of the worst possible country to try to start a rubber plantation and his efforts to Americanize the Brazilians, his Fordlandia idea failed entirely in a relatively short time.

As I said, I worked "in country" on jobs in South America, and lived and ate with crews of local mechanics and other crafts. Simple fare, imaginatively cooked with some good seasonings was usually the order of the day. To this day, when my wife and I are wanting a quick meal for supper, my wife will ask me to make some black beans and rice. The Brazilians, as do the other peoples in South America have a developed culture and have their own social customs, music, and much else. Henry Ford refused to accept or respect it, claiming his idea of "Americanization" was the best and only way. He got his when the workforce at Fordlandia rebelled, and a sure way to ignite simmering tensions into a full blown riot is to serve people slop they can't stand after riding roughshod on them. Reportedly, from what I'd read, there was a full blown riot in the mess hall, with people throwing the food back at the American Ford management, followed by mass resignations. After that, the workforce quit en mass. That, combined with no success at cultivating rubber trees spelled the end of Fordlandia. It was stillborn for all practical purposes.


Henry Ford had a deep mistrust of anyone who was not his idea of a person. Eastern Europeans, Southern Europeans, and people from places other than England, Scotland, Ireland, or Northern Europe were people Ford not only mis trusted, but looked down upon. In the Ford plants, he had a whole set of departments to work on Americanizing these groups of people. Investigations into how an employee lived at home, what their personal habits were, what church they went to, what groups they were members of were all investigated by Ford's snoops. If an employee was of the "wrong" ethnicity, they tried to Americanize him, and if his personal habits in his off hours did not coincide with Ford's ideas, the employee was fired. Ford brought this mentality to Brazil and it backfired on him. With his mistrust of "Foreigners", Ford would never have done the logical thing before starting on Fordlandia: hire a few South American agronomists or experts in the field of cultivating rubber trees and producing raw rubber.

Ford got his, and he had it coming. Having worked amongst South Americans and gone up and back over the border between Paraguay and Brazil and lived amongst the people, my sympathies are with the workforce at Fordlandia.

Nice summary, but a lot of those ideas for company towns were not just Fords ideas. There used to be a few company towns across America that instituted those same types of programs and morality standards, and pretty much every one of them that banned alcohol had a saloon/brothel district just down the road. I'm sure Ford added a few of his own twists, but most of it is out of the "How to Run a Company Town" manual:D. I live in an old company town, stage stop for Ragtown was just across the street.
 
I recall a good episode about Fordlandia, maybe on American Experience on PBS.

Ford certainly did not do his homework. He sent a team of automotive engineers and not a single arborist or horticulturist. They knew they needed X amount of trees so they just planted them every so many feet to have enough.

I believe at some point they brought in some experts who more or less told them it was hopeless.
 
It was a different time. One has to remember that when looking back.
With the benefit of history and a wider view it's easy to say this or that was a bad move or had it coming.
Good things, bad things as all people do.
I do hate any kind of judgement done in the rear view mirror.
The question is would you try such a grand scheme when being squeezed by your suppliers?
Bob
 
Henry was no fan of the unions. I'm sure that he paid the $5.00 per day wage in an attempt to keep the unions out. A man such as Henry Ford who wanted to control all aspect of his business would have no love for unionization of his plant, especially when it ultimately occurred. It was a terrible time in Detroit in 1932 when the Ford Hunger March occurred.

Ford's announcement was for $5/hr for 8 hour days which was previously $2.34/hr for a 9 hour day. The real reason was they just couldn't keep workers on the line, because they simply hated it. Turnover was over 300% and it was killing production. The other thing they don't note is the wage was for qualified men only. Ford required you to pass an investigation into your private life which was later dropped.
 
One would like to see any company announce a 100+% starting pay increase today.
The investigation into your private life continued although just a record kept on you. The fledgling GM companies did the same.
Bob
 
Doug:

Henry Ford had some deep seated prejudices or bias that went back to his boyhood. He came from an upbringing where people around the region were predominantly of English, Scotch, Irish, or German stock. The prevailing religion was some protestant denominations. There was a deep mistrust of cities, city people, business people, and this tied in with some of what became the Populist beliefs.

Ford instituted the $5.00 daily wage, but that was where the semblance of caring for the welfare of his workforce ended. The workforce worked quite hard on the production lines to earn that $5.00. Henry Ford was tied to the Model T and long after it was an obsolete or outmoded design of car, he insisted on producing it because he thought it was what people needed. As competitors produced better cars of more modern design and did it at competitive prices, Ford's reaction was to cut the price of a new Model T. To make that profitable, the result was the "Famous Ford Speedup", cranking up the production line speed. Workers who worked at Ford Motor Company during those years tell stories of company policy that forbid a person leaving the production line to use the toilet until a relief worker was brought to fill their position and keep things moving. If a person did get permission to use the toilet, Ford had people in the toilet areas to check how long a worker took to use the toilet and also to check that the worker legitimately had to perform their bodily functions. As the story went, if there was nothing in the bowl, the worker was docked or subject to other disciplinary action.

Ford, while disliking "foreigners" in general, had an a virulent anti-semitic streak in him. He spent money buying a local newspaper so he could write his own editorials, many of which condemned the whole Jewish race and blamed the troubles of the world on them. He donated large sums of money to Adolf Hitler's early political campaign in Germany, and supported Father Charles Coughlin (a priest who broadcast antisemitic speeches blaming the troubles of the world on the Jewish people and the Jewish bankers). Ford was decorated by the Nazi government for his support.

All of this hatred and mistrust predated any real campaigns by unions to organize the auto industry. Ford simply was a man consumed by bigotry and hatred and he had the money to try to advance his ideas. In one famous instance, his bigoted statements and publications against the Jews resulted in him being sued for slander. He was named in a suit, and the suit held water so Henry Ford was served with a subpoena and ordered to appear in court. Ford was besides himself, as the last thing he wanted was to have to appear in court. The plaintiff in the suit said he did not want monetary damages, just a formal admission from Ford that he had been wrong in his statements about the Jews, and a formal apology to the Jewish people. Ford agreed to this, as it settled the suit without having Ford being required to take the stand. When the time came for Ford to make that apology, he could barely get his voice to anything more than a whisper, literally choking on the words. Ford was an embittered man to the end, and his pressure and ideas killed his son Edsel (ulcers plus Ford's insistance that drinking raw unpasteurized milk was healthier- Edsel developed some infection from that milk aside from ulcers that became cancerous).

Ford, in plain English, was a bastard to one and all, even to his only child, Edsel. It was after Edsel died that Henry Ford's wife laid the law down to him. She demanded that Henry Ford fire a man named Harry Bennet who headed what was called the "Service Bureau". This was nothing more than Ford's strongarm, snitch and goon squad. Ford's wife threatened to leave him if he did not fire Bennet and name his grandson as chief executive officer. By then, Ford was an old man, in his 80's, and he begrudgingly gave way to his wife.

While company towns existed and had strict rules, Ford took it to an even more invasive and restrictive level. I knew men who grew up in company lumber and coal towns in Kentucky. These were "dry" towns, and were strictly run, but not to the point of sending inspectors to see how a household was maintained or to check on where the people of the town went to church or avoided it. In the company towns I was told about, the main issues were keeping out union organizers and keeping the town "dry" so miners and sawmill workers did not drink up their wages and tear up the place or skip work. One fellow I worked with was the son of a coal miner from Stearns, Kentucky. He showed me a newspaper reproduction from January of 1900. The gist of the article was that union organizers had come into the town of Stearns (a company town owned by Stearns, a company with timber and coal interests). Stearns had company goons, armed and ready to deal with union organizers. The union organizers were pursued by the company goons, who were shooting at the union organizers. The union organizers wound up taking refuge from gunfire from the company goons in the Stearns Hotel. Of course, the paper made out this taking refuge was a "cowardly act". When the union organizers would not come out and give themselves up, the article went on to say that company goons (company police officers) had no choice but to set fire to the Stearns Hotel with the union organizers in it. The result, aside from the organizers being burned alive, was the total destruction of the Stearns Hotel. Of course, the paper went on about the expense and trouble associated with the burning and destruction of the company's hotel, and blamed that on the union organizers as well.

Henry Ford needed no manual on how to run a company town. If anything, he could have written it. Henry Ford had more than enough money to try to bring his workforce into line with his ideas. Try as he would, people eventually got around him and his ideas. One thing I read is that prior to Henry Ford setting up the assembly lines to build the Model T's, back when cars were being built in small batches in Ford's earliest days, Ford was said to have some human feeling for his workers. Once the assembly line came into being, workers became numbers and Ford thought in terms of controlling them and molding them to his ideas. I recall seeing a youtube of some ceremony held by Ford Motor Company to celebrate turning some of the workers who were recent immigrants into "real Americans". Obviously a staged event, with workers who showed how they abandoned their old-country ways in favor of the better methods and life style Ford taught them.

In the coal mining towns, I do not think any effort was ever made to "Americanize" the workforce. There was a heirarchy, and it used the different ethnicities to advantage to keep control of the workforce. English, or more specifically, Cornishmen, were often the mine "captains"- the supervision and management. Scottish men were usually the hoisting engineers and also in management, as were some German immigrants. Eastern Europeans along with Italians and Greeks were sent down into the mines to do the actual mining. It was said that keeping workers speaking different languages in the same crews was a way to prevent any talk of organizing. The job was to get out the coal, and the miners were paid by the ton. In some of the company towns along the Hudson River in NY State, built around Cement Mills, the practice was to bring over immigrant labor who would work cheap and do any heavy dirty jobs without complaint. The other practice was to bring over immigrant groups who had feuds going from the old country. In some of the cement mill towns, there are still bullet holes from neighbors shooting at each other, simply because they were from feuding peoples in the old country. Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins would be brought over to work in cement mills along with Slovaks, Poles and anyone else who was looking to come to America and would work cheap with no questions asked. This led to some real feuds imported from the old country, and the management actually liked it because it pitted the men against each other and sometimes resulted in increased productivity as they tried to out-do each other. Off times, they drank hard, fought, and occasionally took potshots at each other or their houses.
 
....
Workers who worked at Ford Motor Company during those years tell stories of company policy that forbid a person leaving the production line to use the toilet until a relief worker was brought to fill their position and keep things moving. If a person did get permission to use the toilet, Ford had people in the toilet areas to check how long a worker took to use the toilet and also to check that the worker legitimately had to perform their bodily functions. As the story went, if there was nothing in the bowl, the worker was docked or subject to other disciplinary action.

I can assure you such still exists.
We don't check toilet bowls but you can not leave until replaced and if you take too much time there is a loitering in the rest rooms clause in the UAW union contract.
I haven had to write people up on both sides and won the grievances.
You wait to go pee or poop until your spot can be filled or take the hit.
Normally this is no problem to cover, 2-3 people gone and it becomes one.
Walk away to the bathroom unannounced anytime during run without coverage and you will be on notice, six notices for any shop rule violations and unemployed, all within the contract and no recourse.
Bob
 
Joe, the next time you visit Greenfield Village or the Henry Ford Museum, take a look at the old building behind the Henry Ford Museum (its current name is the Ford Engineering Lab, or FEL). I have been in the building several times on account of work meetings. It has been a Ford engineering building since it was built in the 20's. It has been remodeled recently to modernize it but it essentially a cube farm under one roof. Near the front is a row of offices, one of which was Henry Ford's office and conference room. I saw an old floor plan showing how the building was laid out when it was built. The offices for the Dearborn Independent newspaper were in the front, north corner of the building.

Ford Motor Company has tried to build bridges in the years since. An example of that: Ford Motor Company sponsored the TV premiere of Schindler's List, unedited, uninterrupted, and commercial free.
 
Ford Motor Company has tried to build bridges in the years since. An example of that: Ford Motor Company sponsored the TV premiere of Schindler's List, unedited, uninterrupted, and commercial free.
Much like Carnegie did eh ?

Harm the workers (actually have them shot), and then "Pay Remittance" to the public-at-large in the future.....
 








 
Back
Top