ABSTRACT
Mr. Leonard confesses that he was moved to begin the study of Henry Ford by burning moral indignation. He was horrified by the inhuman processes of speeded-up mass production in the great factories; and by the Ford by-product of petty tyranny over private lives through the system of espionage and arbitrary interference, inevitably producing sullen, cowed resentment. Mr. Leonard gives the bare facts of Ford's early life briefly, regarding amplification as an unfruitful task. Mr. Leonard gives Calvin Coolidge the credit of sidetracking Ford from the route to the White House with the bait of Muscle Shoals; which of course was not in the President's control, though Ford supposed it must be. Since then Ford's career has been a slow diminuendo. His Wayside Inn, with its collection of relics of the pre-motor age, Mr. Leonard finds pathetically significant. It is Ford's retreat from reality, from the desolation of the industrial centers.
