Henry Ford & the Peace Ship

Commentary
News of the outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914 was received by most Americans with disbelief. Why, people asked, had the armies of seven nations taken to the battlefield when war was so destructive and damaging, and very much part of a bygone era?  Opposition to the War was expressed by many in America: women’s organisations, trade unions, religious groups – and also, by Henry Ford.

Ford was a complex character. Although he had relatively little schooling and lacked formal training in maths and engineering, he had considerable mechanical curiosity, and a great deal of practical skill.

It took some time for him to build up his successful car business. After several failed ventures, the first Model A, produced in 1903, was the start of the dynasty. Within a year, the company had made and sold more than 650 cars, at a profit of over $98,000; a figure soon dwarfed by the huge fortune that he subsequently accumulated.

After the launch of the Model T in 1908, the company moved to its new Highland Park plant on the northern edge of Detroit. At the time, it was the largest manufacturing facility in the world, enabling Ford, using a moving assembly line, to produce a new car every 24 seconds.

Henry Ford’s business philosophy was relatively straightforward. He bought materials and components in large quantities; he paid his bills promptly; and built in huge numbers to lower the unit cost. He also surrounded himself with some very capable managers, enabling the business to operate effectively on a very large scale.

By 1913 there were more than half a million Fords on the road, and profits were continuing to grow. With enough money set aside for further investment and expansion, Ford decided to share some of his wealth with his workforce, fearing (it is said) that the public might become less inclined to buy his cars if they knew how much money he was making.

On January 5th 1914, he announced his intention to offer a minimum wage of $5 a day to all employees, and to introduce a profit-sharing scheme, totalling $10m, for all male adult employees and for women who were supporting families.

Until this time, although Ford cars and vans were known throughout the world, the man behind them was not a particularly prominent figure. However, his generous (and for the time, almost unprecedented) treatment of his workforce changed all this. Henry Ford became a folk hero – a solid man of the people – despite his 56-room baronial mansion, Fair Lane, with 15 baths, eight fireplaces and 550 light switches.  The strategy clearly worked; at the end of 1914, the company had a surplus of more than $48m dollars. 

There were, however, several other sides to Ford’s character. Those who met or knew him, painted a picture of someone who was sunlight and shadow; one who was kind and generous, but also, at times, cruel and insensitive.

He often cut a solitary, private figure, with relatively few close friends, and little knowledge and understanding of those things outside his immediate mechanical and financial preoccupations. He seems to have had quite rigid beliefs, laying great store by simple maxims, and was rarely open to discussion of alternative views.

Henry Ford very, very much believed in the motor car; not primarily for his personal gain, but because he saw mass car ownership as something that would bring people prosperity and - if allied to productive labour - peace. He appears to have kept his anti-war views largely to himself at the start of the Great War, but in April 1915 he was reported as saying that there would have been no war had Europe spent its money on peaceful machinery and the manufacture tractors.

It was these ideas that, four months later, prompted the editor of the local Detroit Free Press to send a reporter to ask Ford for his further thoughts on the European war. In the article that followed, published on the 22nd August 1915, the carmaker declared that he would do “everything in his power to prevent murderous, wasteful war in America and in the whole world”. He continued: “I will devote my life to fight this spirit of militarism”.

The resulting article was front page news, and the story repeated in other newspapers throughout the country. It received a mixed reaction; many responded positively to Henry Ford’s words; others said that he should stick to making cars, and not make pronouncements on matters of which he had little knowledge.

At the outset of the European war, there had been a call in some quarters for Woodrow Wilson, the American president, to mediate between the warring nations. Wilson was apparently wary of doing this, concerned that his efforts might be ignored. Instead, he favoured working quietly behind the scenes, to determine whether a peace conference might be feasible.

His cautious approach appears to have encouraged peace groups within the United States to organise their own unofficial mediation programme, and one of the leading lights in this respect was Rosika Schwimmer, a Hungarian journalist and prominent member of the International Women’s Suffrage. Based in London at the outbreak of war, she was declared an enemy alien in Britain because of her nationality, and sailed to America in September 1914 to continue her work in search of peace.

She seems to have been an exceptionally skilled campaigner for, within two weeks of arriving in the States, she had obtained an appointment with President Wilson to outline her mediation plans. Wilson, however, remained cautious, and although perhaps privately supporting some of Schwimmer’s ideas, was reluctant to give them his official endorsement.

Despite the activism of many (mainly female) peace movements in America, public opinion towards the War was beginning to change. Six month earlier, in February 1915, the passenger liner, RMS Lusitania, sailing from New York to Liverpool, had been torpedoed by a German submarine, with 1200 deaths, 128 of which were American citizens. Additionally, the U.S economy was becoming more closely linked to the Allied war effort, which tended to work against the pacifists’ cause. However, the publication of Henry Ford’s views on the War, together with his undertaking to work for peace, gave the peace groups one last hope that their ambitions might be achieved – in the form of a mediation conference between the warring nations, organised by the United States.

Initially, things did not look good. Every single peace representative who asked for a meeting with Mr Ford was rebuffed by the company’s business manager, Ernest Liebold. However, on the 16th November 1915, Liebold was not in the office, and thanks to the efforts of Rebecca Shelly, one of Rosika Schwimmer’s most enthusiastic supporters, a meeting with Henry Ford was arranged for the following day.

The timescale in which the subsequent arrangements were made was nothing short of astonishing. On 17th November, Ms Schwimmer held her first meeting with Henry Ford. Although offered a second meeting the following day, she apparently held out little hope that he would support her proposal. However, Ford appears to have been particularly receptive to her account of the death and suffering of the war, and invited Ms Schwimmer to his home for the lunch on the next day (the 19th), where she would have the opportunity to speak to Ford’s wife Clara, on whom he often relied for guidance.

Like her husband, Mrs Ford was soon convinced of the need for greater efforts to be made to stop the war, and was happy to endorse Rosika Schwimmer’s ideas for neutral mediation.

On Saturday 20th November, other prominent members of the peace campaign were invited to lunch at Fair Lane, where Mrs Ford agreed to cover the cost of a nationwide telegram campaign asking the President to intervene. The following day, Henry Ford travelled to New York with the intention of announcing a plan to end the war – although nothing appears to have had been properly prepared or thought through. The motor magnate seems to have focused more on the publicity and popularity that he might accrue from his announcement than the details of what he actually intended to do.

On Monday, Ford had lunch with Ms Schwimmer and members of her group at the Biltmore Hotel in Manhattan, and it was here that the Hungarian campaigner resurrected an idea that she had originally proposed several months ago of chartering a peace ship to take a delegation of American mediators to a meeting in The Hague.

Ford took up this suggestion with an enthusiasm that the delegates could have scarcely imagined. After lunch he returned to his hotel and immediately set about contacting a number of shipping agents.

By Wednesday, he was in a position to tell Woodrow Wilson of his plans to charter a vessel, and to invite the President and his family to join him on the voyage. As before, Wilson explained that he did not wish to be involved in an initiative of this kind, over which he had little control.

The ship that Ford had chartered was the Oscar II. Built in 1901, in the Alexander Stephen & Sons' shipyard yard in Glasgow, for the Scandinavian American Line, it was scheduled to depart from New York for Kristiania (the former name of Oslo) on December 4th. First and second-class passengers who had already booked their passage were transferred to a faster and more modern vessel, the Frederick VIII, due to leave four days later. Those with places already reserved in steerage were allowed to remain.

Leaving the White House, after talking to the President, Ford repeated his determination to end the war through mediation saying to the press that they “would get the boys out of the trenches by Christmas”. Ford took little part in answering the barrage of questions that followed, instead referring them to the two advisers standing by his side. As a result, newspaper headlines the following day gave little credibility to Ford’s efforts, tending to portray the industrialist as well-meaning but naïve.

Looking back, it was from this point that support for the mission began to ebb away. Almost all the prominent figures invited by Ford found some reason to not attend. A number of the more experienced peace activists were concerned how little real planning had gone in to the way in which the warring sides might be brought together, feeling that the mission was becoming primarily based on hopes and aspirations, alongside the bottomless pit of funding provided by Henry Ford.

Even Clara Ford was losing faith in the venture, urging her husband to stay at home and avoid the dangers of the long journey, together with the company of many of the delegates, who could best be described as freeloaders.

Ford, however, remained resolute. He regarded the voyage as a form of practical action that defied convention and reflected his pacifist principles.

By now, the Biltmore Hotel had become the centre of operations, but by all accounts, was utterly organised. With just one week to go, invitations were still being sent out in their hundreds, with most being ignored or rejected. Paradoxically, there was also a flood of applications from people asking to join the expedition – most of whom were entirely unsuited to the task in hand.

At 3.15pm on Saturday December 4th, the Oscar II departed Hoboken waterfront, New Jersey, watched by a crowd of around 3,000. Its complement included 55 peace delegates, 45 members of the press, 25 students, and 31 administrative staff hired specifically to service the organisational needs of the expedition.

The plan, as much as it existed, was for the group to sail to Norway, and then travel by land through the neutral states of Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. Here, it was hoped, that the various lectures and meetings planned by the group would develop a momentum for peace that the warring nations could not ignore.

The first night at sea was the start of three days of stormy weather; but despite the rough seas and heavy swell, the mood on board remained overwhelming positive. Rosika Schwimmer had assumed the role of expedition leader, in her customary autocratic style, whilst Henry Ford moved round the ship talking to activists and members of the press. He also spent some time, perhaps predictably, with members of the crew, down in the engine room.  

One of the main tasks that Ms Schwimmer set the group for the voyage was to draw up a peace manifesto for their forthcoming meetings in Europe. After much discussion, it was decided that the document would be based on three fundamental principles: an oath of loyalty supporting Henry Ford in his quest for peace; the promotion of international disarmament, and; opposition to the US government’s policy of preparedness for war.

It was this last element that proved to be particularly problematic. Over the past year, President Wilson’s attitude towards US national security had hardened to the point where he felt it necessary to ask Congress for further funds to strengthen the armed forces so that the country could “care for its own security”.

The absolute pacifists on board saw this move as “entering the edge of militarism”. There was, they argued, no current danger to America, and that preparedness for war only benefitted *the profit mongers who … had no patriotic impulse whatsoever”.  Others believed that all countries needed to have the ability to defend themselves until all nations had agreed to disarm.

As the discussion unfolded, Ms Schwimmer, and her self-appointed committee, refused to consider any kind of compromise. This response provoked further argument, which came to a head when it was decreed that anyone who refused to sign all three parts of the manifesto would be excluded from the mission. The dissenters were furious, claiming that no mention had been made of this before the start of the voyage.

As more and more delegates began to express their concern over the way in which the matter was being railroaded through, the members of the press on board became increasingly attentive, and began to prepare their copy for transmission. The meeting eventually broke up with Ms Schwimmer and her colleagues returning to their cabins. However when the journalists had completed their reports and went to the wireless room to file their stories, they found the door locked, apparently on Ms Schwimmer’s orders.

Inside the room, the wireless operator was sending the peace committee’s own account of the meeting, which stated that the three resolutions forming the manifesto had been “heartily applauded and … rapidly signed.”

The arguments around the treatment of those who would not sign the manifesto rumbled on, and deputations were made to Henry Ford in search of some sort of compromise. However, like Ms Schwimmer, the industrialist refused to budge, saying that he failed to understand why delegates could not sign up to all three objectives, and why they should be disturbed at being disenfranchised as a result.

A games evening was organised for members the following day in an attempt to help heal some the divisions, but Ms Schwimmer’s actions in preventing the journalists’ from filing their stories was about to cause further problems for the peace mission. Up until this point, the press reports had been generally benign and even-handed – but, after the lock-out, this changed. One report opened with the words …:”War has broken out aboard Henry Ford’s peace argosy”. Another stated: “All is not peace on the Peace Ship. War has been declared*.

On Monday December 13th, the Oscar II entered British waters, and was picked up and followed by a Royal Navy cruiser. Just off the Scottish coast, a boarding party was dispatched, and the captain of the Peace Ship informed that his vessel was now under British control. Apparently the first words of the young naval lieutenant who came aboard were to ask the whereabouts of the mutiny. The British Admiralty had apparently interpreted the American journalists’ disgruntled dispatches rather too literally.

Although it was soon established that there no such problem amongst either the crew or passengers, the liner was nevertheless taken to Kirkwall, the capital of Orkney, where it was searched for contraband. Reports state that 800 sacks of letters and parcels were taken from the vessel by the British authorities, together with 4,000 lbs of rubber, discovered in the hold - apparently, en route “to a well-known enemy forwarding agent in Sweden”.  

The Peace Ship was held in Kirkwall Harbour for four days. During this time, members of the peace group were told that would not be allowed to leave the ship. Henry Ford remained confined to his cabin; a few days earlier, he had been soaked by a particularly large wave and was suffering with a heavy cold and fever.

On Friday 17th December, the Oscar II began the final leg of its journey across the North Sea, and Rosika Schwimmer had the wireless operator cable officials in Denmark, Norway and Sweden to make arrangements for them to meet the Peace Ship. However, when the US Secretary of State learnt of this, he instructed the American ambassadors in each country to inform their foreign offices that the US Government would take no responsibility for any of the group’s activities or negotiations. To make matters worse, Ms Schwimmer received the same response from the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace, whom the peace activists were claiming to represent.  

Despite these setbacks, the public meetings held by the peace mission as they journeyed through Scandinavia were reasonably well attended. Many had hoped to catch a glimpse of Henry Ford but he remained unwell and confined to his hotel room in Kristiania. His doctor explained that he was not well enough to continue with the expedition and advised that he either went home, or remained in Norway, gathering his strength at a health resort.  

On the evening of Wednesday 22rd December, Ford told Ms Schwimmer that he was returning to America. In the early hours of the following morning he left his hotel catching a train to Bergen, from where he sailed back to New York. Most members of the group were unaware of his departure until they left Norway, on their way to Sweden.

Although no longer part of the peace mission, Henry Ford continued to fund the expenses of the entire expedition. This covered the cost of travel, accommodation, and meals for group members, as well as the hospitality provided wherever they held their meetings.

On his return to the States, Ford denied that his return had been unexpected and that reports of dissent amongst the delegates were just “tommyrot”. He told reporters in New York that the expedition had been a success, as people were now thinking and talking about peace; an outcome that fell someway short of his earlier aims.

Members of the peace expedition continued on their journey to Denmark, and then on to the Netherlands, which they reached on Friday 7th January 1916.
There continued to be considerable friction within the group, largely triggered by Ms Schwimmer’s leadership style. However the effectiveness of the mission was also very much lessened simply because the international groups gathered in the Hague (American, Danish, Dutch and Swedish) were unable to find a form of wording on which they could all agree.

With the war in Europe continuing for almost three more years, Henry Ford’s peace mission arguably did little to bring the fighting to an end, nor did it prevent America’s own entry into the War in April 1917.

In the aftermath of the expedition the peace mission was widely ridiculed in the press. However, there were others who regarded the Peace Ship as a naïve, but nevertheless noble, attempt by ordinary citizens to try to broker an agreement that many politicians at the time were not prepared to consider.

Further details
• Ford – the men and the machine, Robert Lacey, Heinemann, 1986.
• The Peace Ship, Barbara S Craft, Macmillan, 1978.