The Vagabonds

The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip

Jeff Guinn

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781501159329
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

A "f ascinating slice of rarely considered American history" ( Booklist )—the story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison—whose annual summer sojourns introduced the road trip to our culture and made the automobile an essential part of modern life. In 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on.Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of chefs, butlers, and others, this elite fraternity also had a serious purpose: to examine the conditions of America's roadways and improve the practicality of automobile travel. Cars were unreliable and the roads were even worse. But newspaper coverage of these trips was extensive, and as cars and roads improved, the summer trip by automobile soon became a desired element of American life. The Vagabonds is "a portrait of America's burgeoning love affair with the automobile" (NPR) but it also sheds light on the important relationship between the older Edison and the younger Ford, who once worked for the famous inventor. The road trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford's reputation, even as Edison's diminished. The automobile would transform the American landscape, the American economy, and the American way of life and Guinn brings this seminal moment in history to vivid life.

Chapter One

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1914

On February 23, 1914, nine and a half years before Henry Ford and Thomas Edison dropped in on Jep Bisbee in Paris, Michigan, two thousand people swarmed around the train depot in Fort Myers, a small but growing town on Florida’s west coast. The crowd, comprising virtually the entire area population, included quite a few people toting homemade banners and a small brass band ready to strike up celebratory tunes. Everyone sweated in the warm sunshine. The Atlantic Coast Line train they awaited was almost a half-hour late, and as they milled impatiently their excitement became increasingly mixed with concern. Thomas Edison, by far Fort Myers’s most famous—if only part-time—resident, was scheduled to arrive for his annual months-long escape from the winter cold and business cares of New Jersey, and if newspaper reports from up north were to be believed, he was bringing along not only his wife and three youngest children, but also two prominent friends. One, naturalist John Burroughs, was a well-known author-lecturer who both charmed and instructed readers and audiences with fact-filled tales of countryside rambling. Town leaders, eager for economic growth from tourism, had hopes that Burroughs might commemorate his visit with magazine articles or even a book extolling the wonders of colorful area plants and wildlife. Previous Burroughs writings had inspired many readers to visit the author’s native New York state and also Yellowstone National Park. If sufficiently impressed, he might bestow the same priceless favor on Fort Myers. The seventy-six-year-old Burroughs must be made welcome from the moment he stepped from the train.

This was even truer of Edison’s other well-known guest. In 1908, Henry Ford introduced a car that transformed American consumerism and travel. Previously, automobiles were exclusively for the rich, costing thousands of dollars just for purchase, and considerably more for upkeep—the country’s rough roads pounded dents into heavy chassis, ripped hoses, shook loose valves, and punctured overburdened tires at staggering, expensive rates. But Ford’s Model T changed everything. Thanks in great part to Ford’s innovative assembly line, Model Ts were mass-produced on a previously unimaginable scale. In competitors’ factories, it took workers several hours to assemble an individual car. At the Ford plant, a completed Model T rolled off the line every two and a half minutes. It was America’s first real family car. Various styles had room for as many as six passengers (one publicity photo showed parents and nine children crammed in), with a five-passenger model the most popular.

One feature of the Model T was to impact all other American cars. Prior to 1908, there was no set placement for steering wheels—they might be placed on the right or left side of the front seat, pretty much at the manufacturer’s whim, with right-side steering prevalent. But Ford insisted that the Model T wheel be on the left because he intuited a change in car passengers. Automobiles were used more and more for family transportation, with, of course, men always driving but with wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, or girlfriends seated beside them. Most American roads remained rough, with many composed of dirt that could deteriorate to mud or dust depending on weather. U.S. cars were driven on the right-hand side of the road. If the steering wheel was on the left, and female passengers were seated on the right, then the driver could pull up to sidewalks and the ladies could step out of the car and onto pavement without soiling their shoes.

Model Ts were also utilitarian—fancy body styles, pots for plants, and other gewgaws that traditionally prettified automobiles (and drove up the price) were conspicuously absent. Ford passed on the savings to his customers. At the time of its market introduction, the Model T sold for as little as half what other cars cost, and from there Ford continued tinkering with the manufacturing process, aggressively seeking ways to cut production expenses and Model T prices even more. The best example fostered a popular joke that you could buy any color Model T that you liked, so long as the color was black. Few realized that Ford insisted the cars come in that color because black paint dried quickest, meaning Model Ts could be whipped through the assembly line and off to dealerships at an even faster pace, saving additional time and labor-related dollars. Thanks to these and other innovations, in the last few years the car’s average price gradually dipped from $850 down to the $500s.

Model T savings for owners only commenced with the initial purchase. Ford’s engineers—he employed only the very best and brightest—copied certain European auto manufacturers who utilized vanadium steel, a much lighter metal that allowed Model Ts to skim over rock-rutted, pothole-clotted roads that routinely shook heavier cars into pieces. An Oldsmobile Model S tipped the scales at 2,300 pounds; a Pierce Great Arrow weighed in at a hefty 2,700. At 1,200 pounds, the Model T weighed half as much, and the cost of body repairs and replacement tires was accordingly less. Suddenly, members of the expanding American middle class could afford not only to own a car, but to drive it inexpensively wherever there was any semblance of a passable road. They responded enthusiastically. In 1908, as Ford introduced the Model T, Americans owned approximately 194,400 cars. Just six years later, as the crowd gathered at the Fort Myers train depot, that number had increased to about two million, and Ford controlled almost half the automobile market.

The Model T alone would have established the fifty-one-year-old Henry Ford as a household name, but just three weeks before his anticipated arrival in Fort Myers, he’d further cemented his reputation as a friend of the working man with a stunning announcement. In an era when factory line workers were lucky to earn $2 a day for their labor and toiled through ten-hour shifts six days a week, Ford pledged to pay $5 a day, and to reduce workdays to eight hours. More pay for less work—this was largesse almost beyond comprehension. Everyone in America was talking about it, and at this very moment when his popularity had reached a new zenith, Henry Ford was due to arrive in Fort Myers—that is, if the blasted train ever came, and if, this time, Thomas Edison actually kept his word. Yes, he’d promised Yankee reporters that he was bringing Henry Ford and John Burroughs south to Fort Myers, but the man had broken promises, and trusting Fort Myers hearts, before.

Edison first arrived in Fort Myers in March 1885, on vacation with business partner Ezra T. Gilliland and mourning the recent death of his first wife. There was nothing unusual with a rich, well-known man from the Northeast escaping some of the winter cold with a Florida trip, but what was different about Edison was that he shunned the state’s far more populous and cosmopolitan east coast. It was impossible, at that time, to reach much of Florida’s west coast except by rickety train across the northern part of the state and then south by boat. No roads linked the coasts in mid- or lower-state. The vast Everglades formed a natural, forbidding barrier. Fort Myers itself was mostly populated with a few hundred cowboys and untold thousands of cattle, raised on local ranches to be shipped off to far-flung markets. But trail drives and railroad cattle cars in other places had pretty much eradicated the local beef industry, and tiny Fort Myers’s existence was to some extent in jeopardy. Edison’s visit, and subsequent decision to buy property and build a vacation retreat, was an unexpected godsend. As the inventor of the phonograph, the kinetoscope, and flexible film rolls that comprised important steps in the movie industry, and of the incandescent light bulb, the first to burn long, bright, and inexpensively in homes and offices (and, perhaps more critically, of generating systems that made connecting electrical power to these bulbs commercially possible), at present Edison was unquestionably the most famous man in America. If he vacationed annually in Fort Myers, surely some of that fame would attach itself to his new part-time hometown.

Things got off to a promising start. Edison and Gilliland built adjacent homes, and Edison added a laboratory adjoining his. He said that he would tinker and invent even on his Florida vacations—what great new thing might be birthed right in Fort Myers, with all the attending publicity? The world waited breathlessly for whatever he would conjure next, and now, hopefully for months at a time on a yearly basis, that global gaze would fix squarely on Fort Myers.

Edison soon made an announcement that thrilled his new Florida neighbors. For his Fort Myers laboratory to function properly, it must have electricity and lights. Accordingly, he would import a massive dynamo/generator system and electrify the entire isolated community. To this point, Fort Myers homes were lit with kerosene lanterns and candles. Outside of a few major cities, this was true all over Florida. By this one act of its new favorite son, a tiny backwater would leap forward in both reputation and self-respect. A town with electricity mattered. In early 1886, Edison returned with a new wife in tow, and as they honeymooned Edison informed the local newspaper that he’d get his home and laboratory set up for electric lights first with a small generator, then the rest of the town would have electricity immediately afterward, or as soon as the necessary equipment (which he would pay for himself) could be shipped from the North. On the night of March 17, 1887, most of Fort Myers’s other 349 residents lined up outside the Edison estate and gasped with wonder as its lights went on. The local newspaper speculated that a date would soon be announced for the rest of the community to be properly wired and illuminated. But the anticipated shipments didn’t arrive, and Edison returned to New Jersey. Everyone in Fort Myers assumed that their leading citizen would return and electric service would commence the following year, but neither happened. Edison and Gilliland had a nasty business falling-out that ended up in court and shattered their personal relationship. Edison had some health issues, and various other personal and business affairs claimed his attention. He didn’t return to Fort Myers in 1888, or the next year, or the next, and the townspeople decided that Thomas Edison had either forgotten or never meant his promise to bring electric light to them. A few more years passed without Edison returning to town. At one point he neglected to pay taxes on his Fort Myers property, and nearly lost it. Some construction work continued on the property, and various Edison relatives, including the inventor’s aging father, occasionally spent time there, but never the man himself or Mrs. Edison or their children. In 1897 another rich resident—even without Edison, Fort Myers managed to attract a small coterie of wealthy snowbirds—paid to import a sufficiently powerful generator to light the town.

Then, in 1901, Edison and his family returned, offering no explanations for their extended absence. The inventor praised Fort Myers’s progress: “It is the prettiest place in Florida and sooner or later visitors . . . will find it out.” Edison was accepted rather than warmly welcomed back. Though he was no longer expected to personally perform miracles for the town, his presence would still attract attention and, hopefully, more visitors. In 1904 the railroad finally reached Fort Myers. Permanent town population swelled to more than one thousand. Tourists on boat trips stopped to fish and shop. Things were definitely on the uptick, and then in 1907 the Edisons unexpectedly stepped forward again. They invested $250 in a community drive to build a country club and donated $150 to help found a town library. Best of all, they volunteered to line Riverside Avenue, the town’s main street, with attractive palm trees—in a letter addressed to the Fort Myers town council, Edison pledged to buy the trees, provide sufficient fertilizer, and replace any trees that died for a period of two years. After that, the town would be responsible for all costs and upkeep. The offer was quickly accepted, and Edison returned to local good graces to such an extent that plans were made to rename Riverside Avenue for him.

But the palm tree plan proved just as unreliable as Edison’s promise of electric lights. Too busy to oversee the process himself, Edison authorized two locals to acquire the trees and get them in the ground. It was expected to take only a matter of months. Some palms would come from the Everglades, others from Cuba. But a temporary quarantine delayed delivery of the Cuban trees, and most of the Everglades palms didn’t survive uprooting and replanting. Things sputtered along for several years. One of the local men tasked with buying and planting the trees was W. H. Towles, who also chaired the town council. Towles kept acquiring and planting more trees, but most wilted and died. He asked for and believed he received Edison’s approval for this additional expenditure. When Towles submitted a bill for $3,993.55, Edison was willing to reimburse only $1,500. The disagreement between them raged until the town council voted to pay Towles the difference between what he’d spent and what Edison paid him. Edison in turn was encouraged to “complete his gift to the city.” He didn’t—so far as Edison was concerned, he’d satisfied his obligation. As a rich, famous man, he was constantly badgered for donations to good causes, and even in a case like this when he’d been the one to make the original offer, limits had to be observed or else everyone would feel free to take advantage. Resentment festered on both sides. Soon afterward when a wealthy widow underwrote other improvements along the road, plans for “Edison Street” were scrapped and Riverside Avenue was renamed McGregor Boulevard in memory of her husband. In 1913, Edison donated some replacement palms, but, as Florida historian Michele Wehrwein Albion notes, “the relationship between the town and the Edisons remained somewhat strained.”

Which was why, at the Fort Myers depot in February 1914, there was an escalating degree of uncertainty whether Edison was going to step off the train with Ford and Burroughs, or else arrive without them or any explanation for their absence. Edison himself might not be on the train. There was no way of knowing until the arrival. Then came the sound of a whistle somewhere up the track, and finally the train pulled into view. Everyone pressed forward to see who emerged.

The train was late because several Fort Myers civic leaders had boarded it in an unscheduled stop outside town. The town mayor, the Booster Club leader, and the Fort Myers Board of Trade president all wanted to share in the adulation when Edison, Burroughs, and Ford stepped out onto the depot platform. The famous visitors were taken aback, and not especially pleased at the impending hoopla that the boarding party described. Besides the banners and band, every automobile owner in Fort Myers waited to participate in a grand parade from the railway depot to Edison’s home—that meant thirty-one cars in all. Madeleine Edison, the inventor’s twenty-six-year-old daughter, later lamented in a letter that all she wanted to do was “get home and wash my face.” There was nothing to do but go along—Ford, for one, had established a dealership in town, and sharing some smiles and handshakes might sell an additional Model T or two. The three famous men, trailed by Ford’s wife, Clara; his son, Edsel; Mina Edison and children Madeleine, Charles, and Theodore, were greeted on arrival by raucous cheers, then escorted to waiting cars for the ceremonial procession. The parade wended its way along, banners waving, and eventually the crowd left and Edison was finally free to welcome the Fords and Burroughs into his home. Host and guests settled in for a relaxing vacation, and an extended chance to get to know each other better.

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The friendship between Thomas Edison and Henry Ford was relatively new, though Ford’s personal attachment to the inventor went back almost eighteen years. As a young engineer working for one of Edison’s Detroit companies, in 1896 Ford was introduced to the man he previously admired from afar at a corporate banquet in New York. Ford had dreams of building affordable cars powered by gasoline engines and worked tirelessly on designing one during off-work hours. Recently he’d street-tested his first prototype called “the Quadricycle,” a light wagon mounted on four bicycle wheels and powered by a small gas engine. As Ford gingerly steered the contraption around a few city blocks, a friend on a bicycle rode ahead to move aside pedestrians. Ford used this moment with Edison to describe his fledgling achievement. The older man, as was his custom with all would-be innovators, was encouraging, even though he himself believed that electric- rather than gasoline-powered cars would be the wave of the future. One of Edison’s areas of post-incandescent-bulb research was the attempted development of a car battery that could hold sufficient electrical charge to propel a vehicle more than a few miles.

Over the years, as Ford founded and failed with two auto manufacturing companies before succeeding with his third, he endlessly reminisced about the meeting and Edison’s words of encouragement: “Young man, that’s the thing. You have it. Keep at it.” Sometimes Ford described even more than that—he’d spent a long time at the banquet, talking with Edison; the two of them sketched things on napkins and shared a short train ride afterward. Ford was almost certainly exaggerating. But no matter how brief or extended this initial contact, his admiration for Edison blossomed into virtual worship as a result. Throughout his own business successes, as his hard work and belief in himself culminated with the Model T and subsequent automobile industry dominance, Ford warmed himself with memories of that encounter with his hero.

In April 1911, one of Edison’s business offices in Orange, New Jersey, received a letter from a high-level staffer for Henry Ford requesting, on Ford’s behalf, an autographed photo of Mr. Edison. At this point, Ford’s reputation as an innovator (if not inventor—though it wasn’t true, many assumed he’d actually invented the automobile) made him almost as well-known as Edison, and, because Ford was a cannier businessman than his hero, much wealthier. A few days later, one of Edison’s sales managers sent along a photo of Edison, which, besides a signature, included the inscription “To Henry Ford: One of a group of men who have helped to make [the] U.S.A. the most progressive nation in the world.” The sales manager added a note: “I assure you that Mr. Edison was only too glad to do this for Mr. Ford and he wished me to write you expressing his pleasure in doing so, and also inviting you and Mr. Ford to come to Orange at your convenience as he would be very much pleased to meet Mr. Ford.” To Ford, his interaction with Edison in 1896 was inspirational and life-changing. To Edison, it had been a brief encounter with an ambitious fan, not at all unique and instantly forgotten.

It took some time to arrange a date suitable to Edison’s schedule, but in January 1912 Henry Ford and Thomas Edison met in New Jersey. Ford relished the opportunity to once again trade shop talk. Edison, impressed with Ford’s booming car sales and resulting wealth, had an additional agenda. Though he was far from broke, Edison suffered financial setbacks on some of his own recent endeavors, notably in mining and a plan to build inexpensive houses made entirely of concrete. He now envisioned a monetary comeback by allocating enormous resources to the development of a storage battery so efficient that it would power electric cars up to the distances enjoyed by gas-burners. Edison charmed Ford as he would any potential investor, but at another level he found that he simply enjoyed the automaker’s company. Edison had few close friends; he always suspected that anyone seeking friendship had ulterior motives. But Ford was already far richer than Edison, and almost as famous. There were other things in common—during this visit, they found themselves in complete agreement about the evils of Wall Street and the crass men there who cared only for profit and not for the public. Both were poor boys who made good. Ford was the son of a farmer. Edison left school and went to work on the railroad at age twelve. Neither had a...