The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America

That month, the Ford Company releases two new Model As. Though the company had predicted strong sales and more jobs, the predictions do not come true. Detroit banks soon crash, and Ford (who keeps his money in those banks) bails them out and thus expands his empire.

The workers’ jobs are reduced to one or two days per week and the minimum wage is lowered to $4 a day. The Shutts continue to take in lodgers, and Abner searches for work in vain, until he can’t walk anymore. He supplements his odd jobs by pawning valuable possessions, but when fall comes he has to ask Hank to help him get back his pawned winter coat. Milly’s health has worsened, and she is mostly bedridden; the family cannot afford doctor’s visits or medicine.

Daisy tries to avoid having children, but her second abortion makes her so ill that she is afraid to try another, “so now she had a baby whom she didn’t much care for, and he was rather spindling because she hadn’t much milk” (176). Her dreams of elegance have vanished, and she spends her days in household drudgery, and since her husband’s reduced employment has made “any sort of amusement” (177) impossible she has lost interest in him.

The rest of Detroit lives in much the same way. Homelessness and hunger are rampant, and at the same time the near-bankrupt city and state reduce welfare benefits.

When election time comes around, the Republican Party nominates Hoover again, since “to do otherwise would be to acknowledge failure, and besides they were satisfied with what he had done, giving government credit to the rich, from whom prosperity would have to flow whenever it got ready to flow again” (178). The Democrats nominate Franklin D. Roosevelt, who promises to lift the Depression with a New Deal. The Shutts, who have had to sell their radio, do not hear any of the political speeches.

Ford advises his workers to vote for Hoover. Abner, who votes against the Democrats on principle, doesn’t need this advice; Daisy and her husband Jim decide to vote for Roosevelt because they are so bitter toward Ford and their poverty.

Daisy, who likes to watch movies but can no longer afford a ticket, now reads used pulp fiction magazines with her mother for entertainment. The stories always feature poor people who achieve great wealth and happiness, usually via romance and marriage.

Abner, who listens to Daisy reading these stories, thinks of the one wealthy person he knows, Ford. Abner begins to daydream about approaching Ford in person or writing him a letter describing his long history of working for Ford and his current plight and asking for help. One day, when he finds the privacy to do so, Abner writes a letter to Mrs. Ford, who is known for her charitable activities, and asks her to get him a job at the Ford plant.