FIGHTING OVER SWAMPLAND

“Politics have no relation to morals”
Niccolo Machiavelli - “The Prince” - 1513

I would say that 1835 was, like most years, a revolutionary year in America. Inspired by pro-slavery gringo emigrants, Texas rebelled against anti-slavery Mexico. In Boston, five thousand bigots broke into a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, and dragged abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison through the streets at the end of a rope. In South Carolina 36 slaves and one 60 year old free-black carpenter were hanged for trying to organize a slave revolt. Down in Florida the Second Seminole War broke out when Native Americans refused to surrender their freedom and their homes. And along the shores of Lake Erie, free whites did their very best to start a war over possession of 268 square miles of swamp known as “The Toledo Strip”.

In truth, the Great Black Swamp was what film maker Alfred Hitchcock would call a "magoffin'. It was not what people were really fighting over, even tho it was what people were fighting over. It was not even much of a swamp by Louisiana standards. It was great only because it occupied a swath of land 40 miles wide and 120 miles long, in the northwest corner Ohio – which was a little far north for a swamp.

It was really a remnant of the ice ages, a collection of ponds and marshes interspersed with hillocks, filled and drained by the 130 mile long Maumee River, which rose from the high ground around Fort Wayne,  Indiana and fed into Lake Erie.  It's only claim to fame was that it formed a natural barrier between the state of Ohio and the territory of Michigan. The Black Swamp was certainly not desirable  farmland, but it provided a bumper crop of mosquitoes each summer, and they, and the malaria they carried, made life difficult for any intrepid surveyors who might set up their theodolites upon such soggy ground.

“Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.”

Niccolo Machiavelli – “The Prince” – 1513

The first real attempt to draw the border was made in 1817, when Michigan Territory hired surveyor William Harris. According to the “Harris Line” the mouth of the Maumee River was in Michigan, below the swamp. In 1818 Ohio responded by hiring John Fulton to survey the border, which he found five miles further north, avoiding the swamp by going above it. Taken together the two lines bracketed the Great Black Swamp. And while the desire of a surveyor to avoid all those mosquitoes was understandable, the residents of Ohio and Michigan were confused. They appealed to Washington, D.C.  But abiding by the political rule that whatever you do will make somebody angry with you, the Federal politicians decided to do nothing. After all, nobody would fight for ownership of a swamp. Would  they?

Then in 1825 the Erie Canal opened, connecting the port of New York City with the Great Lakes. It proved to be such an economic revolution that plans were immediately drawn up for a port at the mouth of the Maumee River, and a canal up that river to Fort Wayne, Indiana (statehood granted in 1816), where it would connect to another canal to be built down the Wabash River, to the Ohio and thence to the Mississippi. Those canals would make the port at Toledo (which was established by Ohio in 1832) the hub of transportation for the entire center of the continent. A Toledo lawyer, John Fitch, noted that already it was the general opinion that “no place on the lake except Buffalo will rival it.” Quite a claim to fame - almost as big as Buffalo. The politically active residents of Michigan Territory became convinced that Ohio politicians were trying to steal Toledo from them. Which was true.

The politics finally solidified when hot-headed 23 year old Stephen Mason was appointed Territorial Governor of Michigan. He was a gift from President Andrew Jackson, a man who appreciated hot heads. And under pressure from other hot heads in the territory,  Governor Mason issued the “Pains and Penalties Act” of 12 February, 1835,  making it illegal for a non-Michigan resident to enforce Ohio law in Toledo, Michigan Territory.

The Cleveland, Ohio newspapers called the Michigan claim to Toledo “as absurd as it is ridiculous.” And on 23 February, the defiant Ohio General Assembly, playing to their own base, voted to “run the border” of the Fulton Line, meaning to mark it again as Toledo, Ohio, with stone posts that clearly said so. Then on April Fool’s day Michigan held local elections in the Toledo Strip. On 6 April, Ohio held competing local elections in the Toledo Strip. Somebody was going to have to disappoint their supporters..

“Before all else be armed.”
Niccolo Machiavelli – “The Prince” – 1513

Two days later a Michigan Country sheriff and an armed posse of 40 men rode into Toledo to enforce the Penalties Act. Several men snuck into the home of Benjamin Stickney, who was an “Ohio patriot” or an Phio Nut - depending on which side of the border you lived on. He was also a major in the Ohio militia. Now, even allowing for how little humanity knew at the time about dysfunctional parenting, the level of strangeness displayed by Benjamin Stickney toward his own children is staggering. This respected member of the Ohio community named his eldest son “Number One” and his younger son “Number Two”. Stickney also had a daughter, but we don't know what he called her. I suspect it might have been “Light Sleeper”.

You see, on the night of 8 April, 1835,  the girl was awakened by a noise, and she stepped into the hall to investigate. A creeping Michigan deputy clamped a hand over the startled child’s mouth, and held her silent, lest she shout a warning to her father.  Alas, Benjamin Stickney would not have heard her, as he was not at home. So two of his house guests were arrested and taken north for arraignment. Two days later they were released on bail.

In handbills and letters to Ohio newspapers Major Stickney inflated the posse to 300 men “armed with muskets and bayonetts". He claimed that the deputies had tried to gouge out his eyes (he wasn't there)  and had “throttled” his daughter.  He urged his fellow buckeyes to “turn out en masse to protect  their northern border and restrain the savage barbarity of the hordes of the north.”  Ohio Governor Robert Lucas, another Jackson Democrat,  sent 40 men to guard his surveyors and ordered the 100,000 members of the state militia to assemble in the tiny town of Perryville, Ohio, just up the Maumee River from Toledo. Only 10,000 actually responded and most of them never got to Perryville, because they got lost in the swamp.

Meanwhile on Sunday 21 April a Michigan posse 30 strong, caught the Ohio “line runners” relaxing in camp.   Most of the buckeyes broke for the woods, but nine of the protecting militia were caught in the open. When the Michigan posse fired a volley over their heads they wisely surrendered. All seven were unharmed but were arrested for violating the “Pains and Penalties Act”. And on Monday morning six were granted bail and two were released after a warning to behave. The only Ohioan who remained in jail was Jonathan Fletcher, a hot head who refused to post bail “on principle.” In the annals of Michigan this encounter was memorialized as the “Battle of Phillip’s Corner”, since the encounter had occurred in a field owned by Eli Phillips, who supported Michigan.

“The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.”
Niccolo Machiavelli – “The Prince” – 1513

The smell of gunpowder had brought a degree of sanity back to Governor Mason, and in the spirit of good will he suspended enforcement of his Pains and Penalties Act. But now it was the Ohio legislature’s turn to appease their base. Kidnapping was already illegal in Ohio, but buckeye politicians felt it necessary to pass a new law providing hard labor for kidnapping anyone from Ohio. And they made Toledo the capital of a new Ohio county.

In Toledo one observer noted “Men (were) galloping about – guns getting ready – wagons being filled with people and hurrying off, and everybody in commotion “ The little town of just 1,250 citizens had become a magnet for every nut case, political hot head and pugnacious drifter in the Midwest. In July, two Michigan deputies tried to hold an auction of property seized for non payment of Michigan taxes, and a gang of Ohio “patriots”, led by Number Two Strikney, broke up the auction. So, on 12 July 1835 a Michigan arrest warrant was issued for the son-of-a-patriot, for disturbing the peace.  Number Two, upon learning of the warrant, sent a message to the Michigan Sheriff to stay out of Toledo, if he wanted to live.

That threat set Michigan Governor Mason off again. He ordered 250 men into Toledo, under Deputy Sheriff Joseph Wood, to arrest Number Two and his "gang". Most of the Ohio “patriots” ran safely for the Maumee River border, but Number Two didn’t make it. When Sheriff Wood physically grabbed Number Two, he pulled what in Ohio was called a pen knife and in Michigan described as “a dirk”.  “Two” stabbed the sheriff in the leg and disappeared across the Maumee River. The wound was minor and the sheriff was able to ride back across the border that night, having paused to arrest Number Two’s father, Major Stickney, and drag him back to Michigan, tied to the back of a horse. But before leaving town the Michiganders also smashed the offices of the pro-Ohio Toledo Gazette, behaving, claimed the paper, worse than an “Algerian robbery or Turkish persecution.” It seemed the residents were finally running short of hyperbole. What was left but gunpowder?

“A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.”
Niccolo Machiavelli – “The Prince” – 1513.

It was at this point that Andrew Jackson finally stepped in and on 29 August, 1835 removed Mason as governor of Michigan Territory. Jackson also let it be known that Michigan would only be allowed to become a state after they accepted that Toledo was a town in Ohio. It was a bitter pill for the Badger rabble to swallow, particularly after all that rabble rousing, but as a sop for hurt feelings, the federal government granted Michigan the additional territory known as the Northern Peninsula. Michigan was finally admitted into the union, sans Toledo, on 26 January, 1837.

So Ohio won. The canals were dug, and the buckeyes benefited from the taxes paid by the port at the mouth of the Maumee River.  In 1842 1,578 barrels of flour and 12,976 bushels of wheat were shipped through Toledo, Ohio, and taxed.  By 1852 the totals were a quarter million barrels flour and almost two million bushels of wheat. But Toledo did not become the transportation hub for the Midwest, because canal technology was superseded by the railroads, and Chicago superseded Toledo; none of which the Ohio patriots could have predicted in 1835.

Meanwhile, in 1844, a party of surveyors was marking out the second place prize for Michigan, the Upper Peninsula,  when they found their compasses spinning wildly. This was caused by one of the largest concentrations of iron ore ever found on the planet Earth, the Marquette Range, which was surrounded by one of the largest concentrations of copper ore ever found on the Earth. Beginning in 1847 and continuing over the next one hundred years and fifty years, over a billion tons of iron and several billion tons of copper were removed from those hills. None of the Michigan patriots could have predicted that, either.

The truth was the future contained a bounty beyond the imagination of the patriots who willing to kill each other in 1835, all for possession of a swamp – and not a great swamp at that. Does that make any sense?  It is a basic rule of human history - That which people are willing to murder for today, they may give away tomorrow, and what they want to give away today may be worth a fortune to their children.  Folks, you might remember that rule, next time a hot head starts calling for a war.

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AMERICAN NARCISSIST

I can see him clearly, as if he was standing next to me at this moment. And yet his image remains hazy. According to his drivers' license, he was five feet, nine inches tall, weighed 150 pounds and had gray hair. He was also described as “ ...a slight hollow-chested man”, of 46, with thin lips. And yet he remains an enigma. A neighbor, when shown several photographs of him, said, “ "I knew him well and he never looked like that.” And he was not just a physical enigma. Howard Kittle, the Clinton County agent and Farm Bureau manager, received a letter from him, and admitted that if anyone else had written it “I would have thought sure he was insane.'” But that was before - when he was an elected community leader, a trusted guardian of the communities' wealth and its future. Afterward - the Clinton County Republican-News was forced to wonder, “Is the building of a modern institution which equips children to meet the problems of the world a burden - or is it a privilege?” You see, the man at issue was a anti-tax warrior and an American narcissist.

Bath in 1927 was a little farm town of about 300 people 10 miles northeast of Lansing, Michigan. “(It) had a ( grain) elevator, a little drugstore, and you knew everybody within 20 miles” said a life long resident. In 1922 rural Clinton County closed its scattered one room school houses. They used $8,000 of their own hard earned money to buy five acres of ground just south of Bath. They borrowed $35,000 to build a two story Consolidated School building. Here, classes would be divided by ages, to protect the younger children from bullies. With fewer teachers, higher standards could be required if the instructors, even a college teaching degree. And amenities such as a library, lunch programs, athletics, music and art were added. And buses picked children up at their front doors and returned them safely home each night. It was the foundation for the secure world we grew up in. And it was not cheap.

The future always costs. You either invest in it, or if you refuse, it proves much more expensive trying to catch up.  In 1922 property taxes in Clinton county were $12.26 per thousand dollars of valuation ($160 today, or over $16%). In 1923 those taxes had gone up by half to $18.80 ($235 today). This was not the decision of a few liberals. This was debated for years within the community. And over time the decision was to invest in the future of Clinton County, in the counties' children, and spend the money. Three years later, eager to eliminate the debt quickly, the elected leaders of Clinton County paid off $7,200 of their obligation, and taxes topped out at one dollar higher (to $240 per thousand in today's dollars). It was expected taxes would now start to drop, but that did not take into account the rising inflation of the late 1920's, and the selfishness of one egomaniac who chose not to have a future.

I shall not use his name because of something Neil Kaye, forensic psychiatrist at Jefferson Medical College told Time Magazine in April of 2007. He said, “We glorify and revere these seemingly powerful people who take life. Meanwhile, I bet you couldn't tell me the name of even one of (serial killer) Ted Bundy's victims.” So let me just share headlines from the New York Times, dated Wednesday, May 18^th, 1927, to explain what this man did. “Maniac blows up school, kills 42, mostly children; Had protested high taxes...He then kills himself and 3 others by Dynamiting Auto...Children Pinned in Debris. Others hurled against walls or out windows – Searchers still hunt for missing. Agonizing scenes in yard. Distraught parents find little ones dead beneath blankets...”. The early numbers were wrong, of course. The maniac killed eight adults and 34 children at the school, that day. The last little victim, nine year old Richard Fitz, would die of infection caused by his injuries, a week short of a year after the Bath School Disaster, and that was the name of one of this selfish bastard's victims.

Just before he murdered the children, the maniac had bludgeoned his wife to death, restrained all his animals in a burning barn, killed every fruit tree on his farm, and burned all his expensive farm equipment. Interestingly, it was figured by the cleanup crews, that he could have paid off his mortgage and his property taxes by selling most of his well maintained farm equipment, which, according to his neighbors, he rarely used. Neighbor M.J. “Monty” Ellsworth wrote later, “He was at the height of his glory when fixing machinery or tinkering...He spent so much time tinkering that he didn't prosper.” The maniac also stood out, as a farmer, for his meticulous appearance. He changed his shirt quickly should a spot of dirt appear on it and was often seen sitting on his front porch, in a smoking jacket, puffing on a cigar. But his primary interest, his obsession, was in cutting taxes.

The maniac had been elected to the school board in 1924, two years after the new school had opened and the first election after the new higher tax rate had been announced. In 1925, after the death of Maude Detluff, the board's treasure, he had been appointed to fill that position. His book keeping was, like his appearance, meticulous. After his suicide, his books showed “a long and detailed explination” of a 22 cent discrepancy. But in the spring of 1926, when he ran for election to the job, the voters had rejected him. Once again, the majority approved investment in the future About this time the maniac stopped paying the mortgage or insurance on his farm. The previous owner, his wife's relatives, eventually began foreclosure proceedings His crops began to rot in the fields.

There is a story that decades earlier, a promising career as an electrician in St. Louis had been cut short by a fall and a serious head injury. So farming was the maniac's second choice. He married and moved to Clinton county right after the First World War. He might have over paid for his farm, because land prices were inflated at time. And his wife was afflicted with tuberculosis, a wasting disease. The Klu Klux Klan would even alleged his Catholicism encouraged him to destroy the school because it was not a Catholic school. But even if all of that were true, none of it would justify the cold blooded murder of 36 innocent children, and eight adults. And all the maniac was focused on was his high taxes.

Before the school was built, he had opposed it. Once it was decided to build it, he insisted it should be a 10 grade institution, instead of 12. He opposed the inclusion of a library, or athletics or music. And he lost each argument. Once the building was constructed, he had enough supporters to win election to the school board, where his obstinacy continued. He even opposed giving the superintendent a paid vacation each year, and then argued it should only be one week, not two. And as he lost each of these arguments, his obsession grew, day by day. Words used to describe him during this time were “surly”, “obstinate”, “impatient” “arrogant” “closed mouth”. Eventually he began to invest his money not on his farm, or his wife, but on explosives, and to sneak them into the basement of the school house, rig them with a timer and set them to explode early on a Wednesday morning, just after classes had begun.

The day after the bombing while still in shock and grief, the Clinton Country Republican newspaper ran an editorial, which explains the connection between the maniac's crime and his anti-tax fever. “That he was insane there is little doubt. But he was not always insane. To start with he was merely antagonistic. Then he became radical.. He was the victim of the progress of his own lack of balance...What a terrible price to pay for narrow-mindedness. What an awful calamity for one peaceful little community to bear for one man's lack of ordinary American ideals...Never before have we known of aversion of the cost of education taking such terrible form. There are, however, many people who unthinkingly hamper and discourage the progress of good schools and other institutions for the welfare and happiness of the public. What are we going to do about it?”

It is almost a century later, and the question begs to be asked of the Tea Party and the radicals who have taken over the Republican Party - those who object to investing in the future because they do not believe they have one. What are the rest of us going to do about it?

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THE TRIUMPH OF GEOGRAPHY

I admit that it would be an oversimplification to say Detroit became the center of the American auto industry because in 1863, Henry Ford (above) was born in it's suburb of Dearborn, Michigan. That accident of birth may have been why, out of the thousands of backyard inventors and tinkers it was Henry who in just 30 years went from failure to earning the modern equivalent $188 billion. But the real key to Detroit's success was just good old geography.

See, in 1900, there were 8,000 automobiles in America,built by over 1,000 inventors from Bangor, Maine to San Francisco. But a realistic look at the market showed that if you wanted to be successful at making cars you needed six things – steel, coal, rubber, cheap land for your plant, workers and customers. And it turned out that 1900 Detroit, was the perfect time and place for all those things to come together. Well, not perfect. It was a compromise, but as compromises go, it was perfect.

First, if you want to make steel, you need iron ore, and around the northwestern edge of Lake Superior – in the forests of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ontario, Canada and the upper peninsula of Michigan – were some of the world's richest outcrops of soft cherty iron oxides. Humans started mining this iron in the 1840's, when the ore was so rich it could go straight into a smelter. 

They started out producing iron right next to the mines, heating the ore over wood fires to over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit and then scraping off the impurities. But you can't make an automobile out of iron. You need steel.

The forests that surrounded the mines might have supplied enough fuel to turn that iron into steel, but burning one pound of wood only gives you about 7,000 British Thermal Units of heat. However burning a pound of coal produces almost 3 times as many BTUs. The problem was the nearest coal deposits were 1,500 miles and more to the south. 

Ships being the cheapest method to carry bulk cargoes,investors, mostly from Cleveland, Ohio, built fleets to transport ore out of Lake Superior, through Lake Huron to the bottom of Lake Michigan and Lake Erie.  Where in the 1840's they could connect to the Erie Canal and reach New York City.

In 1903, at the age of 39, Henry Ford had his third try at making automobiles - The Ford Motor Company. Henry had little money left to invest, and was installed as Vice President of his own company. The new factory (above)  was in the Milwaukee Junction neighborhood of Detroit, and it was already home to a few other would-be automakers. But the largest industry in town was making heating and cooking stoves. Which they made out of iron.

Ford Motor Company's first car, the Model “A”, was a 2 seat “runabout” with an 8 horse power engine under the driver's seat. It only came in one color – red – and was advertised as “The most reliable machine in the world”, which it was not. Still, Ford sold 1,708 cars in 1903, and was able to offer an improved model, the “AC”, in 1904, with a 10 horse power engine. That year they also introduced the Model “B”, with it's 24 horsepower engine up front. But the “B” cost 3 times what the Model “A” did, and did not sale well.

In 1900 the southernmost port on Lake Michigan was Hammond, Indiana. And about 60 miles due south of Hammond was the Kankakee Arch, the northern rim of the 500 million year old subterranean Illinois Basin. It lies under most of Illinois, half of Indiana, a big chunk of Kentucky and a sliver of Tennessee. Since 1900, the basin has produced well over 8 billion tons of coal.

By 1901, the furnaces of Hammond were importing 2 ½ million tons of iron ore every year. A new port was constructed 30 miles to the east, to serve what became 6 steel mills pouring out smoke from the Illinois border the U.S. Steel's new mammoth plant in Gary Indiana. 

They called it the Calumet Steel District, and it boasted 37 open furnaces, 8 blast furnaces, with endless lines of rolling mills that would employ 200,000 workers, producing, in 1925, some 8 ½ million tons of steel. And since the rail roads were already delivering coal to the Calumet, it was a minor investment to extend those rails to new electrical generating plants in Chicago.

In 1906, Ford introduced the luxury Model “K”, powered by a 6 cylinder, 40 horsepower engine. They sold less than 1,000 Model K's but the profit margin per car was high enough to make the “K” successful. Despite this Henry was more enthusiastic about his 4 cylinder Model “N” (above), which sold over 2,190 cars in 1906. That year, Henry bought out the chief supporter of the Model “K”. Alexander Malcomson. And as the new President of the Ford Motor Company, Henry was now free to discontinue production of the “K”, and pursue his dream to “Democratize the Automobile”.

A little over 200 miles southeast of Detroit, and about 40 miles south east of Cleveland, on the western edge of the Pennsylvania coal fields, is Akron, Ohio.  Dr. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich had moved his rubber manufacturing company (above) to Akron in 1875, because of the cheap land, convenient canals and railroads, and the labor supply.  But mostly because 25 feet under the sandstone foundations of Akron, there was a lot of coal.

See, back in 1860, the British chemist Charles Greville Williams had described the chemical that made rubber act like rubber – latex. And once described in living plants, the same molecules were quickly found in dead plants – like coal. In particular the kind of coal underlying Akron, Ohio. 

The new synthetic latex wasn't as good as natural rubber. It was better, because in cooking up each batch, you could tweak the recipe for whatever product you were making – like fire hoses or rubber gloves (above) or tubing...

...or tires and inner tubes for the 1890's bicycle craze.  And with that was why Akron, thousands of miles from the nearest rubber tree plantation, became the “Rubber Capital of the World”.

The bicycle craze brought new companies to Akron, like Diamond, Universal, and Goodyear, and, in 1900, a buggy wagon salesman named Harvey Firestone. (above)  Harvey decided to specialize in mass producing pneumatic tires for buggy's and wagons. Many a farmer's ass thanked Harvey Firestone for that innovation. 

And, in 1907, when Henry Ford (above, left) went looking for somebody who could supply enough tires and rubber belts and gaskets for his “car for the multitude”, Harvey (above, right)  was the right man in the right business.

In January of 1907, the 44 year old Henry Ford set up a work shop on the third floor of his factory to design his new car. It had to be simple to assemble and cheap to build. Henry wanted it to be light enough, simple enough and rugged enough that the average customer could maintain it by himself. It had to survive the rutted and pockmarked unpaved roads of America. Presented to the world in the fall of 1908, it would be Henry Ford's Model “T”.

That same year Henry bought a factory 4 miles north of Detroit in Highland Park, Michigan, from the Dodge Brothers -  who had been building engines there for Ford -  Henry also acquired 60 adjoining acres of farmland. Here he would build a massive new factory (above), large enough to allow him to experiment in assembling his Model “T”. 

It was here the Industrial Assembly Line would be born, and all but a handful of the 15 million “T” Fords would be built here, gobbling up the steel from the Calumet mills and rubber from Akron..

Owners called her the Tin Lizzie, the Bouncing Betty and the Mechanical Cockroach. The “T” had no fuel pump, so you had to drive uphill in reverse. It had no oil pump. Crankcase oil splashed up onto the cylinders, as well as down onto the ground. To avoid excessive breakage, each linkage of the chassis had a generous amount of “give”, which resulted in a very talkative car .

How do you tell the difference between a rattlesnake and a Model “T”? You can count the rattles on a snake.  Owners did not need a speedometer. At ten miles an hour the hood rattled. At fifteen the radiator rattled. At twenty the top rattled. And at twenty-five miles an hour the transmission fell out. 

It was alleged Henry Ford was training squirrels to run behind each new Model “T” to collect the nuts as they fell off.  

Model “T”s came in only one color – black.  But, went another joke, why did they paint Chevy's Green? So they could hide in the grass and watch all the Fords go by. 

However, one owner insisted he wanted to be buried in his Model “T”, because “its gotten me out of every hole I've ever been in.”

Three hundred and fifty miles almost due south of Henry Ford's new factory, was the college town of Bloomington, Indiana (above) . In 1910 it had less than 10,000 inhabitants, whose primary occupations were farming, quarrying the local limestone, making furniture, and tending to the residents of Indiana University. The town boasted a new courthouse, 5 churches, 2 railroad stations, 2 theaters, and a new library. I.U.'s claim to fame was coach James Sheldon's team which did not give up a single touchdown during their 6 and 1 season. But Bloomington had yet another reason to celebrate the year of 1910.

Near the corner of North Rodgers and West 8^th Street, the United States Census Bureau had calculated was the exact physical balance point of the 92,228,496 American citizens enumerated in the 1910 census. 

In short, half of Henry Ford's potential customers lived east of Bloomington, and half west. And half of his potential customers lived north and half lived south of this imaginary fulcrum - 39 degrees, 17 minutes north latitude and 86 degrees 53 minutes west longitude.

In the decade Henry Ford was building his company that center had shifted west 36 miles from outside of Columbus, Indiana to Bloomington. In the coming decade of the Model “T”, it would shift another 28 miles west northwest to just outside of Spencer Indiana. And by the time they finally ended production of the Model “T” in 1928, the center of the customer pool would have moved another 31 miles west southwest to the little town of Linton, Indiana. Each following decade, the center of the customer base would move a little farther from Detroit and farther from Henry Ford.

Henry supposedly retired in 1918, turning control over to his son, Edsel. But that was just a scam, to remove his opponents from the board of directors.  By the time America became involved in World War Two, Henry's corporation had produced more than 29 million automobiles. But he had suffered a series of strokes in the late 1930's, and Edsel became the true president of Ford Motor Company. 

Then in 1943, Edsel died of a stroke, and Henry took up the reins again. But age and wear  ate away at his attention span. Under his tenure Ford Motor Company lost $10 million a month. As his mind faded, his daughter-in-law sued to take control of his company, and installed Henry's grandson, Edsel Ford II as new president.

Henry Ford died in the waning moments of Monday, 7 April, 1947, at 83 years of age.  His funeral procession (above) passed the headquarters of all the major automakers in Detroit, and their employees stood at the curb, to pay homage to the man who had built their industry. 

Henry Ford was a life long antisemitic, and used his fortune to finance antisemitism worldwide.  He also built the first mosque in the United States, for his Muslim employees.  He did business with Nazi Germany, and Hitler praised Henry in speeches.  At home, Henry paid thugs to brutalize labor union organizers.  He also hired African Americans, and paid them equal to white workers.  He was suspicious of mathematics, and as long as he was in control, Ford Motor Company was never audited. Perhaps Henry's ignorance was understandable, since his mother had died when he was 12 and his father had forced him to leave school at 15 to work on the farm.  He hated his father's farm.  It was why the publicity department at Ford Motor Company usually photographed Henry in his machines. He understood machines.  

In short, Henry Ford was a human being, smart and stupid, kind and cruel, arrogant and humble, sometimes in the same moment. He worked hard every day of his life. He was very rich, but wealth merely magnified his faults and strengths. What made Henry Ford one of the richest human beings on the planet, had surprisingly little to do with Henry. It was really just geography.

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