A birthday for the auto assembly line—and leftist philanthropy

Industrial civilization changed forever on October 7, 1913. Henry Ford hit the start button on the moving assembly line 112 years ago today. Contrary to some myths, he didn’t invent the automobile, but he did create the mass-production of same, launching the modern auto industry and countless other enterprises. Soon afterward, a new Fords were rolling off the line every five minutes. By 1916, the initial $850 sticker price had been reduced to $360 (less than $11,000 in today’s dollars). Ford put America on wheels and his workers into the middle class.

The Ford Foundation hasn’t had the happy history of the Ford Motor Company that funded it. For more than half a century the loot has been under the the control of left-wing philanthropy bureaucrats, rather than the Ford family. That’s still the case today. According to its most recent (2023) tax filing, the Ford Foundation had net assets of $14.3 billion and disbursed annual grants totaling more than $600 million.

The Capital Research Center has an extensive archive of reports on the Ford Foundation’s grantmaking history. Ford abandons Detroit (November 2018) is one of several that covered the irritation of Henry Ford II regarding the Ford Foundation’s leftward lurch:

Despite their best intentions, the Ford family is at fault for allowing this to happen. In the 1950s, Ford Motor Company CEO Henry Ford II, grandson of the founder, voluntarily signed away a majority of the Ford Foundation board seats to non-family members. He would go to his grave regretting what he had done. By 1977, the foundation had abandoned Detroit and free enterprise, and Henry Ford II—the last of the family to sit on the then-14-member board—resigned his seat as well.

On December 11, 1976, he sent a surprise resignation letter to his fellow board members. A subsequent New York Times front page headline from January 1977 read: “Henry Ford 2d Quits Foundation, Urges Appreciation for Capitalism.”

“The foundation exists and thrives on the fruits of our economic system,” wrote Ford in the letter. “The dividends of competitive enterprise make it all possible.”

He continued:

In effect, the foundation is a creature of capitalism—a statement that, I’m sure, would be shocking to many professional staff in the field of philanthropy. It is hard to discern recognition of this fact in anything the foundation does. It is even more difficult to find an understanding of this in many of the institutions, particularly the universities, that are the beneficiaries of the foundation’s grant programs.

The family’s frustration with “their” foundation’s betrayal of Detroit boiled over a few years prior.

Getting Help for Detroit Was Like “Pulling Teeth”

The July 1967 Detroit riots created a sense of urgency in Henry Ford II. Among other efforts, he invested in and spearheaded the development of the Renaissance Center, the cluster of riverfront towers that are now the Detroit skyline’s most dominant feature. (This effort was undertaken personally by Ford and not a part of the Foundation’s work.) Yet, when the city declared the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history on July 18, 2013, it was still suffering from unhealed riot wounds inflicted 46 summers earlier. The honorable efforts of Henry “the Deuce” and others like him over almost five decades hadn’t done enough to restore the city’s broken civic and political institutions.

The Ford Foundation acquitted itself less honorably.

One of the inner-city institutions put under financial duress by the riots was the Henry Ford Hospital.

According to The Fords: An American Epic, a family history authored by Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy repeatedly rejected Henry II’s brother, Benson, when he went pleading for aid for the hospital. Bundy had come to the Foundation after serving as National Security Advisor (and a Vietnam War hawk) for President Lyndon Baines Johnson. The only remaining family member on the Ford Foundation board at that point was Henry II, and when Henry picked up the task after Benson had given up, Bundy doubled down on rejecting the family’s request.

The hospital’s true champion became Henry II’s then-wife, Cristina, who rallied both her husband and the family to the cause, shaming the foundation in the process.

“Do you forget that the old man left three billion dollars to the foundation?” asked Cristina of Bundy, according to the account in The Fords. “He gave it to you instead of his own children!”

She pointed out to another board member the bad optics of the Foundation building itself a $45 million headquarters in New York City, yet finding no charity for a hospital in the devastated Motor City.

Eventually a $100 million grant was provided, but Bundy said it was a “terminal” gift, effectively telling the family and the hospital to buzz off.

It was like “pulling teeth,” a frustrated Henry II told a New York Times interviewer years later.

“He should have had to pull teeth to get it,” sniped another trustee. “Did any other hospital get that much money?”

Influence Watch also has a profile of the Ford Foundation.

Some of the most recent examples of CRC reports include the following:

The Ford Foundation spends $20 million-per-month on lefty advocacy

What the Ford Foundation Could Be Doing with Henry Ford’s Fortune

How the Ford Foundation Changed Entertainment

The Ford Foundation’s Ugly, Warped View of America

Hoovering Up Henry Ford’s Money