The Henry Ford

I didn't dig into every single, um, every single iteration of the Ford Sunday evening radio hour, all of the scripts.

So all of that material is is held at the Henry Ford, which is the archive that holds Ford Motor Company records and Henry Ford's personal papers, really the Ford family personal papers, up through like 1950.

And so I read in those and then the Ford films are all cataloged in the National Archives.

So there's a Ford Motor Company collection in the National Archives that holds everything from the Ford Motor Company film department.

And so that's the kind of media...

I largely found myself in.

There's also like the photography, Ford photography is also held, but that's again at the Henry Ford, at the Benson Ford Research Center at the Henry Ford.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

So starting off, I was wondering, what does conducting a close personal analysis on figures like Henry Ford reveal about broader American culture?

A huge question.

And I guess in some ways, a lot, right? It tells us a lot.

And you're right that Henry Ford is a central figure for me in this study.

Although I'm not sure I try exactly to do a kind of close personal history, instead I tend to think about this project as kind of trying to move across a set of, I don't know, set of spheres, I guess, both thinking at the biographical level, as you said, about Henry Ford and thinking about how Ford gets institutionalized at the Ford Motor Company, how Ford becomes a capital brand and how it ends up becoming a marker for an entire system of political economy.

So trying to move across those biographical, institutional, and political economic realms is where I tend to think of this book.

And so in some ways, I guess I think about it more like a religious history of a brand.

Absolutely.

So starting off, I was wondering, what does conducting a close personal analysis on figures like Henry Ford reveal about broader American culture?

A huge question.

And I guess in some ways, a lot, right? It tells us a lot.

And you're right that Henry Ford is a central figure for me in this study.

Although I'm not sure I try exactly to do a kind of close personal history, instead I tend to think about this project as kind of trying to move across a set of, I don't know, set of spheres, I guess, both thinking at the biographical level, as you said, about Henry Ford and thinking about how Ford gets institutionalized at the Ford Motor Company, how Ford becomes a capital brand and how it ends up becoming a marker for an entire system of political economy.

So trying to move across those biographical, institutional kind of, and political economic realms is where I tend to think of this book.

And so in some ways, I guess I think about it more like a religious history of a brand.

And so those two entities are established as the Edison Institute.

And then later on, they get sort of rebranded into and called the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village.

And then they add the archives at some point later.

And now they also run tours to the River Rouge plant So, I'm sure many people have been there.

And so those two entities are established as the Edison Institute.

And then later on, they get sort of rebranded into and called the Henry Ford Museum.

And then, and Greenfield Village.

And then they add the archives at some point later.

Oh, well, we're really excited to be launching this program.

It's It started at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, and it's been running for years and years.

But 4-H is the Oregon organization that's rolling it out in Oregon for the first time this year.

And we're really focused on it here in the Gorge area.