“Crucible,” John Sayles’ new novel about the world of Henry Ford, has special relevance to today’s political turmoil. Henry Ford was the Elon Musk of his day. Both men revolutionized the capitalist production system and created new products for mass consumption. Both espoused conspiratorial political ideas. Both flirted with right-wing nationalism. And both were adamantly opposed to the American labor movement.
In film and literary fiction, Sayles has been an artful chronicler of class, race, and ethnicity in America for 50 years. Movies like “Return of the Secaucus Seven” (1980), “Matewan” (1987), and “Eight Men Out” (1988) explore the hardships and privileges of society. His novel Union Dues (1977) is an on-the-ground look at the Miners for Democracy movement and the New Left activism of the early 1970s.
“Crucible” takes place in Detroit from the Stock Market Crash of 1929 until 1945. It’s populated by a cast of fictional characters who interact with real figures of the day. Henry Ford is the power behind the empire, but his ruthless lieutenant Harry Bennett drives the narrative. Bennett heads what amounts to the world’s largest private security firm, designed to prevent the unionization of Ford. To that end he maintains complex alliances with Detroit’s Italian, Jewish and Irish gangsters, and with Black pastors who supply the company with a steady stream of African-American workers recently arrived from the South.
Ford is a paternalist, and his enforcer Bennett wants Black men who will owe their allegiance to the boss rather than the newly founded United Auto Workers. Foundry workers Otis and Zeke must decide whether to play by Bennett’s rules or embrace the UAW. To enforce company rule Bennett uses carrots — like paying Black strike breakers $5 a day — and sticks — machine guns and hired thugs. The Dearborn River Rouge plant operates under the cold principles of scientific management. As one worker says to a new hire: “There’s gonna be a guy with a stopwatch, and you’re gonna want to leave yourself a little breath room.”
Up against Bennett are the UAW’s Reuther brothers; Rosa, a young Communist Party member; and Kovacs, a first-generation Polish-American.
We also meet the people who made Detroit a center of social turmoil in the ’30s: the ascendent boxer Joe Lewis, the pride of his race; the radical Mexican artist Diego Rivera, who comes to town to paint his iconic mural on the wall of the Art Institute; the racist and antisemitic radio broadcaster Charles Coughlin; and the great bass-baritone Paul Robeson, singing at UAW rallies. The reader will feel that Detroit is the center, not only of the automobile revolution, but of the entire decade’s artistic, cultural, and political ferment — a veritable crucible.
And Sayles tells a lesser-known story of the Ford empire — his effort to create a model rubber plantation in Brazil to provide raw material for car production. Fordlandia, as it was known, failed, but the story reminds us how even in the 1930s, the reach of capitalist entrepreneurs like Ford was international in scope, just as Musk’s is today.
Sayles puts the UAW at the moral center of the drama, but he is aware of the contradictions within the union, even after Ford finally signed a first union contract in 1941. Despite the egalitarian ethos of the UAW/CIO, Black workers remained uncertain the union would treat them as first-class citizens. Otis and Zeke aren’t sure if they will be welcome in the union or whether Jim Crow has followed them from the South. “Crucible” includes a powerful portrait of a 1943 race riot that divided Detroit and other American cities. The violence was fueled by resentment over housing opportunities, but the divide went directly to the heart of the union as well. After Roosevelt desegregated war production in 1941, progressive CIO unions struggled to suppress racist wildcat actions by members who did not want to work side by side with African-Americans.
The CIO was a grand example of American civic education in action. As one Polish worker tells his son: “This country, they ask you what you think. So is your duty to let them know.” But Sayles recognizes that the victory of the UAW over Ford was incomplete.
It remains to be seen what forces will step up to challenge Elon Musk’s vast power today. John Sayle’s fine novel reminds us that it has been done before.
Marcus Widenor is a former labor organizer and associate professor emeritus at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center.
