Books - The Flivver King

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	Books - The Flivver King

The Flivver King A Story of Ford-America is a novel by Upton Sinclair, published in 1937. It was an important piece of literature in the organizing and unionization of Ford Motor Company manufacturing plants in the same year.

Plot summary

On Bagley Street in the city of Detroit, Little Abner Shutt begins the story by explaining to his mother that "there's a feller down the street says he's goin' to make a wagon that'll run without a hoss." That man of course is Henry Ford. The story follows the progress and growth of Ford Motor Company through the perspective of a number of generations of a single family.

Effects

The first edition, published by the UAW states on the cover, that it was printed "in an edition of 200,000 copies for its members". There is no mistake that the book was meant to provoke and challenge its readers; on the cover (seen ), as a preface to the first edition it is stated:

What is Henry Ford? What have the years done to him? What has his billion dollars made of him?

Here is the man, and the story of his life. Here also are his workers, a family of them over a period of three generations. What has the billion dollars done to them?

A dramatic labor struggle is under way. Will Ford recognize the union? Will there be a "sit-down" in his plants? Here, in story form, are the facts needed to understand events.

Now that it has been more than 65 years after those lines were written, it is left for the reader, if interested, to look at what answers have been made and subsequently remade to those questions as society lurches along.

The Flivver King due to its connection to the labor movement was a cog in the unionization of the automobile workers. The effects of having the UAW publishing and distributing copies of this book give a clue as to what use it was meant to have. Its effects have been made on individuals and groups of people leading to both short and long term results. The results depend on your own perspective and philosophy. One can argue that its effects have been either positive or negative.

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