100 pages • 3 hours read
Upton SinclairThe Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1937A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 1-3
Chapters 4-6
Chapters 7-9
Chapters 10-12
Chapters 13-15
Chapters 16-18
Chapters 19-21
Chapters 22-24
Chapters 25-27
Chapters 28-30
Chapters 31-33
Chapters 34-36
Chapters 37-39
Chapters 40-42
Chapters 43-45
Chapters 46-48
Chapters 49-51
Chapters 52-54
Chapters 55-57
Chapters 58-60
Chapters 61-63
Chapters 64-66
Chapters 67-69
Chapters 70-72
Chapters 73-75
Chapters 76-78
Chapters 79-81
Chapters 82-84
Chapters 85-92
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapters 37-39Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 37 Summary
Ford has also been sued by the Dodge brothers, who had made 650 engines for use in the first Ford cars in exchange for Ford stock but have never received any dividends.
Ford does not believe in “paying rent for the use of money [or] letting people get money which they hadn’t earned by useful labour” (94), so he uses the Ford Company’s profits to invest in capital. The Dodge brothers win their suit and Ford is ordered to pay dividends to his stockholders.
In response, Ford spreads a rumor that he intends to start a new company with his son to make cars that will retail for $250. The minority stockholders are alarmed and sell their stock for “a small part of the market value”; still, they make “a thousand times what they had invested in the business” (95).
Abner and his father calculate how much money their family had had in savings back when Ford was inventing his first car, and how much they would have today if they had invested the money in the Ford Company. Everyone else who had known Ford in the early days makes the same calculation, and “the fact that such prizes were being drawn lent a thrill to being alive” (96). Americans who read about the extraordinarily wealth acquired by businessmen enter “a state of mind where they [are] ready to gamble on whatever [comes] along” (96), and are taken advantage of by purveyors of get-rich-quick schemes.
Chapter 38 Summary
Abner’s hardworking eldest son John, 15, is accepted to study at Ford’s trade school: “He was going right ahead to learn everything about the making of an automobile, and the great Ford organization was going to be his world” (97).
Hank, the Shutts’ second son, is much less successful: he skips school, lies to people, and runs away from home when he is punished. The police catch him robbing freight trains with a group of boys, and Abner has to miss work to attend Hank’s trial. The boy is sentenced to probation and begins a life of crime: “He had got himself marked, a young criminal; people would look askance at him, and he would reply with ridicule of their dull piety. A tough young guy but, as it turned out there was a way of life for that sort too” (98).
Chapter 39 Summary
Ford, his wife, and his son are the sole stockholders and directors of the Ford Motor Company. After his experience with the peace ship, Ford becomes more hardened and fires employees who disagree with him: “From now on he was a business man, and held a tight rein on everything” (99).
He takes on a harsher, gruffer manner, firing employees without notice and even flying into rages and destroying their desks. The head of the Social Department, Dean Marquis, sees Ford act unjustly and tries in vain to correct him. Finally, Marquis “realize[s] that the period of idealism [is] past, and that there [is] no longer any place for a Christian gentleman in the Ford business machine” (100).
After Marquis’s resignation, Ford changes course, dropping his attempts to guide his employees’ personal spending and abandoning the promise he made to turn over all his war profits, a total of $29 million, to the US government.
Chapters 37-39 Analysis
In these chapters, Ford’s turn from naïve, idealistic businessman to hardened capitalist is complete, and Marquis’s resignation from the Social Department punctuates this transformation.
In Chapter 37, we learn that Ford refused to pay the Dodge brothers’ dividends because he “didn’t believe in letting people get money which they hadn’t earned by useful labour” (94). Sinclair’s tone in this passage, as in many others, is ironic: after all, at this point in the story, Ford has earned a great deal of money from other people’s useful labor. Ford does not view his own activities completely honestly, and has mastered the art of spinning his business decisions in ways that are beneficial to his own and his company’s image.
Abner’s children have reached adolescence and their personalities begin to emerge: Johnny will be the social climber, Ford company man, and conformist; Hank the “problem child” (97). Hank’s career as a thug begins in Chapter 39, when his activities are presented as criminal in the literal sense. Hank violates the law, is caught, and is punished; his actions are destructive to the social order and the relevant authorities treat them as such. However, as the novel progresses, Hank’s thuggishness gradually leads him into a nominally “lawful” way of life. That is, his actions continue to violate the law, but as the authorities grow increasingly beholden to Ford, Hank’s and others’ criminality comes to be not only accepted but also supported by the police.
