(Preview) Vampire Bats Thwart Henry Ford

**Andrew Heaton** (0:00)
Greetings, Lord Uncle Heaton here. This is a preview of this week's bonus episode on Fordlandia, Henry Ford's company town in the middle of the Amazon, which among other things was thwarted by cultural mismatch, heat, and vampire bats. It is my favorite installment of our series on company towns, and you can hear the rest of it by becoming a patron. Head to thepoliticalorphanage.com and step up. That's www.thepoliticalorphanage.com.
Thanks and enjoy this random bit of the episode with no context whatsoever.
Henry Ford hated that. That was not just a needless expense. It was an affront to efficiency. Can you believe that? It's so mind bogglingly stupid. Some dude just wanders around a forest whistling until he finds a tree.
This, this was not just a gap in Ford's vertical integration model. No, this was an affront to Fordism itself and affront to efficiency and industry.
But what are you going to do? Right? What are you going to do? Rubber trees don't grow in Iowa. There aren't heaving trunks of latex clogging up the roadways of Guthrie, Oklahoma. You're just going to have to take it on the chin and buy rubber from some rubber monger at a dock, right?
But it gets worse. Sri Lanka, and therefore the British in this era, had a monopoly on the global rubber trade, which meant those smug British imperialists could pretty much charge self-made Henry Ford whatever they wanted for rubber. And if Henry wanted tires on his cars, he'd just have to pony up.
Enter Teddy Roosevelt.
One day, Henry Ford and Teddy Roosevelt are having lunch. I don't have the minutes of that lunch, but I think it probably went something like this. Teddy Roosevelt drank two gallons of coffee. He drank an inordinate amount of coffee. He was an upper type guy, and he smiled and he shouted a lot. Henry Ford at some point, over the course of the lunch, mentions that it drives him crazy, that he has to contend with a inefficient rubber process, which is owned by foreigners, and they have a monopoly, and they jack up the prices on all of this inefficient rubber. It just drives him nuts. And Teddy Roosevelt says, why have you ever been to Brazil? When I lost the presidency to Woodrow Wilson and met backstabbing fat ass William Howard Taft, I went on an expedition to South America with my good friend, the explorer Candido Rondon, and we explored the Rio da Doveda, the River of Doubt, which the locals have subsequently renamed the Roosevelt River, because they rightly recognize that I'm a superhuman, got a bad case of malaria there, and the wound got infected, I very nearly died, but I didn't because I'm a superhuman. Anyway, while I was exploring the Rio da Doveda, hunting various big game, I saw quite a few rubber trees, yes sir, quite a few rubber trees, they're all over the place. Why, sure would be great if Brazil started exporting rubber, don't you think? Because then we could buy it and maybe use it to kill Germans. Now, I know how you feel about killing Germans, Henry, but it's not that I hate Germans, it's just that I really love killing people in general. War is good, boy, it turns boys into men, keeps your country from becoming sluggish and effeminate. Every good country needs a good war, might as well be with Germany. I think they qualify as a peer country. So, sure would be good if Brazil started selling us rubber so we could kill Germans without having to pay the British. Anyway, what were we talking about, Henry?
Something like that. Henry Ford gets the idea from former president Teddy Roosevelt that he ought to set up a rubber operation in Brazil, and finally, at last, fully integrate every step of the Ford Motor Company's operations. Henry Ford summoned, I'm using that word intentionally here, he summoned the governor of the state of Parra to meet with him in America. And they hammered out an agreement. The Brazilian government would turn over 2.5 million acres of an area called the Boa Vista for Ford to, well, do whatever the hell he wanted with. That was pretty much the deal. We will exempt you from export taxes and local regulations. All you have to do is pay us 9% of your profits, 7% to the Brazilian government, and 2% to the local municipalities. Try not to murder anybody, but otherwise, have fun. Good luck with your weird American rubber company in our dense malaria-infested jungle, Mr. Ford. So in 1926, the Ford Motor Company became the overlord of a chunk of Brazilian jungle just smaller than Connecticut. Ford would build not just a rubber plantation in that area. He would bring civilization to the local savages. And not just any civilization, mind you, but the best civilization. America.