Neil Baldwin
New York: Public Affairs, 2001
$27.50
416 pp.
Henry Ford
Dearborn, MI: Dearborn Independent, 1920-1921
416 pp.
Reviewed by Kevin MacDonald
The first part of Henry Ford and the Jewish Question (Part I: The Education of a Midwestern Industrialist)appeared in the Fall issue of The Occidental Quarterly (Vol. 2, No. 3) and assessed the issues raised in Neil Baldwin’s Henry Ford and the Jews. Part two examines the actual writings of Henry Ford, which first appeared in The Dearborn Independent from 1920 to 1921.
So what is one to make of Henry Ford’s series of writings on Jews? The International Jew (TIJ) is an amalgam of dark speculations on Jewish conspiracy combined with some interesting and, on the whole, accurate information on Jews and perceptions of Jews during the period. The weekly articles, which were compiled into a four-volume book version that was never copyrighted and has thus been in the public domain for over eighty years, merit a fair and accurate summary.
The general view of TIJ is that Jews have achieved a great deal of economic, political, and cultural domination in the U.S. and European societies. At times, TIJ writes as though the United States economy was completely dominated by Jews: “In America alone most of the big business, the trusts and the banks, the natural resources and the chief agricultural products, especially tobacco, cotton and sugar, are in the control of Jewish financiers or their agents” (5/22/1920). This undoubtedly exaggerated view of the overarching power of Jewish finance contrasts with discussions of a great many areas describing the extent to which Jews control specific areas of the economy and culture. A later article (6/05/1920) claims several other important industries are under Jewish control in the U.S.: the motion picture industry, 50% of the meat packing industry, “upwards of 60% of the shoemaking industry,” the clothing industry, distribution and selling of music, jewelry, grain, the Colorado smelting industry, magazine writing, news distribution, the liquor business, and the loan business, “only to name the industries with national and international sweep.”
While overly inclined to see Jewish domination of the U.S. economy resulting from Jewish overrepresentation in investment banking, TIJ was essentially correct when it pointed to particular industries that were dominated by Jews. Data from the 1930s indicated that Jews had disproportionate influence in retailing, the garment industry, cosmetics, entertainment, mass media and publishing, investment banking, and the professions (Editors of Fortune 1936; Sachar 1992, 341). All of these, with the exception of Jewish involvement in the professions, were foci of TIJ, although TIJ did discuss Jewish influence in journalism and the academic world, particularly economics. TIJ is careful to distinguish between investment banking, where Jews had a very strong position, from retail banking, where they did not—a distinction also noted by Editors of Fortune (1936).
All of these industries are given detailed treatment in various places in TIJ (e.g., the liquor business was the focus of three articles appearing in late 1921). In general, TIJ takes a balanced, nuanced approach to Jewish influence in particular areas. For example, in the financial area, TIJ describes a conflict between a nascent Jewish group and a non-Jewish group bent on preventing Jewish influence. “At one time [Jewish influence] threatened to be [paramount], but American financiers have always been silently aware of the International Jewish Financier, and have endeavored quietly to block his game” (11/13/1920). However, while presently thwarted, TIJ notes that Jewish influence on the stock exchange is increasing rapidly because Jews are willing to pay the highest prices for seats on the New York Stock Exchange as they become available, and no Jew ever sells his seat to a non-Jew.
One outstanding characteristic of the Jewish race is its persistence. What it cannot attain this generation, it will attain next. Defeat it today, it does not remain defeated; its conquerors die, but Jewry goes on, never forgetting, never deviating from its ancient aim of world control in one form or another (11/13/1920).
TIJ gives figures for Jewish membership of the NYSE as 60/1,009 in 1872, rising to 106 in 1893 and to 276 in 1919. Jewish control “is struggling to go higher, but has thus far been stopped” (11/13/1920).
Noting the importance of the theater as part of the plan outlined in the Protocols, TIJ provides detailed accounts in a series of five articles on Jewish domination of the theater and motion picture industry.
Not only the “legitimate” stage, so-called, but the motion picture industry—the fifth greatest of all the great industries—is also Jew-controlled, not in spots only, not 50 per cent merely, but entirely; with the natural consequence that the world is in arms against the trivializing and demoralizing influences of that form of entertainment as at present managed. As soon as the Jew got control of American Liquor, we had a liquor problem with drastic consequences. As soon as the Jew gained control of the “movies,” we had a movie problem, the consequences of which are not yet visible. It is the genius of the race to create problems in whatever business they achieve a majority . . . . Millions of Americans every day place themselves voluntarily within range of Jewish ideas of life, love and labor; within range of Jewish propaganda, sometimes cleverly, sometimes cunningly concealed (1/01/1921). Frivolity, sensuality, indecency, appalling illiteracy and endless platitude are the marks of the American State as it approaches its degeneracy under Jewish control (1/01/1920).
TIJ claims that Jewish producers stage plays that provide positive images of Jews and that most of these are not successful despite massive publicity and endorsement by public officialdom. Ben Hur is given as a prominent exception, its nineteen-year run explained by the fact that “it is the most successful of all the vehicles for pro-Semitism now on the stage” (1/08/1921).
Nevertheless, despite this upsurge in discussion of Jewish issues as a result of the publication of TIJ, public discussions of Jewish issues have remained more or less taboo. Father Charles Coughlin discussed Jewish issues in his widely disseminated radio broadcasts in the 1930s until being effectively shut down in 1940 as a result of a decision by the National Association of Broadcasters to forbid selling airtime to “spokesmen of controversial public issues” (Marcus 1973, 176; see also Warren 1996)—a regulation that was explicitly aimed at keeping Coughlin off the air. In September 1941, Charles Lindbergh had few, if any, defenders in the media when he was subjected to a torrent of abuse for stating a simple fact, that Jews were one of three groups advocating U.S. involvement in W.W. II against Germany (the others being Britain and the Roosevelt administration). In the long run, the TIJ was simply a blip in a long-term trend that continues into the present.
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