Wes Davis

In 1918 the American industrialist Henry Ford undertook an auto-camping road trip in the Great Smoky Mountains at the border between North Carolina and Tennessee. The grand culmination of various shorter trips exploring rural America, his companions – as on the previous sojourns – were unlikely. Joining Ford was John Burroughs, an American naturalist who damned the automobile as the ‘scourge of nature’ and enjoyed an existence that was, in his words, ‘all vacation’. Having met in 1913, the pair’s obvious differences were meliorated by a shared admiration for the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, their friendship secured when Ford gave Burroughs a Model T so that he could ramble the countryside with newfound efficiency. Burroughs’ deep connection with nature, meanwhile, helped Ford better understand the agrarian past which he saw disappearing in the rearview mirror.

Ford’s friendship with Thomas Edison – the third passenger – had peaked at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915. As the pair toured various stalls which promised a brave, industrialised future, they were drawn to a display which argued that these same forward-thinking goals might be achieved through the careful management of America’s vast natural resources. By the time the two celebrities pushed their way out of this garden exhibit, Ford’s ‘agrarian nostalgia’ and Edison’s deep curiosity for botanical science had reached boiling point. Both felt that they needed to return to ‘nature’s laboratory’, and fast, if they – and America – were to reach their – and its – true potential. Various road trips in pursuit of this quest followed.

In American Journey: On the Road with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John Burroughs Wes Davis follows Ford, Edison and Burroughs as they plan their short escapes to the country, debate – and compromise – on their diverging opinions on the First World War, and navigate the ups-and-downs of business life. A fourth character, the tyre magnate Harvey Firestone, also appears halfway through the book, joining the trio (who had taken to calling themselves ‘the Vagabonds’) for their grand 1918 expedition, which Davis only arrives at in his penultimate chapter.

Sadly, the book falls short in its analysis of the trips’ true significance. As Davis sees it, the trio understood their trips as an opportunity to uncover ‘their own deep, rural roots and reattach themselves to the nation’s rooted, agrarian past’. To this end, they would ‘rough it’ in tents along the sides of mountains and streams, fend for themselves on the bucolic backroads of rural America and wake every morning to birdsong, all in an attempt to better understand how industrial progress and agrarian origins might coexist in efficient harmony.

Ford and Edison eagerly donned the costume of celebrity itinerants. They regularly stopped at farms, not only to camp for the night, but also to ‘play farmer’, scything grass and chopping wood. So, too, did they enjoy conversing with their gentleman-naturalist, Burroughs, on the warble of a bird, taxonomy of a plant or a line from Emerson. They revelled in the constant gaggle of fans and pressmen who sought a quippy line or a quick photo. They drove brand-new Ford automobiles loaded with every piece of gear possible, were occasionally joined by a ride-along celebrity chef, and followed by a ‘small city’ of well-outfitted luxury tents. The tour more closely resembled a glamping trip than a backwoods bivouacking slog.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Vaughn Scribner is Associate Professor in History at the University of Central Arkansas. Under Alien Skies: Environment, Suffering, and the Defeat of the British Military in Revolutionary America is forthcoming.… (altro)