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Chapter 53
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Flivver King, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Capitalism and Dehumanization
American Idealism and Disillusionment
Misinformation, Media Bias, and Ignorance
Individualism vs. Unionization
Technology and Progress
Summary
Analysis
Herbert Hoover succeeds Calvin Coolidge, and all the captains of industry support him. But in the first year of Hoover’s presidency, there is a panic on Wall Street and billions of stocks crumble into nothing. Because of this, people no longer have money to buy things like cars. The first panic lasts several days, and then there is a lull. Ford decides to give a statement to newspapers that he’s going to raise the minimum wage in his plants to $7 a day, hoping to raise confidence in the market. But a few workers point out that since the $5 minimum was established 16 years earlier, the cost of living in Detroit has doubled. In addition, while Ford pays some men the new minimum wage, he also fires 55,000 of them.
As the first panic hits in late 1929, the Great Depression begins. This disproves the journalists’ and economists’ theories that there would be no more depression or poverty. Ford even tries to harness the power of the media in order to instill confidence, knowing how biased information can affect people’s views. But his duplicitousness illustrates that Ford is simply motivated by a desire for profit, and the capitalist system has caused a sweeping and unforgiving economic downturn.
Themes
