Henry Ford's Failed Amazon Utopia: Fordlandia's Downfall

[00:00:00]hello everybody today we're going to be talking about that time that henry ford built his own country in the amazon rainforest and more specifically how that country became one of the most expensive and lethal disasters in industrial history we're going to talk about how something that started out with most likely good intentions became such a monumental failure and more specifically how a flagship of the american idea was unable to overcome nature and the culture surrounding it so if that sounds interesting to you stick around after the ad as we get into the downfall of ford landia as well as the greater concept of man and industry versus human will and nature itself but before you get your daily dose of existential dread let's set the mood for that dread with today's sponsor galaxy lamps galaxy lamps allows you to turn any room you want into your own personal light show the device as you can see here is very compact and comes with a three position stand so that you can place it on any wall or ceiling that you want and with the integrated galaxy lamps app you are able to customize specific colors as well as set times for them to cycle in and out and schedule times for the projector to turn on and off you can also use the lamp with amazon alexa and google assistant or if you want to keep it simple there's a big button on the side that you can push to cycle through the different color options i'm a fan of the galaxy lamp because it lets you set the mood for any situation if you're interested in a creepy horror mysterious setting or a relaxing nature setting or anything in between the galaxy lamp has you covered and right now is the perfect time to get in on this offer because if you go to the link in the description you will be able to take part in galaxy lamp's easter sale for 50 off that is right if you go to the link in the description until april the 19th you will be able to get your galaxy lamp for 50 off plus another 10 off for orders above 50 bucks 25 off for orders above 125 and 50 off for purchases over 200. that is all in addition to the easter sell of half off and if you are watching this after april 19th then my normal link will be down there for 15 off still a great deal but you cannot beat half off on the galaxy lamps get in while you can you don't want to miss out thank you all so much for watching the ad thank you so much to galaxy lamps for sponsoring this video it really does mean the most i hope you all check them out link is in the description and we are back to the video we're gonna go ahead and get into it but as always thank you for watching henry ford is a man who needs little to no introduction his innovation such as ford motors and the assembly line led to the industrialization of not only america in the early 1900s but the world at large ford's system of a 9-5 workday with decent pay as well as rapid production of things like automobiles meant that the workers could actually buy the products that they were building this was a far cry from the 19th century ideas of there being distinct classes of citizens where some make high-end products that only a few can purchase because of this many feel that henry ford was the first to establish the middle or working class american culture and ford profited greatly from this being one of the richest men alive in the 1920s one of the ways that ford managed to keep costs low and profits high was by owning the manufacturing rights of everything that was required in assembly in other words he didn't just own the factory where the cars were assembled he owned the mills that would produce the steel he owned the lumber yards that would produce the wood and in the early 1920s he owned nearly every aspect of material needed to build his vehicles say for one rubber today rubber production is often overlooked as are things like metal and wood production but in the 1920s before the invention of synthetic rubber it was a much more engaging process around the turn of the century from the 1800s into the 1900s rubber trees were exclusively found in the south american jungles the process for extracting rubber is workers would walk into the jungle until they located a rubber tree to which they would then cut a line into the tree itself and then whenever they got to a point where latex began seeping out they would place a spigot into the tree in order to tap it and drain the latex into a bucket that latex was then taken home where it would be boiled in a sort of kiln and then these mounds of rubber would be sold to bidders by private farmers who were just walking and finding rubber trees in the middle of the jungle not only was this a very slow process but it was also unreliable if someone like henry ford wanted to reliably buy rubber which mine you would require millions of pounds worth of rubber for all of the seals hoses and tires for his vehicles then he would have to hope that thousands of farmers across the amazon rainforest just so happen to have a good supply of rubber and haven't already sold that to anyone else however while again brazil was for a time the only place in the world that one could get rubber because it was the only place that had rubber trees in 1876 a man by the name of henry wickham who does have a fantastic mustache stole thousands of rubber tree seeds and brought them back to england from there england began to distribute them to their more tropical colonies and after growing them in plantations for several years became the number one supplier of rubber because of this england became the world's number one distributor of rubber while brazil faded into obscurity as people quit purchasing from their local workers ford hated the british rubber trade because britain had a monopoly on rubber and could pretty much charge whatever they want ford couldn't really do anything about it though because unlike a steel mill he can't just build a rubber tree plantation in the middle of detroit if he decides he wants to make it himself that was until one day when henry ford was having a conversation with his friend president teddy roosevelt who told henry of his adventures to the amazon rainforest and how he thinks it would be an excellent idea to begin producing rubber back in the country where rubber production started and here we have the first mistake as ford consulted pretty much no one else and decided to spend all of his money on this massive rainforest production facility now it seems that the brazilian government as well as the local workers and journalists were thrilled with the idea of ford building a facility in the amazon see the brazilian government was also upset at the british rubber trade because it took all of the business out of brazil so they saw ford's new construction project as a potential return to form ford sent some diplomats down to brazil to make negotiations with the local government and eventually decided on purchasing 5 625 square miles of land for 125 000 or by today's standards over 2 million now while that may not sound like a lot for the amount of land being purchased this was completely undeveloped jungle and the government pretty much pulled a fast one on ford and charged him way more than the land was actually worth for example ford wanted to begin building immediately in 1926 however what he did not know and would have known if he consulted anyone who was actually from the region the tapajos river which was the nearby river and the only means of transportation in or out of the region of land he just bought was about to enter its dry season and during the dry season the river retracts so much that there's no means of getting supplies to the undeveloped land this would also mean for the foreseeable future ford could only ship materials in and out for half of the year furthermore his deal with the brazilian government said that he could run the land with whatever regulations and rules he liked as long as nine percent of the profits went to the brazilian government everyone around ford all of his advisors and family members said that this was a terrible idea not only would so much need to be spent in order to build this facility that it would take decades for them to see a return on their investment but ford's plan was not only to build a factory in the middle of the jungle but to build an entire city in the middle of the jungle and that's where we get into the aspect of fordlandia that in my opinion elevates it from a bad business venture into a historical marvel and that is that fort landia was not just a proof of profit but a proof of legacy see there's this thing seen with a lot of millionaires and billionaires throughout history that whenever they've made their money and come to the end of their life they begin to focus on how they'll be remembered instead of what they're doing right now an example of this would be walt disney's epcot where during the end of his life he too tried to build his own private city henry ford grew up in a small american farming town and he believed that that was key to the success he learned thereafter and his plan for ford landia was to just take a copy of an idyllic united states midwest town and throw it in the middle of the jungle and then the workers of that facility would not only receive high wages but also receive free health care at their own private hospital free education for their childrens at their own supplied schools as well as churches restaurants entertainment and everything else that ford saw fit the management or staff of the facility would be american workers who go down to south america in order to run it and then those doing manual labor would be local brazilians in other words ford had enough money and the reason that he put away advice to not do this was because this wasn't just another profit adventure for him this was a form of idealist diplomacy during a meeting with his high-ranking staff where he was urged to not go through with the concept of fordlandia ford said we are not going to south america to make money but to help develop that wonderful and fertile land ford thought that what was best for him would be best for everyone and that all that they needed was a little nudge in the right direction so how did that little nudge go well let's find out as mentioned earlier one of ford's contributions to the business world was the concept of the nine-to-five work day and while this concept may have worked in american industry this was not the practice in brazilian industry see in the brazilian jungle it's not uncommon for it to be around 110 degrees by noon so in brazil it was common for workers to wake up very early at 4 or 5 in the morning work until the sun got to its peak around 10 take a several hour break throughout the day then go back to work at four to finish up this not only gave them a large break period in the middle of the day but kept them from collapsing in the amazon heat well to ford this was completely unacceptable because again he's approaching a south american operation with a north american doctrine because of that in 1926 whenever the jungle began to be physically cleared the workers were working through the hottest parts of the day this led to workers becoming incredibly weak and people began catching illnesses such as malaria and yellow fever as well as several accounts of workers just collapsing now i remember that detail i mentioned earlier about the water levels not allowing them to get equipment to the area well because of this the majority of the labor had to be done by hand which caused its own problems see this is the amazon rainforest and the last thing you want to do is be sticking your hand at the base of trees or into random leaves or dirt piles or whatever because of this several people were dying before the facility's true production ever really began people would reach under trees and be bit by pit vipers there were several of counts of men running into swarms of hornets and being stung everywhere some accounts even said that men would lay their hand on the ground and immediately their entire arm would be covered in ants and then these bites and blisters would break out from where they were ate up by them not only that but the first americans who came to the region were not acclimated to the region itself as the land was being cleared the first things that were built were the homes for the american workers most of these workers brought their families with them and it was very common for children to become sick due to the new environment and these homes which were modeled exactly like american homes did a horrible job at keeping out the wildlife several men had stories of waking up in the middle of the night and seeing vampire bats licking blood off of them as a matter of fact it was a reoccurring problem that jaguars were stealing babies out of their homes and in one instance a woman who again came from america to work at fort landia was killed while bathing in the river by a caiman to give you an idea of how chaotic the first couple years of production were the lead manager over all of this was a ship captain named einer oxholm he was initially a ship captain who brought supplies to the region and then i guess they just figured he was really good at being a captain so they were like hey you want to also manage workers production facility assisted living health care and education and he was like i mean i'm already here in 1929 only a couple years after production had began three of his children had died from fever and his other child was stillborn overall in 1930 when production actually started between the workers who were clearing the grounds as well as the american workers who died of illness and caimans and jaguars and everything else over 90 people had already died at this point too much cost and time had been sunken into the production and perhaps to forge something greater than cost was also at risk a couple years earlier in 1928 the water tower bearing the ford logo was placed in the town this was seen as a symbolic completion of the town and ford gave it the name of fordlandia the town itself was quite impressive the town was not only able to house 10 000 people but a few of the amenities there were a hospital several schools a library a hotel a swimming pool a playground a golf course its own power plant phone lines saw mill and a church and all of these were fully staffed mostly by american workers a lot of workers at the time talked about how bizarre it was to essentially step out of the jungle and into a midwest american town fully staffed by americans and then to move your entire family there and essentially exist as a us citizen even for a short while in this kind of make-believe place and perhaps this make-believe place could have been more like a fairy tale if it wasn't for ford's insistence on proper living see in 1928 whenever the town was officially crowned they planted the rubber trees and began hiring workers for the sawmill see it would take the trees a while to grow so the idea was they could make money out of this sawmill selling wood from the amazon up until it becomes time to actually start harvesting the rubber from the trees while these workers who showed up to work at the sawmill were immediately greeted by a whole lot of new roles see it was true that ford was paying very well as a matter of fact some reports say he was paying five dollars an hour which at the time was insane money however while that may be very lucrative in the united states the amazon rainforest isn't exactly a place of consumerism so even if you made a ton of money you couldn't buy more than the local market is willing to sell for american dollar i say that now to give emphasis to how annoying the following rules are for one ford was a firm believer in the idea of the strong hard-willed american man and because of that he believed in putting away all vices so because of that alcohol and tobacco were completely banned from anywhere in fort landia prohibition was going on in the united states at the time and ford was a big fan of it so he decided to apply that to this area for landia even though alcohol wasn't outlawed in the rest of brazil while workers could move their family members into the houses of ford landia you could not bring in a woman if you were not married to them houses were also frequently inspected by the managers in order to make sure that there was no contraband keep in mind most of the brazilians didn't speak english and most of the americans didn't speak portuguese to combat this just five miles down the tapajos river was a location the workers had set up known as the island of innocence this was just outside of the border of fort landia so the staff couldn't really do anything about it and on this island of innocence was a series of bars and brothels and the only protests that the staff could give to workers is they put out a policy stating that venereal disease would not be covered in their health care plan ford also believed that the only right kind of entertainment was american entertainment because of that things like soccer or football to the brazilians was banned like straight up you just can't play soccer i guess it wasn't apple pie enough for him and keep in mind this isn't just the workers this applies to this applies to the wives as well as the children of the workers who just can't play soccer for whatever reason so okay if you ban that then what kind of entertainment do you have in order to replace it well as mentioned earlier there was a playground for the kids a golf course and a swimming pool and that was it for the entertainment except for one thing and that was a square dancing hall and i'm not kidding and i'm emphasizing this because this was something that ford really pushed most likely because he met his wife at a square dancing hall but also because he despised jazz music so because of reasons like this it wasn't just american culture being transported to the jungle it was four's idealized representation of what american culture should be transplanted into the jungle and believe it or not groups of children who have never been to the united states and don't speak english aren't exactly big fans of square dancing however perhaps the most annoying detail of ford's idealism was his diet plan see ford was a vegetarian and one of the first proponents of clean eating essentially just a diet of rice and vegetables and that's like it so he thought well this diet is great for me it'll be great for the 10 000 brazilians in the middle of the jungle so workers who were used to eating their own meat were now forced to eat an entirely vegetarian diet it should also be noted that the american managers who did not care for ford's vegetarian ideas would ship in meat themselves in order to make things like steak and hamburgers this created another level of disparity between the workers and the management as the workers who have been forced to eat these vegetarian diets and not play soccer and square dance got to look over at these american managers who were eating hamburgers and probably smoking cigars and listening to the radio as well one aspect that was interesting whenever ford landia was built was the idea that every worker would be treated as if they're at an american restaurant in other words there wasn't a line like a cafeteria that the workers would go to and then scoop their food as in most assembly lines instead they would set at tables and waiters would come to them as for their order and then bring it out again their options were like rice or celery but still it made them feel special that was until in 1930 when they decided this was inefficient and switched over to the cafeteria line which seems to be the final breaking point for a lot of people like you know obviously all these rules random house inspections regulations and diet was bad enough to begin with but at least they got some level of dignity whenever they sat down to eat and now that was taken from them something else they all really hated was a time clock system where you would punch your card and clock in and clock out again while this worked in american industry the brazilian workers hated the concept of walking to the punch-in desk and then going to the place they need to start working this also compacted with the fact that a nine-to-five job was not typical of brazilian workers so all of these elements were at a breaking point and keep in mind no one has made any rubber out of this deal yet but in 1930 in the cafeteria that used to be a restaurant an argument started between one of the brick masons and the current manager now i've seen conflicting reports on what the argument was specifically over i saw some that said it was an argument over the workers not following their diet properly i saw some that said they were going to cut wages from the workers because they were eating too much but regardless of what the specifics were everyone was so ready to start a fight over something this seemed like a good thing to start it over the shouting match kept escalating until eventually nearly all of the 3 000 workers were rioting within fort landia now there was a previous sort of semi riot that happened in 1928 whenever the workers weren't given proper food but that was just more so like a strike for a couple days and then it subsided this was a group of people who were angry and setting stuff on fire and breaking things the first thing that they did was destroy the time clock punch-in system and i just want to know how that conversation went because someone convinced them that they need to leave the cafeteria and go beat up the time clock from there they just started destroying everything they destroyed parts of the sawmill they destroyed parts of the rubber plant which wasn't really running yet they even started destroying several of their own houses and all of the american staff freaked out and got on a boat to go hide and float out in the river while they just tore stuff up for a few days my favorite detail is that apparently the mob saw the american chef and chased him into the woods where he was hiding for four days and i can just imagine like this group of people so mad and upset at the management and that you know they're obviously upset over the diet that they have to eat and i just imagine like a chef running out and he's got like the stereotypical like giant chef hat and like the mustache and everything and they're like there he is get him and the workers who escaped on the boats called back to the home office in detroit and detroit called the brazilian government and brazil sent in the military to calm down the workers and after a few days of breaking stuff they eventually calmed down after this event a new manager was appointed by the name of archibald johnston and supposedly he made things a little bit better like he still enforced the diet and all that but he convinced the staff to like show a couple movies in the completely abandoned square dancing hall from time to time and you know maybe he even got a little crazy and let them kick around a soccer ball every now and then but after the 1930 incident which is referred to by locals as the breaking pan revolt things were pretty normal among the workers but now i know what you're thinking what about the rubber and that's a good question what about the rubber well remember how i mentioned earlier britain had a monopoly on the rubber industry because they had set up all these plantations in their colonies while ford's management in the late 20s decided to plant these rubber trees in plantation rows the idea being that's how crops are grown everywhere else in the world so you might as well grow rubber trees the same way the issue with that is that in the british colonies like sri lanka where they were growing the rubber trees there weren't any natural predators or diseases that could kill the trees so it didn't matter how many you grow together however in the brazilian forest there were a ton of things that can kill rubber trees everything from a form of blight as well as caterpillars whose primary food source is rubber trees now these things are all over the jungle but they're normally not that big of a problem that's because rubber trees are solitary so if one tree gets infected with blight or caterpillars and that tree dies it's probably fine because all the other trees are too far away to get infected themselves well whenever you grow all of these trees right next to each other in a plantation you're essentially making a giant hotbed for things like blight and caterpillars to grow in not to mention rubber trees have very large root systems and whenever you grow them next to each other it diminishes their growth so for some reason that they couldn't figure out but they would have if they asked literally anyone who knew what they were talking about the trees were not growing as fast as they were supposed to be and as soon as they sprouted leaves they were killed by caterpillars or disease the caterpillars even started to trick the workers the caterpillars usually eat the leaves from the bottom and the workers would pick them off and literally fill buckets full of them and then just burn the buckets so the caterpillars adapted and started eating on top of the leaves so whenever the workers looked up through the trees they'd thank the tree's fine and then it would be dead a couple days later so not only were the workers upset and things bad for the people living in fort landia but the rubber wasn't even being produced and that wasn't the only problems they had with rubber production because as soon as they started to harvest it workers routinely got sick and just passed out one reason for this was again the whole nine to five work day and they had to be out there in 110 degree weather which also side note the way the latex from the rubber trees pour out is whenever they're mildly cool it just flows but as the temperature gets too hot they kind of inflate and crowd up inside of the system of the tree itself so not only were the workers getting too hot in the middle of the day the tree was literally too hot to let out the rubber and the other reason workers were passing out is because ford decided that they needed to take all of the modern vaccines in the u.s and make the brazilian workers take every single one of them all at once again while this may have had good intentions taking people who have never taken any kind of medication in their life and making them take like 12 vaccines at once was not a good idea i'm not sure how many people necessarily died from that but the hospital beds were routinely full around this time eventually ford broke down and hired a botanist by the name of james weir james said that what effectively happened at fort landia is they had accidentally turned the entire country into a petri dish for blight because at this point everything was so infected by the trees being grown close together that it doesn't matter what you grow it's going to die in a couple years anyway his recommendation was that they needed to scrap production on that plot of land and move it to another plot down the river known as beltera also no one liked james apparently i don't know if he was annoying or the workers were annoying and then a year later in 1937 without telling anyone he got on a boat and never came back while they did begin the rubber tree production at belterra again it takes a few years for the trees to even grow enough that you can harvest the latex from them by the time they were ready to harvest it was 1941 and america was about to enter world war ii and at this time fordlandia as well as baltera became a station for american soldiers little to any latex was harvested as resources were being put towards the war effort also around this time synthetic rubber was becoming more popular than naturally sourced rubber just because it's easier to make and doesn't require you know a jungle country to do it so demand for the trees at beltero were low to begin with near the end of ford's life in 1945 he passed off the company and the majority of its assets to his grandson can reform the second henry ford ii began by selling off a majority of the company's assets that were no longer making a profit and the first of these to go as you could imagine was ford landia which he sold back to the brazilian government for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and while that is a profit of one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars for the price they originally paid for it that price they originally paid was for completely undeveloped jungle ford had spent nearly 20 million dollars on the construction of ford landia which adjusted by today's standards due to inflation is closer to half a billion and while that's a massive money loss as i mentioned earlier ford is near the end of his life at this point and isn't looking to make more money the deeper loss for ford was the lack of furthering the american idea and as ford believed at the end of his life you can't culture something that doesn't want to be cultured when in reality it's just that you can't culture something that already has a culture and as he should have recognized at this point you can't grow something where it's already growing it would be like starting a tree farm in the middle of the jungle henry ford died two years after the selling of fort landia in 1947 never having actually visited the land in his entire life while being what is undoubtedly the largest blunder of his career it is largely forgotten to history but to me the most interesting part of fort landia is not the failure that it represents but instead the lesson that it's created the city of fort landia still stands to this day and while the majority of the structures have been overrun by nature the towns still host a population of around 3 000 people the land has spawned a new industry an industry of tourism as hotel owners and guides give tours of henry ford's decrepit city it's so fascinating to me seeing the remnants of something that was so determined to beat nature at its own game now years later after everyone is left being overcome by that same nature the water tower is still there although the ford logo has long faded to the degree that you would never know it was there unless someone told you otherwise and to me that is the best representation of what fordlandia is a monument that yes still exists but it's a monument to something different than what was originally intended and i think it's pretty cool and hopefully you think it's cool too and if you made it this far into the video i just want to say thank you for watching i love weird stories like this about just this super millionaire rich guy built a giant cityscape in the middle of the jungle and it fell apart and now it's like half abandoned half a tourist attraction and that's that's my cup of tea that's the kind of stuff i'm here to talk about thank you again thank you for watching thank you so much to my subscribers we're at 1.25 million that is another quarter million past 1 million which is absurd and thank you guys so much for that i should have some more videos up this month my this is the last part of divine comedy will be decently soon that one's a lot to read or any parts of the divine comedy or a lot to read but i want to get that up maybe this month we'll see and then i've got some bigger projects planned uh hopefully some stuff you'll be excited about i won't give anything specific yet but uh keep your eyes peeled for more weird and wacky topics that i'm known for hopefully you enjoy it but for now i want to say thank you for watching i hope that you enjoyed and i will see you in the next one bye