{"id":9770,"date":"2006-11-06T09:55:59","date_gmt":"2006-11-06T16:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2006\/11\/06\/fordlandia.html"},"modified":"2006-11-06T09:55:59","modified_gmt":"2006-11-06T16:55:59","slug":"fordlandia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/11\/06\/fordlandia.html","title":{"rendered":"Fordlandia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n<\/div>\n

A couple of interesting<\/a> articles<\/a> about Henry Ford’s 1930s attempt to bypass expensive British-Dutch rubber plantations by in Asia building a Michigan-style town in the middle of the Amazon. <\/p>\n

\n

Scores of Ford employees were relocated to the site, and over the first few months an American-as-apple-pie community sprung up from what was once a jungle wilderness. It included a power plant, a modern hospital, a library, a golf course, a hotel, and rows of white clapboard houses with wicker patio furniture. As the town’s population grew, all manner of businesses followed, including tailors, shops, bakeries, butcher shops, restaurants, and shoemakers. It grew into a thriving community with Model T Fords frequenting
\nthe neatly paved streets.<\/p>\n

[…] Henry Ford’s miniature America in the jungle attracted a slew of workers. Local laborers were offered a wage of thirty-seven cents a day to work on the fields of Fordl\u00e2ndia, which was about double the normal rate for that line of work. But Ford’s effort to transplant America\u2013 what he called “the healthy lifestyle”\u2013 was not limited to American buildings, but also included mandatory “American” lifestyle and values. The plantation’s cafeterias were self-serve, which was not the local custom, and they provided
\nonly American fare such as hamburgers. Workers had to live in American-style houses, and they were each assigned a number which they had to wear on a badge\u2013 the cost of which was deducted from their first paycheck. Brazilian laborers were also required to attend squeaky-clean American festivities on weekends, such as poetry readings, square-dancing, and English-language sing-alongs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Plagued by a lack of horticultural expertise, cross-cultural differences with the locals, isolation, and, ultimately, the development of synthetic rubber in WWII, the two sites — Fordlandia, and its successor, Belterra — were sold back to the Brazilian government after Ford had plowed $20-30MM (1930s dollars) into them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of interesting articles about Henry Ford’s 1930s attempt to bypass expensive British-Dutch rubber plantations by in Asia building a Michigan-style town in the middle of the Amazon….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-business","category-cars"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":32513,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/02\/12\/book-review-fordlandia-by-greg-grandin.html","url_meta":{"origin":9770,"position":0},"title":"Book Review: "Fordlandia" by Greg Grandin","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 12-Feb-13 6:30pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Though something of a shotgun approach to a broad-ranging topic, Fordlandia is endlessly interesting in its scope. 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