100 pages • 3 hours read
Upton SinclairA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapters 1-3
Chapters 4-6
Chapters 7-9
Chapters 10-12
Chapters 13-15
Chapters 16-18
Chapters 19-21
Chapters 22-24
Chapters 25-27
Chapters 28-30
Chapters 31-33
Chapters 34-36
Chapters 37-39
Chapters 40-42
Chapters 43-45
Chapters 46-48
Chapters 49-51
Chapters 52-54
Chapters 55-57
Chapters 58-60
Chapters 61-63
Chapters 64-66
Chapters 67-69
Chapters 70-72
Chapters 73-75
Chapters 76-78
Chapters 79-81
Chapters 82-84
Chapters 85-92
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
The police release Tom Shutt. However, Henry Ford remains forever imprisoned by his wealth in the belief that he is “the object of deadly mass hatred” (213). Ford has become the worst employer in the automotive industry: he pays the lowest wages, submits his workers to brutal speed-ups, and fires anyone who mentions the subject of a union.
“Morose and bitter,” Ford lives in near-isolation, “watching his guards to make sure that they watched him” (214). He is haunted by his similarity to Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia, a billionaire who had done the same thing as Henry—gunned down workers seeking an audience with him—and was assassinated, along with his wife and children, thirteen years later.
Ford believes that he is the father of a great dynasty with the potential to last generations. However, he feels threatened by “persons with names such as Trotsky and Zinoviev and Bela Kun and Radek and Liebknecht and Luxemburg and Jaurès and Blum” (215); that is, by revolutionaries, especially Jewish revolutionaries. Ford remains as convinced as ever that there is a vast international Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy to take away his billion dollars and destroy American society. He publishes several anti-Semitic statements accusing American labor organizers of carrying out a Communist plot.