In December 1923, Henry Ford's General Secretary, Ernest G. Liebold, wrote to "Dr. H B Harper" in Santa Monica, California. Liebold was looking for advice. (1)
In the beginning of October, Liebold had received a letter from the legal advisor for the Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society, asking whether Sikhs who wore beards and a turban would be allowed to study at Henry Ford's "university." (2) The advisor explained, "A number of students from India have made application to come and are coming to the United States to enter the various universities...These people have and represent large taxi companies in the big cities in India" and wished to study at U.S. universities "to fit themselves for high and better positions in their native land."
Now, Henry Ford did not have a "university" as such. In 1916 he had founded a private high school, called the "Henry Ford Trade School," to give "local" boys both academic and mechanical training. (3) A 1926 advertisement for the school listed a wide range of subjects: from English, geometry, and civics to general chemistry, qualitative analysis, and metallurgy. For each one week in the classroom, boys spent two weeks in the shop, fabricating items for use at the Ford Motor Company. Thus the education students of the Trade School received, trained them to get jobs in auto or manufacturing companies.
Due to the legal advisor’s references to "taxi companies" in India, jobs in auto manufacturing and repair seem to have been the goals of the prospective students from California too. But the Sikh students were full-grown adults, not school-aged boys, and their training seems to have been a part of a different program. (4) Ford also offered a “Ford Service Course” for owners and mechanics. According to the lesson plans of a “Model T Ford Service Course” lesson plan, the course had “been designed for the purpose of establishing with Ford owners a more intimate understanding of their cars with the view of reducing the cost of operation and up-keep.” While it advertised itself as a school geared towards Ford owners and drivers, creators of the course also planned it for interested mechanics. The initial parts of the lesson plan explained, “While this course has not been established primarily to make mechanics, we will, during the classes, demonstrate as many repair ‘short cuts’ as possible…It is our idea that a garageman will in the very near future, become either a Ford specialist or a general garage repair man and it is with this idea in mind that we will furnish as many ideas along shop repairing lines as our time will permit.” This opportunity to develop as grace repair men likely explains why Sikhs from California hoped to study in Michigan. The last line also gives a clue to what lay behind the Ford executives decision to enroll as many Indians and East Asians in this course as they did. Training foreign students to be “Ford specialists” could help Ford sell its wares in international markets. Allowing Sikhs to enroll in the course could be a win-win situation for all parties.
Initially, Liebold showed willingness to take 20 of the purportedly 50 Sikh students "now available" around Stockton, CA. (5) From his office in Dearborn, MI, he set about to conduct the student application process in what he considered an orderly manner. First, he asked for the names and addresses of the people who would take up the course. Then he asked to interview a representative of their group.
The responses to these two requests probably did not conform to his expectations. The student list Liebold received was filled entirely of men with the last name "Singh," for whom the address of the Khalsa Diwan Society was their only contact information. (6) A shared address was hardly abnormal for immigrant communities, whose members often boarded together in short-term, rental properties and used ethnic organizations as central hubs for social life. Likewise, had Liebold been familiar with Sikh naming practices, he would have understood that since the establishment of the Khalsa tradition in 1699, all Sikh men - whether after birth or conversion - take “Singh” as one of their names, usually their surname. Still, the similarity in the prospective students’ names and address made it almost impossible for Liebold to make decisions about them at an individual level. Responses about the Khalsa Diwan Society seemed confusing as well. A letter dated December 7th gave "D. S. Sodhi and Anup Singh" as the Society's representatives, while a telegram on the 8th said that Bachint Singh "and he alone" would be the "authorized representative." The leadership behind the student request for admission thus would have seemed to lack cohesion to someone in Liebold’s situation.
If the haphazardness of the exchanges was not concerning enough, Liebold received a harsh email from a "P. N. Mathur" at the Ford Motor Company Dearborn Laboratory on December 6. Not having the "chance to consider the individual fitness of these twenty members of the Khalsa Diwan Society," Mathur advised against allowing them to come. He raised the specter of the Khalsa Diwan Society's "strongly anti-British" and "revolutionary" politics towards India. He asserted that "their fanatic adherence to caste distinctions" would keep them from "adapt[ing] themselves to working with others in the plant or [finding] suitable boarding places." And he gave his final analysis that because of the caste restrictions followed by orthodox Sikhs, “members of the Khalsa Diwan Society [had] not given satisfaction wherever employed industrially in California." Even if Liebold considered Mathur's letter extreme, the letter seemed to give him pause in bringing so many of the Society’s members to study at their Michigan auto plant. The next day, Liebold fired off a confusing but obviously concerned telegram to the Society's legal advisor, sparing him only 10 words: "Please give more definite information than contained your telegram date."
On December 13th, Liebold turned to Dr. H. B. Harper. In a letter, he explained the situation with the 20 Sikh students. Liebold’s concern lay with the conflicts he imagined developing between the new Sikh students and the Indians already attending the school (which he claimed amounted to about 100): "It seems there is a difference in their religion and ideas on political matters which might conflict with those we already have in our school, about one hundred in number." Rather than explaining the situation in terms of Sikh revolutionary connections or incompetence in industry, as Mathur had implied, Liebold limited himself to concern about “conflict” between those from the Khalsa Diwan Society and other Indians. This gives the impression that Liebold mostly cared about harmony among the student workers. As industrialists of all stripes understood in the early 20th century, happy workers were more likely to funnel their energies into productivity, and it was only worth bringing in contentious new workers if one was attempting to break a worker’s strike, or something of that sort.
Who was this Dr. H. B. Harper to whom Liebold looked for advice on Indians and Sikhs? A distinguished scholar of oriental studies? A politician with connections to British India? A friend who had visited India?
The collections of letters that I found in the Henry Ford Museum don’t offer any clues to solve those questions. I’ll need to go digging in a different source base to find those answers.
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(1) All the letters referenced in this post can be found at the Benson Ford Research Center (Box 246, Acc 285, Henry Ford Office Papers, Benson Ford Research Center, The Henry Ford)
(2) M. P. Shaughnessy, Letter to "Henry Ford, Esq.", October 5, 1923.
(3) "Henry Ford Trade School" advertisement, June 24, 1926. From the Collections of The Henry Ford. ID#P.833.46992.
(4) This is a point I am having considerable trouble figuring out: were these Sikhs actually coming to work at the Henry Ford Trade School or just in the Service Course? I currently think the latter, since Liebold's letters make a point of wanting to weave the Sikh students in gradually - "at rate of two per week after January 1st." (E. G. Liebold, Telegram to M. P. Shaughnessy, 12/17/23, 4:35PM.) This points more to the 10-week curriculum used by the Service Course, where students could join in rolling admission over the course. Still, pictures found in the Benson Ford Research Center archives (Acc. 833, Box 76, Folders 205a) clearly label groups of "Hindu" male adults under the heading "Henry Ford Trade School." I have yet to find any evidence that clearly points one way or another for this group, but I would not be surprised if there were some sort of other system in play.
(5) M. P. Shaughnessy, Letter to "Hon. Henry Ford," October 30, 1923; E. G. Liebold, Letter to Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society, November 7, 1923.
(6) M. P. Shaughnessy, Letter to E. G. Liebold, November 27, 1923.
