The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America

One snowy day in midwinter Tom gets into a small accident on the way to work. He arrives to work over an hour late, expecting his pay to be docked; instead, the foreman fires him. Two thugs from the service department make sure that he leaves without protest, and Tom is blacklisted for his work as an activist: “he could not work for any big industry in the Detroit area under his own name” (206).

Tom has saved money in anticipation of being blacklisted, and devotes himself to full-time labor organizing, meeting with workers who have to sneak “by devious routes” in to secret meetings held “in absolute darkness” (207) and guarded by tough men.

Dell Brace, Tom’s fellow student with the glasses, stooped shoulders and interest in the economics of labor, comes to Detroit and goes to work in the city welfare department. She chooses the city partly to escape her reactionary Republican family in Iowa and partly because she and Tom plan to marry.

Tom refuses to marry Dell until he finds a new job, and Dell accuses him of having turned “bourgeois” and of viewing her as less than his equal: “if a woman was the equal of a man, why shouldn’t she be as free to support him as to be supported by him?” (208).