Riot over oatmeal

Tuesday saw me flying to and from Melbourne and avoiding work by reading The London Review of Books on the plane.

The 8 October issue has a review by James C. Scott of a book about Henry Ford’s ambitious but failed attempt to establish a rubber plantation in Amazonia.

See here for more information about the book, Greg Grandin’s Fordlandia.
http://us.macmillan.com/fordlandia

Grandin’s thesis, according to the review, is that two factors brought about the demise of Fordlandia early in the project’s history – the recalcitrance of the workers (the candangos) and the harshness of the tropical environment.

In terms of management’s conflict with the workers, apparently there was a riot on 22 December 1930 sparked by what the reviewer describes as a “trivial” incident. Let me quote from Scott’s review:

At first, common labourers had sat at one end of the dining-hall, foremen and craftsmen at the other, and each group has been served by waiters. Then, at the suggestion of a supervisor … a cafeteria system was instituted, meaning that the men had to queue for their food. As the workers waited in the stifling heat, someone shouted: ‘We are not dogs that are going to be ordered by the company to eat this way’.

Everything in the dining hall was then smashed by angry (and we can only assume hungry) workers, who then moved on to destroy the powerhouse, the office building, the garage, the sawmill, radio station and so on. Most of the Americans at the site escaped on an emergency launch and provincial troops were called in to quell the riot. Says the reviewer, “Fordlandia staggered on, but it never really recovered.”

Later in the review we learn that what was on offer for Fordlandia workers to eat was not their usual fare but the kind of food Henry Ford considered to be nutritious (healthy workers make more efficient workers …). Whole wheat bread, unpolished rice, canned peaches and oatmeal.

I understand why the workers rioted. After a long morning of work, standing in line in the heat for oatmeal seems like anything but trivial.

It’s clear that Ford didn’t truly understand the ways in which food – what we eat and how it is served to us - is so essential to our happiness and wellbeing. Had he served the workers what they wanted to eat in the manner in which they wanted to eat it, showed some understanding of their culture and their needs as human beings, maybe Fordlandia would not have been sacked.