The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-07-22
FORD IS GENEROUS
Contributes Lfberally To Fund For
 Preservation Of Wild Life

society, made public today.
 tions and the world court MT. Ford shrugged his shoulders and quoted Whittier, this time his selection was from "Maude Muller" He disposed of the League of Nations and, the world court with shrug of the shoulders, gesture as of impatience and this verse
 "Ah, welli for us all some sweet
 hope lies
 Deeply buried from human eyes; And in the hereafter angels may,
 Roll the stone from the grave
 away"
 Ford And The Presidency.
 On the subject of the presidency. Mr. Ford Is reserved, but not eva sive. There Is something almost naive in the way that this quiet-man- nered, low-voiced master of men and lover Of nature dispose of the furore occasioned by the possibility of his election. The thing that Is causing the politicians tQ lose sleep is pre- Ford refused to become excited. Un- Questionably the call for MT. Ford comes from the people, the farmers, the small business men, the workers the country over. It Is plain that the l politicians do not want MT. Ford. Yet they do net hesitate to advise him. He Is the recipient of unmask- ed advice from representative of | both the great parties, but so far as anybody knows, he has not accepted their advice. nor Is he likely to do so. MT. Ford did not tell me nor any one about his place, but l have good reason to believe that the letters re- ceived daily at Dearborn from north, south. east and west calling on MT. Ford to become the Moses of the masses, are arriving by the five hun dreds and the thousands. When MT. Plain Citizen takes his pen in hand and earnestly requests some fellow citizen to become candidate for the presidency, that single event Is not significant. But when 1t Is multi piled by the thousands and the tens of thousands, it becomes impress sively significant. While tarried in Dearborn, muslng upon this phase of Mir. Ford's career, sentence or two from the speech of Roscoe Conklin nominating Grant for a third term came trickling through my mind. Later, when l had an opportunity, l locked up the speech and verified the lines. Here they are-said Conklin- referring to the General-"he has no plans. no official power has been used for him. Without patronage without electioneering contrivances without effort on his part, his name is on the countrys lips"
 What kind of a president would Ford make? That is the question. Ask ten men and you will receive as many answers, perhaps. One man who is very close to MT. Ford, who knows him personally and intimately, appraised MT. Ford for the presi- dency in a glowing paragraph. Said he: of Henry Ford were president, he would organize the United States, and that is something that has not been attempted heretofore. Nor Is that all. Within a month after his inauguration. there would be de- velopment of constructive industry among the lame ducks time-serv- CTS, swivel chair patriots, crown prince appointees. broken down poli- ticians, and other incompetents such as would set the country agog from ocean tu ocean. and from gulf to great lakes. He would make them work Yes, as president, Henry Ford would organize the United States"
 To be sure, this ardent tribute can be offset by ranging alongside 1t QlalTlDe gards MT. Ford's candidacy as pre- posterous. But quite apart from these extreme views, either favor able or unfavorable, Is the voice of the people. for the people reason, at least some of them do, that a man who can take 300 miles of railway with rolling stock ready for the junk heap and a frightful condition of road bed with rails, together with exGrbitant freight rates and poorly paid employes-a man who can take such a railroad and in short time perfect the rolling stock. reduce the freight rates, increase the wages of the employees, and make travel on that road a thing of real pleasure, can do the same trick with 3o,oO0 all the paraphernaliJ that goes with that complicated business.
 An Estimate Of Mir. Ford.
 Robert Louis Stevenson described the typical boy as "part pig, part pirate and part poet" If l attempted to describe Henry Ford after the same alliterative pattern. l would say he Is part visionary, part ven- dor, and part vigilant. He Is a dreamer with castles in Spain. He not in the past. but the future. He talks little of things that have been, but much of things that are to be. The dreamer and poet In Ford crops out sometimes in the small, some times in the large, but 1t is mo- where seen at better advantage than in the policy which he adopted years ago and has never deviated from, namely. that an open fireplace must be built in every home constructed h without an open fireplace? Well. for one thing, 1t is no place for dreamers. Then MT. Ford Is a ven- dor, the like of which the world never knew before. He Is vendor not only of the well-known article he makes by the millions, but ven- dor also of high ideals, his whimsi- calities, his prejudices, and vendor of himself. Shrewdness, and almost uncanny shrewdness, Is one or his biggest assets. He Is also vigil ant. first, last and all of the time a watchman who never abandons his post on the high tower where he scans tho horizon for the enemy's ap- proach Some there are who deem him a self-appointed body guard for Uncle Sam, watchful of the Jews, watchful of Wall street, watchful of Washington, a vigilant to the core.
 Henry Ford may not Know what wire runs around the world, but he knows who operates the wires and keeps them under surveillance ac- cordingly. He may never be presi- dent, but if he does run, whoever his opponents are they will know that they were in race royal.
 When the time came for me to say goodbye to MT. Ford, l told him l was leaving shortly for Ireland where l proposed making some first hand studies of the reconstruction period there, to be printed in Ameri- can newspapers. I asked him if he bat I ,ferb to