HENRY JONES FORD

Background

Henry Jones Ford came of English stock on his father’s side and of Welsh stock on his mother’s. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Franklin and Anne Elizabeth (Jones) Ford. His father, a wholesale flour merchant, died when he was only nine, leaving the family in straitened circumstances.

Education

Henry attended the public schools in Baltimore until the age of seventeen, when he went to work in a wholesale dry-goods store, first as general utility boy, then as assistant bookkeeper.

Career

When he was barely twenty-one chance threw in his way a job on the Baltimore American, of which he became managing editor six years later.

In 1879 he moved to New York to become editorial writer on the Sun, then under the management of Charles A. Dana, who exercised a formative influence upon the thought and style of the younger man.

In 1883 he became city editor of the Baltimore Sun, and then in succession managing editor of the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette (1885 - 95) and of the Chronicle- Telegraph (1895 - 1901), and finally editor of the Pittsburgh Gazette (1901 - 05).

The first of those writings on political history and government which brought him his reputation was The Rise and, Growth of American Politics; a Sketch of Constitutional Development (1898), the outcome of reading and reflection “out of hours” through many years.

For the first time this volume set forth the reciprocal action of party organization and governmental structure upon each other. As an editor he had come to realize the importance of the control of public expenditures, which involved the fundamental problem of the relation of executive and legislature in a constitutional government.

To his mind the course of English constitutional history pointed to the only practical solution of this problem.

The function of the executive was to govern; the role of the legislative to criticize and control. Yet as early as 1898 he discerned— what has since become manifest—signs of impaired efficiency in the British cabinet system, and he believed the presidency a much securer basis for democratic government if the essential principle of the British system could be recovered.

In 1906 he lectured in Johns Hopkins University and in the University of Pennsylvania. Two years later he was invited by President Woodrow Wilson of Princeton University to become professor of politics, his first academic post.

In February President Wilson appointed him ad-interim member of the Interstate Commerce Commission. He served until May 1921 when he was replaced by an appointee named by President Harding. During this interval, in addition to conducting investigations in several important cases, he prepared a noteworthy decision on the subject of the Commission’s power, under the Transportation Act of 1920, in relation to intrastate rates (Rates, Fares, and Charges of New York Central Railroad Company, 59 /. C. C. , 290), holding in effect that such rates were within the mandate to the Commission to prescribe a rate level which would enable the railroads to maintain an adequate and efficient service for the country at large.

In 1922 the Supreme Court sustained this view (Wisconsin Railroad Commission vs. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company, 257 U. S. , 563).

During these years he published the rollowing volumes: “The Evolution of Democracy: an Historical Sketch” (in Problems in Modern Democracy, 1901); The Cost of Our National Government; a Study in Political Pathology (1910), lectures on the Blumcnthal Foundation at Columbia University; The Scotch-Irish in America (1915); The Natural History of the State; an Introduction to Political Science (1915); Woodrow Wilson, the Man and His Work; a Biographical Study (1916), primarily a campaign biography; Washington and His Colleagues (1918) and The Cleveland Era (1919), in The Chronicles of America Series ; Alexander Hamilton (1920).

He was also a frequent contributor to magazines; and some of these articles were published separately, notably “Darwinism in Politics and in Religion, ” which appeared serially in The Living Church (June to September 1909).

His last work, Representative Government, published in 1924, like all of his writings, bears the stamp of a philosophical mind, richly stored with the harvest of years of reading.

His death occurred at Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, after an extended illness.

Achievements

• When Wilson became governor of New Jersey he appointed Ford commissioner of banking and insurance (1912); and after he became president he sent him on a confidential mission to the Philippines, presumably to report on governmental conditions in those islands.

Works

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  • My Life and Work

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  • The Scotch-Irish in America

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Membership

He was an ad-interim member of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Connections

On February 18, 1875, he married Bertha Batory of Howard County, Maryland.

He was survived by his widow and' four children.

Father:

Franklin Ford

Mother:

Anne Elizabeth (Jones) Ford

Wife:

Bertha Batory