SOURCE: "Henry Ford and The International Jew," in Right Center Left: Essays in American History, Rutgers University Press, 1992, pp. 70-105.

[In the following essay, which was originally published in American Jewish History in June 1980, Ribuffo closely examines the historical context and the content of the anti-Semitic articles Ford published in The Dearborn Independent and, subsequently, in the four volumes entitled The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, Jewish Activities in the United States, Jewish Influences in American Life, and Aspects of Jewish Power in the United States.]

Social scientists and journalists have continued to examine American anti-Semitism, but discussion among historians has subsided during the past two decades. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, however, the subject evoked heated exchanges, with controversy usually centering on the relationship between nineteenth-century agrarian radicalism and twentieth-century "extremism." The diligent and sometimes passionate efforts of many scholars produced little agreement. Indeed, we are tempted to surmise that discussion of American anti-Semitism passed from fashion among historians because the leading authorities wore themselves out in controversy.

Returning to the subject today, we enjoy advantages over Oscar Handlin, John Higham, Norman Pollack, and others who wrote three decades ago. Scholarship has revealed much about related topics, including the nation's long tradition of conspiratorial thinking, popular racial theories and practices, and the social psychology of deviance. This [essay] attempts to illuminate anti-Semitism by focusing on The International Jew, a series first published during the 1920s in Henry Ford's newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. More than any other literary source, these articles spread the notion that Jews menaced the United States. [In an endnote, Ribuffo adds that the series of articles known as The International Jew was later published in four separate volumes: The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem (1920), Jewish Activities in the United States (n.d.),Jewish Influences in American Life (n.d.),and Aspects of Jewish Power in the United States (n.d.).]

When, in mid-1920, writers for the Independent attacked a putative Jewish conspiracy, they joined a host of citizens who had perceived alien threats to American virtue. From colonial times through the Civil War, warnings against sinister plots by monarchists or Jacobins, Catholics or Masons, abolitionists or slaveholders diffused through all classes, sections, and political groups. The social and intellectual turmoil of the late nineteenth century, what historian Robert Wiebe calls the "search for order," nurtured a new wave of countersubversive theories. Populists found the emerging corporate elite more sinister than the slavocracy had been, while centrist politicians like Theodore Roosevelt countered that Populists resembled Marat and Robespierre. Many white Protestants agreed with Rev. Josiah Strong that unassimilated immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe imperiled "our country."

World War I accentuated both the fear of subversion and efforts to combat it. Americans were encouraged by government agents like George Creel and the Committee on Public Information to believe that Kaiser Wilhelm's domestic allies undermined national security. The nation slid easily from wartime suppression into the Red Scare. Justifying mass arrests and deportations, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer warned in 1919 that the "sharp tongue of revolutionary heat" licked church altars, played in school belfries, and crawled "into the sacred corners of the home."

The campaigns against Huns and Bolsheviks obviously encouraged the suspicious dispositions of "one hundred percent Americans." For different reasons, opponents of suppression also doubted surface explanations of social phenomena. Even before the war, reformers had shared with Walter Lippmann the sense that "deception has become organized and strong." Journalists and progressive professors had probed beneath the surface to discover the "real" forces ruling the economy, the Senate, or the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Appalled by the success of wartime indoctrination, Lippmann concluded in 1922 that deceivers of public opinion had increased their power. Similarly, the political scientist Harold Lasswell observed that "more people than ever" were "puzzled, uneasy or vexed by the unknown cunning which seems to have duped or degraded them." Their minds, Lasswell might have added, were thus susceptible to conspiratorial explanations. Indeed, this frame of mind was probably more common after World War I than at any time since before the Civil War.

Nor was it remarkable in an overwhelmingly Christian nation that Jews were placed at the center of one of the most popular conspiracy theories. The connection between Christianity and anti-Semitism is controversial and complex. Among American Christians, mixed feelings about Jews had existed since the Colonial period. Although Protestant creators of holy commonwealths might identify with Old Testament Hebrews, they also inherited a tradition that blamed Jews for Christ's crucifixion and numerous subsequent crimes. By the mid-1800s, evangelists derided Jewish "rebels against God's purpose," politicians sneered at "Judas Iscariot" Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of State, and the New York Times called financier August Belmont an "agent of foreign Jew bankers."

As immigrants poured in from Eastern Europe after the Civil War, actors, clergymen, dime novelists, and serious writers routinely portrayed Jews as libertines, enemies of true religion, and cheats. Some agrarian radicals held foreign Jewish bankers responsible for tight money and depressions. Theologically conservative Protestants said that Jews would return to the Holy Land, possibly in alliance with the Antichrist. On a less abstract level, antagonism ranged from demonstrations against merchants to innuendo in the press about "obnoxious" Jewish traits. Restricted clubs and resorts signaled a deepening concern with the Jewish parvenu, an old image put into modern dress.

Although historians still disagree about the extent of antiSemitism during the late nineteenth century, tentative conclusions are necessary in order to understand the origin of The International Jew. In a nation committed to the "Americanization" of immigrants, the literary caricatures were not, as Oscar Handlin contended, generally devoid of malice. Moreover, the argument, made most forcefully by John Higham, that patricians, radical farmers, and rival immigrant groups were unusually biased probably means that scholars have studied those groups more than others. The dominant attitude among Christian Americans, Leonard Dinnerstein rightly concludes, was an amalgam of "affection, curiosity, suspicion, and rejection." Finally, comparing Americans and Europeans, we can say that anti-Semitism in the United States was relatively less violent, less racist, and less central to the world views of those who accepted it.

The first two decades of the twentieth century witnessed a shift toward greater suspicion and rejection. The lynching of Leo Frank in 1915 was only the most dramatic incident in an era that marked, according to George Fredrickson, a peak of "formalized racism." Less benign than Josiah Strong's Our Country, the leading nativist tract of an earlier generation, Madison Grant's book, The Passing of the Great Race, rejected the "fatuous" view that Jews could be assimilated. Comparable racial stereotypes were accepted by leading progressives. Indeed, magazines that attacked municipal corruption also worried about the "Jewish invasion." The issues coalesced for the muckraker Burton J. Hendrick, who denounced Jewish theater and liquor "trusts." Though Hendrick, Jacob Riis, and the sociologist Edward A. Ross still mixed sympathy with suspicion, they casually claimed that Jews avoided physical labor; manipulated money without engaging in "basic production"; valued profit more than life itself; destroyed ethical standards in business, law, and medicine; promoted prostitution among gentile women; intimidated the press; and "overwhelmed" Congress with lies during debates on immigration restriction.

After World War I, hostility toward Jews escalated, operating in three overlapping areas. First, "polite" antiSemites, including President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, restricted admission to clubs, resorts, universities, and the professions. Second, supported by many leading psychologists, such popularizers as Lothrop Stoddard and Kenneth Roberts spread the Anglo-Saxon cult to a wide audience. Third, commentators and members of Congress increasingly associated Jews with radicalism in general and Communism in particular. For example, Dr. George A. Simons, a former missionary in Russia, told a Senate committee that the "so-called Bolshevik movement" was "Yiddish." Simons's allegations, which particularly impressed Senator Knute Nelson, were largely endorsed by other witnesses, including a Northwestern University professor, a Commerce Department agent, two representatives of National City Bank, a YMCA official and vice counsel in Petrograd, and several Russian emigres.

To Simons, "Yiddish" Bolshevism seemed to "dovetail" with the plot outlined in The Protocols of the Learned Elders ofZion. In this notorious forgery created by Russian royalists at the turn of the century, a leader of a secret Jewish world government allegedly explained the plot to destroy Christian civilization. For almost two thousand years, the Elders had been "splitting society by ideas" while manipulating economic and political power. Currently they popularized Darwinism, Marxism, "Nietzscheism" and other anti-Christian doctrines, undermined clergy and corrupted governments, and arranged wars that would profit Jews while killing gentiles. Above all, the conspirators controlled both the mechanisms of capitalism and the radical movements pretending to offer alternatives.

Czar Nicholas II and his anti-Semitic protégés, known as the Union of Russian Peoples or Black Hundreds, used the Protocols to stir pogroms, but the forgery reached its widest audience after the Romanovs had fallen. During the Russian civil war, White commanders distributed copies to their troops. Almost immediately, emigres and returning foreigners such as Simons brought the Protocols to the outside world. During 1918-1919, as references to "Yiddish" Bolshevism reached the press and congressional hearings, translations were offered to American military and civilian leaders, including President Woodrow Wilson. No one worked harder to disseminate the Protocols than Boris Brasol, a Russian lawyer and trade representative who had belonged to the Black Hundreds. After the Revolution Brasol remained in the United States, advised the Military Intelligence Division of the War Department, and in 1920 published an edition of the Protocols.

In many respects, this monarchist forgery was an incongruous addition to political discourse in Wilsonian America. But prewar concern about the "great Jewish invasion," wartime wariness of subversion, and continuing fear of deception helped Americans to ignore the Protocols' obvious antirepublicanism. Moreover, the Protocols' generality left room for interpolations to fit local circumstances. Finally, their basic charges were "Americanized" and disseminated under the imprimatur of a national hero, Henry Ford.

Along with the nation as a whole, Henry Ford faced a series of crises during 1915-1920. With the introduction of the Model T in 1908, he had begun to achieve his great goal: mass production of a reliable, inexpensive automobile. By the mid-1910s his decision to freeze auto design and expand production instead of paying dividends had alienated subordinates and minority stockholders. Undaunted, he fired employees who disagreed with him, bought out dissatisfied shareholders, and gained full control of the Ford Motor Company in 1920. Thereafter, except for his able son Edsel, he rarely encountered anyone who openly disagreed with him.

On the assembly line, however, employees were attracted to the Industrial Workers of the World. To outflank the Wobblies, in 1915 Ford established the "Five Dollar Day," with the company "Sociological Department" determining which employees merited the high salary. These programs made Ford's national reputation as an industrial statesman, assuring a wide audience for anything he said or did. Increasingly he offered advice on issues unrelated to the Model T. Rev. Samuel S. Marquis, who headed the Sociological Department for five years, believed that Ford's chief ambition was to be "known as a thinker of an original kind." After denouncing the "capitalist" war in Europe, for instance, he chartered Oscar II, the famous "peace ship," to transport delegates to a conference of neutrals. In 1916, he condemned American intervention in Mexico. Two years later, drafted by President Wilson, he accepted the Democratic nomination for senator from Michigan.

None of these projects fully succeeded. Inflation eroded the daily five dollars and employees continued to resent oppressive working conditions. Marquis left the Sociological Department in 1920 because Ford's paternalism had degenerated into "brutal" treatment of executives and ordinary workers. Not only was Oscar II ridiculedin the press, but the pacifist passengers bickered and Ford abandoned the expedition soon after its arrival in Norway. He lost the Senate race to Truman V. Newberry by 7,500 votes, though he ran remarkably well for a candidate who declined to give a single speech. Indeed, paying more attention to his rival after the election, he financed an investigation of campaign expenditures that prompted Newberry's resignation in 1922. Opposition to the Mexican intervention produced the greatest harm to Ford's reputation. When the Chicago Tribune responded by calling him an "ignorant idealist," he sued for one million dollars. He won a judgment of six cents, but Tribune lawyers demonstrated that he was ignorant of most matters unrelated to automobiles.

Following his disastrous testimony in the libel suit, Ford became, in the words of biographer Keith Sward, "as inaccessible as the Grand Lama." He remained eager to offer wide-ranging advice, but now usually filtered opinions through Ernest G. Liebold, his secretary since 1911. An ambitious martinet, Liebold expanded his authority by exploiting Ford's quirks, such as his dislike of paper-work and refusal to read most correspondence. The secretary gladly managed public relations, issued statements or answered letters in Ford's name, and exercised power of attorney after 1918. Indeed, he substantially controlled Ford's access to the world outside of Dearborn.

To promote the views that he developed in virtual seclusion, Ford in 1919 purchased a weekly newspaper. The Dearborn Independent was designed to disseminate practical "ideas and ideals" without distortion by the "world's channels of information." The Dearborn Publishing Company, moreover, looked like a family enterprise. Henry Ford, his wife Clara, and his son Edsel were respectively president, vice-president, and treasurer. Editorship of the Independent was bestowed on E. G. Pipp, a friend of Ford who had edited the Detroit News. William J. Cameron, an intelligent but hard-drinking veteran of the News, listened to Ford's ruminations and then wrote "Mr. Ford's Page." Both men operated under the watchful eye of Liebold, who detested Pipp and barely tolerated Cameron.

Despite a promise on the masthead to chronicle "neglected truth," the Independent at first printed nothing extraordinary. It supported Prohibition, prison reform, the Versailles Treaty, and the League of Nations; yet these serious issues often received less attention than light stories about prominent persons, cities, or colleges. For sixteen months, the newspaper did not mention an alleged Jewish conspiracy. The owner, however, had been contemplating the issue for several years, and had considered raising it during the 1918 senatorial campaign. After the election, Pipp recalled, Ford began to talk about Jews "frequently, almost continuously."

The source of Ford's animus remains obscure. Pipp thought that hewanted anti-Semitic votes in a presidential race. Harry Bennett, who headed the motor company's Service Department, a euphemism for thugs and labor spies, said that failure to secure a loan from Jewish bankers embittered the automaker. Norman Hapgood, author of the "inside story" of The International Jew, believed that Ford blamed Rosika Schwimmer, a Jew, for the peace ship's "moonshine errand." Ford himself told Liebold and Fred Black, the Independent business manager, that Herman Bernstein, editor of the Jewish Tribune, and other passengers on Oscar II had blamed Jewish financiers for the war. Liebold, who said that unspecified behavior by Jewish journalists in Norway "confirmed" Ford's suspicions, obviously shared and encouraged the automaker's bias. Indeed, Ford's secretary suspected Jewish automobile dealers of thwarting company policy and, a generation later, still recalled The International Jew as a worthwhile enterprise. Closer to home, Clara Ford may have promoted her husband's bigotry. At least she opposed Jewish membership in their country club and urged Ford to fire an executive whose wife was half Jewish.

Pipp acted briefly as a countervailing influence. Six months after buying the Independent in 1919, Ford wanted to run a series on Jewish subversion. The editor held out for almost a year. In April 1920, he quit instead of sanctioning the articles. The imminent anti-Semitic campaign was probably not the only reason for Pipp's departure. Liebold had been undermining his authority and restricting access to Ford. When he resigned, Pipp joined a formidable list of former employees who had refused to be sycophants.

Because the office files of the Dearborn Independent were destroyed in 1963, and because other records for 1920 have disappeared, we must rely on scattered correspondence, self-serving reminiscences, and conjecture to trace the composition of The International Jew. Apparently research and writing began toward the end of Pipp's tenure. Investigators directed by Liebold forwarded antiSemitic information to Dearborn, where, Pipp recalled, Ford swallowed "all … that was dished out." Cameron, who succeeded Pipp as editor, did most of the writing. Initially unaware of the Protocols, Cameron did little "preliminary work" for the first article. He read "whatever was around," including Werner Sombart's The Jews and Modem Capitalism. But Cameron's later protests that he considered the articles "useless" must not be taken at face value. Fred Black recalled that Cameron "walked the floor" for three months before agreeing to write The International Jew. Within a year or two, however, he came to believe most of what he wrote. In the meantime, along with other Ford employees, he followed orders.

The first article, "The International Jew: The World's Problem," appeared on 20 May 1920. Liebold had suggested the title and date of publication in order to coincide with an attack on "greedy" Jews by Leo Franklin, a prominent Detroit rabbi and Ford's former neighbor. Although the Independent promised further revelations, the staff seems not to have planned more than a month ahead. Indeed, Black thought that Ford himself did not anticipate a sustained campaign.

Yet several developments kept the series alive until 14 January 1922. Ford, Liebold, and—eventually—Cameron got wrapped up in their project. Ford visited the Independent almost every day, concerning himself only with "Mr. Ford's Page" and The International Jew. Despite their mutual hostility, Liebold and Cameron consulted often on the series, sometimes poring over articles together until three o'clock in the morning. Critics provided grist for the mill. When former President Taft or columnist Arthur Brisbane attacked The International Jew, they were denounced in subsequent articles as "gentile fronts." Moreover, Liebold's agents regularly supplied rumors, clippings, and forged documents.

Liebold and Cameron later denied rumors that they had a large staff of investigators, and surviving evidence, though fragmentary, supports their recollections. Stanley W. Finch, who had become convinced of Jewish immorality while working for the Justice Department, found a place on the payroll. Lars Jacobson tried to show that American relief officials in Europe were covertly sending Jews to the United States; Liebold urged him to consult former Kaiser Wilhelm on the "Jewish situation" in Germany, but there is no record of a contact. From time to time, Ford dealers were obliged to purchase documents or find books about Jews.

The main detective operation, located on Broad Street in New York, was managed by C. C. Daniels, a former lawyer for the Justice Department, whose aides, including several veterans of military intelligence, used secret identification numbers when contacting Dearborn. Norman Hapgood exaggerated only slightly when he said that the group "muckraked everybody who was a Jew or was suspected of being a Jew." It attracted "adventurers, detectives, criminals" and gave credence to their stories. For example, though Daniels's brother Josephus, the Secretary of the Navy, might have told them otherwise, Ford investigators thought that President Wilson took orders from Justice Brandeis over a private telephone line. Daniels's special concerns included Eugene Meyer, Jr., of the Federal Reserve Board, whom he accused of blocking Ford's acquisition of the nitrate plants at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. "As you know," he wrote to Liebold in 1922, "locks and bars make no difference to that portion of God's chosen people seeking to displace the stars and stripes with the Jewish national flag and that calls Lenine [sic] the greatest Statesman alive."

Liebold recalled that he needed few European agents because "people came over here and revealed their stories to us." Russian emigrés ultimately provided a translation of the Protocols. Here, too, slight surviving evidence obscures the story. Historian Robert Singerman suggests that Boris Brasol, who had written on Bolshevism in the Independent, provided a copy. According to Liebold's reminiscences, however, Pacquita de Shishmareff, a Russian emigré married to an American soldier, provided his "first knowledge" of the Protocols in mid-June 1920. Liebold told Ford that Shishmareff, who is better known as Mrs. Leslie Fry, possessed "full and thorough knowledge of all Jewish operations in Europe." Whatever the Russian source, on 10 June 1920, W. G. Enyon, a company employee in Delaware, dispatched several copies to Dearborn.

Starting with the 24 July article, the Protocols description of an international Jewish conspiracy provided the central thread of The International Jew. For the next three years, Liebold expanded his contacts with Russian royalists and their dubious documents. In addition to Brasol and Fry, he consulted several of their friends. A Ford agent in Paris paid 7,000 francs for a report by former Russian judge Nicholas Sokoloff purporting to show that Jewish conspirators had murdered the Romanovs. Liebold was impressed and invited Sokoloff to Dearborn. However, the emigrés soon discovered that they were treated as capriciously as other Ford employees. When Sokoloff fell ill, Liebold "hustled" him out of Michigan, and later refused to support his widow and orphans.

Although the Dearborn Independent was indebted to emigrés for me Protocols, The International Jew was not, as historian Norman Cohn contends, "far more a Russo-German than an American product." The alleged manifestations of the "world's foremost problem" coincided with issues that had unsettled the United States since the Civil War. First, the Independent complained that both the monopolistic activities of large corporations and the countervailing actions of government had produced a "steady curtailment" of freedom. "Theories of liberty" abounded without halting the "steady tendency toward systematization." At the same time, "Public Health," "Public Safety," and analogous movements produced an "unaccustomed bondage to the State."

Second, joining the search for moral order that intensified after World War I, the Independent condemned new styles in dress and music, changing sexual mores, Holly-wood "lasciviousness" and the "filthy tide" sweeping over the theater. Sensitive to unraveling family bonds, the newspaper warned that children were drawn from "natural leaders in the home, church, and school to institutionalized 'centers' and scientific 'play spots.'" Third, the Independent addressed the issue that had grown in importance since the "endless stream" of immigrants had begun to arrive in the 1880s: what was Americanism? These strangers, especially residents of the "unassimilated province" known as New York, were responsible for the "mad confusion that passes in some quarters as a picture" of the United States.

Fourth, the Independent worried about the problem of determining truth in the modern world. Even before the anti-Semitic campaign, the newspaper had shared the prevailing fear of deception by propaganda. People were "born believers" who needed "deeply" to affirm something. But it was hard to know what to beliève. The International jew protested that man was ruled "by a whole company of ideas into whose authority he has not inquired at all." Not only did he live by the "say so of others," but "terrific social pressures" on behalf of "broadmindedness" discouraged probes beneath conventional wisdom. Sounding like Walter Lippmann or Harold Lasswell, the newspaper warned that credulity was especially dangerous in the current "era of false labels."

The Protocols offered a "clue to the modern maze." Hedging on the question of authenticity, as Liebold did in correspondence, the Independent said that the documents themselves were "comparatively unimportant." They gave "meaning to certain previously observed facts." Whether or not an Elder of Zion had actually given these lectures, it was clear that Jews used ideas to "corrupt Collective Opinion," controlled finance, sponsored revolution, and were "everywhere" exercising power.

Ironically, the Jew's ancestral genius had been "spiritual rather … than commercial." Mosaic law rendered "plutocracy and pauperism equally impossible" among Israelites, but the tribes had no qualms about exploiting outsiders. Their enslavement of the Canaanites marked the triumph of materialism. During the dispersion, a central office, a modern version of the Sanhedrin, directed the exploitation of gentiles. Over the centuries, Jews created financial institutions to maximize profits and influence: credit, stock exchanges, government loans, holding companies, and renovation of used materials for resale. Simultaneously they used an atheistic "pseudo-Masonry" to spread radical doctrines and, during the French Revolution, came close to total victory.

Bits of information about these machinations passed unseen before gentile eyes. Benjamin Disraeli, "a Jew who gloried in it," dropped a hint in Conningsby. Sidonia, a character who personified the "international Jew, full dress," tells a friend that the "world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." Since Disraeli had written his novel, the "hidden hand" had tightened its grip. An unidentified speaker at the sixth Zionist conference predicted the outbreak of World War I, and Jews alone profited from the conflict. Surrounding the major statesmen at Versailles, "princes of the Semitic race" extracted "extraordinary privileges" for their people, including the promise of a homeland in Palestine.

Propaganda about pogroms was part of a "deliberate program" to overthrow the Romanovs. Jacob Schiff financed Japan's war against Russia in 1905 and, at his behest, Tokyo disseminated revolutionary doctrines among prisoners of war. After these tactics installed Bolshevism, the Elders turned to Germany, the "most Jew-controlled" country in the world—with the "possible exception of the United States."

Jews influenced America even before independence. Indeed, Columbus "consorted much" with them. Over the objections of Governor Peter Stuyvesant, they brought slick commercial practices to New Amsterdam in the seventeenth century. Haym Salomon helped to finance the Revolution, but most Jews "were both loyalists and rebels, as the tide turned"; some participated in Benedict Arnold's treachery. The Rothschilds made twenty million dollars by arranging the use of Hessian mercenaries. Fifty years later, the family's first agent arrived—August Belmont, whose "professed Christianity" The International Jew did not take seriously.

By the twentieth century, as the Elder of Zion had boasted, Jewry manipulated presidents. Jacob Schiff and his henchmen forced William Howard Taft to abrogate the Russian-American commercial treaty in 1911, thus making the United States a "crowbar to batter down" the czarist regime. Jews formed a "solid ring" around Woodrow Wilson at the start of his administration and more "swarmed" into Washington after the declaration of war. No official held more power than Bernard M. Baruch, chairman of the War Industries Board and "Jewish high governor of the United States.

Following this "historical" survey, The International Jew purported to document the current activities of Jewish capitalists, radicals, and propagandists. In the economic sphere, the Independent distinguished between Jewish "Finance" and the "creative industry" dominated by gentiles. From the Rothschild family on down, Jews were "essentially money-lenders" who rarely had a "permanent interest" in production. Rather, they seized a commodity "at just the point in its passage from producer to consumer where the heaviest profit can be extracted. …" Squeezing the "neck of the bottle" in this way, they dominated the grain, copper, fur, and cotton markets. The rising national debt was another "measure of our enslavement." Furthermore, in 1913, Paul Warburg, a German Jew who had emigrated "for the express purpose of changing our financial system," convinced Congress to pass the Federal Reserve Act. The Federal Reserve Board helped the "banking aristocracy" to contract the money supply and centralize banking.

As the "wonderful" Protocols made clear, political power complemented economic control. As early as 1860, August Belmont had chaired the Democratic National Committee. Exaggerating the group's unity, the Independent alleged that the Kehillah, a Jewish community council in New York that had begun to disintegrate by 1921, ruled the city through "gentile fronts" and sought to make the United States a "Jewish country." Bernard Baruch's willingness to advise diverse officials typified the Jew's opportunistic disregard for party allegiance. A purported boom for Justice Louis D. Brandeis in 1920 was intended to prepare the public for a Jewish president, "really a short step" from the Jews' current level of influence.

Quoting testimony and statistics from the Senate investigation of Bolshevik activities, the Independent went beyond Dr. Simons's denunciation of Yiddish "apostates." It noted that Trotsky belonged to the Jewish "nationality" even though he spurned the religion, said that Communists sacked churches but left synagogues "untouched," and claimed that the soviet (like the New York Kehillah) was an adaptation of the ancient Hebrew kahal. Communism, of course, was a "carefully groomed investment" by Hebrew financiers. Furthermore, the erstwhile "East Sider" Trotsky had left a substantial "endowment" to the United States—a Bolshevik population larger than Russia's. In particular, the Wobblies, International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and Amalgamated Clothing Workers inclucated the "Jewish idea" of "getting" without "making," undermined craftsmanship, and threatened the "very cement" that held society together.

Following the Protocols ' plan to "split society by ideas," Jews or their dupes preached red doctrines in the class-room, wrote treatises to show that depressions were "good," and convinced publishers to keep "certain things out of the public mind and [put] certain things into it." The Jewish "passion for misleading" others, symbolized by their willingness to change their own names, led to the confusing "era of false labels." These machinations paled beside the various forms of moral corruption that the Independent examined at length, relating each to supposedly Jewish traits. For example, unlike the "true ring fighter" who took risks, boxer Benny Leonard boasted that he had never been scarred. Leonard and other Jews were "not sportsmen." Rather, they exploited sports for profit, even stooping to fix the 1919 World Series.

The "gigantic Jewish liquor trust" illustrated pushiness and shoddy workmanship. Genteel gentiles had formerly practiced the "science and art" of distilling fine liquor. Ambitious Jews drove them out of business by selling "synthetic poison" under distinguished brand names. The temperance movement did not achieve total victory, the Independent said, because Jews were exempted from Prohibition. They were also the foremost bootleggers and their propagandists still promoted the "idea of drink" on stage and screen.

No subject provoked greater anger than "Yiddish" entertainment. Recalling the simple classic, "Listen to the Mocking Bird," the Independent lamented, "The only 'birds' the people are encouraged to sing about today are 'flappers.'" In addition to eroticism, jazz and other "moron music" illustrated poor craftsmanship and Jewish responsibility for the "steady tendency toward systematization." Creative individuals had composed the "picturesque, romantic, clean" songs of the late nineteenth century; now "song factories" produced melodies in bulk. Mass acceptance of these "so-called" popular songs merely showed that anything "can be popularized by constant repetition."

Similarly, since 1885, an odd collection of Jews had destroyed the theater's "natural genius." Movies were so "rotten" that no one contested the case against them. The Independent added to it, however, by tracing the "psychic poison and visual filth" to the subversive plot sketched in the Protocols. Along with "most other useful things," motion pictures had been invented by gentiles. Some Christian directors like D. W. Griffith still filled the screen with "delight and joy." However, as "usurpers" like Carl Laemmle of Universal Studios captured the industry, films joined music and the theater in sensuous decay. They caricatured Christian clergy, mocked rural life, praised Jewish immigrants, welcomed radicalism, and taught murder and safecracking. Hollywood's degradation proved that "oriental" Jews had failed to embrace the "Anglo-Saxon, the American view."

Through four volumes, Jewish vices appeared as the reverse of any "American view." The dichotomies between making and getting, morality and sensuality, fair trade and chicanery, "creative labor" and exploitation, heroism and cowardice were only the beginning. Some of the most important differences impinged on politics. Anglo-Saxons had created the press to prevent secret domination by any minority, but Jews twisted news for their own advantage. Democratic procedures were, another Anglo-Saxon inheritance; Jews "instinctively" favored autocracy. One of the "higher traits" of "our race" fostered obliviousness to Hebrew machinations. Eschewing conspiracies themselves, Anglo-Saxons neither expected them among other groups nor followed the available clues "through long and devious and darkened channels."

Above all, gentiles advanced by individual initiative, while Jews took advantage of unprecedented "racial loyalty and solidarity." Because success—a preeminent American and "Fordian" value—could "not be attacked nor condemned [sic]", the Independent hesitated to criticize Jews for doing "extraordinarily" well. Neither could it concede superiority to another "race." In essence, therefore, the newspaper cried foul. Because Jews took advantage of their position as an "international nation," it was "difficult to measure gentile and Jewish achievement by the same standard." Jews captured the "highest places" only because they began with an unfair advantage.

The Independent said that Jewish solidarity required "one rule for the Gentile and one for the Jews." In fact, the newspaper itself not surprisingly held to the double standard. It condemned acts by Jews that, if committed by Christians, would have been considered innocuous, legitimate, or admirable. The wartime ban on the German language and the fundamentalist effort to drive Darwinism from the classroom were acceptable; Jewish objection to The Merchant of Venice violated "American principles." George Creel's chairmanship of the Committee on Public Information did not prompt a discussion of Protestant traits; Carl Laemmle's production of The Beast of Berlin for the same committee was a "lurid" attempt to profit from war. Jacob Schiff's use of dollar diplomacy on behalf of Russian Jews seemed sinister; efforts by E. H. Harriman to squeeze concession from the Czar passed without comment. Similarly, Irish-American agitation about the Versailles Treaty went unremarked; Jewish concern elicited complaints about the "kosher conference." The immigrant's willingness to change his name was seen as evidence of duplicity, not of a desire to assimilate.

In addition to assuming the worst, the Independent singled out Jewish participants in any endeavor and concluded that they were acting as Jews. But although Paul Warburg, for example, did play a major role in the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, he acted on behalf of major bankers of all faiths. Although the War Industries Board did create a "system of control such as the United States government never possessed," Chairman Baruch believed that the general welfare was synonymous with capitalism, not Judaism. Jews may have been represented disproportionately in the Soviet hierarchy, but they used their positions to further Marxist ends, including the secularization of Russian Jewry; almost none of the "Yiddish" Bolsheviks spoke Yiddish. Jacob Schiff's objections to the Russian-American commercial treaty would have meant little if outrage among grass roots and elite gentiles had not moved three hundred members of the House of Representatives to agree with him.

The disposition to single out Jews and to create a separate standard for them derived from three circumstances. First, as Irving Howe notes, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were "radically different" from the dominant Protestant culture. The Independent was incensed by this lack of "conformity" to the nation's "determining ideals and ideas"; the recent arrivals seemed to think that the United States was "not any definite thing yet." Second, as John Higham argues, Jews attracted special attention because they were relatively more successful—and thus more visible—than other groups in the "new immigration."

Third, despite professed indifference to Jewish religious practices, the Independent supposed that acceptance of the nation's ideals meant acquiescence in its "predominant Christian character." Jews, however, were determined "to wipe out of public life" every Christian reference. Their "impertinent interferences" included contempt for Sunday blue laws and protests against Christmas celebrations and Bible reading in public schools. Louis Marshall, president of the American Jewish Committee, even said that the United States was "not a Christian country." Such actions by a race that had had "no hand" in building the nation naturally stirred a "whirlwind of resentment."

From this matter-of-fact amalgamation of Christianity and "one hundred percent Americanism," the Independent moved on to theology. The transition was easy for Cameron, who had preached occasionally, without benefit of ordination, to a "people's church" in Brooklyn, Michigan. Accepting the mangled history and biblical exegesis of the Anglo-Israelite Federation, Cameron believed that contemporary Anglo-Saxons had descended from the lost tribes of Israel. Hence they were "chosen" to receive the blessings that God had promised to Abraham's progeny. But this divine choice of Israel did not extend to Judea, or to the Jewish offspring of the two southern tribes. On the contrary, Anglo-Israelites were often hostile to contemporary Jews.

Fred Black speculated that Cameron's Anglo-Israelism had prepared him to accept conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Certainly the editor's faith gave a peculiar twist to the discussion of religion in The International Jew. Citing the Protocols' injunction to undermine the clergy, the Independent blamed Jews for biblical criticism and "liberal" Protestantism, a typically mislabeled doctrine that reduced Jesus to a "well-meaning but wholly mistaken Jewish prophet." Discriminating between Israel and the rebellious Judeans, the weekly said that Jesus was not Jewish in the modern sense of the word. Neither was Moses or any disciple—except Judas Iscariot. Fundamentalists also read the Bible through "Jewish spectacles" when they confused modern Hebrews with God's chosen people. Not only did Jews reject Christ, but they abandoned the Old Testament in favor of the Talmud's "rabbinical speculation." Instead of fulfilling the prophetic promise of a return to Jerusalem, as many fundamentalists supposed, Zionism represented the "Bolshevist spirit all over again."

In the broadest sense, then, the Independent presented the "Jewish question" as a contest between two peoples, each supposing that God was on its side. There was "no idea deeper in Judaism" than the belief in divine election.

But, the newspaper protested, the "Anglo-Saxon Celtic race" was the "Ruling People, chosen throughout the centuries to Master the world." Beneath the bragging, however, there lay a hint of the insecurity that typically fueled nativism in the 1920s. On the one hand, Yankees could beat Jews "any time" in a fair fight. Still, the Kehillah's "extraordinary unity" was impressive. Unpatriotic American "mongrels" and "lick spittle Gentile Fronts who have no tribe … would be better off if they had one-thousandth the racial sense which the Jew possesses."

The Independent maintained that its pages contained "NO ATTACK . . ON THE JEWS AS JEWS" (though it was not always possible to "distinguish the group" deserving censure). Occasionally the weekly made ostentatious efforts to sound fair. It quoted admirable (meaning unobtrusive) Jews, admitted that Paul Warburg's Federal Reserve Act contained "important improvements," and recognized Bernard Baruch's intelligence and energy. On 7 January 1922, a "candid address" to Jews urged them to recover Old Testament morality and practice "social responsibility." If Jews stopped trying "to twist Americanism into something else," they could participate without objection in finance, entertainment, and government.

The newspaper's remedies for the "world's foremost problem" combined faith in expertise, national unity, and publicity. A "scientific study of the Jewish Question" would forestall prejudiceby transforming gentile assailants and Jewish defenders "both into investigators." Research by "qualified persons" would yield "society's point of view," which, the Independent claimed, was the perspective taken in its pages. In the interim, to combat Jewish adulteration of products, a consumer movement should "educate people in the art of buying." Most important, "clear publicity" must be the "chief weapon" against the Hebrew cabal. Their program would then be "checked the moment it is perceived and identified." Russia, Germany, and England had failed to solve the "Jewish Question," but the United States would succeed—without violence.

While new installments of The International Jew continued to unroll in its pages, the Independent collected in book form most of the articles that had already appeared; sometimes 200,000 copies were printed in a single edition. The staff sent complimentary volumes to locally influential citizens, especially clergymen, bankers, and stockbrokers.

To supplement The International Jew, the Independent ran "Jewish World Notes." This regular feature charged that Madame Curie was treated less well in New York than the spurious Jewish scientist Albert Einstein, chided evangelist Billy Sunday for ignorance of the Elders' conspiracy, derided Zionist immigration to Palestine, and feared that President-elect Warren G. Harding, like his predecessors, was falling under Jewish influence. The Independent also kept up persistent attacks on alcohol, tobacco, movies, comic books, jazz, Wobblies, Soviets, and immigration. Simultaneously looking to Ford's financial interests, editor Cameron promoted highway construction, opposed federal aid to railroads, and looked greedily toward Muscle Shoals. In 1922, as Ford began to covet the presidency, his newspaper dutifully emphasized the inadequacy of other possible nominees.

Yet the Independent had not become merely a compendium of anti-Semitism and other Ford causes. The paper still published travelogues, Western Americana, and portraits of prominent persons. Nor were editorials uniformly intolerant. The weekly applauded women's suffrage, favored the appointment of public defenders, urged federal legislation to halt lynching, asked President Wilson to pardon Eugene V. Debs, and praised Harding for doing so. Occasionally departing from its harsh nativism, the Independent said that close relatives of prewar immigrants should be allowed to join them.

When the staff forgot that Jews were supposed to control everything, the Independent contained insightful commentary. Thus readers could believe astute analyses of Harding's mediocrity, or they could believe that he was a tool of the "court Jew," advertising executive Albert D. Lasker. The treatment of Harding's predecessor was even more perplexing. The International Jew said that "Semitic princes" had manipulated Wilson at Versailles; elsewhere the Independent endorsed his diplomacy and denounced "barbaric" Senators who disagreed. When Wilson died in 1924, "Mr. Ford's Page" said that he would "doubtless rank with our greatest presidents."

If the Independent had offered only a perverse mixture of reform, eccentricity, internationalism, and nativism, it would have attracted relatively little attention. But The International Jew was extraordinary even during what Higham called the "tribal twenties." Opponents mobilized quickly. The Federal Council of Churches condemned the articles in December 1920. A month later, without specifically mentioning Ford, 119 prominent Christians, including William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Cardinal William O'Connell, signed "The Perils of Racial Prejudice," a statement asking gentiles to halt the "vicious propaganda" against Jews. Officials in several cities considered censoring the Independent or removed it from public libraries.

At first many Jews wondered, as Louis Marshall asked, if The International Jew had Ford's personal "sanction." Returning Ford's annual gift, a new sedan, his former neighbor Rabbi Leo Franklin warned Ford that he was inflicting harm on innocent people. Similarly, Herman Bernstein, a voyager on Oscar II, appealed to the automaker's "humanitarian" nature. But even after Jewish spokesmen recognized the depth of Ford's commitment to the anti-Semitic campaign, they disagreed on counter-measures. Following an initial protest, Marshall worked behind the scenes, sponsoring Bernstein's rebuttal, The History of a Lie, recruiting signers for "The Peril of Racial Prejudice," and in mid-1921 urging President Harding to intervene. Others preferred more militant tactics. The American Hebrew challenged Ford to abide by an impartial investigation, attorneys for the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League advocated laws against the collective libel of groups, Yiddish newspapers rejected advertisements for Ford cars, and individual Jews refused to buy them.

On the other hand, journalist W. J. Abbot expressed "sympathy" with Ford's views and critic John J. Chapman hailed the "lucidity and good temper" of Volume 2. C. Mobray White, an "authority" on revolution for the National Civil Federation, urged supplementary publication of the Protocols. According to Liebold, J. P. Morgan, Jr., liked the series. The number of Independent readers fluctuated widely over short periods because Ford dealers, who were ordered to sell the paper, showed little enthusiasm for the task. It appears, however, that The International Jew temporarily attracted new subscribers.

Liebold responded to protests and praise. Agreeing with the Independent that good Jews had "nothing to fear," he urged them to join Ford's crusade against the worldwide peril. But hissupercilious tone was hardly reassuring. He accused Marshall of sounding like a "Bolshevik orator," lectured Rabbi Franklin on the importance of principles, and generally praised the newspaper's reliance on "actual facts." Conversely, he thanked friends of The International Jew and encouraged their efforts, telling C. Mobray White, for example, that there was "quite a field" for distribution of the Protocols. Occasionally he was forced to retreat. "Amazed" by the accusation that he had been Wilson's Jewish "mouthpiece," columnist David Lawrence wrote to Ford, whom he considered a friend. A testy exchange followed with Liebold, the perennial shield, who finally said that the automaker had "no knowledge" of the articles relating to Lawrence.

Indeed, consistently distancing his employer from The International Jew, Liebold answered protests in his own name and testified in 1924 that Ford devoted his time to the company's "numerous and complex" operations. The Independent promoted the same fiction. Because Cameron explicitly attacked Jews on every page except "Mr. Ford's Page," devoted admirers could believe that Ford was too busy making cars to supervise his own newspaper. The strategy was transparent, but it laid the groundwork for his face-saving retraction in 1927.

Protected by Liebold, Ford may have been unaware of the nation-wide protests. Nevertheless, he ordered Cameron in January 1922 to discontinue The International Jew. According to Pipp, he realized that the articles hurt both company sales and his amorphous ambition to achieve the presidency. Upton Sinclair said that Ford backed down in order to avoid a counterattack by filmmaker William Fox. Scholars and associates have also attributed decisive influence to Edsel Ford, Thomas Edison, Arthur Brisbane, and President Harding (who dispatched an emissary to Dearborn in mid-1921).

None of the explanations is fully convincing. Subtle pressure by friends, family, and the White House may have moved Ford, but direct threats by Fox—or anyone else—would have made him more stubborn. Unlike his distributors, moreover, Ford ignored the shrinking market for Model Ts, even when the decline had nothing to do with politics. Unfortunately, Ford was no more able than later scholars and journalists to provide an adequate rationale for his action. He offered at least three explanations. In My Life and Work, an autobiography composed with Samuel Crowther, he sounded practical. Reports on the "Jewish Question" could cease "for the time" because Americans now knew enough to "grasp the key." Speaking to the journalist Allan Benson, he struck an altruistic note. There was, he said, "too much anti-Semitic feeling." If the series continued, then "something might happen to the Jews. I do not want any harm to come to them." Finally, Ford told Cameron that he needed Jews "on our side" in order to abolish the money standard that they had created. A week after The International Jew ceased onl4 January 1922, the Independent began an exposé of money and banking.

The pause did not mean that Ford had begun to doubt the existence of a Jewish conspiracy. He still raised the matter in interviews. In addition, Liebold's agents collected fresh material that, Pipp warned, Ford would order into print "whenever the whim may strike him again." Apparently the whim struck within a year. In November 1922, anti-Semitic references resurfaced in the Independent.

Scholars pay slight attention to this second wave even though attacks on Jews appeared regularly until 1925. Most themes, including occasional allusions to powerless "worthy" Jews, had appeared before. Instead of an eccentric historical survey, however, the Independent now stressed current issues, such as the Dawes Plan (a "subtle scheme" to enrich the Warburgs) and the murder trial of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb (proof that judges favored rich Jews). After Ford declined to seek the presidency and endorsed Calvin Coolidge in December 1923, the Independent discerned Jewish influence behind Coolidge's rivals, especially Senators Hiram Johnson and Robert LaFollette. Through the winter and spring of 1922-1923, the most vicious articles accused Army Captain Robert Rosenbluth of murdering his gentile superior, Major Alexander Cronkhite. Although the Army ruled that Cronkhite had accidentally shot himself, the Independent considered the case, in which Louis Marshall and Felix Warburg aided the defense, an example of Jewish defiance of "Anglo-Saxon law."

The newspaper simultaneously applauded gentiles, including President Lowell of Harvard, who showed signs of discovering the "Jewish Question." The search for kindred spirits even transcended a powerful grudge. When Ford's old adversary, the Chicago Tribune, complained of excessive Jewish influence, the Independent exulted, "We no longer feel like a lone voice crying in the Wilderness."

Starting in April 1924, the Independent focused on "Jewish Exploitation of Farmers' Organizations," and on Aaron Sapiro, the alleged chief exploiter. After serving as counsel to the California marketing bureau, Sapiro began in 1919 to organize farm cooperatives in other states. Within four years, he created the National Council of Farmer's Cooperative Marketing Associations, whose constituent groups represented 700,000 farmers. Presidents Harding and Coolidge, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, former Governor Frank O. Lowden of Illinois, and Senator Arthur Capper (Republican of Kansas), leader of the congressional farm bloc, encouraged Sapiro and sometimes provided substantial assistance. By 1923, however, many cooperative associations had collapsed and enthusiasm began to ebb among farmers. In 1926 the National Council quietly disbanded.

Despite his organizational ability, legal skill, and personal magnetism, Sapiro's strategy had many weaknesses. He underestimated the complexity of marketing, acted hastily, appointed several inept managers, and ridiculed competing agricultural spokesmen. In the final analysis, moreover, the agricultural depression of the 1920s was beyond his control. Efficient cooperatives provided a means to withhold crops from sale temporarily; they could not permanently raise prices and profits as long as world markets remained glutted. Probably Sapiro's greatest mistake was to promise a panacea when, at best, he offered a palliative.

Believing that Sapiro's Jewish background was "incidental," Fred Black and some other members of the Independent staff had wanted to concentrate on defects in his program. Once again it is hard to fix responsibility for the final anti-Semitic emphasis. In 1927, Cameron testified that protest letters from farmers had prompted the series, "Jewish Exploitation." Most of the articles were signed by "Robert Morgan," a pseudonym for Harry H. Dunn. Dunn, who had worked for the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Post, and the Hearst chain, wrote frequently for the Independent. In this instance, Cameron edited Dunn's articles and apparently wrote some anonymous supplements. Liebold later claimed that he had tried to delete libelous material. If Cameron's recollection is correct, however, Ford had urged him to shun moderation in order to provoke a suit.

In keeping with the Independent's peculiar combination of insight and prejudice, the series mixed sound agricultural economics and absurd allegations of Jewish conspiracy. The weekly chided cooperatives for tending to augment production in an already glutted market, noted Sapiro's occasional mismanagement and exaggerated promises, and claimed in January 1925 that the criticism had "nothing whatever" to do with his religion. But plausible analysis appeared less frequently than assertions that Sapiro rationalized agriculture in order to profit "international Jewry" generally and himself in particular. In the process, he hired "reds" to coerce growers, disrupted the American Farm Bureau Federation, and manipulated "Gentile Fronts" (including Secretary Hoover). He wanted ultimately to unify agriculture in a "Jewish 'holding company.'"

Sapiro was a natural target. Cherishing the myth of the sturdy Christian farmer, the Independent and its publisher assumed that Jews entered agriculture only as greedy middlemen. Ford joked that he would pay $1,000 to anyone who brought in a Jewish farmer "dead or alive." Moreover, farm cooperatives fostered the "steady trend toward systematization" deplored in The International Jew. And Sapiro's financial backers included two of The International Jew's foremost villains, Bernard Baruch and Eugene Meyer, Jr.

Still the Independent's assault had an ironic aspect because Ford and Sapiro shared more common ground than either realized. Like Ford, Sapiro cherished farming as a virtuous way of life untainted by radicalism or federal planning. Furthermore, he too was a proud man who resented attacks on his character. In January 1925, therefore, Sapiro sent a thirty-one-page letter to Ford and his associates, demanding a retraction of "Jewish Exploitation." When the Independent refused to comply, he sued Ford and the Dearborn Publishing Company for $1 million in order to vindicate "myself and my race."

Sapiro's was the third suit provoked by Ford's antiSemitism. In January 1921, Morris Gest had sought $5 million in damages because the Independent accused him of producing lewd plays. Two years later Herman Bernstein had filed a complaint denying that he had told Ford of an international Jewish conspiracy. Neither case came to trial. Nor did they alter the newspaper's course. Yet, as part of a new look that included respectful articles on Sinclair Lewis and Sigmund Freud, after 1925 the Independent reduced its anti-Semitism to occasional sniping.

The last extended treatment, "What About the Jewish Question?," appeared in March, 1926. Asserting that contributors had eschewed "sensational" or "arousing" material, the Independent denied having been anti-Semitic. On the contrary, by pointing to faults, it had acted as a "rather courageous friend to Jews." The Independent affirmed the right of Jews to participate in national life "on equal terms with others" as long as they adopted American ideals. Finally, since wise members of the "race" had come to understand this principle, additional discussion of Jewish power was no longer necessary.

"What About the Jewish Question?" was an apologia, not an apology. The Independent repudiated The International Jew only after Sapiro pressed the issue. In March 1927, his suit alleging 141 libels by Ford and the Dearborn Publishing Company began in U.S. District Court in Detroit. Opening for the plaintiff, attorney William Henry Gallagher called the Independent Ford's "mouthpiece" and held him responsible for malicious attacks on "Sapiro and his race." The defense, led by Senator James A. Reed, a conservative Democrat from Missouri, responded that the weekly had a "moral duty" to expose Sapiro as a "grafter, faker, fraud, and cheat."

The Independent's discussion of Jews was irrelevant, Reed added, because the law did not recognize libel of a "race"; Sapiro raised the religious issue merely to "capitalize" on sympathy. Finally, making the familiar distinction between Ford and his newspaper, Reed said that the automaker had not read the series on Sapiro "to this blessed day."

On 18 March, Gallagher called Cameron as his first witness. During six and a half days on the stand, Cameron was determined to protect his employer and save his job even if he had to skate on the edge of perjury. Ford, he conceded, "dropped in from time to time," sometimes discussing public issues "in a general way." Yet he gave wide latitude to the Independent staff. Cameron might have "mentioned" the Sapiro series to him. It was more likely, however, that Ford had known nothing until the victim protested. When Cameron tried to explain the articles at that time, Ford waved his hand and gave the "usual formula: You're the editor. Get the facts. Be sure you are right."

Gallagher prodded the witness to say that Ford had initiated the "general series" attacking a supposed Jewish "International ring." Defense counsel rescued Cameron with the persistent objection that "you can't libel a race." Gallagher countered that the Independent had "aggravated" the libel of Sapiro by presenting him as an ally of Baruch, Meyer, and others maligned in The International Jew. Judge Fred S. Raymond admitted discussion of specific Jews who were Sapiro's alleged henchmen, but overruled evidence relating to the newspaper's broad anti-Semitic campaign. This restriction allowed Cameron to dodge direct answers and preserved the illusion of Ford's aloofness. For example, with the possible exception of "one or two" references to Baruch, the editor recalled no conversation with Ford about "any article on any Jew." He did not add that Ford had spoken often if vaguely about Jews and encouraged him to fill in the details. Nor did he mention that Liebold, not Ford, typically conveyed orders from the front office.

The rival attorneys were skilled and well-matched. Gallagher raised doubts about Cameron's sobriety and Ford's intelligence. On the other hand, defense objections excluded from evidence letters to Ford protesting inaccuracies in "Jewish Exploitation of Farmers' Organizations." Gallagher called James Martin Miller, a former Independent employee, to testify that Ford personally had charged Sapiro with manipulating agriculture for a "bunch of Jews." Asking one question to reveal that Miller had sued for back pay, Reed dismissed him: "That's all." The two sides persistently clashed over Gallagher's effort to broaden the discussion of antiSemitism. Poking fun at the defense's "extraordinary sensitiveness" to the word "Jew," Gallagher said that comparable "apprehension" three years earlier would have made the suit unnecessary.

After Gallagher traced his client's rise from an orphanage to eminence, Reed cross-examined Sapiro for two bitter weeks in April. Counsel badgered the witness and deliberately mispronounced his name. Sapiro responded with a mixture of confidence, retaliatory sarcasm, and occasional loss of temper. The two wrangled over Baruch's standing as an economist and Governor Lowden's credentials as a farmer. Moving through a long list of cooperative associations, Reed accused Sapiro of profiteering. In language Ford might have chosen, Sapiro answered that money meant less to him than the farmer's welfare.

Although the press predicted testimony by Baruch, Lowden, and Meyer, none of them was called. The most famous figure in the case also avoided an appearance. At first, Ford planned to take the stand. Then, perhaps recalling his humiliation during the Chicago Tribune trial, he changed his mind and walled himself off from process servers. Company officials claimed that a subpoena intended for Ford was mistakenly presented to his brother. After Gallagher threatened to begin contempt proceedings, Ford's lawyers said that he would speak voluntarily. On 31 March, however, he was apparently the victim of a strange accident. A Studebaker sedan forced Ford's car off the road and down a fifteen-foot embankment. The automaker was taken to Henry Ford Hospital, where he was treated and shielded by friendly physicians.

Sapiro suggested that Ford had "faked" the accident, which has never been fully explained, because his "vanity was punctured at the collapse of his case." Indeed, sensing the jury's skepticism, defense lawyers did fear the verdict. On 11 April using reports from some of the fifty Ford Service agents who prowled through the courthouse, they told Judge Raymond that a juror, Mrs. Cora Hoffman, had lied during the voir dire and later was offered a bribe by a Jew who wanted to convict Ford. Because Mrs. Hoffman's vehement denials appeared in the press, Raymond granted a defense motion of mistrial on 21 April. The court scheduled a retrial for 12 September as lawyers continued to spar. Valuing Raymond's restrictions on discussion of the "Jewish Question," Reed blocked Gallagher's attempt to change judges.

Judge Raymond adhered to the legal fiction that the Independent's attack on Jews was largely irrelevant to the suit, but Ford himself knew better. By repudiating The International Jew, he could open the way to an out of-court settlement and avoid testifying. During a meeting on 11 May with Arthur Brisbane, who remained friendly even though the Independent had labeled him a "gentile front," Ford mentioned his decision to close the newspaper. At roughly the same time, he told Joseph Palma, head of the United States Secret Service field office in New York, that he had underestimated the impact of the Jewish series; he wanted the "wrong righted." Serving as Ford's emissaries, Palma and Earl J. Davis, a former assistant attorney general, met secretly with Louis Marshall of the American Jewish Committee. On 9 July, Ford announced through Brisbane that "articles reflecting upon the Jews" would "never again" appear in the Independent. Liebold, Cameron, and Edsel Ford had known nothing of the negotiations.

The retraction, written by Marshall, allowed Ford to slip through the loophole held open since 1920 by Liebold, Cameron, and a formidable array of lawyers. Ford said that he had failed to "keep informed" about the actions of his newspaper. Thus he was "deeply mortified" to learn that the Independent had printed a series based on the "gross forgeries," the Protocols of Zion. "Fully aware of the virtues of the Jewish People," he begged their forgiveness, promised to withdraw The International Jew from circulation, and pledged "future friendship and good will." Marshall considered the statement "humiliating" and was surprised that Ford accepted it.

Sapiro and Bernstein quickly dropped their suits in return for apologies and reimbursement of legal expenses. On 30 July, the charge that Sapiro had belonged to an international conspiracy was formally "withdrawn" by the Independent; the weekly claimed to have accepted Harry Dunn's articles "at face value," only later to learn of their "inaccuracies." Following the usual strategy, the editorial said that Ford had had "no personal knowledge" of the series. Sapiro pronounced himself "entirely satisfied," evidently embraced the illusion that Ford had been "misled," and claimed credit for helping a "great man get right."

Unfortunately the apologies of 1927, like the remission of 1922, did not mean that Ford had "got right." He closed the Independent on 30 December 1927 but—contrary to his lawyers' promise to Marshall—kept Liebold and Cameron, both unrepentant, in his employ. He ordered destruction of thousands of copies of The International Jew yet, despite entreaties by Marshall and Bernstein, barely publicized his retraction in Europe. His subordinates intervened to halt circulation abroad only when pressed by Jewish leaders. Furthermore, Ford informed the Manchester Guardian in 1940 that "international Jewish bankers" had caused World War II. At roughly the same time, he told the nativist Gerald L. K. Smith that he had allowed Bennett to forge his signature on the retraction, hoped some day to reissue The International Jew, and urged Smith to do so if he could not.

Partly due to Ford's laxity, the series continued to circulate among the "rabid Jew baiters" whom the Independent had professed to disdain. Historian Norman Cohn estimates that The International Jew "probably did more than any other work to make the Protocols world-famous." The Nazi youth leader Baldur von Schirach re-called the "great influence" of the books on young Germans of his generation. In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler applauded Ford's efforts. Within the United States, The International Jew provided a usable past for antiSemites like Smith, who ultimately published an abridged edition. As early as 1922, Norman Hapgood angrily held Ford responsible for setting "loose a malicious force that added fury to similar forces already in existence."

Such anger is justified but insufficient. In addition, analysis of The International Jew and its supplements illuminates attitudes toward Jews as well as broader aspects of our culture. First, the text undermines the assumption shared by writers as diverse as Handlin, Higham, and McWilliams that Christian belief and practice hardly influenced anti-Semitism in the United States. The International Jew was imbued with Ford's faith that the national "genius" was "Christian in the broadest sense" and destined to remain so. The series portrayed a clash between two "chosen" peoples, and Cameron, the chief compiler, sometimes cast the conflict in terms of Anglo-Israelite theology. Although we cannot infer the attitudes of a complex society from motifs in a single literary source, there is warrant for paying closer attention to the Christian roots of American anti-Semitism.

Second, a reading of The International Jew prompts yet another consideration of the much-debated relationship among "populism," "progressivism," and anti-Semitism. Though problematical, the terms "populist" and "progressive" retain utility if used with care. Despite their differing views of settlement houses or strikes, progressives applauded or accepted an economy dominated by corporations and at most wanted to make a hierarchical society more efficient and humane. Two decades earlier, the People's party and its sympathizers had raised more basic questions. They had doubted that the triumph of the "trust" was either inevitable or beneficial. Populism appealed to poor farmers and some urban workers, whereas the various progressive coalitions drew primarily from the middle and upper middle classes. During the 1890s, Populism never achieved respectability. Before World War I, progressivism became the catchword of the day.

Recognizing the limits of these broad categories, we can nonetheless dispute the designation of Ford as a "populist" by Peter F. Drucker, Morton Rosenstock, Allan Nevins, Frank Ernest Hill, Richard Hofstadter, Reynold Wik, and David Lewis. Anne Jardim aptly notes that Ford, the son of a prosperous Republican untainted by agrarian radicalism, worked quietly in Detroit during the embattled 1890s. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that Independent subscribers were aging veterans of the People's party. MosT lived in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, states where the Populist nominee, General James B. Weaver, had run poorly in 1892.

The newspaper's presidential poll in 1920 is also revealing. Of the six leading candidates—Senator Hiram Johnson, Herbert Hoover, Leonard Wood, Frank O. Lowden, President Wilson, and Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo—only McAdoo identified in some sense with Populism and several others had specifically condemned the People's party. William Jennings Bryan, an erstwhile Populist nominee, ran a poor third among Democratic prospects; Senator Robert LaFollette, a recently radicalized insurgent, received only scattered support.

While Ford and Independent editor Cameron remained aloof from Populism, their weekly explicitly endorsed "sane progressivism." The adjective may seem inappropriate but the general identification makes sense. Ford contributed $36,000 to Woodrow Wilson's campaign in 1916 and was convinced by the President to run for senator two years later. Throughout the 1920s, he was hailed as the preeminent business statesman whose commitment to efficiency, social service, and paternal labor relations promised industrial peace. Certainly The International Jew contained characteristic progressive themes. For example, adapting a growing consumer movement to its anti-Semitic ends, the Independent urged a boycottof Jewish merchants. Furthermore, the "Jewish Question" must be subjected to "scientific study" by experts.

The most striking progressive legacy was The International Jew's assertion that "clear publicity" was an American alternative to Jewish disfranchisement or pogroms. Richard Hofstadter observed that progressive intellectuals, scholars and journalists alike, "confirmed, if they did not create a fresh mode of criticism" that purported to uncover "reality." They believed that "reality" was "hidden, neglected, and off stage," something to be dug out from under superficial explanations. Norman Hapgood shrewdly saw that Ford's detectives "muck-raked" Jews and suspected Jews. Ford apparently shared the Independent's faith in publicity. In My Life and Work, he maintained that the Jewish threat could be "controlled by mere exposure."

Instead of revealing a pernicious Populist legacy, the Independent's anti-Semitic campaigns underscore the diversity within progressivism, a persuasion so diffuse that both Ford and Aaron Sapiro plausibly identified with it. Indeed, for historians who ponder the fate of reform after World War I, their confrontation must be considered something more than a dramatic nativist episode. In addition, the battle between Sapiro and Ford, two nationally known reformers, symbolizes the fragmentation of the progressive "movement" during the 1920s.

From a narrow perspective, the historiographical debate about "populist" anti-Semitism concerned the number of bigots in the People's party and related agrarian protests. Yet such pluralists as Handlin, Hofstadter, and Seymour Martin Lipset were simultaneously making assertions about how ideas, in this case prejudiced ideas, moved within society. At least implicitly, they repudiated Carey McWilliams's contention that anti-Semitism "must be studied from the top down and not from the bottom up." Rather, with varying sophistication, they maintained that hostility to Jews primarily pressed upward from a "populist" mass.

After clearing away jargon about "status anxiety," we should scarcely be surprised that provincials who fear social or cultural change are more likely than their comfortable, cosmopolitan fellows to seek scapegoats and embrace conspiracy theories. While repeating this truism for three decades, however, scholars have slighted the elite contribution to anti-Semitic rhetoric. Many images used by the Independent to document alleged Jewish failings were shared by—or borrowed from—Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell, Professor Edward A. Ross, novelist Kenneth Roberts, and muckraker Burton J. Hendrick. Such urbane progressives and conservatives should not be absolved of responsibility simply because they rejected The International Jew's sweeping conspiracy theory and the Klansman's vulgar agitation. Moreover, because the boundary between "polite" and conspiratorial anti-Semitism has been porous, we must no longer pass over McWilliams's admonition to start investigation at thetop.

Third, an interpretation of The International Jew helps to sort out "crucial differences in the variety of things called anti-Semitism." The Independent distinguished its answers to the "Jewish Question"—consumer protection, scientific study, and publicity—from violent European solutions. Ford himself claimed only to oppose "false ideas," called hatred of individuals "neither American nor Christian," and remained personally fond of several Jews, including the architect Albert Kahn, baseball player Hank Greenberg, and Rabbi Leo Franklin; he was perplexed by Franklin's refusal of a sedan in 1920 to protest The International Jew. These actions by Ford and his newspaper, though eccentric or self-serving, nevertheless point to complexities within nativism during the tribal twenties.

A venerable nativist position, presented eloquently in Josiah Strong's 1886 polemic, Our Country, held that the "new immigration," including Jews, was culturally regressive and therefore must be taught superior Anglo-Saxon ways. The racial theorists who gained prominence after 1900 held that the "new immigration," including those whom Kenneth Roberts called "mongoloid" Jews, was innately inferior and therefore incapable of learning Anglo-Saxon ways. Whereas Strong suggested that "our country" might benefit from a blend of "races" under Anglo-Saxon guidance, Madison Grant, the premier "Nordic" ideologue in 1916, insisted that assimilation would backfire, producing a "mongrel" nation. Although the doctrine of inherent racial inferiority never fully superseded the earlier tradition, by the 1920s most nativists mixed the two attitudes in varying proportions. For example, Ford and the Independent sometimes ascribed behavior by Eastern European immigrants to "nasty orientalism" or "Tartar" origins. More often, however, they complained that these Jews refused to be like Anglo-Saxons. In the final analysis, The International Jew, the major nativist tract of the 1920s, was closer to Strong's assimilationist ethnocentrism than to Grant's biological determinism.

The distinction may provide little comfort to victims of discrimination (though in the long run they gain from it), but it does suggest that the nation's broadly liberal tradition even affects our nativists. Hence, they are more likely than counterparts in Germany or France to judge ethnic targets, in this case Jews, on the basis of individual behavior instead of putative genetic traits. Significantly, the Independent did not concur in the basic premise of Mein Kampf, that all Jews betrayed "definite racial characteristics." Of course our sweeping generalization about attitudes in several countries requires qualification. Baldur von Schirach probably read Mein Kampf and The International Jew without noticing major discrepancies. And we still need systematic comparative studies before reaching firm conclusions about bigotry on two—or more—continents. In the interim, however, scholars should be wary of superficial parallels between American nativism and foreign Nazi and Fascist movements.

Fourth, we must ask how thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of readers could believe The International Jew's far-fetched thesis that a worldwide Jewish network threatened their way of life. Richard Hofstadter maintained that adherents to such conspiracy theories betray a "paranoid style," a frame of mind qualitatively different from normal thinking. Indeed, the notion that bigots comprise a psychologically abnormal fringe is not only popular among both pluralist scholars and their leftist critics, but also comforting to lay men and women unconcerned with social science method. It is nonetheless misleading. Much as they exaggerate the tolerance of the dominant culture, leading scholars also mistakenly assume that it was imbued with their own version of liberal or radical rationalism. During the 1920s, however, following a government-sponsored war scare and Red Scare, belief in some sort of conspiracy theory may have been the norm instead of an aberration. In this context, The International Jew's perverse accomplishment was to combine the inchoate antiSemitism of the progressive era with the growing postwar fear of hidden forces.

To be sure, belief in a cabal of Zionist elders (as opposed to conspiracies by Huns and Bolsheviks) was not endorsed by the federal government or by a majority of the population. Still we cannot assume that conspiratorial anti-Semites were pathological. In the past three decades some social scientists have rediscovered an old insight from the sociology of knowledge: that much of what we know rests on the authority of others and remains plausible only as long as they confirm it. But these significant "others" need not represent the whole society. In the United States, semiautonomous cultures have often nurtured unconventional world views in the face of sensible objections by outsiders. Among such "cognitive minorities," to use sociologist Peter Berger's term, normality may require belief in The Book of Mormon, Science and Health, or The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The compilers of The International Jew revealed this phenomenon in microcosm. Working in relative isolation, Ford, Liebold, and Cameron warded off protests and reinforced each other's prejudices.

Finally, what disposed Ford to agree with Liebold that there was a Jewish conspiracy instead of accepting counterarguments by his son Edsel or Arthur Brisbane? Samuel S. Marquis called Ford the "most elusive personality" whom he had ever met. Seventy years later biographers are still trying to capture that personality.

In an astute psychoanalytical interpretation, Anne Jardim relates Ford's behavior to his version of the "universal" ambivalence toward parents. Specifically, he idealized his mother Mary, who died when he was thirteen, but developed an "unconscious fantasy" of abandonment by his father William. To prevent further rejection, he sought "absolute control" in personal and business relations.The aggression toward his father also surfaced as a projection of his own hostility to others. While retaliating against William Ford, he sought to assuage guilt and deny his loss through "restitutive action." In particular, Jardim says, Ford's manufacture of tough vehicles for rural roads, sale of tractors at a loss, and sponsorship of agricultural research were symbolic affirmations that he was "still a farmer's son."

Sometimes Ford channeled aggression into creativity. Although his greatest creation, the reliable, inexpensive automobile, transformed America, the triumph failed to satisfy him. After the Model T conquered the market in the mid-1910s, therefore, he externalized his conflicts in capricious company policy and through the promotion of good, bad, or merely eccentric causes. With varying intensity, he advocated world peace, mass production, funny money, and ballroom dancing, while opposing bankers, liquor, tobacco, Truman Newberry, and the "international Jew."

Jardim does not fully solve what Marquis called the "psychological puzzle" of Ford's life. By building on her insights, however, we can better understand his sponsorship and ultimate retraction of The International Jew. As we have seen, Ford's animosity toward Jews grew during the personal crisis after 1915. Seeking to make restitution to the farmer, he was drawn to the convention that Jews were, as Edward Ross wrote, "slovenly" agriculturalists. Moreover, whether or not the process is called projection, Ford attributed to Jews traits that he refused to recognize in himself. For example, in 1920-1921, shortly after Ford had tricked stockholders and exploited his dealers to gain full control of the company, his newspaper accused Jews of violating business ethics. Ford thought that Sapiro inflicted "systematization" on the farmer, but his own machines did more than cooperatives to alter rural mores.

Although anti-Semitism brought into "manageable focus" Ford's hostility to Wobblies, bootleggers, and bankers, Jardim rightly notes that there was "nothing predestined" about his espousal of it. If the United States had not provided copious anti-Semitic imagery, he might have favored a different conspiracy theory. Furthermore, because there were so many targets for his aggression, Ford could almost nonchalantly surrender over Jew-baiting in 1927. Indeed, after repudiating The International Jew, he was increasingly belligerent to unions and drew closer to Harry Bennett, the head of the company labor spies.

In 1923, more than one-third of 260,000 voters polled by Collier's favored Ford for president. They overlooked, if they did not endorse, his personal peculiarities, suppression of labor, and sponsorship of anti-Semitism. Ford's reputation thrived partly because it was protected by Liebold and the public relations experts who followed. But they built on a popular craving to esteem an un-spoiled country mechanic whose ingenuity and effort had made a contribution to the general welfare as well as a fortune. Marquis reported that many workers on the assembly line denied that Ford knew of their misery. Similarly, Jews initially doubted that he sanctioned the Independent's attack; their praise of Ford after his retraction in 1927 moved Louis Marshall to warn against excess. Like their gentile neighbors, Jews wanted to believe in self-made men, benevolent capitalists, and a just system that produced them. In ways that Ford failed to comprehend, these immigrants and their children were embracing American dreams and illusions.