As a kid growing up in the Detroit area, my 5th grade teacher asked the class how many of us had family working in the auto industry. Every kid raised their hand.

The influence the car companies exerted over life in the city for the past 130 years can’t be overstated. And to the extent that they were controlled by any one man, that man would be Henry Ford. If you worked at the Ford Motor Company, you didn’t work at Ford, you worked at Ford’s, meaning, you worked in a factory owned by Henry Ford, the man.

With strict demands on his workers on the job and off, he didn’t make it easy. His utopian ideals, ambition, anti-Jewish propaganda, conspiracy theories, paranoia, spying, oddly peculiar morality and hygiene codes, union-busting tactics, and political influence make today’s billionaire megalomaniacs look like woke namby-pamby schoolboys.

Still, if you could stand the strains, the rules, the foreman, the noise, and the repetitive, mind-numbing tedium, the pay was decent. Maybe you couldn’t go to college, but you could do better than a lot of people who did. You just had to give up a little bit of your dreams. It was the deal with the devil that you made every day.

Well grandpa James and his brothers
They’re working for Henry
My tired old mother
She’s working for Henry
The newlywed lovers
They’re working for Henry
Working for Henry ‘til we die

Oh we’re tired when they wake us
Working for Henry
But the old man make us
Working for Henry
Dreaming bout Vegas
Working for Henry ‘til we die

He’s got the whole town on the payroll
Working for Henry
If you’re breathing then you’re able
Working for Henry
So grab ahold the cable
Working for Henry ‘til we die

Oh clang bang hiss
Working for Henry
The super’s got a pistol
Working for Henry
You ain’t allowed to whistle
Working for Henry ‘til we die