SOURCE: The American Earthquake, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958, pp. 214-48.

Wilson was one of the foremost literary critics in the United States. A prolific writer who also produced poetry, plays, novels, journalistic nonfiction, and historical studies, Wilson was at all times concerned with the social reality that gives human actions, and the products of human actions, context and meaning. In the following essay, originally published in 1931, he presents a portrait of life in the auto industry, examining the reality against the various myths of Ford legend.

On the dreary yellow Michigan waste with its gray stains of frozen water, the old cars wait like horses at the pound. Since the spring before last, Henry Ford has been buying them up at twenty dollars apiece, and people drive them in every day. Old, battered, muddy roadsters, sedans, limousines, touring cars and trucks—in strings of two or three they are...