Edmund Wilson

Throughout the twenties, more than one in eight adult Americans worked in the automobile industry, with almost 150,000 laboring at Ford's Rouge River plant in Detroit alone. Paying a wage of six dollars a day, Ford assembly line jobs were coveted by thousands of immigrants newly arrived in America. But as one English immigrant known only as Bert explains, life at the Ford plant was more like a nightmare than the American dream. He told his story to prolific author and social historian Edmund Wilson.

When I first came over [from England], I worked at Fisher Bodies for three months. I took a threeshift job on production at the start rather than be walkin' around. But then I went to Ford's—like everybody else, I'd 'eard about Ford's wages. And you do get the wages. I got $5 a...