Everything They Had by David Halberstam Page A

heroes, then this was the most democratic of lands, the nation where mass production—and a new kind of economic democracy that went with it—was born. It was not by chance that the new century was perfectly designed for America, and indeed was often known as the American Century. That was a partial misnomer. In truth, it was the Oil Century, as the Japanese intellectual Naohiro Amaya called it, for it was a century in which gas-driven machines would replace coal-driven machines, with an explosive increase in productivity. In the oil century productivity flowered; it could generate products enough for everyone—not just for the handful of rich. The oil culture because of the nature of the fuel created vastly more wealth, a wealth so great that it was shared by ordinary people. And of all the industrialized nations poised for the start of a new era, America, with its rich indigenous oil deposits, was uniquely well-positioned for the new age.
    In the oil culture, because oil produced so much more in the way of goods, the workers became prosperous, too. The oil century produced, it would soon become clear, workers who would become consumers; and the more they consumed, the more they created work for others. It was the dawning of a culture in which ordinary people achieved not merely middle-class status, but an elemental social dignity which had in the past been reserved for a tiny number of people. This was an American invention—a nation with something new, a mass middle class. The citizens in this new society gained dignity, confidence, leisure time and, in time, disposable income. That alone was to have a profound effect on the rise and the obsession with sports in the century ahead.
    If there was one key figure who represented American genius in the first half of the century, and gave a sense of what America was to be—a mass-driven society with mass-produced goods, all those forces which would make America an economic superpower—it was the first Henry Ford. He was the architect of the most powerful of American ideas which drove the century and made American economic democracy unique—the worker as consumer. He brought the concept of mass production to its height with his River Rouge plant, and turned the auto from an item available only to the rich into something that all Americans could own. In time he came to love the assembly line—the true diamond in his eye—more than the car itself.
    Almost from the start, sensing that his workers were his real customers, he began to put most of his energy into what was his production line, to build more cars faster, to meet the unparalleled demand, and at the same time to keep reducing its price. Because the car was already so simple and well-designed there was not much to tinker with in the car itself, he poured most of his energies and his special genius into the production line.
    The cars poured off the line, soon more than a million a year. The speed of manufacture meant he was selling that many more cars per year and could cut the price per car accordingly. Ford loved making a car that benefited working people. “Every time I lower the price of a car $1,” he said, “I can get 1,000 new customers.” In its early incarnation, in the 1910–11 fiscal year, the Model T had cost $780; a year later with the production ascending in amazing increments, the price had dropped to $690 and then to $600, and on the eve of World War I, it was down to $260. What he had wrought was the beginning of a revolution—the good life for the common man.
    And so early in this century America became a vastly more dynamic, vastly less class-dominated, infinitely more open society than competing nations. Its people were busy; they were on the move, driving all the time now, it seemed, prosperous, and ever more confident. Its love of sports became a parallel force. The more confident and affluent Americans were, the more they became sports nuts. In