section_path: Career/Ford Airplane Company/World War I era and peace activism
section_name: World War I era and peace activism
paragraph_text: World War I era and peace activism
  
  Ford opposed war, which he viewed as a terrible waste, and supported causes that opposed military intervention. Ford became highly critical of those who he felt financed war, and he tried to stop them. In 1915, the pacifist Rosika Schwimmer gained favor with Ford, who agreed to fund a Peace Ship to Europe, where World War I was raging. He led 170 other peace activists. Ford's Episcopalian pastor, Reverend Samuel S. Marquis, accompanied him on the mission. Marquis headed Ford's Sociology Department from 1913 to 1921. Ford talked to President Woodrow Wilson about the mission but had no government support. His group went to neutral Sweden and the Netherlands to meet with peace activists. A target of much ridicule, Ford left the ship as soon as it reached Sweden. In 1915, Ford blamed "German-Jewish bankers" for instigating the war.
  
  According to biographer Steven Watts, Ford's status as a leading industrialist gave him a worldview that warfare was wasteful folly that retarded long-term economic growth. The losing side in the war typically suffered heavy damage. Small business were especially hurt, for it takes years to recuperate. He argued in many newspaper articles that a focus on business efficiency would discourage warfare because, “If every man who manufactures an article would make the very best he can in the very best way at the very lowest possible price the world would be kept out of war, for commercialists would not have to search for outside markets which the other fellow covets.” Ford admitted that munitions makers enjoyed wars, but he argued the most businesses wanted to avoid wars and instead work to manufacture and sell useful goods, hire workers, and generate steady long-term profits.
  
  Ford's British factories produced Fordson tractors to increase the British food supply, as well as trucks and warplane engines. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, Ford went quiet on foreign policy. His company became a major supplier of weapons, especially the Liberty engine for warplanes and anti-submarine boats.
  
  In 1918, with the war on and the League of Nations a growing issue in global politics, President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, encouraged Ford to run for a Michigan seat in the U.S. Senate. Wilson believed that Ford could tip the scales in Congress in favor of Wilson's proposed League. "You are the only man in Michigan who can be elected and help bring about the peace you so desire," the president wrote Ford. Ford wrote back: "If they want to elect me let them do so, but I won't make a penny's investment." Ford did run, however, and came within 7,000 votes of winning, out of more than 400,000 cast statewide. He was defeated in a close election by the Republican candidate, Truman Newberry, a former United States Secretary of the Navy. Ford remained a staunch Wilsonian and supporter of the League. When Wilson made a major speaking tour in the summer of 1919 to promote the League, Ford helped fund the attendant publicity.