High Tea

Their Majesties sipped tea, last week, in crumpet passing proximity to Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford. The chat waxed cordial and lasted for two hours. It took place neither at punctilious Buckingham Palace nor in the spacious hotel suite of Henry Ford (TIME, April 16). Royalty & Fords met before the cozy country hearth of famed Viscountess Astor at Cliveden, 20 miles from London. She, vivacious, hospitable, bred in Virginia, but now a British peeress and M. P., seemed the ideal international hostess. Gossip told that the conversation of Her Majesty and Mrs. Ford was at all times stately, that the men eventually shared a chuckle, too.

Prior to his high tea at Cliveden, Motor Man Ford sojourned idly in London, delaying his projected tour of the British Isles, but found time to extemporize to the press as follows:

"Unemployment in England is caused by not paying enough wages. Good production's the thing. People are afraid to want things because wages are low. Real prosperity depends on machinery. To those who say this will produce idleness, the reply is it's just the other way. It will produce work. For making machines means making more machines, and consequently you have more production and better wages."

The Laborite Daily Herald, enthusiastic at these words, headlined across an entire page: "Henry Ford on the Evil of Low Wages--Unemployment in England Due to Low Wages."

Mr. Ford also said:

"I know nothing about Russia, but it is a market--they have always paid me for my business. . . ."

"My experience is that no one can drink alcohol without injury. If people have to drink, they are done for as far as I am concerned. Smoking and drinking are both the same; they destroy the brain cells."

"I don't believe in anything else but free trade all round. I don't know what a tariff means, except that it means giving one crowd an advantage over another. Free trade is competition, and nothing can get large enough if you won't have competition."

That Their Majesties were graciously pleased by Lady Astor's U. S. guests, was made evident a few days later, when the court circular announced that Edward of Wales had received Mr. and Mrs. Ford in his bachelor home, St. James's Palace.