Harry Barnard - Independent Man: The Life of Senator James Couzens

BOOKS BY HARRY BARNARD

INDEPENDENT MAN: The Life of Senator James Couzens

EAGLE FORGOTTEN: The Life of John Peter Altgeld

RUTHERFORD B. HAYES AND HIS AMERICA

Harris & Ewing

SENATOR JAMES COUZENS

INDEPENDENT MAN: THE LIFE OF
Senator James Couzens

By

HARRY BARNARD

WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS DETROIT

GREAT LAKES BOOKS

The publication of this volume in a freely accessible digital format has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation through their Humanities Open Book Program.

This book was originally published in 1958 by Charles Scribners Sons.

Copyright 2002 by Wayne State University Press,
Detroit, Michigan 48201. All material in this work, except as identified below, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/.

All material not licensed under a Creative Commons license is all rights reserved. Permission must be obtained from the copyright owner to use this material.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barnard, Harry, 1906
Independent man: the life of Senator James Couzens / by Harry Barnard.
p. cm. (Great Lakes books)
Originally published: New York: Scribners, 1958.
ISBN 978-0-8143-4396-8 (pbk.: alk. paper); 978-0-8143-3587-1 (e-book)
1. Couzens, James, 18721936. 2. LegislatorsUnited StatesBiography. 3. United States. Congress. SenateBiography. 4. MichiganPolitics and government18371950.
I. Title. II. Series.
E748.C87 B3 2002
328.73092dc21
[B]
2002069138

FOR PERMISSION TO QUOTE BRIEFLY FROM THE FOLLOWING SOURCES, THE AUTHOR MAKES GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT.

America in Midpassage by Charles A. and Mary R. Beard (The Macmillan Company, 1939)

Inside U.S.A. by John Gunther (Harper and Brothers)
Letters of Franklin D. Roosevelt by permission of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt
Michigan Magic by John T. Flynn (Harpers Magazine, December 1933)
Wild Wheel, The by Garet Garrett (Pantheon Books, Inc.)

Wayne State University Press thanks Frank Couzens Jr. for his generous permission to reprint material in this book.

http://wsupress.wayne.edu/

The James Couzens in Independent Man was not the James Couzens I knew. I was his first grandchild, born in 1924, and probably because I was a first grandchild I received a lot of attention and many favors. My grandfather loved all of his grandchildren, and we loved him. We knew him as Daddy Jim.

In the summer, our family lived at Wabeek Farms, as did my aunt and uncle and their children, the Yaw family. On Sunday mornings I looked forward to my grandfather picking me up for a ride in his station wagon. He would show me his fields, the cows, the chickens, and the creamery. One Sunday he drove by the little cemetery on Middlebelt Road and told me that was where he would be buried. This was not where they buried him.

He had a smooth and effective way of correcting my poor manners. One day while having dinner at his home, he observed me trying to cut my meat with my elbows up in the air. He asked, Are you trying to fly, Frank?

Once he took us grandchildren to the Bloomfield Hills Country Club for lunch, as a treat. My grandfather didnt think that anyone should have to eat spinach, so he was really perplexed when we all ordered spinach. He didnt know how much we wanted to be like Popeye.

From the Senate he wrote to me in his beautiful handwriting. I did not fully appreciate those letters at the time. My mother, Margaret Lang Couzens Slattery, would see to it that I would write him back, usually when I was trying to listen to a Detroit Lions game. The writing had to be neat, the lines straight, and the spelling perfect. This required many rewrites, which decreased my appreciation for my grandfathers thoughtfulness.

Four generations of Couzens men. From left to right: James Joseph Couzens, Frank Couzens, Frank Couzens Jr., and James Couzens.

I truly looked forward to being with him; he was fun. On a couple of occasions, I was invited to go on a Great Lakes cruise with him, my grandmother, and my Aunt Betty. During each of two summers in the late 1930s Grandfather chartered a beautiful yacht. One was the Buccaneer and the other was the Trudeon. These yachts were too large to dock in most harbors. They would drop anchor and we would go ashore in one of the launches. Once we went ashore in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to meet one of my grandfathers colleagues, Senator LaFollette. This was before ship-to-shore radiotelephones; each yacht had a radioman or a signalman, and Morse code was the way communications were received and sent. We knew by flashing signal lights when to meet the Senator on shore, and Morse code radio transmissions were how my grandfather received the morning news and communications from shore. It was also very exciting, especially for a teen, to be in the Chicago harbor in 1934 the night John Dillinger was shot. We wondered the next day if the shots we heard in the night were the same that killed the infamous gangster.

We did not hear about my grandfathers business dealings or his Senate agenda. He loved his farm and his Ford station wagon. The lesson from Daddy Jim was, Do it right, and Fulfill your commitments. I am still working on these lessons.

Frank Couzens Jr.

January 2002

INTRODUCTION

Independent Man: The Life of James Couzens and I have been friends since 1958 when it was used in the preparation of my doctoral dissertation on Henry Ford. My copy cost $5.95. Present-day buyers pay more, but they, too, have made a sound investment.

Independent Man, a perfect title, has been out of print for many years (its publisher, Charles Scribners Sons, does not know how long it has been unavailable or even the number of copies that were originally printed). Kudos to the Wayne State University Press for reprinting the only book-length biography of one of Michigans most remarkable men.

Born in Chatham, Ontario, in 1872, Couzens moved to Detroit in 1890. Able, exacting, truculent, he had a dont-tread-on-me attitude reinforced by outspokenness and a terrible temper. On the job, wags said, when he smiled his annual smile, the ice broke up on the Great Lakes.

Couzens was a paradox. All business from his bump-toed shoes to his derby hat, he was a loving family man with compassionate, even tender, feelings toward children. His children and grandchildren called him Daddy Jim. A capitalist multimillionaire, he had profoundly democratic instincts, and earned an unparalleled reputation as a radical. He was a dragon at the cashbox, but gave away most of his fortune. Although appreciative of publicity, he was tactless with the press, characteristically ordering the