Robert Lacy's biography "Ford" has a brief but entertaining discussion of the making of the mural. Edsel Ford kind-of knew what he was getting into, but he didn't really expect a Marxist polemic to the dignity of labour.<p>Henry Ford senior was a complex, hateful, racist, antisemitic reactionary, prepared to hire goons with machine guns to take on strikers but also capable of investing in illiterate and monoglot immigrant workers with housing above standard for the time, and wages designed to kill his Detroit competition.<p>Crazy like a fox and a bastard to his family. He cannot have been ignorant of Diego Garcia's world view and yet.. the mural remains. I have no doubt ford senior could have killed the project if he wanted to. Henry died in 1947.<p>Ford's conflicted relationship with Edsel who was into modernist art lies at the heart of it I think: Edsel wanted to show he was above the shenanigans of his father, he funded the work. Henry bought up old time tractors and Edison lab trash for his historical museum in Dearborne. He wasn't into funding socialist artists.<p>Unlike the one Diego Rivera did for Rockerfeller, with Lenin in it, which was covered up.