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Henry Ford and His Employees: Work with Soy

A Special Exhibit - The History of Soy Pioneers Around
the World - Unpublished Manuscript

by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi

©Copyright
2004 Soyinfo Center, Lafayette, California

Henry Ford, born 30 July 1863 on a farm near Dearborn, Michigan, was
one of America's foremost soybean and soyfood pioneers. From the late
1920s until many years after his death in 1947, Ford's name was closely
linked with soybeans, for he developed a host of new ways to use the crop
industrially and was one of the most creative of the original soyfoods
pioneers. In those days when soyfoods were not yet respectable (are they
yet?), Ford had to take a lot of abuse and become the butt of many jokes
and newspaper cartoons for his firm belief in the soybean. A man of great
vision and influence, Ford and his huge publicity machine, plus his unique
ability to attract media attention, gave soybeans and soyfoods extensive
and exciting nationwide publicity. He reached both farmers and the general
public in an area when soy was still largely unknown.

Early Research with Soybean Oil and Meal. Ford was deeply
interested in finding ways of relating new technology to agriculture as
part of his lifelong efforts to improve the lot of farmers, who were among
his best customers for both Ford cars and Fordson tractors. This is where
his extensive research with soybeans began. In 1928 Ford became interested
in a new agricultural concept, farm chemurgy, which applies chemistry and
allied sciences to transform farm crops into new industrial products. Ford
believed "that industry and agriculture are natural partners," that
industry would increasingly turn to the soil for many of its raw
materials, and that eventually many components of finished cars and
tractors could come from farms. He declared in about 1933-34, "If we want
the farmer to be our customer, we must find a way to be his customer"
(Ref??). In 1935 Ford played host to 300 leading agriculturists,
scientists, and industrialists, who met in Dearborn to organize the
National Farm Chemurgic Council, which set in motion the whole chemurgic
movement.

In 1929, when the Great Depression hit America--and especially American
farmers--Ford set out to develop new ways to help farmers out of the hard
times. In that year, he built a large laboratory in Greenfield Village,
which was part of the Edison Institute of Technology in Dearborn,
Michigan. Thomas Edison (then over 80 years old and Ford's greatest hero,
after whom the Institute had been named) was a frequent visitor and
consultant. At the laboratory Ford and his researchers began experiments
to find a farm crop that could be grown in Michigan and that showed
promise for use in industry and as a food. In December 1931, after
extensive tests on virtually every farm crop known, the soybean was chosen
as the most hopeful contender, since it was rich in both oil and protein,
had a residual fiber amenable to many uses, was low in water, and stored
well. One day at about this time, according to Bob Smith, one-time manager
of the Ford farms, Mr. Ford wandered into the laboratory and picked up a
copy of The Soybean by C.V. Piper and W.J. Morse (1923); he sat
down and read it from cover to cover. When he finished he encouraged his
researchers to go ahead at full speed, concentrating their efforts on soy.
In keeping with his policy of producing raw materials as near as possible
to the point of processing, Ford was soon encouraging farmers in southern
Michigan to plant plenty of soybean, with the assurance that the Ford
Motor Company would do everything possible to provide a market for
them.

Ford's two top soybean researchers during this testing period had been
Robert Allen Boyer, head of the laboratory studying industrial
applications, and Dr. Edsel Ruddiman, doing soyfoods research. Boyer, born
on 30 September 1909 in Toledo, Ohio, had moved to South Sudbury,
Massachusetts when his father had been hired by Ford to run the nation's
oldest hotel there, the Wayside Inn. Ford, who had a real eye for
promising young talent, had "discovered" Boyer at the Inn in 1925 during
one of Ford's frequent visits there. Attracted by the boy's keen, active
mind, Ford had suggested to Boyer that, instead of following his plans to
enter Andover prep school and then Dartmouth College, he enroll in the new
Henry Ford Trade School and participate in its unique work-study program
at the adjacent huge River Rouge auto factory. Boyer accepted the idea and
after attending the trade school from 1927-1929 he graduated at age 21, a
promising research chemist; he took his first job as head of the new
soybean lab at the Edison Institute. Ford liked to call the Edison
Institute (which was both a school and a research center) the "School for
Inventors." He once said he would like to put a sign over the front door
which would read "Place for Damn Fool Experiments," although he never
did.

Dr. Edsel Ruddiman, a close boyhood pal of Ford's, formerly dean of the
School of Pharmacy at Vanderbilt University, and an excellent scientist,
had started his soyfoods research with Ford in about 1927, and now had a
lab near to Boyer's. Ruddiman was the man who got Ford interested in
soyfoods; in gratitude, Ford gave Ruddiman's first name, Edsel, to his
first son. Ford soon became deeply interested in the fact that soyfoods
had been used for thousands of years as a key source of high-quality,
low-cost protein by millions of people in East Asia.

Ford's researchers were pioneers in developing processes and equipment
for the solvent extraction of soy oil. In the late 1920s the first solvent
systems had come to be used in the US after having been developed in
Germany. Extraction using gasoline solvents existed on a commercial scale
in Germany but was not yet in use in the US, so Boyer and his staff had to
develop the equipment. In about 1932 they built a small solvent extractor
to separate the bean into soy oil and protein-rich meal. The oil
eventually became the most important commercial soy product on Ford cars.
Previously the cars had been finished with five to eight coats of lacquer,
each of which had to be sanded and smoothed by hand. Starting in 1934,
this was replaced with a synthetic baked enamel paint, which contained
roughly 35% soy oil, and saved considerable time and money. In 1935 more
than 1,000,000 gallons of soy oil were used in enamel paints for Ford
cars. Another 540,000 gallons were made into glycerine and used in shock
absorbers, and 200,000 gallons were used in the foundry as a sand binder
in the manufacture of cores. It took 78,000 acres of soybeans to yield all
this oil; 12,000 of these acres were grown by Ford.

The protein-rich defatted meal also began to show exciting new
possibilities. As early as 1915 Dodd was granted a US patent for making
plastic materials from soybean meal, and in 1917 and 1918 Satow (a
Japanese) was granted a whole series of patents for soybean plastics.
Ford's researchers found that when their defatted soybean meal was mixed,
in a new process, with phenol and formaldehyde, it reacted to form a
thermoplastic resin, which could be molded under pressure to make
nonstructural plastic parts for Ford's cars: plastic horn buttons,
gearshift knobs, coil cases, distributor heads, accelerator foot pedals,
glove compartment doors, and tractor seats. Even steering wheels were
attempted, but they were not as food as the hard rubber type. The new
parts molded very solidly, and could be finished like animal horn to take
a high polish. Many pleasing colors and effects were obtained. Like
ancient alchemists, Ford and Boyer were transforming soybeans into tractor
parts, which were then used to help farm the soybeans used to grow more
tractor and auto parts . . . an elegant, decentralized renewable cycle.
Each new molded plastic part added to the car required 7,200 more acres of
soybean per year. During 1932 and 1933 Ford spent more than $1,250,000 on
his new soybean projects. In December 1933 Fortune magazine
reported that Ford was now "as much interested in the soya bean as he is
in the V-8." By 1935 a bushel (60 pounds) of soybeans went into the paint
and molded plastic parts of every Ford car.

The development of the soy protein plastic was followed by the
construction of a building 400 feet long in the River Rouge plant, where
commercial production could take place. Space for 400 molding machines was
provided, as well as for equipment to produce 80,000 pounds of the molding
material each day. The new unit, which cost $4 million, was Ford's answer
to the questions of the permanence of the new products. By 1936 some of
the trim on the new Ford V-8 was made of soybean plastic, causing one
humorist to remark that "Ford had discovered soybeans were his 'bumper
crop'" (Ref??).

Ford was now more interested than ever in finding new ways of bringing
agriculture and industry closer together. As Ford saw the world of the
future, every farmer would become prosperous by running his own little
"cottage industry" (as Ford called it), that took the soybeans the farmer
grew in his fields and transformed them into one or more raw materials for
sale to industry or foods for sale to grocery stores. In this
decentralized society there would be no need for animals; the barns would
house the cottage industries and serve to store grain. Prior to 1934 Ford
had developed a small solvent crushing mill that could be installed in an
ordinary (or abandoned) farm barn. The machinery was simple and could be
easily installed at low cost; much of it was standard piping. Only the
crushing rolls and a few pipe fittings had to be purchased. It used about
100 gallons of high-grade gasoline or naptha solvent and required a total
investment of $1,500-$2,000 (Sweinhart 1934; Markley and Goss 1944).

Soy made nationwide headlines at the "Century of Progress" World's Fair
held in Chicago all summer in 1934. Ford bought in an entire barn from his
childhood home (it had been built by his father in 1863), planted a plot
of soybeans around it, put a sign "The Industrialized American Barn" over
the barn door, and set up inside it in an elaborate soy display featuring
one of his small farm-scale solvent extraction plants and a soyfoods
kitchen. Over a million people viewed low-technology soy oil production
and the molding of soy protein into plastic parts. The soy oil, produced
on the spot, was used to fuel a diesel engine, which ran a generator that
produced all the electricity for the display! An especially tasty variety
of large-seeded vegetable-type soybeans was deep-fried and served like
salted peanuts to visitors, providing most with their first taste of
soybeans. Similar exhibits were shown at various state, regional, and
world fairs during the 1930s. (The cottage industry solvent plant concept,
although interesting, was not economically viable so it never got off the
ground.)

Ford, Ruddiman, and Soyfoods. Ford's interest in soyfoods began
in the early 1930s and stemmed from the interest and work of Dr. Ruddiman.
The two men's earliest soyfoods extravaganza was the press luncheons and
dinners that they developed to publicize the experimentation with soy. The
first was served (to 30 wary reporters) at the Chicago World's Fair in
1934; two others were served prior to 1943. Every course consisted
partially or wholly of soy (Dahlinger 1978). Ruddiman's meatless menu,
accompanied by a recipe for each dish served, read:

Tomato juice seasoned with soy sauce

Celery stuffed with soybean cheese

Puree of soybean

Salted soybean

Soybean crackers

Soybean croquettes with tomato sauce

Buttered green soybeans

Pineapple ring with soybean cheese and soybean dressing

Soybean bread with soybean butter

Apple pie with soy crust

Cocoa with soymilk

Assorted soybean cookies, cakes, and candies

Roasted soybean coffee

Soymilk ice cream (Simonds 1938, p. 235)

Apparently not all guests shared Ford's enthusiasm for the feast. As
one wrote years later with wry humor, "Nothing we newsmen ate that day led
us to foresee that soybeans were destined to become an ingredient in many
popular food products . . . We accepted as reasonable the possibility that
the bean might become a leading cattle feed or industrial material." An
article in the Christian Science Monitor (18 August 1934) titled
"Chicago Finds that Soybeans Made into Savory Dishes Rival the Boston
Beans," noted in a similar vein, "Please pass the soybean salad." "Oh!
won't you please have some soybean soup?" "This soybean cake is delicious,
but after the soybean croquettes, soybean apple pie and soybean coffee,
you know one isn't really hungry." Dr. Ruddiman also developed a soybean
biscuit, which both Ford and white rats apparently liked, yet one of
Ford's secretaries described it with unabashed candor as "the vilest thing
ever put into human mouths" (Lewis 1972).

Out of their work in developing soyfoods banquets during the mid-1930s,
Ford and Dr. Ruddiman developed a 19-page soup-to-nuts booklet titled
"Recipes for Soy Bean Foods." One of the first of its kind in America, it
was published by the Edison Institute and contained 58 soyfoods recipes
including ones for breads, biscuits, cakes, cookies, salads, meat
substitutes, soymilk, tofu, and soy butter. Unfortunately this book was
not widely distributed. Dishes containing 25-30% soy flour were often
served at Ford's daily roundtable luncheons at the Dearborn Engineering
Laboratory, and recipes for these and other soyfoods recipes (including
tofu recipes) were published from time to time in the Ford News, to
introduce workers to soyfoods.

During the mid-1930s Ford became deeply interested in soymilk. When he
informed his first reporter that he was developing a "synthetic milk," he
was greeted with a howl of laughter and disbelief. As part of his ongoing
research on soyfoods and industrial soy products he built a demonstration
soymilk plant in Greenfield Village and it produced several hundred
gallons of soymilk daily. It was most popular among Ford's Filipino
employees; the addition of a little banana oil was said to improve the
flavor. After World War II started, the soymilk process was taken over by
one of the soy dairy workers, Bob Smith. He built a private soy dairy in
Dearborn and sold his soymilk for use in local baked goods, frostings, and
the like, and to a big bakery in Detroit. The operation was so successful
that, soon after it started, a very large and well-known food company in
Buffalo, Rich Products, started the same process. One of Bob Smith's
workers went there and made soymilk, coffee creamers, and the like. In
1940 Ruddiman presented a paper on "Possibilities of Soybean Milk" at the
annual meeting of the American Soybean Association.

Ford loved soymilk. He was constantly inviting his friends and research
assistants to sample it. He kept soymilk in his refrigerator and gave his
recipe away to friends. He liked it best sweetened with a little maple
syrup, sorghum syrup, or honey. He loved to show his friends letters he
had received from doctors who were grateful for his experiments on
developing soymilk for babies who were allergic to cow's milk. Ford also
used his soymilk to make tofu (Simonds 1938).

Ford's interest in soyfoods can apparently be traced back to 1923 for
by that year, according to his biographers Nevins and Hill (1957) the Ford
company stores sold soy flour breads and canned fresh green soybeans. No
indication is given as to the source of these early soy products. Ford's
interest in soyfoods reached its peak during the mid-1930s. Dahlinger
(1978) reports that Ford would talk about soyfoods with almost everyone he
met. When he went to others' homes, the cooks would be instructed to sneak
some soybeans into as many dishes as possible--the soup, salad, peas, or
vegetable dishes. In their homes, both Ford and Boyer liked to eat roasted
soynuts, natural breads made with soy flour, soybean pies and soups, tofu,
and tofu cottage cheese (sometimes made with the acid-precipitated curds
from the soy protein isolate process to which salt and other seasonings
were added).

During the 1930s, anyone visiting Greenfield Village came away with a
knowledge of soy flour, soy grits, and other soyfoods. Soy flour was used
in many foods sold to visitors at the Village: breads, rolls, muffins,
biscuits, cakes, and cookies. Also popular with visitors were the salted
soynuts, made by soaking whole soybeans in water, deep-frying them,
salting lightly, then packaging like salted peanuts. Another favorite was
soybean candies coated with a mixture of soy lecithin and chocolate. Dr.
Ruddiman also developed canned fresh green soybeans (Bansei variety) and
produced 590 cans in 1935 and 1,000 in 1936 (Simonds 1938).

Ford's interest in soyfoods is best understood when viewed against his
lifelong and unusually strong interest in diet and health. Full of energy,
lean as a split rail fence, well tanned, and in good physical condition,
he was the picture of health. Ford (and Boyer) did not smoke or drink and
he waged many a public crusade against these evils. He banned smoking in
his plants and discouraged drinking; workers at his plants were actually
fired if they were caught doing either. In the early 1900s he became a
member of the Committee of Fifty to Study the Tobacco Problem (which
included J.H. Kellogg, another soyfoods pioneer) and helped produce one of
the first educational motion pictures warning of the dangers of tobacco
smoking. He loved American folk dancing. At one period in his life, he
regularly jogged three miles in the morning and ate his first meal at one
o'clock in the afternoon. He challenged scores of people, particularly
reporters, to foot races, and only the most fleet footed could stay with
him over 100 yards. He was still racing when he was 80 years old (Nevins
and Hill 1963, p. 229). At times he supported vegetarianism. As early as
1919-1920 he said that the world would be better off without meat. In 1922
he claimed that "chicken is fit only for hawks." He disliked quadrapeds,
finding them unnecessary and inefficient. He called the cow the crudest
machine in the world. He said, "We don't need cows. We can make milk and
meat substitutes out of soybeans." Yet for most of his life Ford enjoyed
meat (especially steaks) as much as most Americans. Ford preached that
sugar was dangerous for the body. His wife suffered from arthritis and he
sought diets to help her. His well-publicized dietary fancies, too, varied
almost from year to year. Yet Ford believed that whole, natural foods were
of the greatest benefit to health. Frederick Stare, of the Harvard
University Department of Nutrition, has even classed Ford (along with
Sylvester Graham, Horace Fletcher, John D. Rockefeller, and George Bernard
Shaw) as one of America's original "food faddists" (Ref??; Deutsch 1961
and 1967, "Nuts Among the Berries).

Development of the Plastic Car. In 1935 the first commercial
plant for manufacturing industrial-grade soy protein isolates was built by
the Glidden Company in Chicago, Illinois. Most of this soy isolate was
used by the paper-making industry for the coating and sizing of paper.
Casein technology provided the most advanced knowledge of protein isolate
utilization in those days and served as a guideline in soy protein
development. The first high-quality soy protein isolates designed for
food use were produced by Central Soya in Oct. 1959 and then
Ralston Purina in about 1963 (1960??). These would later be used in making
meat analogs and other food ingredients.

From 1937-1939 Ford built three relatively small commercial soybean oil
solvent extraction plants in Michigan, at the Rouge plant and at Saline
and Milan. These were used for producing soy oil and meal as well as for
research and demonstration. They used 6-24 tons of raw soybeans a day. By
1937 Ford was producing 300,000 gallons of soy oil a year for use in car
enamels (Soybean Digest 1947). Since this left him more meal than
he could use, he was selling the meal; he ran ads for it in the early
1940s in the Soybean Digest. One advantage of the new solvent
system was that the mild heating required caused little denaturation of
the soy protein, which was important in making soy isolates and later,
spun soy fibers.

To supply his plants, Ford was also growing his own soybeans. In 1932
and 1933 the Ford Farms (with help from Floyd Radford) planted 300
varieties of soybeans on some 8,000 acres of farms he had bought in
southern Michigan. (Also in 1932 Ford acquired a 2,000-acre estate in
Boreham, Essex, England; the first successful crops of soybeans in England
were grown there by J.L. North in 1933-34.) By 1935 Ford had 12,000 acres
of soybeans in Michigan and by 1936 he had 60,000 acres. By 1939 the Ford
Motor Company was harvesting about 100,000 bushels of its own soybeans; it
had to buy an additional 500,000 bushels plus large amounts of soy oil.
Ford eventually helped raise Michigan's soybean production to 3,000,000
bushels a year. A soybean named "Ford" was introduced in its namesake's
honor in 1958, eleven years after Ford's death.

In 1936 Ford hosted meetings of the Farm Chemurgic Council in Detroit
and Dearborn, Michigan; 1,000 people attended, as against 400 the previous
year. One entire section of the program was devoted to the soybean, which
stole the show. Six papers were presented and speakers included Mr. E.D.
Funk, Sr. and Clark Bradley. On 12 October 1936 Time magazine
stated: "The No. 1 U.S. soybean man is Henry Ford."

During the 1930s and 1950s, Ford and his researchers worked closely
with the American Soybean Association. In 1940 Ford hosted the annual ASA
convention at Dearborn; it turned out to be a turning point in ASA
history. Attendees toured the Ford soybean fields, saw solvent extraction
plants, and heard the story of the planned use of plastic bodies for
automobiles. Ruddiman presented a paper on soymilk.

American soybeans attained their most sensational media publicity to
date in late 1941 in connection with Ford's "soybean plastic car." As
early as 1934 Ford had first remarked that "Someday you and I will see the
day when auto bodies will be grown down on the farm." He intended to "grow
cars rather than mine them." By late 1937 work had started on the project
and Boyer had developed a curved, structured plastic sheet which Ford
hoped would replace steel in auto bodies. A few weeks later the magnate
called in reporters, jumped up and down on the unbending sheet, and
triumphantly exclaimed, "If that was steel it would have caved in." He
added, "almost all new cars will soon be made of such things as soybeans"
(Nevins and Hill 1963, p. 283). In 1940 Boyer installed a plastic trunk
lid on one of Ford's personal cars. In November 1940, Ford, always the
genius at obtaining free publicity, again called in the press. He startled
reporters by gleefully taking an ax (actually he used the square back end,
covered with a leather guard) and with all of his lanky 77-year-old might,
whalloping the trunk lid to prove that, unlike steel, the new plastic
would not dent, shatter, or crack. He then invited them to try an ax on
their own cars! Finally he predicted that his company would be
mass-producing plastic bodied autos within 1-3 years. "I wouldn't be
surprised," he declared, "if our (soybean research) laboratory comes to be
the most important building of our entire plant." A picture of Ford's ax
swinging stunt and accompanying wire service stories appeared in most of
the nation's newspapers. Time magazine (11 Nov. 1940) ran a full
page story entitled "Plastic Fords," and Life and Fortune
magazines each carried a large photo. Time described how, unlike
most commercial plastics, Boyer's sheets looked like polished steel.
Consisting of 70% cellulose and 30% resin binder pressed into cloth, the
new rust-free, dent-proof plastic was reportedly 50% lighter and 50%
cheaper (to fabricate??) than steel; it could absorb, without denting, a
blow ten times as great as steel could stand. When bent like a jackknife,
the plastic panels snap back into place when released. The color, being
inbred in the plastic, eliminates painting and provides a finish as
enduring as the panel itself. Fenders, when released, would rebound from
minor collisions like rubber balls. Ford went on to say that if each of
the one million cars he produced each year were outfitted with his usual
plastic molded parts and enamel paint, this would consume 700,000 bushels
of soybeans; this was, however, less than 1% of the entire US crop that
year.

Soon plastic trunk lids were installed on many of the Ford company
cars. In November 1940 Ford gave Boyer the authority to order a complete
set of very expensive dies to make an entire plastic auto body. Shortly
thereafter Boyer stated publicly his belief that the plastic car would be
able to compete economically with steel for, although the raw material
cost was higher (above said it was 50% cheaper??), it was less expensive
to fabricate and finish it, and it saved gas by making the car some 30%
lighter than a steel car.

Carrying his dream a step further, on 13 August 1941, at the climax of
Dearborn's annual community festival, Ford dramatically unveiled a
handmade car with a complete plastic body. He also invited the press to
his 14-course soyfoods luncheon. The timing was perfect. Americans were
just starting to become aware of plastics and of the fact that a steel
shortage threatened to cripple the auto industry's nondefense production.
The plastic car was made by attaching 14 molded plastic panels, each 3/8
inch thick, to a welded tubular steel frame; it weighed 700 to 1,000
pounds (23-33% less than its steel-bodied counterpart). Again the car (and
soybeans) got tremendous nationwide publicity and stirred the imagination
of editorial writers as had few Ford-related events for some years. Many
newspapers regarded the experimental vehicle as revolutionary. The New
York Times thought it "may have a great influence on the automobile
industry." Other media suggested that he use the new plastic for
dent-proof battleship armor or for rust-proof coffins.

The plastic-bodied car quickly generated its share of jokes. People
said that if the auto didn't run, Ford could eat it. Or he could have his
car and eat it too. Farmers began to ask each other what they were growing
this year, Fords or Chryslers. The Cleveland Press wondered why
Ford didn't strengthen his plastic by adding spinach. In 1943 several of
these jokes were dusted off when a goat actually ate an Illinois license
plate made of soybean-derived fiberboard.

What was lost (or perhaps deliberately omitted) in all the great
publicity for soybeans was that, whereas soy protein had been a fairly
important component in the early structural plastic panels, it ended up
being only a very minor element, largely because no way was found to make
it completely waterproof (Ford Home Almanac 1941). The real
importance was that a renewable resource was now being used to make car
bodies. Nevertheless the notion of a "soybean car" struck the popular
fancy and hung on.

The outbreak of World War II and the suspension of automobile
production forced Ford to abandon his efforts to mass-produce plastic car
bodies. Until 1943, however, he maintained that he would build them as
soon as the war was over, even though engineers had run into problems; the
plastic ended up costing much more than steel because the panels took a
long time to cure in their molds. Ford died in 1946 and, according to the
Ford Motor Company, the idea just seems to have gotten lost in the files
(Atlanta Journal and Constitution 1973). But others were soon to
follow Ford's lead; in 1953 General Motors introduced the first car with a
plastic body, the highly successful Chevrolet Corvette. Studebaker's
plastic Avanti appeared in 1962. The Ford Company was using an average of
29 pounds of plastic in its cars by 1962, 50 pounds by 1968, 120 pounds by
1972, and 200 pounds by 1980. But whereas Ford wanted his plastic cars
made from renewable crop resources, the new plastics are merely
chemicals/synthetics.

Boyer's Soybean Wool and Edible Protein Fibers. Of the many
soybean projects initiated by Ford and Boyer, the one that has probably
had the greatest impact on soyfoods in America today started with the
development of a synthetic wool from soy protein. The world's first
synthetic protein fiber was developed and introduced in Italy in 1936.
Called Lanital, it was made from casein (milk protein). Still all known
protein fibers (wool, silk, casein) were of animal origin. Rayon, the
basis of a burgeoning new industry at the time, was made of cellulose . .
. as, of course, was cotton. In 1928 Cone and Brown had taken out a patent
in the state of Washington for producing soy protein isolates from soy
meal by extracting the protein with alkali and sodium sulfite, then
precipitating it with an acid to make an isolate for use in plywood glues.
This patent started an entire industry. By early 1933?? Boyer had set up a
pilot plant at the Edison Institute for producing soy protein isolates on
a small scale using the meal from the Ford solvent plant and a new
process, not under license. Some tests were done using these isolates in
molded plastic parts, but defatted soy meal was found to work almost as
well at lower cost. By 1938, however, Boyer had used the soy isolates to
produce the world's first plant protein fiber. At the American Soybean
Association meeting that year he stole the show, announcing "I am able to
display for the first time in a skein form a fiber made from soybean
protein . . . Two acres of land will produce 400 pounds of soybean
protein." Boyer's fiber resembled a soft wool; it was loose and fluffy,
white to tan in color with medium luster, and had a soft, warm feel,
natural crimp, and high degree of resilience. It had 80% the strength of
wool, took the same dyes, had good elongation, and did not wet as easily
as wool. It could be used for upholstery in cars, filling in felt hats, or
clothing. At the New York World's Fair in 1939, Ford had a display
featuring a machine spinning soy protein fibers. (Note that term
"spinning" is used by the textile industry for production of synthetic
fibers like rayon; actually it is an extrusion/coagulation process.) By
1938 Ford sported a necktie (his favorite 75th birthday present) in which
half of the material was soybean "wool." Three years later he made a
public appearance in his treasured "soybean suit" (made of 25% soybean
"wool" and 75% sheep's wool) with which, reported the Detroit Times
(1941), he was "as delighted as a boy with his first long pants," Both he
and soybeans garnered huge amounts of free publicity from the event. Boyer
had made his wife a coat of the same material in 1940. In that same year
Boyer, only 31, headed a staff of 25 research assistants whose average age
was only 24. For his many outstanding achievements, the US Chamber of
Commerce voted Boyer the Outstanding Young Man of 1940 (Garfield
1941).

As World War II approached, it suddenly became apparent that almost all
protein products derived from animals (including wool, leather, meats,
dairy products, and eggs) were going to be in short supply. Rationing
plans for some items went into effect and prices skyrocketed. By 1939 the
Ford Motor Company was importing 250,000,000 pounds of wool from Australia
and Argentina, and there were fears that the supply might be cut if a war
broke out. Prior to 1940 most of the upholstery for Ford cars had been
made from sheep's wool but in that year Boyer developed an improved
synthetic wool made of soy protein fiber. A pilot plant with a capacity of
1,000 pounds per day of the soybean "wool" was built and soon a fabric
containing 25% soybean wool and 75% sheep's wool was used in the sidewall
upholstery of many Ford cars. By May 1942, a new plant for making soy wool
with five times the capacity of the pilot plant was under construction.
Early in the war years, Ford had tried unsuccessfully to interest the
armed forces in making uniforms out of soy fiber fabric. Ford persisted in
his research until mid-1943, hoping to develop a textile that could sell
at prices competitive with wool. Unable to do so he sold his fabrication
process and machinery to the Drackett Company of Cincinnati, in November
1943. Neither Drackett nor any other firm has been commercially successful
in producing textile fibers from soy protein. In 1947 Boyer, now director
of scientific research for The Drackett Company, wrote an article for the
Soybean Digest titled "A Modern Shirt from Ancient Soybean,"
summarizing this work.

All of the research on soybean "wool" led to an unexpected and
extremely important discovery. The process Boyer used to make the soybean
"wool" was basically the same process used today to make meat analogs from
spun soy protein fibers. For the sake of simplicity, we will describe the
modern process. Dehulled soybeans are crushed to make flakes, while oil is
removed with a solvent at low temperature. The defatted flakes are mixed
vigorously with caustic soda or lime and water to extract the protein,
then the fiber is removed by centrifugation, and the protein is
precipitated at the isoelectric point of minimum protein solubility (with
sulfur dioxide gas or phosphoric acid) to form curds. (These closely
resemble the curds used to make tofu.) The fresh (undried) curds are mixed
with alkaline sodium hydroxide to form a spinning solution or "dope"
having the consistency of honey. This is pumped under pressure through
15,000 pinpoint holes in a 4-inch-diameter metal spinerette plate into an
acid-salt coagulating bath (phosphoric acid and sodium chloride), which
precipitates and denatures the protein, causing it to congeal into slender
individual protein monofilaments. The 75,000 fibers from five spinerettes
in one bath are gathered into a large "tow" which is run over rollers that
stretch the fibers and orient the molecules, thus giving them greater
tensile strength and elasticity while reducing brittleness. The tows are
then chemically treated to harden and strengthen them??, washed in hot and
cold water (agitated by bubbles from below) to remove the acid and salt,
and cut to length. For wool, they are dried.

When making the synthetic soybean "wool," after washing out the
chemicals with water, it was the usual practice to taste the fibers to see
that they had been thoroughly washed. One day at the Ford plant in 1942,
Boyer, while sampling the fibers for the wool, suddenly realized that
these same soy protein fibers, if made tender by omitting the protein
denaturation, hardening, and insolubilization, could be used as a basic
ingredient in making meatlike textured soy protein foods. Already he
developed an analog for the protein fibers that grow on the outside
of a sheep (wool), why not develop an analog for those on the
inside, a meatless meat or meat analog? Ford had always said that
since food was the most important basic commodity, it ought to be as
inexpensive as possible. Boyer realized he had stumbled on an idea of
tremendous potential importance that might offer a revolutionary yet
simple new way to produce low-cost yet appealing protein foods. The idea
would not leave him, so he explained it to Ford and Ford was extremely
interested. Unfortunately, however, the war was now on and, as Boyer
commented years later, "It seemed like such a far-out idea, I decided not
to pursue it until after the war." The pilot plant for making soy protein
fiber was shut down and used for producing aircraft engines.

Henry Ford's Passing and Legacy. On 7 April 1947 Henry Ford died
at age 85 in his home at Dearborn, Michigan. The young man who dropped out
of school at age 15 had gone on to become the creator of modern
assembly-line mass production, the man who "put America on wheels." Ford
epitomized that sort of old-fashioned American pragmatic inventiveness
that is America's special genius. He was and remains an American folk
hero. And because soybeans and soyfoods were one of his special interests,
they basked in the light of his reflected glory. Ford's chemical and media
alchemy had totally transformed the once lowly soybean into a subject of
great interest to millions of people. Boyer later recalled, "Back in the
1930s, many people thought our work with soybeans was crazy." But Ford was
smart enough to see the potential long before most others. For years he
would drive the five miles from his home, "Fairlane," to be in Boyer's
office by 8:00 A.M. to check on latest developments. He gave Boyer carte
blanche with money and supported any project Boyer wanted to pursue. Boyer
had tremendous admiration for Ford and deeply enjoyed working with and for
him. Their joint experiments greatly enhanced the dignity of the once
lowly soybean, and as the new "noble bean" began to make headlines, the
world began to take notice. Over the years, Ford spent an estimated $4
million on soybean research plus an additional $10 million on physical
plant and equipment to make soy products. Ford's interest in and
cultivation of the soybean proved an important stimulus to expansion of
soybean acreage. Although Ford's free-ranging predictions on other
subjects were often wide of the mark, his frequent assertion that
"soybeans will make millions of dollars of added income for farmers . . .
and provide industry with materials to make needed things nobody even
knows about now" has been proved correct by the passage of time. In 1947,
when Ford died, American farmers were producing about 200 million bushels
of soybeans. By 1980 they were producing over ten times that many
(2.2 billion bushels). Numerous writers have commented on Ford's
contribution to soy:"

"Ford has done more to promote the soybean industry in the United
States than perhaps any one person in the nation." Kalamazoo
(Michigan) Gazette, 14 December 1939.

"When history is written and the achievements of Henry Ford are
chronicled, the Soy Bean victory will stand out as his foremost
contribution to mankind." Detroit Legal Courier, 1941.

"Through his experimentation and the publicity he gave it, Henry Ford
made a substantial contribution to the increased utilization of the
soybean. His work in this field, started when he was in his late sixties
and carried forward until he was eighty years of age, is perhaps the
outstanding achievement of his declining years. Of all Ford's
accomplishments, it is possible that none pleased him more than in helping
to prove that there was magic in a beanstalk" (Nevins and Hill, 1963).

Since for more than a decade Ford's highly publicized work with
soybeans had made headlines, especially in Michigan and the Midwest, many
people came to believe that large amounts of soybeans flowed from local
farms to Ford's auto and tractor factories (Lewis 1972). Such was not the
case. The publicity generated by Ford's soy project was far out of
proportion to its actual importance or magnitude. Although Ford made a
sincere and prolonged effort to use soybeans in the auto industry, the
industry actually used only a minute fraction of the crop. Nevertheless
the publicity Ford generated was to be of lasting aid to the fledgling
soybean industry, and the research on soy protein foods, carried on by
Boyer, would soon begin to show great promise. Boyer also later commented
that if Ford had lived longer, he would surely have been active in
promoting soyfoods and thus would have greatly accelerated their
introduction into American diets.

Boyer's Development of Meat Analogs. Throughout the war years,
the idea of using spun protein fibers as the basis of human foods, meat
analogs, returned to Boyer again and again. As mentioned above, in 1943
the Drackett Company in Cincinnati, Ohio (which made Drano and Windex)
bought out the Ford protein spinning operation, taking the process, the
equipment, and Robert Boyer with them to Cincinnati. Boyer, now Drackett's
director of research, told the company of his interest in producing foods
from soy proteins, but Drackett was only interested in industrial
products. In early 1949 Drackett sold the soybean operations (to whom??;
in mid-1957 sold agricultural operations to ADM) and Boyer went off to
work on his own.

On 28 September 1949 Boyer filed for his first patent on edible protein
fiber (application serial no. 118,445). It was issued in 1951, then
rewritten that year in a much broader format and issued in final form in
1954 (No. 2,682,466). According to this patent (which expired in 1971 and
has come to be regarded as a classic), no one can use a man-made protein
fiber in a food without violating the basic claim. Basically the patent
called for the use of various proteins (including soy, casein, and peanut
protein) to make edible protein fibers ?? that could be transformed into
meat analogs or extenders that are low in saturated fats and virtually
free of cholesterol.

In September 1949 Boyer took his patent idea to his first company,
Worthington Foods, Inc., a small company in Worthington, Ohio, operated by
a group of businessmen and doctors, that produced meat analogs and
vegetarian foods primarily for the Seventh-day Adventist membership and
institution. Boyer had now been on his own for over eight months and was
almost out of money. He still wasn't sure of whether the whole idea was a
screwball one or not. He later commented that if Worthington had shown no
interest, he probably would have just given up then and done something
else. Advised to keep away from the large meat companies, who might buy up
the patent and "bury" it, he went to Worthington and disclosed his concept
and a pork chop prototype. Mr. Hagle, president of Worthington, was
immediately very excited with the idea, but the company was reluctant to
take a license until there was a source of soy protein fiber. Harrison
Evans, a top Worthington employee, later recalled: "I'll never forget the
day Bob Boyer came by. They brought him down with this textured protein
wrapped in a piece of aluminum foil and all it looked like was rope. Just
unattractive, white . . . It certainly did not look like real meat."

Worthington waited, so Boyer went to Virginia Carolina Chemical Company
(VCCC) in Taftville, Connecticut; they were spinning fibers for textiles
and Boyer hoped they would be able to produce soy fibers for Worthington.
VCCC allowed Boyer to use their protein spinning pilot plant for research;
he provided his own materials. Here he made the world's first edible
protein fibers, which were used to make meat analog prototypes.
Incorporating egg albumen binder plus fats and flavorings into the spun
fibers, he fabricated the first man-made meatless pork chops and then made
hams from soy protein. After the first successful run, nearby Corn
Products Company (CPC) got very interested and ended up buying the first
license on Boyer's patent (an exclusive option), which gave Boyer his
first income from the project. Boyer then consulted for CPC for 9 months.
The first sale of commercial edible protein fiber (produced from corn
gluten) was made from CPC to Worthington (What year??) Eventually,
however, it was realized that corn gluten would not work well in foods
because of its unpleasant and dominant flavor. The project was
dropped.

Now somewhat desperate, Boyer decided to try a meat company anyway. He
went to Swift & Co. in Chicago in 1950 and they immediately liked
these idea and bought exclusive rights to the patent from 1950-1954 (in
1955 they converted to nonexclusive). In 1950, the war scarcity psychology
still prevailed. American consumers and food producers had watched in
astonishment during the war as meats became so scarce and expensive that
only a few could afford them. Thus it was easy to sell the notion that
even after the war, as world population continued to rise, plant proteins
would play an increasingly important role in diets throughout the world.
Boyer worked with Swift for five years, but in considerable secrecy. Swift
told him that if their Livestock Relations Department found out that Swift
was doing research on meat analogs," all hell would break loose."
Eventually Swift made and test marketed new soy protein products. However
in 1952-53 livestock producers in America were in such bad shape
economically that they marched on Washington, D.C. demanding a better
price for their products. Swift, fearing the possibility that the media
might get word of their new project and come out with headlines reading
"Swift Making Synthetic Meats from Soy Protein," decided to shut down the
project. None of the products was ever marketed commercially.

In 1951-52 Unilever bought a license from Boyer for spun protein
isolate production throughout the rest of the world. Boyer went to England
and worked with Unilever in their peanut protein isolate plant and
research labs near Liverpool. Here, for the first time, his process was
used in the making of sausages containing fibers of peanut protein
isolate.

In 1956 Boyer returned to America and went immediately to Worthington,
who had now been thinking about taking a license on Boyer's spinning
patent for seven years. The first food-grade soy protein isolates were
just becoming available, so the company bought the patent rights for the
health food industry and asked Boyer to work with them as a consultant.
Worthington eventually did more with Boyer's discovery than any company in
America; this story is told in Chapter 58.10.

After Worthington purchased Boyer's license, other large food companies
followed suit: Ralston Purina, General Mills, and Nabisco. General Foods
developed their own related process. In 1962 Boyer joined the research
staff of Ralston Purina as a Protein Scientist; he worked there until his
retirement in 1971, at which time he became a Protein Consultant for
Miles/Worthington.

After General Mills took a license on Boyer's product, they built a
commercial-sized fiber spinning plant at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and developed
their Bontrae line which featured Bac-O's, a spun fiber analog resembling
cooked bacon bits (Year??). The venture was impressive in scope and the
product was a real sensation, the biggest thing that had happened to
Boyer's idea to date. (The product is now made with extruded soy flour.)
The whole venture had a profound effect on the thinking of other large
food producing companies concerning soy protein foods. Boyer was now
spending 50% of his time with Worthington and 25% each with General Mills
and Ralston.

Boyer's years of research eventually began to pay off in terms of
handsome royalties from his patents, of which he now had more than thirty,
some shared with Ford. These lasted until the patent expired in 1971. Now
any company can use the protein spinning process without having to buy a
license or pay fees. In 1981 the main American companies using spun
protein fibers in foods were Worthington Foods, Dawson Mills in Minnesota
(which bought General Mills' equipment), Loma Linda Foods in California,
and Ralston Purina. In Europe there are two companies in the Netherlands,
one in Denmark (Nutana), and one in Belgium using food-grade spun protein
fibers. And there was one company in Japan (Which??).

Most manufacturers of meat analogs in the US agree that the general
market has been disappointing, but that the idea is simply ahead of its
time, which will inevitably come as meat prices continue their rapid rise.
The vegetarian or "motivated" market (and especially the Seventh-day
Adventist sector) showed a steady increase each year. No sales figures are
available on the total market size.

When asked in 1980 how he liked the newest generation of meat analogs,
Boyer replied that he found the quality disappointing, since the producers
have to make compromises in equipment and processing to keep costs down. A
researcher can get much better textures and flavors in his lab working by
hand. Another problem is the subtle beany flavors that result from
isolates made from typical defatted soy meal rather than specially
defatted soy meal that can be made to contain almost no beany flavor.
Boyer eats store-bought meat analogs (including bacon bits) from time to
time but not as a regular part of his diet. He prefers Worthington
products to Loma Linda. He likes meat too, and also uses tofu quite a
bit.

How about the future? Harkening back to the years of his work with
Ford, Boyer said in 1981, "We're at the Model T stage right now with
analogs. I'm impatient to get to the Lincoln Continental stage." He feels
that the products still have a very bright future, and that when the price
of meats rises to 10 or 20% above those of the analogs, sales will start a
period of steady growth.

Acknowledgments

I would like to give special thanks to Robert Boyer, Warren Hartman,
Dr. George Harding Sr., and the Ford Archives for their help in preparing
this chapter.

Copyright 2009

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