"All Change!"

(See front cover)

A fair opened in Manhattan this week. From Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan came the merchants and the craftsmen. Their wares were new, bright, polished, gorgeous. Transportation was for sale. Better and cheaper. . . .

Eleven months of the year motorcars may be prosaic things of steel and glass. But in January, when the automobile fairs are held throughout the land, this prima donna of the industrial stage is greeted with acclaim and if her appearance succeeds she is well rewarded.

The merchants gathered. Feasts were arranged and salesmen were harangued to sell, sell and sell as they never had sold before, not only for their own pockets' good, or those of their employers, but for the good of the depressed U. S. (see p. 56). There was talk of the price of steel, of tariffs, tires and taxes. But most of all there was talk of transportation value: price, performance, appearance.

Passing its hurried 30 years of life, the Automotive Industry has been the most aggressive revolutionist in a world of increasing Industrial Revolution. So fast has been its pace that 100 automobile companies have started and quit. But contrary to glib predictions, there have been few casualties since 1929. The cash reserves of good years have been a bulwark against catastrophe.

The only merger of importance in 1932 occurred last autumn when, unexpectedly, Studebaker Corp. and White Motor Co. cast their lot together. A newcomer during 1933 will be Continental Motors Corp. Its markets were lost when most manufacturers began to make their own engines. When some directors warned against the company's entering the retail market Continental President William Robert Angell said, "God almighty did not give me this jaw for nothing, gentlemen."

In the leadership of the 35 companies represented in Manhattan last week (their total capital stock: $1,000,000,000). there had been few changes in 1932. Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr. still spoke for General Motors; Walter P. Chrysler for Chrysler; Alvan Macauley for Packard (and as president of Automobile Chamber of Commerce, for the Industry) ; Albert Russel Erskine for Studebaker. Henry Ford still spoke for Lincoln: his Ford is not a member of the show. Notable among the changes had been the departure of Roy Dikeman Chapin, to be U. S. Secretary of Commerce, leaving William Joseph Mc-Aneeny active leader of Hudson.* The Industry's first U. S. Ambassador, John North Willys, who wisely sold his common stock for $20,000,000 in 1929, was home from Poland and again in control of his company because it had passed its fourth consecutive preferred dividend. He is living in his Fifth Avenue home in Manhattan, but the sojourn has been punctuated by many trips to Toledo where he stays at the Toledo Club and goes to his factory at 8 a. m., often remaining until midnight. Willys-Overland is bidding sharply for a place in the less-than-$500 field.

A company-to-company shift was made by Robert Henry ("Roy") Faulkner. 46, who resigned as president of Auburn Automobile Co. and was last year made a vice president of Studebaker Corp., in charge of Fierce-Arrow sales.

Most notable personal milestone in the one-generation industry occurred when one of its pioneers chose to retire into the chairmanship of the company bearing his name. He was Charles Williams Nash, 68, who once owned 20 sheep and little else, whose fortune grew with the Industry until it was said to have made him 100 times a millionaire. Earl Hansen McCarty, 46, succeeded him as president. Mr. Nash began as a carriage-trimmer in the old Flint Road Cart Co. From 1912 through 1916 he presided over General Motors, having rehabilitated the old Buick Motor Car Co. He then formed his own company. Its home is in Kenosha, where also is the famed bedmaking Simmons Co. Scotch-descended Mr. Nash's specialty is cost-paring and Nash can now break even if it sells i.ooo cars a month. In its early years it jumped production rapidly but canny Mr. Nash sensed the tapering demand, stopped his expansion in time. During the trying third quarter ending Aug. 31, Nash came out $183,000 better than even while General Motors, whose third quarter ends in September, showed a $4,400,000 loss. Chairman Nash works no less now that he is chairman; most Nash papers pass over his pinewood desk. He is a mighty hunter, a fervent fisherman, a famed cook. These and other chiefs, the Royal Family of the Industry, were proud of their changing wares last week. For while their kingdom has reached maturity and stability there is one change that has never changed--the continual approach to cheaper and better transportation. And prouder than the Royal Family were the Industry's engineers. The Automobile Show is really their show. The new models on display were dissected a thousand times by their prying minds. Dignified men lay prostrate to gaze at the marvels of a new clutch. Nor will the observation of the engineers end in Manhattan. If Chrysler's Fred M. Zeder is curious about the new Pontiac he may have one sent to his plant and placed on his "Belgian Road." a machine which shakes and sways and jolts a car until finally some spring breaks or some nut wiggles loose. And if Packard's famed Major Jesse Gurney Vincent is curious about somebody else's chassis he may order one bent and twisted until he knows its points as well as if he had designed it. Just as inquisitive, just as skeptical, are the Industry's other engineers, including such men as Studebaker's Delmar ("Barney") Roos, Hupmobile's Frank E. Watts, Reo's Horace T. Thomas, Auburn's Herbert Snow (formerly with Winton Co.), Hudson's S. G. Baits, Franklin's E. S. Marks (designer of the improved air-cooled motor), Nash's N. E. Wahlberg.

The engineers are the Industry's prime-movers ; only constant change will appease them. None of the automotive technologists is well known to the public or cares to be. But the one most people know about is one whose whole approach to engineering is based on his credo of "change" supplemented by a belief that nothing can be taken for granted, that "A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere with progressive things." He is a tall lank man who has been found to resemble both Ichabod Crane and Abraham Lincoln. He is Charles Franklin Kettering, vice president of General Motors Corp. He invented the self-starter,* and Delco ignition and farm-lighting units,/- fathered Ethyl gasoline** and Duco./= Since he contrived the self-starter, he has far transcended tinkering gadgets. He is GM's visionary magician, perched on a high stool whose legs have grown longer and longer as the business has expanded, gazing into the future with the crystal ball of pure scientific theory. Forgiven and forgotten is his classic blunder of ten years ago, the air-cooled Chevrolet motor which cost GM 31 cool millions. Nowadays most improvements in cars are originated by independent inventors, developed by partsmakers. Mr. Kettering and his research staff have carried GM into rich fields beyond the automobile business. He was largely responsible for GM's frigidaire. If he gets his way. the next big GM sideline will be airconditioning. His fluency of speech and his position as No. 1 engineer of the biggest company have often made him the spokesman for his profession. ''Engineering," he says, "is a combination of materials and brains--the more brains the less material." *

In Detroit Inventor Kettering's domain is the big research building of General Motors Corp. The staff which calls him "Boss" (but his close friends prefer "Ket") is as large today as it was in 1929. Public appearances, consultations and the business of enjoying the millions of dollars he has earned have demanded more of Mr. Kettering's hours than ever. One of his appearances occurred last week when he spoke to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (see p. 34). As usual he spoke about his all-absorbing credo of change. "We have reason not to be afraid of the machine," he said, "for there is always constructive change, the enemy of machines, making them change to fit new conditions. . . . You have heard of Technocracy [see p. 12]. I wish I had those fellows for my competitors. I'd like to take the auto- mobile it is said they predicted could be made now that would last for 50 years. Even if never used, this automobile would be worth nothing except to the junkman in ten years, because of changes in men's ideas and tastes." So much does Mr. Kettering believe in Change's force that he would have all bond issues limited to 20 years.

As soon as Inventor Kettering graduated from Ohio State University in 1904 he threw his diploma away lest it make him think his education finished. He went to Dayton where a job in National Cash Register was awaiting him. He was told to make an electric cash register and did. His manners annoyed the late John Henry Patterson who fired him on sight time & again. The engineering department repeatedly rehired him. For while Inventor Kettering has come by a fortune in his own right he is the antithesis of the successful businessman. He may go to a formal dinner in a sports jacket and not even be aware of it. He has boarded trains without a ticket or a cent.

In a big room across the hall from his linoleum-floored office is an old, flimsy Wright airplane of early vintage. For Inventor Kettering was interested in airplanes as well as motorcars. He learned to fly in 1912. When he gave up in the early 1920's because he had "too much insurance to fly." he had accumulated more flying hours than any other private pilot.

Ever since Mr. Kettering moved into his present home he has delighted in filling it with gadgets to make life easier: buttons to open and close windows, eleven Frig-idaires, a cooling system. This became his pet hobby. Had it no Charles Franklin Kettering, GM would probably not be entering the air conditioning field now. He feels many of the developments in the temperate zone have been due to temperature-control in winter and is excited at the thought of what temperature-control in summer may bring about.

Off-hours, Mr. Kettering leads a private life that remains private. But the same credo of change fills these hours: life, like motorcars, to Mr. Kettering, must be reduced to more efficient terms. He & wife & son have gone touring in the great omnibus he made from an old Yellow Coach, fitted with all the conveniences of home and some not installed in many homes. His yacht, the Olive K., is filled with strange electric contraptions. Inventor Kettering also developed a way of synchronizing its twin screws so that it is vibrationless. Its cruises have taken him and his close friends on exploring parties in Yucatan and the South Seas and in winter the Olive K. is often off Miami where Mr. Kettering is a member of the famed "Committee of 100" for winter residents.

Feeling that nobody can look far ahead, Inventor Kettering maintains that research "is a method of finding out what people will be wanting when they are through wanting what they are wanting now." He feels there is still too much of the horseless carriage about automobiles but would blame it on the public's demands rather than on any engineering deficiency. He visions "a great express highway traversing the continent and carrying an almost fabulous stream of traffic, travelling well over a mile a minute." the cars of that not too distant future looking "no more like our cars of today than our latest models resemble those of 1900."

In this prophecy Mr. Kettering shows where motordom's endless changes are leading, just as all of his inventions point the way towards a life filled with gadgets to reduce all effort. But the first era of his automobile's transition from a buggy with an engine inserted under the driver's seat seems completed, for the Royal Family enters 1933 not with the hope of placing more & more cars on the highways but with the pious ambition of halting the seepage of cars off the highway and into dead storage or junk heaps (see below).

*But on March 4 Mr. Chapin plans to return to Hudson and to palatial home at Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich. *Invented in 1910 in the barn of Col. Edward Andrew Deeds, now chairman of National Cash Register Co., and sold to the Lelands who then owned Cadillac. One of their friends had just been killed cranking a car. Named after Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co. which was formed by Mr. Kettering and later became part of GM. **Invented in 1921 after many noxious experiments which filled the laboratories with vile odors. /=Mr. Kettering's part in the invention of Duco may be much overstated. All the transactions are shrouded in corporate history. Once Mr. Kettering was annoyed by the length of time it took to paint and dry a car. "We might be able to do it in 34 days," he was told. "An hour would be more like it," he snapped back. *Buick's innovation of last year, "Wizard Control," was engineered by the Bragg-Kliesrath division of Bendix Aviation Corp. This year's selling feature, ''No-Draft Ventilation"--panels opening outward like a French window--was done independently by the Fisher Body division. GM's new "starterator"--self starter hitched to accelerator--was brought out by Malcolm Stevenson, oldtime polo player, and John Good. Another GM development for 1933 is a regulator to adjust the spark to the octane-content of gasoline, to ensure complete combustion, avert "knocking." For 1933 there is one development which may assume the importance of 1932's Free-Wheeling: Bendix and Studebaker say, "This is the Power Brake Year."

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