Life of an American Workman, by Walter P. Chrysler and Boyden Sparkes (2025)

BY
WALTER P. CHRYSLER

IN COLLABORATION WITH

BOYDEN SPARKES

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY • NEW YORK

Copyright, 1937, by The Curtis Publishing Company

Copyright, 1950, by Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., Jack Chrysler,
Thelma Chrysler Foy and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM
WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY THE AMERICAN BOOK-KNICKERBOCKER PRESS, INC., N. Y.

TO

DELLA

CONTENTS

•I•

BACKGROUND OF MY BOYHOOD

"You Had To Be a Tough Kid"

Being a machinist, I have always wanted to know how things work. Amachine enabled my pioneering father and mother to provide for me; itwas a steam locomotive of which my father was the engineer. All mytraining, instincts and aptitudes have combined to make me want topenetrate the workings of any machines I see.

Curiously, my earliest recollection of being alive is involved with anadventure growing out of the resentment of certain Americans againstmachines—railroad machines, and all they portended.

With a German-fairy-story fancifulness, my mother enlisted me in theservice of the brass lamp in our kitchen that had its own wall shelfto roost upon. She made it seem a living thing, that lamp whosesmoked-up chimney gave her a daily cleaning chore.

"You must go to the store," she told the barefooted child who naggedher for a slice of bread with sugar on it; that was me between fiveand six years old. "The lamp is empty and, therefore, hungry—justlike you. We must give his wick a big drink or he will sulk and keepus in darkness tonight. You take this can and get some coal oil."

A withered, blackened potato was impaled upon the oil-can spout. Ourswould get a fresh potato for his nose once a month, when our accountwould be squared at the store on payday.

What I wore that day was a gingham shirt and a little pair ofjeans-cloth pants that buttoned to it. The empty oil can clangedmusically as now and then a flowering weed swished against itsemptiness. We lived on the south side of the tracks; the stores, thesaloons and other excitements were on the north side of the tracks.Ellis, Kansas, the railroad town where we lived, was in the heart ofthe short-grass country.

Two utterly different streams of life bisected each other in thevicinity of our small, isolated community; east and west ran therailroad, and its tracks bridged the creek that slanted across theprairie. This creek was a yellow thread of wilderness at the edge oftown. If the railroad and its attendant establishments represented theexcitements of the tame world far to the east, the stream wassometimes a murmuring reminder of other kinds of excitement.Throughout my early years there were being freshly printed in the softbanks of that stream the tracks of wild animals of the prairie bywhich we were surrounded—of buffalo and antelope, and of coyotes.Sometimes there were tracks of a creature that wore moccasins, acreature that hated the railroad.

You had to be a tough kid. Out there where I grew up, if you weresoft, all the other kids would beat the daylights out of you.Consequently you grew tough in all your sensitive parts, just as yourbare feet did in order to avoid the pain of splinters, stone bruisesand rude boot heels. Nevertheless, there was one valid, scalp-raisingfear in my early life which has completely lost touch with currentrealities. When I have spoken of it, my children have seemedincredulous. Yet history is on the side of my memory when I say thatalong that narrow fringe of plains civilization where we grew up,everybody lived in fear of Indians.

I was a year old when, to the north of us, Custer and his men weremassacred. In the fall of 1878, when I was three and a half years old,a band of Northern Cheyennes, led by Chief Dull Knife, slaughteredsome white people living on Sappa Creek and Beaver Creek, in Decaturand Rawlins counties. Other things had happened, were happening andwere told of over and over in the nighttime glow around our kitchenstove, while neighbors sat and blew upon their steaming coffee pouredin saucers. A Kansas white woman, when carried off by Indians, hadwritten pleas for help on scraps of paper with which she made a trailfor rescuers to follow. Why, so often did we hear the tale I almostseemed to see that despairing woman tearing paper and even her aproninto scraps. Though adult voices were lowered to discuss her plight,only a dumb kid would fail to get better than a glimmering of anunderstanding as to why the Indians saved the women and girls,although invariably scalping men and boys. At five I was a palefacevulnerable to scalping, and knew it.

On that day, as I went for coal oil toward the railroad tracks and thestores, I saw another boy running; he cleared the tracks and headedtoward me along the path. As we passed I flung a question at him.

"Indians!" he yelled. "Indians are coming!"

Right now I take a lot of credit to myself, because I did not drop theoil can as I scooted for home, clearing tufts of buffalo grass at justabout the height of a prairie chicken when it flies for fresh cover. Istill had the clanging oil can as I panted into our yard, yipped awarning to my mother and scrambled out of sight, down a flight ofearthen steps into the moldy darkness of our cyclone cellar.

My memory of that occurrence ends as abruptly as a picture that istorn across, but another recollection which may be a piece of itbegins with my small self seated on the floor, amid the smell ofdust, against the wall of the second floor of the stone railroadstation in Ellis; this was also the hotel. Many people were there. Thewomen, with shawls and sun-bonnets on their heads, were enjoying theexcitement of being frightened, if I can trust what I seem toremember.

Just to prove that we were in danger, the children were not allowed toplay or make any noise. Every man who showed himself carried some kindof weapon; most had rifles, but a few younger men made savage gestureswith axes and whiffle-trees. I remember one naked saber carried almostlike a doll baby in the folded arms of an old man who leaned againstthe wall close to me. There was stable manure on his wrinkled blackboots. That occasion was certainly one of our Indian scares. I thinkthis was in 1880; it might have been in '81. However, the Indiansnever got me, in keeping with my mother's promise that they neverwould; she would reassure me whenever I hesitated to invade, alone,the awful blackness of the bedroom. Sometimes she tucked me in, notalways.

Frontier hardships accounted for great changes in the lovelyMissouri-born girl with peach-bloom complexion, tender mouth andyouthful form whom my father married in 1871. She was a shapely bridewhen she left the comfortable German culture of her father's Missourifarmhouse. By the time I became conscious of my dependence on her, mymother's large dark eyes were set in a big powerful woman of thefrontier. I was the third of four children she bore in Kansas railroadtowns in the 70's before the prairies had been tamed. She ate buffalomeat to nourish her sons. Sometimes now I seem to see her eyes lookingat me, miraculously, out of the face of one of my grandchildren.Sometimes, in a mirror, I catch a fleeting trace of her in my owneyes. At such times I hope afresh that they were right, those vanishedEllis neighbors who, when drinking coffee in our kitchen, would casta nod at me and say, "Walt takes after his ma."

Work? Of course, a boy had to work in a household where my mother wasthe ruler. She worked all the time herself and had prodigious energy.What awakened me every day was the clangor of iron lids on hercookstove before the sun was up. For years her kitchen fire was theonly heat we knew in winter, and to reach its blazing comfort in amorning that was still night-black, often I had to scamper bare-footedacross a floor where snow had drifted through the cracks of badlyfitting windows. I shared a bed with my bigger brother Ed, who wasthree years and three months older. Before breakfast Ed had cows tomilk, but I had other work to do.

Sometimes I was sent early to get the soup meat. Until I was six orseven, the few hundred people who lived in Ellis almost never gotbeef; we all ate buffalo meat. There was an abundance of it and it wascheap; some of it was shipped east to other towns. The rump was whatmy mother wanted. She would put a great hunk of this maroon-and-bluishgristled meat into the big black iron pot in which she made her soup.I have never tasted any other soup quite so good. She never served hersoup on the day she made it, but, steaming hot, it would appear on thetable the next morning when we had breakfast. What enormous mealsthose were with which a Kansas day began back in the '80's! Steaks,potatoes, pancakes, followed soup. Often we had hominy, but if we did,we owed it, every grain, to my mother. She soaked the yellow grains inlye water until the flintlike yellow coating vanished. A mound ofhominy was material out of which to build a dike to retain a lake ofgravy. My mother not only made the hominy but she grew the corn. Shehad a garden where no weed was ever tolerated. There was no task sheever dodged for lack of strength or skill or willingness.

A certain soft scraping sound that I hear faintly sometimes in abarbershop is like an echo of a harsh and loud scrape, scrape, scrapethat I used to hear in our kitchen when I was a boy. As I listen, withmy face and mind erased of present things by a barber's soothingtowel, I doze; and, dozing, slip back to one of those moments of mypast that is quickened by the razor's noise. Our kitchen was the onlybarbershop my father knew. My mother was the one who always cut hishair and shaved him. We never spent money for anything that we couldget without spending.

When it happened on a Sunday morning, the shaving of my father was apart of the family preparation for attendance at church services. Hisupper lip, by design and in accordance with the prevailing masculinefashion of the West, was always black with a thick glossy mustachethat drooped at the corners of his mouth. That was proper, but thestubbly growth of whiskers on his cheeks, neck and chin was asdisturbing to my mother, as little to be tolerated, as weeds in herkitchen garden. So, badgered by her, my father would seat himselfmidway between the window and the stove, on which a basin of waterwould be steaming. I have forgotten how the lather brush had beenimprovised, but I never can forget that the soap, often with myconscripted labor, was home-made out of grease and lye. With a prod ofher thumb against the bristles of his chin, my mother would tilt hishead and give him an iridescent beard of bubbles. When this had becomefoamy, she would start to scrape.

You can bet my father's skin was tough! It had to be to withstand thatkind of homemade soap, along with Kansas sun and wind and blizzards.But if his skin was like bristly leather, his heart was gentle. We twoboys, his sons, were a pair of fighting chore-dodging cubs, unruly andfrequently in need of taming; yet he never laid a hand on us in anger.He would reason with us and get obedience, but his mighty arms andcalloused hands were never used against us. In many of the visions ofhim that recur to me, there is a paintbrush in his hand, or a hammeror a saw. Always he was trying to make life better for his family. Ourfirst Ellis house—the first of three—was of the plainestkind. It was badly put together and, in winter, through its cracks,the snow intruded. It had a little porch, though, and two bedroomsbeside the combination kitchen-dining-living room. A railroad shanty?Oh, no. It was Hank Chrysler's home, a house to swell my mother'sheart with pride as she showed it off to neighbors who still wereliving half buried in the prairie earth in houses made of sod.

We were lucky. Because my father worked for the railroad, we wereprivileged to buy some of its coal when certain other folks in Ellishad no fuel except the dried dung of buffalo or cows. Out hunting,I've warmed my hands over a quick-burning fire of cow chips, oh, manya time, when my fingers got too numb to feel a shotgun trigger. But athome we had a shed full of coal to burn, along with kindling that mybrother Ed and I were required to find and cut. When we neglectedthis, or when we disobeyed her slightest order, our mother spanked us.The mace of her authority was a hairbrush. Corporal punishment? Whenmy mother flailed me on my rear, it seemed to be inflicted by a majorgeneral at least. Once, against my private person, that hairbrush wasjarred from all its bristles, but it was kept in spanking serviceuntil I was nearly seventeen. I was not docile then, or ever, but mymother had the strength to put me, big as I was, across her knee andspank me until my roars convinced her that I was blushing in my pantsand improved in my intentions.

My father and mother were a great pair of people; hard-workingpartners devoted to the job of bringing up a family.

My mother's pumpkin pies were famous out in Ellis, but Henry Chryslerwas known, I guess, from end to end of the Union Pacific. Certainly hewas the best locomotive engineer on the division. When the railroadbought its first coal-burning locomotive, he was the engineer chosento leave the cab of a wood burner and take command of that grandmechanism that snorted in an even cadence when it went puff, puff,puff, puffing eastward out of Ellis at 7:30 in the morning. I used towatch him then and still be thinking of him when I got to school ateight o'clock.

Often when he left the house I walked beside him, lugging his dinnerpail. What he carried rested on his hip—a great big six-shooter thatsagged below his coat. It had a black butt of a size to fill his fist.When I was ten, the handle of that weapon hung on my father just atthe level of my stubbly, home-cut hair, above my eager eyes. I alwayscalled him papa. He was no swashbuckler, just a railroad man who hadbeen a soldier, as I used to boast, "when he wasn't as big as Ed."That was a fact.

My father, Canadian born, had been brought from Chatham, Ontario, toKansas City when he was only five or six. His forbears had foundedChatham; the family stock was German; eight generations back of methere had come to America one who spelled his name Greisler, a GermanPalatine. He was one of a group of Protestants who had left theirhomeland in the Rhine Valley, gone to the Netherlands, thence toEngland and embarked, finally, from Plymouth for New York. After theCivil War began, when my father was twelve, he ran away from home toArmourdale, Kansas, and enlisted in the Twelfth Kansas Regiment as adrummer boy. His father tried to get him out, but he drummed for theregiment until the end of the war. I used to listen to him tellabout the times when he went hungry or had to sleep in snow or rainwith just a blanket. He was not injured by the hardships. I supposethere never was a man more healthy. In the twenty-seven years that hehad that passenger run out of Ellis, I never knew him to lose a day.Nevertheless, what happened to him in the war was a visionary part ofmy young life. My brother Ed and I pumped out of him every scrap ofwhat he could remember of his life as a drummer boy in the Civil War.

When the war was over and he was mustered out, he went to work in therailroad shops in the same town where he had enlisted, in Armourdale.Then he was put on the pay roll as a fireman, and after that waspromoted to be a locomotive engineer. He was an engineer on therailroad until he retired. Of course, when he began, it was not theUnion Pacific; what was being built westward out of Kansas City thenwas called the Kansas Pacific Railway. The train his engine hauled inthat time supplied the construction gang that laid the first railsacross the state. Great herds of bison sometimes blocked the right ofway and were stampeded off only when the bulbous stack of hiswood-burning engine threatened them with dragon snorts of smoke andfire. There were swarms of Indians, too, and they killed some of themen he knew.

Sometimes, but rarely, he would get a permit that let me ride with himup in the cab, from Ellis all the way to Brookville. At Fort Hays,only thirteen miles from where we lived, I'd see the blue-cladsoldiers of the garrison and then, farther on, at Victoria, rightbeside the railroad station, I could see some graves of men my fathersaid he knew.

"Indians killed 'em," he would say, and then, while his great monstershook and reared across the land, he would point out other placeswhere whites and redskins had fought and killed one another. On therun back, he always had the evening train out of Junction City.Waiting for that allowed us idle hours in which to see the sights atBrookville, but nothing gave me quite the thrill that came atnighttime, watching how he made that engine roar across the land.

At my father's nod the fireman would leap to sweaty action, swingingback the fire door with a devilish clang. In that moment of glare,each face in the cab turned as red as an Indian mask. With franticgrace the fireman would scoop coal from the tender, swinging the bigshovel so expertly that the lumpy succession of black galaxies went intight clusters to the center of the white-hot fire. Outside the enginecab the night would seem to moan and scream every time my fatherpulled the whistle cord. I watched the muscles writhe below the hairon his forearms when he used his hands to turn a cock or pull thethrottle farther back upon its quadrant. I watched his face when hefixed his gleaming eyes in a gaze ahead into the headlight's yellowcorridor through which we rode. The padded board on which I huddledbounced and throbbed and shook from side to side. Hot cinders bit meon the face.

If I seemed somewhat less than wide-awake I was allowed, a time ortwo, to yank the whistle cord myself or to let my hand ride with myfather's big and greasy fingers as he pulled at the cotton rope thatsent the bell into a brassy clamor. It was a perfect experience toride in the midst of that fire-and-water miracle and to know that tothe boss of it, my father, I was more important than his engine. Theold engine was just our slave. Climbing down, at the end of the run,to the cinders of the right of way in Ellis, the part of me most tiredwould be my face, and it was tired from grinning in my hours ofecstasy.

The G. A. R. hall in Ellis was in the basement of the stoneschoolhouse. I got to know that place real well, because one year,when I was twelve, I guess, the Grand Army men decided to organize uskids into a drum corps, so we could march with them in their MemorialDay parade. Ten boys were chosen, and my father drilled and taught usall. We had to learn the way he learned to drum: one-twenty time atfirst, and later on we practiced the faster marching time. He boughtme a snare drum that was good enough to take to war, and he taught mehow to stand as soldiers do. The drilling of those days fixed on me, Isuppose for life, the habit of putting my feet at right angles, heelstogether, with my hands at my side.

Chairs were placed close together around the walls of that G. A. R.hall, and every chair was squired by a big spittoon. There was asilken flag, fringed with stiff blue cords, a fine thing that stirredme every time I saw it uncased. There were stacks of muskets, withtheir bayonets fixed, in each corner of the room. There were rustyshell fragments, and on the walls big pictures of Lincoln, GeneralGrant and others. The drum corps, the sound of drums, seemed to takeme by the throat. I stamped around that hall behind my father until hefixed into my blood the rhythm of the beat for marching men. It seemsas if I hear his voice and see the dust rise from the floor as hemarked the time with his big foot and called out, "one step, one step,one step."

Most of the adult railroad workers of our town had been in the war.All the pain had leached out of their days of glory. They wore theiruniforms on important occasions and gave one another military titlesuntil there seemed to be no privates in the hall. They chewed tobacco,spat and yarned. What they all attempted in their yarning was to evokethe past, but my father had a skill that could really do this thing.With drumsticks and a drum, he could make them all sit straighter,make their eyes shine as they remembered.

On Decoration Day and the Fourth of July, when the G. A. R. marched,my father, with his drum, was up at the head of the parade and all uskids were there in back of him, and back of us were the fifers, makingthe shrillest kind of music. On such occasions I would tingle from theexcitement of my own fancy until my skin was like goose flesh.

A drum did not satisfy my mother's notion of what constituted a propermusical education. My brother Ed had always been a successful rebelagainst such matters, but she had her way with me; I was sent onceeach week to Miss Cartwright for a piano lesson. As well as Iremember, I was one of the three Ellis boys thus afflicted. There wereseventeen round buttons arranged in a series of extraordinary curvesover the promontories in the front of Miss Cartwright's basque. Myattention would wander to those jet buttons when I could not keep iton the keys. I sometimes think that I would have been as much aninsurrectionist against this culture as my brother Ed, except that oneof the dozen Cartwright pupils was a girl named Della Forker.

I was a great marble player; in a time when marbles and spinning topswere the only games common to men of Ellis and the other towns alongthe railroad, I was the local champion. There were several of us boyswho practiced from the schoolyard games, had skill enough to hold ourown and more in the big game. Where the men played was close to thestone buildings of the railroad, within the sound of its chatteringtelegraph instruments in the train dispatcher's office. A cindersurface there, hard packed by many feet to a smooth blackness, was therendezvous of idling trainmen; engineers, conductors, firemen,brakemen and others gathered there before the start and at the end ofall their runs. Occasionally, there was to be found in that assemblagesome cowboy, a farmer, or even a soldier from Fort Hays. Scratchedupon the ground we'd have a twenty-foot circle, and into the middle ofthis were massed twenty marbles from every player. Often there were adozen of us playing, while other dozens watched us shoot.

Each player had his favorite shooting marble, of agate or onyx orglass; these were our taws, which we believed were fraught with whatwe had of luck. When your turn came to shoot, you'd take your taw andknuckle down on the edge of the ring. Any marble you knocked out ofthe ring you kept, and then took another shot. The trick was to keepyourself in position. I could make my taw obey me like a billiardball. If you hit a marble squarely, your taw stayed at the point ofcontact, spinning away its momentum until it stopped. The men mightplay for money, but when kids played, the only prizes were thoselittle plaster "keesters," which, in the big game, were always new andclean. That is why we liked to play with the men. They bought theirmarbles at the store, paying real money for them.

Us kids supplied ourselves with marbles by winning from the men.Neither Ed nor I ever saw the day, in our boyhood, when we dared spendgood money for marbles. A German sense of thrift was our standard insuch matters. We got that not from our father but from our mother.Although she was born in Rocheport, Missouri, her background, herfeeling, her instincts were German. She spoke German to us when myfather was not around; it was long since a strange tongue to him, butwe children could understand and speak it with her. Now I haveforgotten almost all my German, but this I do remember: In hertenderest moods my mother's words came boiling out of her in German.

While antique hunting on an autumn day in 1936 I went into a housenear Saratoga where a sale of the contents was in progress. In achina closet there I saw some little flowered cards, and for a momentI almost felt as though I were twelve years old again. Those cards hadall the power of a perfume to call up the past. It almost seemed to methat I could hear my mother exclaiming, in her German words, her deeppleasure over the exquisite calling cards I had provided for her.

In Ellis, except for staple goods, we did our shopping by mail. Everyyear we sent five cents in stamps to some Eastern house, so as toreceive its catalogue. Another means by which we extended ourknowledge of what was right and proper in the world outside of Elliswas by reading all the advertisements in the magazines we saw. Wetraded magazines around among the neighbors, but eventually myfavorite, almost my Bible, was The Scientific American. However, I amnot sure just where I saw the printed offer to set me up in businessas an agent for these calling cards. Anyway, my mother, as shestirred, bare-armed, some creamy batter in a yellow mixing bowl,looked at me proudly and consented to be my first customer.

The calling card she selected, edged with scallops, was almost like avalentine. Against the white background of the stiff card was fixed arich design of glossy, highly colored paper lace. Through a cluster offorget-me-nots, a cuff of lace and two loops of golden bracelet, wasextended a likeness of a hand, patently that of a lady who had nevercooked nor scrubbed. This hand clasped another that was just as whiteand lovely, and was chastely cuffed in lace obscured by leaves, twopinkish roses and a bud.

I had samples ready when the boom began. All Ellis ladies seemed towant such cards as Mrs. Chrysler had. I remember that there was aspecial good-luck card on which a warm and pinkish hand extended agilded horseshoe wreathed with red and yellow roses and a bluishribbon on which was inscribed, "All joys be thine." The hand motif wasmuch too general, in my opinion. One of these hands held out a designof lilies of the valley, white peonies and green leaves surrounding anoak leaf on which were printed trembling letters spelling, "To the oneI love." The sample revealed that this was intended to be a man'scard. But what sort of man? His like was not to be found among therailroaders in Ellis! Nor was there any male customer for thegilt-edged card of baby blue, with a turned-down pinkish corner. Onthat one the sample name was "John B. Hard," hidden by agreen-and-brown bird's nest containing three greenish eggs. God aloneknows the meaning of that symbolism now, but certainly no man of Ellishad the disposition to order any. Oh, beyond a doubt that fad wasaddressed to women.

I was not trying to improve the tone of social life in Ellis. I wastrying to make a few nickels to spend for candy and other things Iwanted. Next my merchandising fancy was caught by an advertisement ofa house that offered inducements to any who would solicit orders forits silverware. What I displayed thereafter, from kitchen door tokitchen door in Ellis, was a black case of imitation leather withnickel clasps. When I unfastened these and raised the lid, I hadalmost made my sale! The lid was lined with white satinette; the boxitself was lined with red plush which formed soft slots in which wereheld three knives, three forks, three spoons. Those women wantedsilverware almost more than they wanted food. In the course of five orsix paydays, I sold some of them four boxes, so that they had theirsilverware in dozens. I had competition, though, and so my mother'soffer, plus her hairbrush, won me to another form of peddling. I soldmilk.

The words I commonly applied to those cows are not permitted to beshaped in type. For a while, milking, morning and night, was a chore Ishared with Ed, but he was so much bigger that I had no choice but todo any job that he neglected; either that or take a beating. He hazedme pretty constantly, thereby driving me into a closer alliance withmy mother. He was three years and three months older. There would havebeen another brother between us, but he died before I was born. Theonly other child in the Chrysler household was our little sisterIrene. Consequently, when Ed got big enough to declare hisindependence of mother's hairbrush and all the cows, I became the onewho had to milk the cows, to clean their stable, fork down hay andfodder or round them up when any wandered. But that was not all; I hadto sell the milk and cream.

Every evening, as soon as the milking was over, I delivered milk fromhouse to house. I carried a big open tin bucket full of milk andmeasured out each customer's share with a tin quart cup I carried withme. Wagon? I had no wagon, and if any customer wanted cream I had tomake an extra trip. I delivered fifteen to twenty quarts or more eachnight. We had no ice at first; mother just had a little cellar, and inits cool dampness the milk, cream and butter, in ordinary weather,kept quite sweet.

Nobody paid for anything in Ellis until payday. I kept a record of mycustomers' obligations in a small account book carried in a hip pocketof my pants. On payday I collected at the rate of five cents a quart.For that I was rewarded. The cut that mother gave me was a cent onevery quart.

Despite the taming influences of chores and money-making, I confess Iraised my small share of hell. Maybe there is as much fighting amongboys today; I can only say I do not think so. In the schoolyard weoften had four or five fist fights in the fifteen minutes of recess. Akid who had a yellow streak would lead a dog's life; several that Iknew ran away because they lacked the necessary toughness. If youcould take your beating fighting back with all you had, you did nothave to take so many beatings. We really had a tough environment therein Ellis. It was never any cause for wonder in me that Kansas took toprohibition early in its history. On railroad paydays the saloons wereset like traps; likewise every few months when the cattle ranches paidtheir hands.

The saloons were placed as islands down the middle of a most informalstreet, a pathway really; and each saloon was surrounded by itshitching rack. When the cowboys' horses were standing in slant-hippedweariness, flank to flank around the saloon racks, that was a goodtime for timid folks to stay at home, indoors. But for us kids, thehoof clatter, the yipping and the shooting as a band of thirsty,paid-off cowboys rode into Ellis was prized above most of our localexcitements. I have seen cowboys full of whisky and the devil pulltheir guns and throw a shot or two at some derby hat worn by astranger at the station. I have seen them shoot out a few store frontsand ride their horses out of the mud and along the board sidewalks,but it was all in fun, and I never saw one less than perfectly politeto any woman. They seemed to have more respect for a woman than didany other sort of men. On occasions they did some killing, but I sawnone of that. However, us kids used to pick up the pistol cartridgesthat would jounce loose from the belts of galloping cowboys when theyrode in town on payday. I had a cigar box full. I never wanted to be acowboy; that I can remember, thanks to what I had to do with cows athome, but I certainly aimed in those days to grow up tough.

Ellis grew civilized so fast, however, that barbarianism never had avalid claim on me. At first there was no paving whatever; when youstepped off the boardwalk, you were in the mud. Then a bank was organized,and we had a butcher shop where beef was sold. The butcher would giveyou liver for the asking. First thing we knew, there was a coalyardand a lumberyard. Somebody opened a rival of the first general store,and finally we had a regular post office apart from any store. Thestreets intruded farther and farther into the prairie. It was about1889, when I was past fourteen, that my father built a bigger housewith two stories. It had a shingled roof, a nice porch, and just aboveit a dormer window. Around the yard was a wooden picket fence; therewere lilac bushes in the corner of the lot and some maples my fatherplanted eventually were big enough to shade our yard.

There was no plumbing in Ellis that anyone could brag about, and itwas an event when my father, a progressive citizen, bought a windmillso we could have running water. The next thing was a bathtub, forwhich he built a special room against the kitchen. He made it himself,by lining a wooden box with sheets of copper, shaping the metal with asteep slope at each end, enclosing this contrivance in a sheath oftongued and grooved boards. When it was painted we had something ofwhich all the neighbors envied us. Until then, our baths were taken ina wooden tub out in the kitchen. At the rear of our yard there was astable—we had four horses as well as three cows—and a coalshed. It seems to me that the back door of our house was the only oneI ever used. The alley was a thoroughfare that led to temporaryfreedom from the chores I hated. If Ed or I ran away after dark toplay with the kids, when we came home we always got a licking, becausemy mother was unfailingly strict. It was her law that we must not beout after dark. Sometimes we would hop the evening train, riding onthe blind baggage thirteen miles to Hays. You could bet, as youapproached the house through the back yard, that she would be sittingin the kitchen waiting with that hairbrush, and a hand that wouldhold you by the neck with a grip like iron. Still, on certain nights,the excitement was worth the fee.

Arranged along the alleys in the proportion of one to every house wererows of small structures that an anthropologist, if a stranger in theland, might have supposed were shrines. If they were shrines, then wewere vandals, because on Halloween we used to discommode the town byroving all the alleys, tipping over every little house we foundunguarded. Surely those pranks disqualified any member of our gangfrom ever being accepted as a hero of the Horatio Alger pattern. Mysole excuse for such behavior is that when we came home on Sundaysfrom the Methodist Church, my mother always said, "Take off thoseclothes." Probably, with the clothes I stripped off something of thespirit.

Since my mother made practically all the clothes we wore, this was herright; she knitted our socks, she made our shirts and made my sister'sdresses, and when I was big enough to assert a need to have my legsincased in long pants, she took an old pair of my father's, opened upthe seams, turned them upside down when she cut them to my measure,and then, wrong side out, made me a pair that I was proud to wear. Oh,she had a lot to do to keep us clad and fed. We ate enormously, likefamished demons. All day Saturday she baked, and so, for help, sherequired that whole day out of Ed's life and mine. Of course, when Igot into high school, Ed had been emancipated from home into a job.

My brother Ed, as husky as anyone that Kansas ever grew, always wasaggressive. He was a boy who managed to make more money than a lot ofEllis men. But he surrendered some of his money-making chances tobecome an apprentice in the machine shops of the Union Pacific therein Ellis. Ed was going to learn a trade.

Certainly, in our town it was thoroughly accepted that a sound way tokeep a boy out of mischief was to require him to use up some of hisenergy in work. It was the same with horses; when they were notworked, they bucked and kicked and made a lot of trouble. Even so, uskids had fun. My father gave me my first gun when I was fourteen, andat the railroad shops they cut it down to fit me. I was a good shot.Of course, I always loaded my own shells; we all did. Later on, for aChristmas present, my father gave me a dozen brass shells. He wasquite liberal with us kids, but he was never so foolish as to supposethat it would be a kindness to permit his sons to loaf while theirparents worked from dark to dark. I was in high school when Ed was anapprentice, but when the summer vacation began I got a job myself.

A fellow named George Henderson who had a grocery store had to keephis wife behind the counter while he pushed a two-wheeled cart around,delivering orders. I offered myself as a delivery boy and was hired atten dollars a month. I went to work at six o'clock in the morning andwas through by 10:30 at night. That store was long and narrow, withjust a plain board counter. Practically all the stock was kept inwooden boxes and barrels. We used the scales to measure almosteverything we sold; even smoking tobacco was measured out by thepound.

The next year, when I had finished high school, I went back into thegrocery store to work for Henderson. He was paying me fourteen dollarsa month, but I did not like those hours and I was not satisfied witheither my money or my prospects. I wanted to quit the grocery storeand learn about machinery. That made Ed sore.

"Why don't you be a boilermaker?" he would roar. "One machinist in afamily is enough."

"I don't want to be a boilermaker," I'd yell back to him.

My father wanted me to go farther in school. One of the prosperousmerchants of the town planned to send his son to Quincy College atQuincy, Illinois. He talked my father into a frame of mind to send me,too, so that his boy would not get homesick. I did not like thethought of college and I liked that other boy even less. I argued mycase at home. Indeed, I nagged my father until at last he said:

"You can't learn machinery, and that's all I got to say. You cannotget to be an apprentice until I say the word, and I won't recommendyou." That made me mad.

I went down to the shops and succeeded in being hired as a sweeper.The flooring there was made of fourteen-inch planks two and a halfinches thick, splintery and slick with grease. I swept them as I thinkthey never had been swept before. I had a stubborn streak in me. Someof the other dirty work a sweeper had to do was in connection with thecleaning of the engine-boiler flues. In Kansas, these pipes, or tubes,of rolled iron would become thickly caked with alkali. Each was aboutfourteen or sixteen feet long and weighed perhaps 150 pounds,thickened as they were with that stonelike deposit of alkali. I had tolug them on my shoulder seven or eight hundred feet to a timber shed.They were rolled around in there until they were clean; then the endswere cut off and new ends welded on. I carried miles, I guess, ofboiler pipe, and swept the floor and did all the other kinds of workthat fall to the lot of a janitor.

But I loved it; I loved to see the engines with their mysteriesexposed. I envied the mechanics who understood their inner workings. Iliked to handle tools. Even as a janitor I was allowed to sharpen, onthe big power grindstone, any tool I brought from home, but then,almost any man in Ellis was permitted to do that. Why, once, while Iwas near the grindstone, an Indian came and sharpened his huntingknife.

I worked ten hours a day, and for that the railroad paid me onedollar.

After six months, I braced the master mechanic himself and asked hishelp. His name was Edgar Esterbrook, and afterward my brother Edmarried his daughter.

"You want to be an apprentice, hey?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, Walt, if ever anybody had a right to ask for the chance, it'syou. You've stuck to your job and haven't belly-ached. The men likeyou. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll speak to your father. That is,if you are sure you want to be a machinist."

"Yes, sir, I do." I was a cocky youngster and full of confidence, butI was shivering in my eagerness.

Mr. Esterbrook won my father over. So I began my four-year term as amachine-shop apprentice. My pay at first was five cents an hour. Whocould ask a better chance?

•II•

AMBITIONS OF AN APPRENTICE

"Tools Were What I Wanted"

A talisman that belonged to my father for more than half a centurybecame a treasured memento in my office; it was his steam gauge. To alocomotive engineer, a steam gauge is as vital as his watch. On thischerished disk of silver-gleaming metal, with a glass cover on itsdial that my two hands will barely hide, my father's life depended;oh, and many other lives. So he had it tested often and guarded itthroughout his days. After he died my sister Irene, out West, found itamong some things he left, and sent it on to me. This old steam gaugewas my father's dearest implement, but now for me it has become a sortof crystal ball.

Gazing upon its face, obliged no longer now to register demonicpressures, it sometimes seems to me as if I can hear my father'sengine whistle blowing faintly to me on the wind from far out of Ellison the Kansas prairie horizon. What I hear, of course, is just ashrillness in the traffic noises rising from the street; yet it worksa miracle! I can almost see the bustling at the little Ellis stationplatform at the moment his engine pulled the night train from JunctionCity into Ellis. It was his engine; his in a way that a trooper'shorse is his, an extension of his power and intelligence, to defend,to brag about and love. Sometimes the vision takes another> form and the engine,venting cautious chuff, chuff, chuffs, is nosing through a roundhousedoor and I am down below the level of its wheels, working in aroundhouse pit with a sooty face and my arms grease-blackened, all mymuscles hard and lean and young. Many times I have wished I reallycould hear again my father's engine whistle as I used to hear it justbefore it reached the Big Creek bridge. Well, music works a trick formy memory, too; a band marching up Fifth Avenue may send a bit ofmelody, just a bar or two, that touches things within my mind. It setsme thinking of a time when I was a machine-trade apprentice in therailroad shops, when I played a tuba in the band, played second baseon the baseball team and walked, on Sunday afternoons, with DellaForker to the Big Creek bridge.

A Union Pacific shop apprentice! You can bet that I was proud. Just asevery locomotive on the road flaunted a pair of antlers on her boilershield beneath her headlight, so I should have had a badge to showthat I was a cadet of that vast loom for weaving the Western half ofthe continent into the nation. Not merely the U. P. but railroading,the entire art as we then knew it, held my imagination in focus.

My opinion of myself had expanded tenfold when I became an apprentice.Everybody in Ellis knew that any apprentice had been required to passan examination—a stiff one. Some boys failed to make the grade, but Ihad done so readily, because algebra was one of my good subjects. Ihad used algebra when I worked in the grocery store, to help GeorgeHenderson figure out his costs. I had used it, too, when we werebuilding a house, but I had never used it to better effect on my lifethan when I worked out some of the examination problems that had to dowith locomotive wheels and driving rods.

Tools were what I wanted as soon as my term began. Times have changeda lot since then; nowadays an industrial company expects to furnishworkmen with all their tools, but in my youthful days the unfailingsign of a skilled workman was the chest of tools he brought to anyjob. With good reason, he prized them above anything he owned. A goodworkman was likely to mistrust any tool whose metal had not beentempered by himself. But I had an even better reason for making mine:I lacked the money with which to buy them.

Years after I ceased to need them to earn a living those tools I madewere brought from the attic of the old home in Ellis and placed ondisplay in a glass case on the observatory floor, seventy-one storiesup in the tower of the Chrysler Building. There, on a clear day, avisitor may look to a horizon nearly forty miles away, and bystrolling around a corridor see in one quick panorama hundreds ofdensely populated square miles of this great land. Yet I am sure thatone who neglects the view to gaze, with understanding, into that chestof tools I made, will have learned more about America than one wholooks from an observatory window down into the uneven mass of steel,stone and brick that forms the city.

When I began to work at my trade, tools were crude, so that isprobably why I see that mainly we owe the tremendous advances of thephysical aspects of our civilization to new and better tools. Electriclights are a tool; the telephone is a tool; so is the motion picture,the radio and the automobile, to mention just a few. How can anyone beso shortsighted as to suppose that opportunities now are fewer? In aworld that offers not only new and wonderful tools but likewiseastonishing new materials, each of which is a fresh challenge toeverything that men have made before, new human needs and bigger humanproblems are being revealed faster than a single human mind can evencount them.

The first tool I made was a little pair of calipers; spread totheir limit, they could measure a diameter of four inches. They werecopied from a pair belonging to another fellow in the shop. I madeother things as need of them arose. One of the mechanics allowed me tolook through a catalogue he had received from a big tool firm in theEast. In there was a picture and a description of a depth gauge.

I had never heard of such a thing; there were none in the shop. Whenwe had to measure the depth of a hole in a piece of metal, we exploredthe hole with a wire, marked it with a fingernail and then applied thewire to a ruler. Maybe such a measurement would be right to asixteenth of an inch; nowadays we work in ten-thousandths of an inch.

Well, I got permission to keep that catalogue awhile, and made a depthgauge for myself. It was crude, but it was a great improvement overthe wire, fingernail and ruler method. Fixed in a small stand was anarm, forked at the end; attached to that by a thumbscrew was a stemmarked in divisions of thirty-seconds of an inch.

Thereafter in making a plug for a hole, I could make it right thefirst time, without a lot of needless filing and chipping. In a fewmonths I made an even better depth gauge. Superior tools got me betterchances in the shop. You see, I was ambitious to do all the kinds ofwork at which I saw the older men engaged. Consequently, I set to workto make myself a pair of granddaddy calipers, with legs almost as longas my arm. When I had those, I also had the nerve to ask to be allowedto help on the first lathe, the big one on which locomotive pistonrods were turned.

Ankle-deep in oak shavings in the carpenter shop, I sometimes talkedwith and listened to an old carpenter. He chewed tobacco with suchvigor that his blond walrus mustache was constantly in motion. Now andagain he became motionless, tilted back his head as if to unmask abattery concealed in that brush of whisker hair, and fired acharge of brown juice at whatever target he had fixed his eyes upon.One day when I complained to him, for about the hundredth time, ofnight-shift men who borrowed tools and never brought them back, hepulled a sack aside and showed me an unfinished chest of just theproper size for tools.

"It's for you," he said. It took him several months to find enoughtime to complete that box to his satisfaction and mine, but meanwhileI had been etching my initials on all my tools.

I had read in The Scientific American how you could do that; firstputting asphalt paint on the surface to be marked, then cutting outthe desired pattern and finally applying acid. I sent ten cents to themagazine for a little bottle of asphalt paint and almost from the dayit came all my tools were branded "W. P. C." in acid.

The Ellis band could turn a dull day into a time of rich excitementany time it marched and played. I was a part of that excitement. Evenbefore getting out of high school they had used me in thisorganization of railroad employees to play the snare drum, and myfriend, Charlie Keagy, played the bass drum. Thanks to my father'sdrilling and my membership in the drum corps, I had become a gooddrummer, but all the time I drummed I knew there were sweeterinstruments. Hell, you could not serenade a girl with a drum!

My big brother Ed played a tuba in the band, and Joe McMahon played aslide trombone. We three slept in the same attic room at home; Joe wasboarding with us, because his Irish father, a section foreman, who hadbecome road master, had retired and moved the nice McMahon family toKansas City, and Joe wanted to stay on in Ellis to serve out the finalyear of his apprenticeship in the machinist trade.

Almost every night we three had a pillow fight that did notend until I, the smallest, was so mad that I was chasing them with abaseball bat. They teased me at home, they teased me in the shop andthey teased me at band practice. In all the small towns I knew, bandpractice was first of all a device for fun; it gave an excuse forgetting out at night, and hence a chance to meet the other boys andgirls of other parents just as strict as yours.

When our band marched and played in Ellis, any young horses thathappened to be among those hitched to the racks in town would pitchand rear, no matter how well our music had been rehearsed. But thethrill was compounded of much more than that; in front of all thestores, with false fronts instead of second stories, wooden awningsslanted out over the wooden sidewalks, supported as a kind of arcadeon wooden posts; when half the town was lined up there to see and hearus, it was swell to be a member of the band.

Our uniforms were simply overalls and caps with long bills, so thatwhen we marched, with red bandannas around our necks, we looked likelocomotive engineers. The leader of the band was an engineer, EdPearson. He played a cornet. Well, I could read music, because I hadtaken piano lessons from Miss Cartwright when Della Forker did;moreover, I had practiced on our organ at home until I could play thattoo. But you can't play an organ with a marching band, and as I wastired of just beating a drum, I bought myself a B-flat clarinet. Itootled and tweetled on that instrument night after night until mymouth was sore.

One year, in our overalls and wearing big sunflowers, we band fellowsrode, on railroad passes, to Kansas City and marched in the Priests ofPallas parade, an annual festival; Creole Belles, it seems to me, waswhat we played best that year. I think it was the next year when Ed,having more important engagements for his evenings, abandoned bandpractice and permitted his brass tuba to turn a greenish color fromneglect. Ed was going with the daughter of Edgar Esterbrook, thedivision master mechanic; afterward, Ed and Mae were married. It was Iwho took Ed's place as tuba player. It made a big noise, and I likedit. I sent money to Kansas City and received a silver-plated tuba witha bell that had a gold burnish—a noble instrument. It wassupported by a strap that went around my shoulder. You could play asolo on the tuba, but you were likely to be the only one who cared forit. Whenever I made mine grunt in practice or in earnest, I was havingfun. Band or no band, however, I worked in the shop not less thansixty hours every week.

There was always a lot of horseplay around the shop when no boss waslooking, and at times they might look in vain and not discover wherethe horseplay was; we had a hiding place. In the back side of one ofthe greasy pits the planking was incomplete, and through that emptyblackness we could pass, with just a bit of squeezing, into a cozylittle cavern big enough for four or five young fellows. The hideouthad been formed as stealthily as if we who used it had been prisonersbent on escape. Well, whenever boredom came, escape was what wewanted.

In Ellis, playing cards was frowned upon by the Methodists, and thatwas the religious group to which I belonged. Association with badwomen, the use of whiskey, cigarettes or cards were as evil brands; ifyou wore any one of these brands, the respectable mothers of the townwould see that you were kept far from all decent daughters. A lot ofyears have passed and I can take the chance involved by my confessing:in that hideout we played cards, we smoked cigarettes and on a fewoccasions we had a little beer. All these iniquities were practiced inthe earth below the shop floor, in the light of a candle stuck in abottle's neck. Oh, how tough we felt ourselves to be!

That was fun, but it was not half so thrilling as the work I did whenwe overhauled an engine. Not books but the things themselves wereteaching me what I wished to know. Wished? That word is not strongenough to describe my passion to learn about machines and the powerthat made them run. Concerning all the unfolding forms of magic whichwere then beginning to transform the continent, I was mad withcuriosity.

As there were none in Ellis well enough informed to answer all myquestions, I addressed myself in almost every mail to an Easternoracle, The Scientific American. In that editorial office, whoeverreceived the questions from subscribers must have thought that WalterP. Chrysler was the pen name of a dozen youths, at least half of whomwere crazy. Yet many of my questions were answered; if you were areader of the issue of November 5, in 1892, you may have seen a littleof all that seethed in my mind. In that issue this was published:

For a long time I had been accustomed to making things I wanted when Icould not buy them. I had made my first pair of ice skates; later onI made a good shotgun; but in the shops I made, on my own time, amodel locomotive.

What I made was a twenty-eight-inch model of the engine my fatherdrove; that was the standard type, which had a four-wheel drive. Wehad no blueprints then, so I had to do it all myself, laying out myown proportions. Then I took a solid piece of iron and started in todrill and chip and file.

A sculptor trying to release in marble some shape of beauty that iscaptive in his mind can give no more loving care and craftsmanship towhat he does than was done by me as I created that locomotive model.Of course, that engine had to live within my mind so real, so completethat it seemed to have three dimensions there. That, so it seems tome, is what the fault is when someone fails to learn from books. Myfingers were like an intake valve through which my mental reservoirwas being filled; of course, my eyes and ears were helping in theprocess, but what I learned with my fingers and my eyes together Iseem never to forget.

When the engine model was complete and had many yards of track to runupon, I made it run all around our yard. When its tiny whistle blew,you should have seen my father's mustache widen with his grin ofpride.

It must have been about the end of my second year that trouble came.At first I had been paid five cents an hour; for a ten-hour day I gotjust half of that dollar I had received when I was only a sweeper. Butthrough my second year I got ten cents an hour, and at the time Ispeak of I was within a few weeks of being entitled to the third-yearrate of pay, twelve and a half cents an hour. That was enough moneythen; I slept and ate at home, and my mother still made most of theclothes I wore. If I worked on the night shift, my mother packed anoblong dinner pail with food enough to fill me up. If I worked days, Iwent home to lunch—not lunch; that was dinner, then.

Midday, when the shop whistle blew and told Ellis women to get readyfor their men, I rushed, with the other soot-and-grease-stainedmechanics, to a trough where we washed up. When I had been a sweeper,to fill that long blackened trough with water about ten minutes beforenoon had been a chore of mine. When all of us had washed our faces,necks and hands in that trough, the water was a dirty fluid, gray andbubbly.

One day as we began working in the afternoon, the wash trough,neglected by the sweeper, still was filled with dirty water on whichfloated an iridescent scum. Some of the men were idling there as Iresumed the filling of a journal box with grease and wool waste so asto pack this lubricant around the axle end. I was bending over a tubof this grease and wool waste when I got a slimy blow upon the faceand ear. Oh, I was mad! A fellow named McGrath had a dripping handwhen I looked up; he had, I knew at once, thrown that rag afterslopping it in the dirty water in the trough.

I said—well, never mind what I said. The first thing I thought of wasgoing after him. I grabbed deeply into the tub of wool waste andstarted for him; he ran through a big door, which he slammed behindhim. I knew he would not loiter outside long, because he had to run inthe direction of the office of the general foreman, Gus Neubert.

I stood before the door, poised as if to throw from second to homeplate, and addressing myself over my shoulder to some who mocked myanger, I said, "I'll soak that so-and-so right in the mouth." Then thelatch clicked softly, a hinge squeaked, and I flung first one handfuland then the other. But it was not McGrath that I splattered in theface; it was Mr. Neubert. He fired me before he had the stuff wipedoff.

For some days thereafter I felt as if I had been banished from earth.I was sick; nothing in the world was half so important as myapprenticeship. Maybe my brother Ed helped out by speaking to Mr.Esterbrook, or it may have been my father. At any rate, the mastermechanic sent for me. When I stood before his roll-topped desk piledup with papers, he gave me a lecture which I received contritely.

"That McGrath," I said, "he made me mad. I was working when——"

A vast man, Mr. Esterbrook. When he chuckled, his watch chain, thatbarely stretched across his vest, moved up and down; I saw it movingthen and knew just a trace of hope.

"Next time," he said, "you wait and see who is coming through thedoor, or catch McGrath outside on your own time. Now, if you apologizeto Mr. Neubert, maybe he'll let you come back."

Well, then, with a hangdog manner, I went to Mr. Neubert. I begged hispardon while tears splashed on my chest. He beckoned me to follow himoutside the shop where no others could hear him dress me down. Formore than half an hour he told me things. At last he said: "This mustbe a lesson to you. If it ever happens again, I'll fire you sure! Andyou'll never come back."

When you see a retriever frisking in the ecstasy that comes when youget out your gun, you will know just how I felt when I went back towork. That fright did me a lot of good. From that time on I reallysettled down to learn, because I knew then just how much I lovedmechanics. And now, in 1936, out in Kansas City, on our pay roll,there is the name of a gentleman, a friend of mine, now quite old—thename is Neubert.

One night the man that I was helping underneath a locomotive stoppedhis work to look around us cautiously. Where others like ourselveswere working on locomotives laid up for repairs, the darkness of theshop was torn by the orange flames of coal-oil flares. Upon the gauntstone walls and cobwebbed trusses of the ceiling gigantic engineshadows alternately swelled and shrank.

"I'm going uptown." His voice was low and meant for just my ear. I washis apprentice helper, and devoted to old Arthur Darling.

"You'd better not," I warned him, scared on his account. "They'll fireyou sure if you get caught." Sometime before, Darling had come intoEllis and got a job in the shops. He had worked in many places, butlast of all in the Santa Fe shops. In our Union Pacific shops what wasregarded as his best skill was in setting engine valves. He surely wasan expert, and Mr. Neubert had put me with him as his helper, so thatI could learn to do a valve job too. Men who could were hard to get.The pulling power of a locomotive depends upon the proper setting ofits valves. Why, even now I can lie in bed at night and tell, from thesound of a distant locomotive as it labors with a heavy train, whetherits valves are rightly set; when they are, there is a smooth evencadence to the puff, puff, puff, puff as the engine works. For thatknowledge, and unnumbered other things I know about machines and metaland men, I owe a great debt to that grease-blackened old mechanic,Darling. Really, I owe him more than I can measure. The way ofteaching in that time, whereby the good craftsman passed on hisknowledge to an apprentice in the most practical way of all—while heworked—to my way of thinking was a most effective system. Certainlyafter the lapse of many years I feel impelled to say that noapprentice ever had a better teacher than Arthur Darling was to me.

"You just go ahead with these valves," he instructed as he moved awayout of the light we shared. "I'll be back around twelve o'clock," hesaid, and vanished.

I was scared on his account.

I had begun to feel a warm affection for him. Although he was inclinedto be almost surly when others tried to learn out of his vastexperience, with me he was quite different; he wanted me to share hisunderstanding. Knowing him was almost like getting away from Ellis,because he knew so much of other roads and of strange locomotivespecies we had never overhauled. He was the first really to teach mehow to handle steel; he had been better educated than the Ellis men inthe shop, and was so sure of himself when engaged with mathematics asto make me marvel.

"Listen," he had cautioned me, "when you start a valve job always takeyour own port marks! No matter if someone says he has taken themalready; you take your own port marks and you won't go wrong."

You can bet I did not want to see the last of such a friend. I did notwant to see him fired. So that night when he went on a spree, Istruggled with that mechanical enigma to save his job.

The wheels, axles, main connecting rods and valve gear had beenconnected. I knew I had a chance, at least, if I could complete thejob before the general foreman came to work in the morning. The rockerarm was put in its middle position. Then the valve stem was adjusteduntil it was in the center of the valve face. I placed the crank onthe forward center, and the full part of the forward-motion eccentricabove and that of the backward-motion eccentric below the axle. Tofasten them temporarily, I tightened up the set screws and threw thelink down until the block came nearly opposite to the end of theeccentric rod. It gave me satisfaction when I realized this was apuzzle I could work!

I was so intent on solving it that it startled me when Darling crawledunder there and stood beside me. It was midnight; he had come back to checkme up.

He ticked off what I had done. There was another helper there, but hewas younger and just a little dumb.

"You're all right, Walt." Darling slapped me on the back. "I'm goingback uptown. Around three o'clock I'll be back and take a look."

"Come on," I pleaded. "Crawl up in the engine cab and take a sleep.First thing you know you'll get it in the neck. They'll fire yousure."

"Nope! Going uptown. But wait a minute. I'll run those wheels around."

Big cast-iron rollers were put in place against the driving wheels;then, with pinch bars and ratchets, we could tighten screws until theweight of the locomotive was entirely on the rollers. Then, by pullingon a pinch bar, a man could turn the drive wheel of a standinglocomotive. The other helper and I pulled the pinch bars, and as weturned the wheels, Darling observed the travel of the valve and madesure that it was equal to the throw of the eccentric.

In a mumble he explained to me just what he was doing, and why. Then,with an endorsing wave of his hand, he walked out again. I proceededwith the job to its conclusion. In the months that followed I do notthink he completed three valve-setting jobs. Because I could do hiswork and because I covered him up, he warmed to me, and my experience,in this field of valve setting, far exceeded that of many journeymen.Old Darling said that I was a great young mechanic, and it isimportant that in my heart I agreed with him.

Sure I was cocky! I thought I was quite a kid. Long before our trainswere equipped with air brakes, I had made myself understand how thisWestinghouse contrivance worked and how to put it on an engine; myinformation came from the Westinghouse Company.

For compressing air there was a steam-driven air pump on thelocomotive, and a reservoir, either on the tender or the engine, inwhich the compressed air was kept under pressure. The tender and eachcar had a cylinder and piston and a triple valve underneath its body;the piston being connected to the brake levers. Each car had a pipeextending along its bottom, and this was connected to the brakecylinder. I understood it long before the Union Pacific determined toequip its trains with this improvement. Consequently, when we did getair brakes, I got the job of putting them on the division locomotives.That was in the last year of my apprenticeship, I was getting fifteencents an hour, but I was getting extra for examining firemen whowanted to be promoted to be engineers. They had a car rigged up withall the air-brake equipment. As I would show a fireman how it worked,I'd be thinking to myself: "What the hell do I want to stay aroundhere for? With what I know, I could get a job in China!"

The next thing to come along was steam heat for the trains. We chuckedout the old-fashioned little coal stoves that were the cause of somany horrible fires in train wrecks. I had been writing letters East,to technical magazines and other sources, so that I knew how toinstall that equipment, too, and got the job. Then along came electricsignals. By that time I was primed with sufficient understanding ofelectricity to do this job. Naturally, as fast as I learned a thingthat was new around the Ellis shops, I had to show it off, but inshowing off I gained a lot of experience. I had a sense of hurry. I'dthink: "Gosh, here I am already twenty-two—and still in Ellis."

Della Forker and I were waltzing in the G. A. R. Hall on a Saturdaynight. Her olive-tinted young throat was soft in a wrapping ofvelvet; just at the level of my mouth was her dark hair that wavedback from her forehead into a Psyche knot. We were engaged; we hadmusic aplenty in our hearts, and it was no concern of ours what sortof squeaky tune the other couples heard. Of course, for an ordinarydance, our crowd could not afford to import a four-piece orchestrafrom Junction City; we took our music raw out of a piano thumped by athin colored girl, and a violin that was squeezed and maltreated by alanky fiddler. It was fine to be engaged, but how could we get marriedon $1.50 a day?

Mr. Forker, Della's father, was a leading merchant of the town. Hishobby was fast harness horses; he used a sulky, and found satisfyingtriumphs in dusty races on the prairie as he coaxed somehigh-shouldered, lathered pacer to throw its hoofs ahead of all theother horses in a race. I could not ask the girl to leave her home onwhat I could provide when we were first engaged, and anyway, we wereagreed that there were better chances almost any place outside ofEllis. If we were civic traitors to our women-ruled community, well,then all small towns are filled with youthful traitors. Besides, Ifairly ached to get around, to work in other shops, to learn and tohave adventures.

As for romance, I showed a wisdom far beyond my years when I obeyedthe inner promptings that told me the world did not contain a girl tomatch my Della.

Lying on my desk there is a letter from an elderly man in our KansasCity branch, who wants to see me again, shake hands and have a talk,"the same," he writes, "as we had many years ago when you passedthrough Kansas City on your way home from Europe. I can feel your handon my shoulder and see the sparkle in your eye." He has signed hisletter, "your friend, Gus." My spirit, as his does, warms to oldmemories. In those days he was "Mr. Neubert."

Mr. Neubert had left his place as general foreman in our shops; he hadleft the Union Pacific to take a more important job with the Atchison,Topeka & Santa Fe.

Long before this he had completely forgiven me for that awful blunderwhen I socked him in the face with axle grease and wool waste. May beit was his going away from Ellis that made me so determined to leavewhen my apprenticeship was served. It was nearly at an end when theylearned at home that I was in a desperate mood, that I was full of acrazy scheme to seek work in another town.

My father spoke to me in deadly earnest, warning me about the men hesaw stealing rides on trains. "Maybe, Walt, when they began theythought they wanted to see more of the world, to learn more things.What's the use of going off to another railroad to look for a job? Thebest railroad in the world is the Union Pacific. On this road you'vegot a lot of friends and so have I. In another week or so you will begetting a journeyman's pay. Mr. Esterbrook tells me there isn't abetter mechanic in the roundhouse or the shops than you. You shouldstay right here in Ellis; settle down."

Settle down? Why, that was just the trouble! I'd never had a chance toput myself in a situation from which I could settle down, or so Ifelt. You couldn't hell around in Ellis. If the gang even had a keg ofbeer out at the ball field, every mother knew it and spoke her mind.

Besides, I just knew that any other town was better than Ellis; anytime I met a stranger, no matter where he came from, he knew thingsthat were unknown in Ellis. To my parents, my defense was that I hadambition and wanted to get ahead.

I was too big to lick with the hairbrush, so my mother tried to win meto her way of thinking by crying; at intervals she pleaded with me tohave some sense and listen to my father. She would remind me that notall cooking was like that I got at home, and then she would shed moretears. I could not argue; what I did was to snatch my hat, rush outand slam the door. I did not want to hear their arguments, becausewhat they had to say, I knew, was far from foolish. After all, theydid like me at the shop.

I was a good worker. I always tried to please the man I worked for;even though I was a good mechanic, if I was asked to sweep the floor,I'd sweep it. However, I had my mind made up. I went to see the mastermechanic, Mr. Esterbrook.

"You've been mighty nice to me," I blurted out as I walked up to hisdesk. "That I am a machinist is something I owe to you. I'll neverforget it either."

"Why, Walt, I'm glad you've done so fine, I'll——"

"But I'm going to quit, Mr. Esterbrook."

His face changed completely. The smile with which he had accepted mythanks faded like a light blown out. He was hurt and astonished.

"Is anything the matter, Walt?"

"No, sir. Not a thing. It's just that I want to get more experience. Ithink I'm a good mechanic—say, I know I am." I saw him grin, becauseof my habitual willingness to appraise my qualities at their propervalue. "I can do any job you ask me to, Mr. Esterbrook, but I want tolearn more things."

"Walt," he said solemnly, "you are a good mechanic; as good as anywe've got. You mustn't quit."

"I'm sorry."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to try to get a job on the Santa Fe."

"Where at?"

"Arkansas City. Mr. Neubert will give me a job."

Some days before, I had written a letter to Mr. Neubert—to myfriend Gus, I mean to say—and he had written me that he wouldfind a place for me. He did too. I got a long envelope from him; itcontained a letter in which he told me to go to the Santa Fe shops atWellington, Kansas. With it he enclosed a letter of introduction to aman named Sherwood.

My mother packed a basket full of food for me to eat on the longday-coach ride to Wellington. It was far to the southeast from Ellis;down in Sumner County on the border of the Indian Territory. I simplyhad to get away. I know that now. I had to give myself a chance to bea man away from home.

•III•

JOURNEYS OF A ROUNDHOUSE MECHANIC

"I Knew The Answer To My Lonesomeness"

One time when Mrs. Chrysler and I went up to New London and saw thecrews of Yale and Harvard race, a lot of my past was revealed; not toothers, but to me. For just about half a minute I had the feeling of andgetting a warning not to stay at the ball too late.

We had gone up there in our first big boat, a beautiful thing withperfect lines expressed in mahogany, white paint and gleaming brass.Then, after the races, we had gone for dinner and to dance at theHotel Griswold; that's where everybody was that night, or so itseemed. At the top of the thickly carpeted stairs, just before we wentdown to the floor to dance, Mrs. Chrysler touched my arm.

"See that big white-haired man in the orchestra. Isn't that JoeMcMahon?"

In all that pink-and-amber dimness, the first thing I looked for amongthe musicians was a slide trombone. When I found it, sure enough, thebulky, red-faced fellow blowing into it was Joe McMahon. Until thetune was finished, we stood there, and then: "Hi, Joe!"

"Hello, Walt; and, say, if it isn't Della!"

We three talked of Ellis, Kansas, where we all grew up, until Joe hadto pick up his trombone again when the leader began tapping with hisbaton on his music stand to end the interlude; but after that forhours I was remembering fragments of a longer interlude when Joe and Iwere roving in the West; each of us a machinist; each accustomed toplay in bands; each inured to freight-train traveling and the lack ofmoney. Many and many a time I hopped a freight train when I wanted togo else in search of work. Does anyone suppose I don't knowwhat it means to hunt for work?

There were some pictures on the walls and the room was bright. Thegolden-oak varnish of the roll-top desk was marred with nicks andscratches; its bottom drawer, nearest where I stood, had been scuffedby shoes until there was no varnish left on its face. This was theoffice of the boss, of the division master mechanic, in Wellington,Kansas, on the Santa Fe. He was seated in his swivel chair, there atthe desk, reading the letter of introduction I had handed to him. Hisname was Sherwood; to me, his precise speech sounded peculiar,foreign; afterward I was to learn that Mr. Sherwood, no longer young,was an Englishman. He wore whiskers of a kind we used to classify as"curtains."

"Mr. Neubert says you are a good mechanic."

"That's right, I am." I knew Mr. Sherwood took his orders from Mr.Neubert.

"You appear pretty young to be an experienced journeyman mechanic. Howold are you?"

A switch engine passed along the yard tracks outside the window justthen, its bell making a great clamor. My eyes were on the engine as Ianswered, "Twenty-three." Actually I was ten months younger.

"Twenty-three does not suggest that you have had much experience,"protested Mr. Sherwood doubtfully. "Can you set valves?"

"Yes, I can do a valve job—good enough for Mr. Neubert."

Mr. Sherwood's eyes roved over me as if he were still unconvinced.

"Can you lay out shoes and wedges?" That is another accurate anddifficult job connected with the repair and overhauling oflocomotives.

"Yes, I can lay out shoes."

"You look too young to be so experienced. Why, I've got older men thanyou around these shops to whom I would not such important and difficult jobs. But on the strength of Mr.Neubert's recommendation, I'm going to put you to work. We have threerates of pay for journeyman mechanics: Twenty-seven and a half centsan hour for the best ones; twenty-five cents an hour for the nextbest, and twenty-two and a half cents an hour for the less-experiencedfellows—lathe hands who come here to Wellington because theywant to learn some more about their trade."

"I'm not just a lathe hand. I'm an all-'round shop man."

"We shall see. You'll have to work two weeks before we say what rateof pay you get."

"All right. I'll work two weeks. But if I don't get the top pay Idon't want the job."

"A cheeky young fellow." Mr. Sherwood looked for confirmation of thisverdict in the eyes of an assistant who sat near him.

"No," I declared. "I'm just a good mechanic."

Mr. Sherwood passed a hand across his mustache, and I think he wipedoff a smile; at any rate, he instructed me to report to the generalforeman, Hart—Bill Hart. As we said in those days, my dander had"riz"; all those questions as to my ability were wounds that wentdeeply into my pride. At home everybody knew I was a really goodmechanic. Of course, in the Ellis shops we had not been equipped to docertain heavy work with frames and boilers, but I had proved mycapacity to do the really complicated jobs. Probably I knew it just alittle too well that day, because I think my manner rubbed Hart, thegeneral foreman, the wrong way.

"You can set valves, hey? Well, there's a job." He indicated with histhumb a locomotive, one of a new type lately purchased by the SantaFe. Concerning it, of course, I was entirely green. But I went towork, starting in to take my port marks. In a little while, Harthurried toward me, waving a greasy hand impatiently as if to flag me.

"No, no, you don't need to take those port marks all over. I took themyesterday."

Deliberately, I took another steam-chest cover off before I answered.I did not want to be abrupt. But when I spoke, the best that I coulddo was to say, "Maybe so, Mr. Hart, but if you want me to set thesevalves, then I'll take my own port marks." I was not going to forgetso soon in my journeyman career the advice old Arthur Darling hadgiven me. Whatever he said to me had sunk in.

Hart glared at me. Now, as I think back on it, I don't blame him. Mymanner must have been irritating to a man with a general foreman'sresponsibility. However, one of the helpers who stood by spoke to meout of the corner of his mouth as Hart, after bawling me out, strodeaway.

"He couldn't set these valves himself," the youngster said. "He triedyesterday, and now you've been put on the job just to show you up.He's trying to rawhide you."

"Yeah?" I went all over that engine then. In the cab I discovered afew things that were new to me, but when I looked at the reverselever, I saw that a plug was missing from the quadrant slot, a plugdesigned to prevent the lever from being opened too wide. I put a pluginto that hole and grinned to myself as I left the cab. Then I tookthe valves out, looked at them and put them back. I knew they wereall right. In a space of time much shorter than is usual on a valvejob, I had the drive wheels off the rollers. Then I went to Hart andtold him I was ready for another job.

"What?" He roared this query.

"She's ready."

"Chrysler, you mean to tell me those valves are set in this shorttime?"

"Yes. Take her out. She's all right."

"And you told me you were a valve man! Well——"

"Sure I'm a valve man. I tell you that engine——"

"Chrysler, if that engine does not pull the way she should when she'sfired up—well, you won't have a job."

"Hook her to a string of cars; she'll take 'em away. What else you gotfor me to do?"

They fired the engine up at once and she pulled just like I had saidshe would. Sherwood sent for me a little while later and asked aboutthat engine. I had refused to reveal anything to Hart, but to themaster mechanic I explained about the plug. He chuckled, andthereafter I was put to work on air brakes. I got the top rate of pay,but, unhappily, I continued for a while to be too cocky.

Wellington was so much bigger than Ellis that I felt myself to be aregular city guy. I found things new and exciting. However, the thrillof a young fellow making his living away from home for the first timesoon waned and the taste of freedom began to pall on me. First thing Iknew I was as lonesome as a fellow could be; what I suffered from washomesickness. I did not have any friends, I hated living in the hotel,I hated the two-mile walk to work, and I hated eating my dinner out ofa bucket. Back in Ellis, the only time I had ever carried a dinnerpail was when I worked on the night shift; days I had always gone homeat noon and stuffed myself until I was full of one of my mother'swonderful dinners—lunch they call them now. She would have beenscornful if she could have seen the wedge of soggy apple pie that thehotel waitress had dropped in my bucket on top of a couple ofjuiceless sandwiches. I sat there wishing I had brought my tuba, so Icould join a band in Wellington; then I was glad I hadn't and simplysat and wished that I was home and hadn't been so foolish as tosquander all my money more than a week before pay day.

I sat outside the roundhouse on a railroad tie, my elbows on my kneesand my hands hanging between them limply. Then, directly under myeyes, I became aware of an enormous pair of feet. I knew who theybelonged to, a fellow named Prince, a boilermaker, the biggest fellowin the shops. Seems to me he must have stood six feet three or four;the top of my head came just about to the level of his mouth.

"Don't you want a cigarette, Chrysler?"

That boilermaker had a tender heart. Of course, I wanted a cigarette.He handed me the makings and I rolled one in a fretful hurry.

As I felt the first drag go deep into my lungs, and breathed it out, Ibegan to grin, and twisted my head so I could look up into the face ofthis good-natured giant.

"You wanted that one bad," he said. "How's it happen you lackcigarettes?"

"Broke," I said.

"Get a sack of makings," he advised.

"That's what I smoke," I said, "but till pay day comes I won't evenhave a nickel."

I grinned and Prince grinned back with a warmth and understanding. Ihad been too proud to bum a cigarette, but when he came and offeredone, that boilermaker made a friend. Thereafter in Wellington, Princeand I were pals, chasing around together. Of course, that made me feela whole lot better, having a companion for my idle hours, but Icontinued to hate the drab uninviting hotel food.

One day at the shop, as I complained to a sympathetic old fellow, ablacksmith, he said, "Say, I've got a vacant room up at my house. Ifyou want to move your things in and live with us, why, my wife and Iwould love to have you."

They were the finest, most-devoted couple anybody ever saw. All hecharged me for my room and board was twelve dollars a month and, my,his wife really could cook! I began to be almost happy. Of course, itwas not as good food as I got at home, but after the hotel, it seemedto me that not only my meals but the whole world had a better taste.Of course, that big fellow, Prince had much to do with how I felt. Thelaughs we had together!

But even through my homesick spell I continued confident. I wasgetting all the best jobs to do around the shop, and I knew my skillin fixing locomotives was a cause of satisfaction to the bosses.Possibly, that upset my sense of values, but I think an even biggerfactor was that I had not then replaced the discipline of home withself-discipline. Lacking that, any human being soon finds trouble.

A circus had arrived in Wellington; not a big one, but still a circus.There was going to be a free parade, and I wanted to see it; so did adozen others in the shop. They chose me as spokesman, and I walked upto Bill Hart, wiping my hands on a piece of waste. We wanted, Iexplained to him, to get off long enough to see the parade.

Hart folded his arms and stared at me. Each half of his big mustacheseemed to move independently. In about two seconds he was in a rage.

"Are you crazy? What's the matter with you fellows? No! No! No!"

In his quite proper loss of patience, Hart raved. What the others didnot hear him say they could interpret from his half-frantic gestures.So, when I went back to report, they all got sore. Our dignity, which,I have discovered, is a lot more important than almost any other humanfactor, had been wounded. We'd show Hart, we would.

We washed up, took off our overalls and tramped uptown. Oh, that was apoor parade. Maybe they had elephants and clowns and a Queen of Sheba;I don't remember though; all I can recall is that I stood on thecurbstone wishing I had been less of a fool. I began to see that itwas more than Bill Hart that I had deserted. I had left the railroad.Suppose all the other men of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railwaywere to take a simultaneous notion to go off the job and watch acircus. I remember how wilted, how tawdry the band musicians looked intheir wrinkled uniforms, and I found no music in the sounds they wereexpelling from their brass horns. In about two hours we were back, andI had no more than hooked up the bib of my overalls than I saw oldSherwood striding toward me. If he had been the blustering kind, Iwould have blustered back, I guess, but he did nothing of the sort. Hewas exceedingly solemn, quiet.

"In years of railroad experience," he began, "nothing like this hasever happened to me. You ought to be fired. Every one of you ought tobe fired here and now. You know that. I know it. So, it seems to meI'll do no good by doing something that I can do. You know I can doit?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well," he said, "I'm not going to fire any of you. I am simply goingto hope that never so long as you call yourselves railroad men willany of you do a thing like this again."

I was just about ready to cry, myself, and I think the others felt asI did. We knew we had behaved quite badly.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Sherwood. I wish I had not been so foolish. Mr. Hart,we thought, made it a little tough for us boys in the way he said wecould not go. I'm awfully sorry and I feel that all the other boys aresorry. I promise you I'll never do anything like this again."

Mr. Sherwood shook his head from side to side and walked away. He hadall the best of that argument without saying another word.

My mother kept on wanting me at home; so did my father. In his lettershe would point out the advantages I would have if I came back to workin the Ellis shops of the Union Pacific; mother simply let me see thatshe was unhappy. But she was not alone in that; I had liked myfreedom, but I had not liked being sure of clean clothes only when Icarried them to a wash woman myself; some of the time I had not likedthe food I got; at home my mother always cooked things she knew heryounger son would relish. I missed my parents, I missed my home and Imissed Della Forker. We corresponded faithfully. To clinch the matter,I got a letter from Frank Merrill, who was then master mechanic. Heoffered me a job at thirty cents an hour—three cents above the bestrate for journeymen in the Ellis shops. So I quit the Santa Fe and,riding on a pass that came as soon as I accepted Merrill's offer wenthome to the finest meal any prodigal ever ate.

The new job was that of night mechanic—that is, I was the head man atnight. I was the one at the roundhouse to whom the dispatcher's officetelephoned when they wanted an engine for a certain train; when I gotsuch a call, it was my responsibility to see that the boy called theengine crew and that the hostler put fire in the boiler, got up steam,took her across the turntable and down to the water tank, that he hadher entirely ready to take a passenger train. Likewise it was myresponsibility to see that the engine that had pulled the train intoEllis was properly treated when the hostler brought her into theroundhouse. There was a book in the roundhouse, a sort of work journalin which each engineer, as he finished a run, would report the kind ofrepairs needed by his engine—the boiler to be washed, flues to becalked, air brakes to be adjusted. That was one thing about my father:he knew so well how to handle a heavy train that his engine onlyrarely needed more than the minimum attention. Often he just wrote onthe book: "Oil the trucks and driving boxes." Some of the men used tocall him "Oil-the-trucks Hank."

Restlessness began to afflict me when I had been home only a fewmonths; after Wellington, of course, Ellis seemed smaller than it hadbefore I went away. But whenever I complained, my mother cried softlyinto her apron, for she knew what this portended. It seemed to me thatI could not make anyone understand except Della Forker. I could tellher that I was ambitious and she would nod; it seems to me, I evendared to tell her that I intended, some day, to be a master mechanic.Of course, I realized I had to learn a lot before I could really hopeto have that dream fulfilled, and that was why I wanted to go to abigger place—so I could get more experience. Most of the time, evenin my own mind, I was pretty vague about what I was going to do. Butfinally I put in a request for a pass to Denver and quit my job again.

I took a little suitcase with me, some calipers and a ruler wrappedinside my overalls; also I had the lunch my mother had put up for mein a shoe box, and there was a third piece of baggage. In a clumsybulbous imitation-leather case I had my silver tuba with its goldenburnished bell. This trip I was prepared to avoid all moping.Through the night of that twelve-hour day-coach journey I used thetuba for a pillow.

In Denver I got a job in the shops of the Colorado & Southern. I didnot like the place; it was wild and reckless. Along almost any streetwhere I wandered of an evening fierce-looking, dissipated men wouldpanhandle you for a nickel or a dime. They might whine with theirlips, but with their eyes they were demanding. All the evil thingsfeared by my father and my mother seemed likely to be coming true inDenver. I worked two weeks and quit.

Cheyenne, Wyoming, was where I headed for next. No pass this time. Imet a conductor of the Union Pacific, and explained that I was HankChrysler's son.

"I can't deadhead you, kid. I'm sorry. Can't tell who might see me."

"No, listen. Not me; just the tuba. Leave it at the roundhouse inCheyenne."

"All right. Give me the suitcase, too, if you want."

That made it easy. I just strolled down the yards to where a switchengine was kicking the last cars into a freight train; some of thecars were empties, and finally I came to one the door of which gapedsix or seven inches. That meant there were men aboard. I pushed itwider, looked quickly up and down the tracks and then scrambledinside. There were half a dozen frowsy whiskered men curled up on thefloor in there. One snarled at me, "Fix that door the way you foundit." I fixed it quickly and settled down, my back against the freightcar's wall. Well, that's the way I started.

I have forgotten much of Cheyenne, of Laramie and Rawlins; I worked inthose places and a lot of others. Sometimes when I could manage, Ijoined the local band. They had a good band in Laramie; as I recallit, it was there that I found Joe McMahon, and we knocked around awhile, parted and then got together again down in Salt Lake City.

There is no order in my recollection of those times. I found jobs inmany places, yet I never seemed to find the job I hunted. Often I wasbroke, but if I went hungry, that was simply due to bad management.The important thing is that I never have forgotten how it feels torove around this country hunting work. A few years ago I put up somemoney for an expedition to fetch live animal specimens from Africa,but I sometimes think I'd like to send another expedition through theWest to see if it could find on some old branch-line water tank theinitials W. P. C. with an arrow through them to show any followingfriend the direction I had gone.

The tuba was better than a passport in any town that had a band. Thefirst band-practice night I would get acquainted with all the youngfolks of the town. I was a pretty good dancer and I danced plenty. Atthe same time, in the shops I was learning more and more; I learnedsomething from every good mechanic with whom I worked; I learned theworkings of a variety of engines; I learned shop practices; but mostimportant, I learned a lot about men, and still more about WalterChrysler.

I lacked patience then; I wasn't willing to stick around a shop toprove that I was good. If they did not appreciate me, if any foremandressed me down, I'd get my time, pack up my bag, forward my tuba andhead for the next shop town. Of course, I was spending money as fastas I made it. Spending money was one easy way to get over an attack ofblues, and I was often homesick. Yet I must confess I liked that sortof life; I liked the freedom, the sense of adventure and the lack ofresponsibility. But there were drawbacks. It was cold lots of times,and I did not always have enough food, although no one had to goempty in the West.

If you got to a water tank and were put off by the train crew, youwould walk to town, a mile or so away, and if you had no money, youwould go to a back door and say that you were hungry. In her life mymother must have fed thousands out our way. Any time you knocked at aback door out West and explained that you were on the move, lookingfor work, you got something to eat; maybe just bread and butter, maybea few slices of cold meat. No one ever felt a need to blush in thosedays for eating such a meal. When you had eaten and rolled acigarette, you could feel a happy glow inside at the thought of theswell job you might get in the next town. Ah, but what a tough lifethat is in cold weather!

By identifying myself sometimes, I was allowed to ride in a caboose.On top of a freight train on a down grade, I've turned a brake wheelmany a time. A few times I was allowed to climb up in the engine cab,sit on the fireman's side, ring the bell and look ahead for him.However, a lot of train crews were strict; on certain divisions theyhad to be or lose their jobs. When the engine was stopped, with brakesticks in their hands, they'd hunt the train from end to end for allmanner of unofficial riders. Then they would try to pull out and leaveus. If they succeeded, all of us castaways would congregate at thewater tank; it was surprising sometimes to see what a variety of menhad been hidden aboard.

Sometimes I was alone, again I'd be in the company of anothermachinist or a boiler maker. Frequently there would be other rovingworkmen, but also there would be men more difficult to classify;fellows with bloodshot, reckless eyes, sinister scars and tattoomarks. Invariably, however, there would be a few whiskered men inbroken shoes and ragged coats held together by safety pins or bits ofstring. Nevertheless, until another train came along, we would bethrown together in the free-masonry that embraces any group ofwayfarers. We'd all rustle wood, and soon there would be a bonfire. Ifyou had a nickel bag of tobacco and some papers, you did not dare toviolate convention by smoking alone; any who lacked tobacco smokedwith you. That was a swell arrangement; I didn't always have tobacco.We'd talk a while, but if, as sometimes happened, the conversation wasdull, why, that was when it would seem worth while to take your knifeout and carve your initials on a water-tank post.

I finally lost my tuba. There was not a lot of music in thatinstrument, but somehow I always enjoyed the big noise that I valvedout of it; it seemed especially grand when any band I was a part ofplayed the overture from William Tell. I'll have to retrace my routeby ear to remember where I parted with my horn forever. Let me see:Cheyenne—big shops there—Rawlins, Rock Springs, Laramieand Ogden, Utah. That brings it back! I beat it into Ogden withanother fellow. I saw the Union Pacific foreman there and he put me towork. I stayed six weeks that time, but roving had almost become ahabit; box-car travel offered an easy escape from boredom. So, whenthis other fellow and I heard a lot of talk about the shops atPocatello, Idaho, we started. I put my tuba in the custody of aconductor, gave him a cigar and asked him to see that it was deliveredto the Oregon Short Line roundhouse in Pocatello. Well, the two of usarrived at last in Pocatello. Every minute of the time that I wasawake I wished I had not come. The wind was blowing all the time. Itseemed to me that there could be no other wind quite its equal inferocity. I swear, it would blow gravel right in your face. In lessthan two weeks I knew I had enough. I left Pocatello in a box car ofa train of empties headed south.

I was brushing off the travel dust in Salt Lake City before Iremembered that I had neglected to arrange for anybody to bring mytuba south. I hope whoever became its master learned to play itsweetly.

In Salt Lake City I got a job in the shops of the Denver & Rio GrandeWestern Railroad. That was in 1900. There was a friend from Ellis, aman named Sam Smith, who was the roundhouse foreman. He fixed it so Igot thirty cents an hour. He liked the way I worked, and I liked himand I liked the shop. Moreover, I liked Salt Lake City. I began to goaround a lot, to Saltair Pavilion on the shore of the lake to swim anddance. I had made up my mind I was through with roving. I guess when Ileft my tuba I likewise left behind a certain frame of mind.

I worked a year and saved my money to the best of my ability. I wasoften dreadfully lonesome. Every time I saw a railroad train movingeastward I wished myself aboard it. Every time I heard a locomotivemournfully whistling "who, who-oo-oo, who-oo-oo who" I knew the answerto my lonesomeness: Della Forker. We exchanged letters faithfully. Shenever wavered during that time when I was a wandering mechanic; sheknew why I was roving, knew that she was completely interwoven with myambitions.

I cherished all her letters and when I was blue I cured myself byreading them and inhaling their faint perfume. I was twenty-six. Aprospective bridegroom could not return for his wedding in a box caror caboose; I had bought a derby hat and other appropriate clothes,but I still had to go on saving. Then, at last, I was able to writeher that I was coming home and asked her to fix a day for theceremony, reporting that I had enough money for expenses and to tideus over to the next payday. I got passes East, over the D. & R. G.W., to Denver; for the return trip it was good for "W. P. Chrysler& wife." But there was no chance of getting a pass for the journeybetween Denver and my home town over the Union Pacific, regardless ofthe years I had worked for that line. So it happened that when Ireached Denver I stood before a railroad station window and for thefirst time in my life bought a railroad ticket. On its face, however,that ticket bore a word that in several homesick years had becomeentirely glamorous: Ellis.

We were married in the Methodist Church. My wife's mother had died andso it was a quiet wedding, just our two families. We caught themidnight train for Denver. Believe me, I had settled down.

We began our married life in Salt Lake City with sixty dollars; thatwas every cent I had. As a roundhouse mechanic, I was getting thirtycents an hour, three dollars for a ten-hour day. Whenever I could pileup some overtime, I figured I was lucky. Through the summer we livedin a little house that we had rented furnished and watched thecompletion of a row of terraced flats. Before the builders hadfinished them, we had rented one of these. When it was ready, we movedin with $170 worth of furniture that I had signed up to buy on time.

I had more ambition then than ever. I had been studying, carrying on acourse in electrical engineering by mail through The InternationalCorrespondence Schools. I had heard about that from Bill Kilpatrick,an Ellis boy who had moved to Salt Lake City and served hisapprenticeship out there. When he had told me what he was doing to geta technical education, I had said, "I'm going to do that too."

I had what might be called a lucky break in Utah. Out there theMormons pay their tithes twice in every year, and tithing time is afestival period; during the autumn tithing week thousands of Mormonswould be on the move, bringing one tenth of all they had produced incash, calves, lambs, eggs, hams, vegetables, fruits, or other thingsto officials of their church. All this made a traffic problem for therailroads in the state; the D. & R. G. W. was busy hauling Mormonpassengers and hauling a freight of tithes. It happened that they hadto send a special train up what was called the Tintic Branch to bringin passengers from the mountains who wished to pay their tithes inSalt Lake City.

The road was short of motive power in those days, and to haul thespecial on its round trip in the morning, it was decided to use anengine that would be needed in the afternoon to take out the train toDenver. This through train was scheduled to leave Salt Lake City atthree p. m.

I was standing at the register book in the roundhouse, taking off somework, when I saw the master mechanic, John Hickey, come tearing intothe roundhouse waving a telegram at Sam Smith, the roundhouse foreman.Mr. Hickey was a dapper man who always came to work dressed as if toattend a wedding; his coat was a cutaway, his pants were striped andhis hat an unblemished gray fedora. He was gray-haired, and to mymind, then, the perfect model of a gentleman. But this time he was ina lather.

"Smith, Engine 46 has blown out a back cylinder head on that specialrun. What in the name of——"

"That's the only engine you got," said Smith, "that can take thatDenver train out of here."

"I know that," said Hickey. "The question is: Can we get her repairedin time?"

"Well, I got a young fellow here I think can do the job."

They came over to me then. Hickey knew me. He always called me"Crissler." He was puffing from his hurry. "Crissler, can you put aback cylinder head on No. 46 and have her ready for the through trip?"

"If anybody can," I said, "I can."

"That's the spirit, Crissler."

"You'll have to give me two helpers."

"Fine, fine! . . . Smith, give him all the help he wants." Then Hickeydashed away and Smith asked: "What do you think? Can you do it?"

"Well, I didn't say I could; I said, 'If anybody can, I can'."

I picked my helpers then, got my wrenches and other tools and laidthem beside the roundhouse pit where I would have to do this job. ThenI went to the machine shop and loaded into a hand truck a new backcylinder head, wrist pins, bolts, studs and other things I thought Imight need. I trucked this over to the roundhouse pit and checked itover to make sure I had everything I possibly could need. Then I tookmy two helpers down to the coal chute where the crippled locomotivewould pause first when she arrived.

Naturally, she was operating only on one side when she rolled in; thebroken side that needed my attention was idle, and so, even before shestopped, I was working on her, stripping off nuts and crossheads as Iwalked beside her. As the cripple puff, puff, puffed unevenly towardthe ashpit, I kept busy with my wrench.

When the fire was dropped out of her, it all but scorched my shins. Inever stopped and I kept my helpers going fast. When I first touchedher at the coal chute, it was just past noon—ten past to be exact,but the whistle meant nothing to me that day. Smith, the roundhouseforeman, went to my home, explained the situation to my worried wifeand waited while she packed a dinner pail for me.

Two hours and forty minutes after I began the job, I yelled to Smith,"You can take her away; she's ready." It was ten minutes to three andthe Denver train pulled out on time.

Old Man Hickey watched her go, his watch in his hand. I think he hadbeen praying to that watch all the time I worked. But when she passedfrom sight, he came to where I stood wiping my face with a piece ofwaste.

"Crissler, I thought the Denver train was doomed to be at least anhour and a half late. I had no idea you'd get that engine out of herein time. I wouldn't have believed anybody who told me a mechanic coulddo a job like that in so short a time."

Of course, I glowed; that kind of praise is better than meat and drinkfor any man. But old man Hickey was not finished:

"You know the wages you fellows get are fixed. If I could boost yourpay, I would." He thought a moment; then he beamed, "I'll tell you,Crissler, there is something I can do for you. You can have the restof the afternoon off." It was three o'clock.

I did not go home. I sat on the side of the pit, ate to the bottom ofmy dinner pail, smoked my cigarette, walked around for fifteen minutesand then went back to work. I felt grand; I wasn't going to sacrificea minute of my feeling of triumph.

It must have been about five months later that word was sent for me tocome to the master mechanic's office. I wasn't "Crissler" any longer.As I walked in, John Hickey said, "Walter, do you think you can holddown the job of foreman over in the roundhouse?"

"Sure I can. But what's going to become of Mr. Smith?"

"We've got another better job for Smith. So I'd like to give you thisjob as roundhouse foreman."

Thereafter I had an office; just a little hole in the wall comparedwith some I've seen, but it contained a dinky roll-top desk with atelephone. I was foreman over about ninety men.

The union had a rule about such matters. In those days, when a manaccepted a foremanship, he was held to be on "the company's side."Therefore, he could not continue his membership in the union. Insteadhe was given a "withdrawal card." If I lost my job, of course, I couldget back in the union. But I did not mean to lose it; at home weneeded all the extra money I could make. Just about that time, ourfirst child was born, Thelma; she who was to become Mrs. Byron Foy.

Even so, before I had been foreman at the roundhouse very long, I madeJohn Hickey mad.

•IV•

A CHANCE MEETING IN CHICAGO

"I Spent Four Days Hanging Around The Show"

I knew what was coming, the instant I discovered it was not thedispatcher on the wire; with a cold feeling in my stomach, Irecognized the voice that rasped through the intercommunicatingtelephone receiver as that of Mr. Hickey's clerk. For several days Ihad been fearful of a summons from the general master mechanic.

You do not need to drown to have much of your past life reel throughyour mind in just a single second. Jobs were scarce; and the suddenfear that you are about to lose your job may do that to you if you areyoung—I was twenty-seven—and constant in your solicitude for a wifeand baby. I had a wife, so pretty that I was swollen with pride anytime we appeared together; a loyal and devoted wife who cooked,cleaned, washed and nursed through longer hours than I worked. She wasthe one who managed so the pay check stretched through the month. Weboth felt that we were lucky to have ninety dollars a month. Thethought of losing what we had made me feel that I was encounteringcalamity when the clerk spoke: "Mr. Hickey wants to see you in hisoffice."

My own little office meant much to me. I had authority. I was the bossof scores of men—fellows like myself who understood metal andmachines. In it, beside my small desk, was a pot-bellied stove, arelic of a time when every railroad coach was heated with one of itscast-iron species. Except on rare days, this was just a target for thetobacco juice of my visitors. There were several extra chairs of wood,their sheen darkened because of the greasy overalls of those who satin them. Anyone who stepped in to see the roundhouse foreman stood,not on bare boards or cinders but on an oilcloth mat. However, Mr.Hickey's office was much finer. He was the boss of thousands, and hisauthority extended all over the railroad, over division mastermechanics, over scores of foremen, over swarms of machinists, overengineers and firemen. There was a carpet on the floor of Mr. Hickey'soffice.

That was the carpet I was heading for as I started out of theroundhouse to obey the summons. From behind the row of levers in theswitchman's tower, an arm was raised to wave to me. I had many friendsaround the yards, I waved back, not too gaily. I was a forceful,snappy young fellow, quick-tempered. That was the trouble. A few daysbefore, I had opened and read a letter from the general mastermechanic. I have forgotten now what act or oversight of mine hadcaused him to write this rebuke, but I remember well how quickly I gotmad. A sassy letter from the boss, eh? Well, I could write a sassyletter too. Because I was young, he need not think he could take myhide off. My trouble was youthful sensitiveness. What I could notunderstand as I crunched along the path of cinders towards the officeswas what had impelled him to wait three or four days. I know that inthat time I had come to realize two things: that Mr. Hickey had bothcause to rebuke me and cause to feel outraged for my lack of respect,as shown in my reply. Well, if I was going to get it in the neck, Iwas not going to whimper. I clamped my teeth, squared my shoulders andopened the boss's door.

"Hello Walt. Sit down. I have been looking at some drawings of a newlocomotive. A monster, isn't it?" Mr. Hickey had me off guard then. Hechatted on and on until, I suppose, he saw that I was relaxed.

"Walt, you're a good boy. You're a hard worker. I don't know a bettermechanic. You've got courage too. But there are some other things Ifeel I have to say to you. Four or five months ago I made you foremanat the roundhouse, made you responsible for the motive power, and forsomething else: For the men, for the work they do."

I knew it was coming then, but I was making up my mind to takewhatever Mr. Hickey cared to say; had he roared, I would have roaredlouder; instead he wore me down with kind and gentle words.

"Walt, I know you pretty well. Right after you went to work, I fixedmy eye on you. Remember when we bought those four new cross-compoundengines? I was worried about their valves. Where would we get a man toset them? The Baldwin man assured me it would be no problem. He saidwe had a kid in the roundhouse who knew as much about the engines ashe did. He told me how you learned about those cross-compounds andtheir complicated valves."

That floored me. When this Baldwin man had come to Salt Lake City toset up these engines, I had just about lived with him. I had workedwith him by day, and after supper had gone to his hotel to sit withhim until ten or eleven at night, asking questions until I nearlytired him out. When he had gone East, I had been the only mechanic whocould set those engines' valves. Most of the parts were similar toother locomotives, but the valve motion was complicated. Sometimes arock thrown up from the road bed would strike and bend a littleeccentric rod, and the engine would go lame, a mysterious thing toeverybody else. Many times a call boy came for me at night to fix oneof those cross-compounds in a hurry. I'd get up, go down to theroundhouse, take off the bent rod, straighten it up and have theengine right all within an hour. Then the night man would say, "Kid,that's quick work—too quick, in fact. Put in for ten hours' overtime,but go on home to bed. Then you can get a full day's work tomorrow."

Maybe Mr. Hickey even knew about that extra overtime; I don't know.Certainly, he knew plenty about human beings. There isn't one of uswho won't listen carefully to a sermon that begins with praise of ourwork or something else that we take pride in. You can bet, I listenedthat day.

"You know, Walt, you've got a future. I don't want to see you throw itaway just because your feelings get hurt now and then. Let me tell youthis: now and then, I get a letter that makes me boil with rage. Youknow what I do?"

Mr. Hickey reached deep into his roll-top desk, so that his glossycuff protruded for almost its length; from a small drawer beneath thepigeonholes he pulled out a sheet of fingermarked paper. I saw that itwas the letter I had written. I was red to the roots of my hair."Walt, there is where I put letters that make me mad. I leave themthere three or four days until I have calmed down. When I amsure"—Mr. Hickey smiled on me then—"I take them out and read themover."

I don't believe I could have stood it if he had read my letter aloudjust then; happily, he simply laid it down between us and kept ontalking, gently:

"If you had put my letter in a drawer until you cooled off, Walt,you'd have dealt with it much more soundly; you would have been fairto me and fair to yourself. Don't you see? Now, boy, you rememberwhat I've told you."

I apologized right then; words of contrition poured out of me the waypotatoes do when you spill the barrel.

Since that day I've never answered any letter while in a passion. Oh,I've gotten mad and pounded my fist on a table when talking face toface, but I never have lost my temper on paper. God knows, I havereceived letters that seemed to tear my heart out, but those letters Ihave always filed in the bottom drawer. Just the act of pulling itopen brings a thought of old man Hickey and cools me down.

When I refer to Mr. Hickey as "old," it is with affection; he was the"old man" simply because he was the boss, the one whose words ofpraise, of sympathetic understanding, gave more lasting satisfactionthan my pay checks. Now, looking backward over the course I havetraveled, I recall him as one of my best teachers, a trainer whoshowed me how to curb some traits of temper that well might havesidetracked me, or even caused derailment.

I had been roundhouse foreman just about a year when, one day, therecame a telegram from Trinidad, Colorado, that got me all excited. Itwas signed by H. C. Van Buskirk, superintendent of motive power of theColorado & Southern, a road that ran from Denver down to Texline,Texas, where it was linked with the Fort Worth & Denver City Railroad.In the telegram, Van Buskirk offered me a job as general foreman ofthe Colorado & Southern's shops at Trinidad. Fifteen dollars more amonth! But I did not know Van Buskirk, never had heard of him. I torearound for several hours, hardly knowing where I stood at any time.Maybe Mr. Hickey could set me straight.

"What can I do for you, Walt? Sit down."

I pulled out the telegram. "I've got something here that's botheringme an awful lot."

Mr. Hickey read the telegram, peered at me, read the telegram again,then peered back. "Well, Walt, this is a fine opportunity, getting ageneral foremanship when you are only—let me see—is it thirty?" Hegrinned. I think he suspected the truth—that I was just pasttwenty-eight.

"But I don't know Mr. Van Buskirk, and yet he wires for me."

"I happen to know him. Probably he heard from somebody that you were ahustler and a good mechanic. I suppose he has a tough job of some kindthat he wants cleaned up."

We talked for half an hour and the old man expanded. He had begun byserving an apprenticeship with the Cuyahoga Machine Works atCleveland, Ohio. He had a short term as machinist, became a locomotiveengineer, then became a foreman of engine repairs with the Burlington.In '73 he had become master mechanic of the Sheboygan & Fond du LacRailroad.

"So you see, Walt, after a general foremanship, the next step ismaster mechanic somewhere."

"Gee, Mr. Hickey! But you went to college."

"Surely; in Toronto, Upper Canada College, before I became anapprentice. But you don't have to go to college to get an education.Keep on with your correspondence courses. You'll learn faster andbetter than most fellows, because you are getting it through yourfingers and your eyes, instead of through your ears. What is thiscourse you're taking? An electrical-mechanical engineering course?"

"Yes, sir. I'm studying drafting now. But, listen, I'd like to stayhere. I've been happy. I——"

"You are a hustler, and I'd hate like the devil to lose you. But, youknow, our general foreman here is an excellent man. I expect he'llhold his job until I die or get fired. Do you want to wait ten orfifteen years? I never hope to have a better roundhouse foreman. Thatjob is yours as long as you want it."

"But, Mr. Hickey, I want advice."

"Take the job, Walt! It's a great opportunity for you. You're learninghow to swing authority while you're young. Don't stop!" Then hedampered down his enthusiasm a trifle: "I am telling you that if Iwere in your shoes I'd take the job. I should regret to see you let afine opportunity slide by just because you are comfortable in a jobthat you have mastered. Don't be afraid of your future."

"I ain't afraid, but I got a wife and baby."

"You got a splendid wife. Talk to her. Then let me know. And goodluck!" He waved his arm widely, as conductors do when they hold alantern in their hand and signal to the engineer to go ahead.

When I got to the flat, my wife put the dinner on the table and wetalked as we ate, while Thelma in her high chair clattered a spoonagainst its wooden tray.

"What do you say, Della? Fifteen dollars means fifty cents every dayin the month. It won't cost much to move. The furniture will go halfrate and we'll have passes, but Trinidad is hundreds of miles away."

"Dad, you are the one to say. I won't fret or worry, whatever comes.Certainly we could use that money." Saying this, she wrapped her armsaround the child. I had her answer.

"Then we'll move."

Once it was the Santa Fe Trail, made glamorous by the feet, the hoofsand creaking wheels of all that had marched and rolled along it aspart of the pageantry of American history. When I first walked on thetrail, what my feet touched had become fixed by stones, boards andbricks into the main street of Trinidad, zigzagging down the hillside.

I was out of overalls in Trinidad and I meant to stay out. What Iwould wear to work was the oldest suit I had; it was worn and spotted,but it was good enough to distinguish me as one who worked entirelywith his head. My superior, the master mechanic of the division, was aman of sixty-five or so, named H. Geigoldt. I grew fond of him, butthe old man had slight strength to do his work. I had to work justthat much harder in my role of general foreman of the shops.

I had complete charge of repairing locomotives, not only theroundhouse jobs of temporary repairs between scheduled runs but alsothe overhauling.

When we overhauled an engine, we took it all apart and rebuilt it.Besides, I had charge of keeping all our freight cars in repair, and Ibuilt some new cars too. The shops had been in a run-down conditionwhen I came, and this, of course, was reflected in the state of therailroad's motive power.

I worked like a dog for more than a year. I rarely got enough hours inbed, and at the table I bolted my meals, thinking constantly of allthe problems of my job. I was far below my normal physical state, butthe shops and the roundhouse were a whole lot better than when I came;so was nearly all the motive power. One day Mr. Van Buskirk, thesuperintendent of motive power, walked with me through the shops. Ihad been there as general foreman, then, about one year and ninemonths, and I could take pride in what we saw. In the roundhouse I hadput a foreman I had picked for loyalty, character and ability. He wasa big, tall, fine-looking fellow with a great shock of hair, and afterhe had taken charge I no longer had any roundhouse worries. I mentionthis because, as I look back, it seems to me that one of my bestskills has been a faculty of selecting men wisely.

"Let's go to your office. I want to talk with you." Van Buskirk spokesolemnly, and for just a second I asked myself, "What could be wrong?"

"Walter, this is what I want to ask: Can you run the job of mastermechanic?"

"Of course I can run it. But say, what's going to happen to Mr.Geigoldt? If you are going to fire that old man to give me his job, Iwon't take it."

"Now don't get excited, Walt. You know Mr. Geigoldt is getting prettyold. Out of Denver we got a little short division and we are going tomove him up there, so he can take it easy. This job takes too much outof him, and we want to make you master mechanic."

In a little while, Mr. Geigoldt came to me with his hand outstretched,smiling. "I knew it first," he said. "Congratulations." A couple ofweeks later he moved away and I was master mechanic of the twodivisions extending out of Trinidad.

Van Buskirk had made it clear just what we had to do: The Colorado &Southern was to be built up until it was a first-class railroad. Youdo not tolerate late trains on a first-class road, and I had a problemthat ran through twenty-four hours of every day, keeping our trains ontime. Responsibility, I was learning, is something that weighs moreheavily than iron. Probably there were a thousand men—all the enginecrews, the shopmen, the carmen and the roundhouse fellows over severalhundred miles of track—who were referring to me then as "the oldman," though I was just under thirty. Being young, of course, was whatmade it all such great fun. But there was another reward. For what Iwas doing I was paid $140 a month.

I had a friend out there named Cotter—George Cotter—who was one of afamily of railroad men. George was made superintendent at Trinidadjust about the time I came there as general foreman. I used to look athim and wish deep inside of me that I had gone to college. As arailroad mechanical man I took it for granted that a man as young ashe was with so much authority on the administrative side of therailroad had a college background. His cultured speech, his ease ofmanner anywhere caused me to assume this, I suppose. Well, I pluggedall the harder at my correspondence courses, so as to overcome myhandicap. It was not for years that I discovered George Cotter leftschool when he was fourteen, became a railroad telegraph messenger,then an operator; from that point on, his rise was like that of hisbrother—train dispatcher, chief dispatcher, train-master and thendivision superintendent. As I look back, it becomes quite plain thatrailroads, railroad work, had been George Cotter's college; and thework had given him a polish too.

One time he came to my office over the shops and cussed a time or two.

"What's the matter?"

"Alkali! I've got to do something about the well out there beyond thewatershed. I've had my roadmaster there most of the time to keep thatshallow well working at all, and the water from it has so much alkaliin solution—well, nobody knows better than you what it is doing tothe locomotives."

Alkali was a problem at some points on most Western railroads. My veryfirst work in the Ellis shops, when I was a sweeper, was luggingboiler tubes from the shops out to a shed where we rattled them arounduntil that hard deposit was flaked off. We thought it was a problemin Western Kansas, but in the shops at Trinidad it was a nightmare.

"Walt, there's sweet water down there below the watershed, but it isdeeper in the earth than we can reach with any ordinary pump. Maybeyou've got some idea how we can get water out of a real deep well. Ifyou can tell me how, you'll have solved my biggest problem, and yoursas well."

"George, have you ever heard of a submerged well?"

"A what kind of a well?"

"Submerged." I repeated the word with just that trace of emphasis thatwould suggest that I supposed everybody had heard about submergedwells. As it happened, the only time I ever had heard of one was in anarticle which I had read several years before. Fortunately, though,whenever I did read about a mechanical device, I read it with pains,to understand what I was reading.

"Walt, if you could make me a well like that, and if it worked—Go on,tell me more."

I never did tell him where I got my information, but I explained theprinciple while we went to my house to eat.

"You don't need an ordinary pump at all; you do need an air compressorand a steam boiler to run it. You put a pipe down into your casingjust the way a kid sticks a straw in a sodawater glass, only you donot suck; you blow. You force air down that submerged pipe, and theair pushes the water up in the casing. Of course, it all has to befigured out carefully, but that won't be hard, once we know the depthof the well."

Cotter was pounding on the table in his delight. "My gosh, if we couldmake it work—Say, where did you ever hear of a thing like that?"

"Oh, I hear about lots of things."

"Well, will you do it for me?"

"Sure." I had never even seen one of the things.

First I got estimates on the cost of a compressor, then some bids onthe pipe. We knew from the start that the water we were after wasabout 600 feet down. When I made up an estimate, the total was $9500,and that was a lot of money. However, George got approval for theexpenditure, and I was told to go and supervise the job.

We drilled the well 600 feet and cased it to a depth of 480 feet; wehad a bottom of water then that seemed to have a constant level. Wehad a seventy-five-foot length of pipe in which a lot ofthree-quarter-inch holes had been cut, and this was to be at thebottom of the submerged pipe through which we would blow our airagainst the water. That was all there was to it, except to build aconcrete foundation and install the steam boiler and the compressor.

Finally, when the submerged well was within a week of being completed,I got a telegram from Cotter that he was arriving, to remain with meuntil the job was finished. I looked forward to his coming, becauseany time spent with George was fun. However, when he came, I felt lessat ease than I had ever felt before; he was in a private car, attendedby a staff of roadmasters, bridge-construction superintendents andsome others, including all the officers of the division. I was still agreen Kansan, a small-town fellow. Through all my years I had givenmyself so completely to my work that there were a lot of things I didnot know.

"We're having luncheon in the car, Walt."

"Thanks, George, but I can't leave this job right now. I'll watchthese fellows——"

"Oh, come on! You got to eat somewhere."

"I got my lunch basket. See you after a bit."

Cotter asked me to that private car of his three times the day hecame. Always I had some reason for not going: I was dirty and greasyfrom monkeying with the drilling machine, or I did not want to stop tochange my clothes, or I had to get some sleep. I was using all myimagination to keep myself supplied with reasons for not going intothe private car. The truth was that I was scared—scared to enter,because I thought I did not know how to act. I had never been in aprivate car.

On the second day of this, George came to me at noon and took me bythe arm. Then somebody, an enormous Irish roadmaster, took me by theother.

"Come on to lunch." They had moved me four steps before I got my mouthopen to say I had my lunch right there in my basket.

"Come on." There was something in Cotter's blue eyes that seemed tomean "no fooling." So I went along, as nervous and excited as if theywere trying to shove me down my well.

"Let me go and change my clothes."

"Ah, the hell with your clothes! Get in the car." They boosted meaboard.

In a little while I was sitting before a tablecloth so white andspotless it was a challenge to every slightest move I made in mygreasy well-drilling clothes. It seemed to me that the rolling of theeyeballs of the colored waiters—these were the first I hadencountered—was a restless activity designed by them the more quicklyto catch me in some dreadful error of deportment. Then the worsthappened!

The waiter placed in front of me a plate that bore a pair of steamingobjects about the size of my finger. Incredibly they appeared to bewrapped in corn husks, tied at the ends with string. I was as alert asa prairie chicken trying to select the moment to abandon cover and flyup in a hunter's face. I stole looks at the others in vain; George,always carefully groomed, was using his hands to gesture while hetalked about Fort Worth, and the Irish roadmaster, after sippingwater, took forever to preen his mustache. All the gentlemen were slowto start. I could not cope with such leisure. I had to get back towork. So I took my knife and fork, slashed off an end and tried to eatit.

The lot of them were Irish, and they could not stand it any longer.They roared with laughter. In his merriment, tears ran down George'srosy cheeks. He had planned to stump me with those hot tamales.Red-faced, I cleaned my plate somehow without eating any more cornhusks. All I could think of was to get out of that place; but they didnot let me go until George, swell fellow that he was, who knew myquick temper was a reflex of my sensitiveness, was sure that I had notbeen wounded by the laughter.

At the well rig that afternoon, I kept living through the hell ofseeing those unknown objects on my plate, of feeling hideously out ofplace and being ignorant about so many things that women rate asimportant. I began to get my wife's slant on certain aspects ofliving. She had never nagged me once, but I knew that back in Ellis,where all the girls went in heavily for refinement, she had eaten at atable somewhat differently served than when she had just me to feed.Table manners? The appetite a machinist brings home when the noonwhistle blows was never meant to suffer any kind of waiting. Put thefood on the table and let a man eat is manners when he is ravenousfrom working hard and has to get back to a job before another whistleblows.

Yet I realized, after that first experience in a private car, thatthere were a lot of things in the world besides machinery and men. Iwent back to eat with George that night, and for the balance of theweek I ate all my meals there, including the one which was incelebration of the completion of the submerged well. It worked rightfrom the start, because the hydraulic calculations had been sound. Toget good sweet water out of it, all that was required was to turn avalve. When this was done the first time, while George and his crowdlooked on, a bubbling geyser shot up in the air, forty feet or more.

No alkali in that water!

Then George got a job with greater scope, one where he had a lot moreauthority and more money; he was appointed general superintendent ofthe Fort Worth & Denver City. This road coupled on to ours at Texline,Texas, and extended on to Fort Worth and Dallas. Before he left, hecame to see me.

"Walt, why don't you come down there with me? You are just the kind offellow I can work with, and down in Texas I've got a shop problem I'dlike to have you tackle."

"You see how you like it first, George."

Three months after Cotter left, he wired me from Fort Worth, asking meto meet him in Childress, Texas, a little village about 300 miles orso from Trinidad. It is south of the Red River, close to the southwestcorner of Oklahoma. George met me there.

"Last week our shop burned down at Clarendon," he began. "It was putthere when the road was built, but the site was badly chosen. This isa much more strategic spot, here at Childress. We can have a longerdivision and save a lot in operations. Now, Walt, I want you to comedown here and build this shop the way you think a shop ought to be.And then you run it. You'll be the master mechanic of the division."

"Gee, I'd like better than anything to build a shop. I got someideas, just from seeing poor ones, but——"

"Come on, what do you say?"

"I'll have to put this up to Della."

"All right. Tell her you get twenty dollars more a month."

"George, I want to come. But you got to admit that in its presentstate this is a —— Say, look at all this red clay dust on my pantsand shoes, and wait'll you see your face!"

We walked around the small town, just a village then, and I could findonly one house for rent. It was a four-room farmhouse, an unpaintedbox out in the middle of an eight-acre cornfield. This was in the fallof the year, and to reach that house George and I walked through afield of cornstalks to have a talk with the farmer. There wasliterally nothing in that house to make life easier for a woman. If Iwould pay ten dollars a month, the farmer was willing to move hisfamily into another little house elsewhere on the farm. The only watersupply near the house was a well, and the water from that had asulphurous taste; it was a spa in embryo. If we stayed there we wouldhave to haul our drinking water from somewhere.

I went back to Trinidad, itching in my soul for the chance to buildthe new shops at Childress, but I did not see how I could ask my wifeto take her baby into such a shelter.

"A terrible little house, Della. Right out in a cornfield. You've gotfriends here now and we're pretty comfortable. Of course we can livecheaper than we can live in Trinidad, and I'll get twenty dollars morea month. Best of all, it is an opportunity; later on, it will be worthsomething for me to be able to say I built the shops at Childress. DidI tell you about that gyp water? You wouldn't dare let the baby drinka drop of it. That house out in a cornfield——"

"Dad, if you think that is the place for us to go, don't worry aboutme. I'll be happy anywhere you think you ought to be to get ahead."There was never a time when my wife batted an eye to keep me stayingon in any place on her account. I've had friends whose wives literallyspoiled their careers just by their whines and chronic kicking.Suppose sometime my wife had said, "No, I won't expose my child to thedanger of living in such a place. I think you are foolish and selfishto try to drag me down to such a hole." Well, then, I would havestayed in Trinidad, or Salt Lake City, or Ellis. Probably I'd be thereyet, but I'd be pretty wistful. Nothing in my life has given me morecause for pride and satisfaction than the way my wife had faith in mefrom the very first, through all those years when I was agrease-stained roundhouse mechanic. So we went to Childress, down inTexas.

The time-payment furniture was getting shabbier with each move wemade. In the house at Childress we had the rug turned, so that theplace most badly worn was underneath the bed. It had not been goodfurniture when we bought it in Salt Lake City for $170, but after longjourneys in freight cars, in addition to the normal wear and tear, itwas getting pretty awful. Yet I never heard my wife say, "This is notthe sort of furniture I used to have in Ellis."

Well, I worked like a dog through the remainder of the fall and halfthe winter, getting the new shops erected and equipped. Then one daysoon after they were completed, out of a clear sky I got a telegramfrom John E. Chisholm, at Oelwein, Iowa. He offered me his job asmaster mechanic on the Chicago Great Western Railroad. He was gettinga promotion to the job of general master mechanic of the road. The jobpaid $200 a month, forty dollars more than I was getting, but therewere other important angles. Chisholm and I had become friends in theWest. At that time he had bragged to me about the amazing equipment inthose Oelwein shops—transfer tables on which an engine could betreated as a toy, and—something quite wonderful then—decentwashrooms and toilets for the men. We were still drinking out of acommon bucket at Childress, and the only washing facilities therailroad had allowed was just the sort of trough that I had used backin the Ellis days.

I sent off a wire to George Cotter at Fort Worth, telling him that anexceptionally fine job had been offered to me, that I had to accept atonce or turn it down. I could not get away myself to talk with George.He was the general superintendent, but he was also my friend; so Isaid in my wire that I would appreciate it if he would come up fromFort Worth on the night train and talk it over. And George came. Hewas grand.

"How can I turn this thing down, George? I hate to leave you, but——"

"Walt, I have to agree. It is a real opportunity. I could pay you $200a month, but not any more, and up there in Oelwein you will bestarting at $200. Those shops must be fine, and of course it will be awhole lot better in a nice, bustling town for Della. But who can I putin your place?"

"I got your man, George. The general foreman of the shops. You don'tknow George Little as well as you know me, but you can bet I know him.I made him a roundhouse foreman at Trinidad, and he has been comingright along behind me, job after job."

After that, I hustled over to the dispatcher's office and sent atelegram to Chisholm, accepting the job and telling him to expect mein about a week.

The chief dispatcher read my message, not with his eyes but with hisears, as the words were being sent by a telegraph operator.

"Say, Walter! You are really leaving? Hey, can I rent that houseyou're living in? You know, I've had my wife here three months and weare boarding in a terrible place. How about it?"

"You can get the house if you will buy my furniture."

"Let's go over and look at it."

We got in a buggy and drove across the railroad tracks, through thethick red dust, across the cornfield to that forlorn and bleak-lookinghouse. The baby was asleep when we tiptoed into the bedroom toappraise the stuff in there. We made a deal. For $100 I sold himeverything except the silverware, table linens, bed sheets and someother personal things. But he got all the furniture and kitchenware.Five days later he was in the house and Della, Thelma and I weretraveling northward; except for the baby carriage and a smallsuitcase, all we had was packed in one big box. All, that is, except$500 we had saved while living there in Childress.

"It'll be a much better place for you," I was telling my wife when werolled out of Texas on a balmy day in February. "Oelwein is a town ofalmost 6000 people. It's a good railroad town. Everything considered,it's time we got you to a place where there will be some doctorshandy."

We arrived there in the morning, stepping off the train into an Arcticregion incased in snow and ice to a depth of eighteen inches. In theclothes we had been wearing down in Texas we began to shiver. I gotthe baby carriage from the baggageman, and when the baby was tucked inand wrapped with blankets, we set out for the hotel. I pushed the babycarriage, and once I slipped and fell.

After we had eaten breakfast and were established in a hotel room, Istarted for the job; on the way I saw what would be a newresponsibility of mine—great snowplows bucking and churning their waythrough the white mounds that were making all trains late; but,nevertheless, the trains were running.

Chisholm took me right to the shops, and I was thrilled to the marrow.I forgot all about the cold. They were the biggest shops I had everseen. Sixteen or eighteen locomotives could be hauled inside of them.In the winter darkness they were brilliantly illuminated with thesputtering bluish arc lamps. There were great cranes aloft that couldlift a locomotive in their chains. Everything was marvelous, and whenI saw the transfer tables I felt like applauding. Best of all,everything in those shops was to be in my charge. I did not worry fora second. It was a bigger job; but thanks to an abundance ofself-confidence, I knew I could run it.

I rented a story-and-a-half frame house in Oelwein; it had a niceporch that could be shaded in the summer with morning-glory vines. Thehouse was on a big lot, just about half an acre. So we began at onceto plan a garden, almost a little farm, in the rear. There was anempty barn. Of course, we had to have new furniture; we bought it ontime. We wanted to keep that $500 in a savings bank. A short timeafter we arrived in Oelwein, our second child, Bernice, was born,displacing Thelma as "the baby" of the family. Bernice, when she grewup, married Edgar William Garbisch.

I knew how to get along with men; I was strong and I knew how to befair, but I was a mechanic and nobody ever questioned that. I couldput the center valves on the ranges so that they were right, and onlya few mechanics failed to ask for help when they had a job like thatto do. A. B. Stickney, both a lawyer and a construction engineer, wasthe president of the Chicago Great Western; he had built the road,and his son, Samuel Crosby Stickney, was vice-president and generalmanager. Sam Stickney was a splendid engineer, a graduate ofMassachusetts Institute of Technology. All along the line of that roadI had friends. In 1936, years after I left that job in Oelwein, alocomotive engineer I had known out there came to my office in theChrysler Building. What he wanted me to do that day was to look downinto the street, so I could see that he was riding in a Plymouth car.

Within a year and three months after I arrived in Iowa, John Chisholmleft the railroad and I was promoted to his place as general mastermechanic. Three months after that my title changed again: I was thesuperintendent of motive power. Over the whole railroad from Chicagoto Oelwein, Oelwein to Minneapolis, I was in charge of engineers,firemen, carmen, shopmen, roundhouse men, and others. That took me upon the staff as high as a man could go mechanically in railroadservice; of course, there were bigger railroads. I was learning plentyand still seething with ambition. My pay by that time was $350.

Frequently I had to travel over to Chicago on business, but in 1908 Iwent to Chicago to see the automobile show. That is where it happened.I saw this Locomobile touring car; it was painted ivory white and thecushions and trim were red. The top was khaki, supported on wood bows.Straps ran from that top to anchorages on either side of the hood. Onthe running board there was a handsome tool box that my fingers itchedto open. Beside it was a tank of gas to feed the front head lamps;just behind the hood on either side of the cowling was an oil lamp,shaped quite like those on horse drawn carriages. I spent four dayshanging around the show, held by that automobile as by a siren'ssong. The price tag meant just what it said, as I found out by repeatedinquiries: $5000 cash. I had $700. I must confess that I never stoppedto ask myself if I should, if I could afford to go in hock to buy thatcar. All I asked myself was: Where could I raise the money?

•V•

EXPERIMENTS WITH HORSE-POWER

"What a Job I Could Do Here"

One acquaintance of mine who had access to a lot of money was agigantic fellow named Ralph Van Vechten, a brother of Carl VanVechten, the writer; he was a banker, second vice-president of theContinental National Bank. Van was inches taller than six feet andweighed well over 200 pounds. He was a grand companion. Usually, ourencounters were in a favored rendezvous of railroad officials, a loopcafe we entered by descending a flight of marble stairs from MadisonStreet into the basement of the Hotel Brevoort. Down there I lay inambush for Van Vechten, and sure enough, he came.

"Van, this Locomobile model that has me hypnotized is the firsttouring car to have four doors. I'll bet you've seen it at the autoshow—a creamy white, with red leather upholstery and a khaki top."

"You told me that this morning, Walt, and yesterday afternoon."

That was true; I had been worrying the life out of him for severaldays, trying to get him to lend me $4300 on my note. Every time I hadtried to state an argument, he had blocked me by saying, "What aboutcollateral?"

I did not have a thing that could be called collateral. The $700which was the total of my savings was to be used with the $4300 thatVan steadily was refusing to lend me, to pay $5000 for that Lulu of anautomobile. Hopelessly infatuated with the car I twisted logic andmustered feeble facts to buttress my case:

"Van, you know a lot about the transportation business; you dobusiness with the railroads here in Chicago every day. Well, theautomobile is the transportation business too. The railroads have madethis a richer country, haven't they?"

"Surely."

"Well, then, just ask yourself what this country will be like whenevery individual has his private car and is able to travel anywhere.Some day——"

"Go on, Walt, be sensible. You get $350 a month and you want to spend$5000 for an automobile." The impatient accent he put on the firstsyllable of that word was devastating to my cause.

"Listen, Van, I'll be making more money before long. I'll give you amortgage on the car, if that's what you want."

"Walt, get somebody to sign the note with you and we might dobusiness. That is, provided the co-signer has something besides penand ink."

"You mean that, Van? If I get somebody else——"

"Some substantial person, Walt. I like you, and if it was my money andyou wanted it for anything less frivolous than an automobile, I'd feellike helping you out. But this is bank money you are trying to borrow.This is——"

"How about Bill Causey?" William Bowdoin Causey, a civil engineer anda Virginian, was then superintendent of the Chicago Great WesternRailway's Oelwein-Chicago division. He lived in Chicago and was aclose friend of Van Vechten; he was my friend too. He was to windistinction in the World War and afterward, when for four years hewas the technical adviser of the Austrian Government.

"Walt, if you can get Bill Causey to sign the note with you, maybe wecan fix this thing up. Bill has a little money."

"All right, Van; I'll be at the bank in the morning and I'll have Billwith me. He's already told me he would go on my note."

That is how I raised the money to buy my first automobile. The onlyother times I had gone in debt had been in Salt Lake City and inOelwein, to buy some furniture. Clearly, that car had a fascinationfor me that must have seemed to others the equivalent of madness. ButI really meant it when I argued my case with Causey and with VanVechten; I did not simply want a car to ride in; I wanted the machineso I could learn all about it. Why not? I was a machinist and theseself-propelled vehicles were by all odds the most astonishing machinesthat had ever been offered to men.

Years later, when Van Vechten was one of a syndicate of bankers whofelt that they were about to lose $50,000,000 in the Willys-OverlandCompany, he was glad he had made that loan to me; he told me so whenthe syndicate wanted to hire me to save their money. To induce me togo to work for them, they made a contract to pay me $1,000,000 a yearfor a term of two years. Van was a sport. In those later days he usedto prod me in the ribs and tell, over and over, how I began to studyautomobiles by borrowing money from his bank on my note.

The barn in the back yard of our house in Oelwein was where we storedour garden tools, but more than half its space was cluttered with alot of useless truck that had been left there by the former tenants ofthe premises. I began to clear this rubbish away, putting into abonfire a dished buggy wheel, some dried-out, broken pieces of harnessand bottles that had contained horse liniment. On that fire I dumpedwheelbarrow loads of dust, straw and other litter, and did not stopuntil the barn was spick-and-span. By that time, my wife was excitedby curiosity.

"I'm going to use it for a workshop."

"What are you going to make, dad?"

"Della, I've bought an automobile."

I told her all about it—that I had spent our cash reserve and gone inhock for more money than I would make in a year. She did not scold me,but it did seem to me that when she closed the kitchen door, it made alittle more noise than usual; maybe she slammed it.

The automobile arrived in a freight car, anchored to the floor. I didnot know how to run it, but I certainly was not going to allow anotherperson to be the first behind its wheel. I arranged with a teamster tohaul it to my house and put it in the barn. I cannot remember that Ihave ever been more jubilant than when Della, with Bernice in her armsand Thelma jumping up and down with excitement, saw me steer thathorse-drawn car into the yard. If it had been a jewel of fantasticsize, I could not have been more careful of it.

My wife was wild with enthusiasm then and wanted to take a rideimmediately. But I put the car in the barn, and it stayed in there solong that she despaired of ever getting a ride. Sometimes she sat init when I cranked up and let the engine run.

Night after night, I worked in the barn until it was time to go tobed, and some nights I did not leave the automobile until it was longpast my bedtime. Saturday afternoons and all day on Sundays I workedon that car. I read automobile catalogues, I studied sketches and madestill other sketches of my own. Most of the time, the innards werespread upon newspapers on the barn floor. There was no singlefunction I did not study over and over. Finally, I proved to myselfthat I knew and understood it, because I had put it all together, hadthe engine tuned so that it was running like a watch.

"Dad, what is the use of having an automobile if we're never going toride?"

"Now, don't be impatient, Della."

"Impatient! You've had the car three months and it's never been out ofthe barn."

It was a Saturday afternoon, and so hot that I had taken off my coatand had my sleeves rolled up. I finished eating. "In the barn threemonths, you say? Well, this afternoon she's coming out. Come look!"

By then the noise of the Chryslers' Locomobile engine was acommonplace in our neighborhood, but somehow the word was quicklyspread that this was an exceptional occasion. I had a gallery ofneighbors, as I cranked up, got behind the wheel, one hand devoted tosteering and one to fiddling with that confounded sliding transmissionlever. In those days, the steering mechanism was still being placed onthe right side. She had a chain drive, of course, and that was whatmade her seem to growl and snarl every time I touched the transmissionlever. I swear, you would have thought the car was ticklish, the wayshe winced, but the engine was purring, and when I looked behind, Icould see that she was not smoking, much. Then I clamped my teeth on afresh cigar and engaged the clutch.

The big touring car bucked like a mustang saddled for the first time.We shot forward; as some of the neighbors whooped and yelled, shebucked again and lurched into a ditch, rolled half a length fartherand stalled, axle deep, in my neighbor's garden patch.

I had chewed up about one third of my cigar on that short run. I sentoff for a man who had a team of horses. He came, the trace chainsclinking against the stones in the road. The fetlocks of his horseswere caked with mud.

"Careful where you hook those chains! Mind that paint! Be careful!Want to ruin that car?"

"Say, mister, I've hauled cars before and will again. Keep your shirton. I'll hold these horses."

We pulled her out; I settled with the teamster and promised monetarysatisfaction to my irate neighbor. I heard a few mocking laughs, andso I cranked her up, jumped in behind the throbbing wheel and startedoff. This time I got her into high and let her roll. All I was doingwas to grip the wheel and steer. I had to turn at the corner, butrather than make those chains growl and clash, I let her go in high. Iwon't swear that only two wheels were touching the ground, but I wantto testify that it felt that way. As we leveled off, we were at theedge of Oelwein, right in the country.

A few hundred yards ahead, I saw a cow emerging from behind an osagehedge that bordered a lane. She was headed for the road. I bulbed thehorn until it had made its gooselike cry four or five times, but thecow, a poor rack of bones draped with yellow hide, kept right on hercourse and never changed her pace; nor did I change the pace of theautomobile. I could not; all that I could do was to grip the wheel andsteer, biting on my cigar until my teeth met inside of it.

Well, I missed the cow, though I was close enough to touch her. Imissed few of the ruts and holes along that country road to thesection line where there was an intersecting road, and there I turnedagain—a little slower on this turn—and rode another milebefore turning onto the third side of a quadrangular course that Iknew would bring me home. I fed more gas to the four-cylinder engineon the street that led toward home. On the basis of ratings today,that car would be said to have about eighty horse-power. As I came upthe grade, the neighbors saw me riding fast, maybe twenty miles anhour. I stopped at the barn. My neighbors helped me push the carinside. I closed the doors and then discovered I was so tired Itrembled. There was not a dry stitch of clothing on me; thatperspiration came from nervousness and excitement. It was six o'clockin the evening then. I went into the house, stripped off my clothes,took a bath and got into bed. I was all in from that wild ride. Well,that's the way I learned to drive.

After that initiation, I made swift progress, until the Chryslerfamily was riding, not only on country roads but right through thebustling heart of Oelwein. My wife and I wore linen dusters on thoserides. A great many times, though, I had that car apart, all itsmembers spread upon the barn floor, and just as often had it assembledagain, until I think I could have put it together, almost in the dark.However, I had other things to do.

The locomotive is the heart of a railroad; therefore, a soundperformance by whoever held my job was vital to the Chicago GreatWestern Railway. Any time an engine broke down or a train was late,the fellow who had to bear the blame was the Superintendent of MotivePower, no matter who really was at fault. Consequently, I kept on themove; besides those splendid shops at Oelwein, there were others atDubuque, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Omaha and Kansas City. There weremillions of dollars' worth of equipment in my charge and, furthermore,mine was the controlling voice when we bought new engines, cars, coaland other things. Every one of the thousands of men in the mechanicaldepartment was a part of my responsibility too. That was quite a loadfor a young fellow who was just turning thirty-four; of course, theythought out there that I was thirty-eight at least. Sometimes theywould think I was older. How strange it is that most of us passthrough some of our years thinking that youth is a handicap.

I had learned a lot about picking men. I remember I got word that anold friend had left Arkansas City and was looking for a place. With atelegram, I arranged for him to come to Oelwein.

"Hello, Walt." There stood Gus Neubert, looking on me with as muchpride and tenderness as if I had been his son. We embraced like a pairof Mexicans, slapped each other on the back. "Listen, Gus, you'remaster mechanic of this division. I need you."

Things had not been breaking right for Gus Neubert, and now, abruptly,everything became right again. Then I saw that Gus was havingdifficulty speaking, and I choked up too. We remembered those yearswhen I had been, first a sweeper, and then an apprentice, and that Gushad been the one who fired me for horseplay in the shop, and that hetook me back. I really needed Gus Neubert, though, and others likehim. We had respect for each other because we shared the secrets of amighty craft.

While running that job in Oelwein I was in close contact, for thefirst time in my life, with technical men who had learned what theyknew about machinery in college. For one, there was Sam Stickneyhimself, son of the road's builder and president. Sam Stickney wasgeneral manager and vice-president. On his office wall up in St. PaulI used to see (and know the taste of envy) his diploma as a graduateof the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition to SamStickney, there were other college-trained engineers and collegemechanics in the railroad's high command. With all of these you had tohold your own.

This is significant: Some of those technically trained executivesencountered frustration in their work simply because they wereineffective when they tried to interpret what they knew and what theywanted done to rough fellows in the shops. I had been pounding away atmy correspondence courses for six or seven years, until there was noword or term of mechanical engineering used by those college men whichlacked meaning when they spoke to me. I had inside of me the essenceof their knowledge, and something more—I could get out on the floorof any shop, walk into any roundhouse and do any man's job, withcalipers or hammer or with a turret lathe. I had not been handicappedby the overalled route that I had followed. I knew that with swellingsatisfaction. I felt, when I tackled a tough job, that there wasnothing I could not accomplish if I wanted to.

I had some troubling thoughts at Oelwein. Sometimes I felt that I hadreached the end of the route along which my ambition had been drivingme. In the railroad service they almost never promoted a motive-powerman into the higher executive group, or so it seemed. At that time itseemed that a merchant, a lawyer or some financial man had a betterchance of becoming a high railroad executive than any mechanic, nomatter how profound his knowledge of the railroad. Oh, I knew that Icould increase my understanding of the other departments by which arailroad serves the people, but I was restless and railroad pay waslow. The work required me to deal every day with men in other lineswho were receiving much more money for performing work involving lessresponsibility. This was apparent every time I talked with men whocame to sell us locomotives, fuel, miscellaneous supplies or the rawmaterials for the cars that I was manufacturing in the shops. Ofcourse, I was not very far removed in time from situations in whichthe $350 I was getting would have seemed a princely sum. Yet we nowhad three children to be reared and educated—Thelma, Bernice, and ournew baby, Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. Like Bernice, Walter Jr., was bornthere in Oelwein. Thelma first saw the light of day in Salt Lake City.

The Stickneys were important figures in the Middle West. The elderStickney was a great and forceful character; to please him, it wasnecessary to have a lot of drive and not say "can't" when he said"can." There are many Stickney legends, for he was a man who could notbe bluffed by anybody. Before that demon of statistics, Jim Hill,bought the Burlington, so as to bring his Great Northern Line from theTwin Cities down into Chicago, it looked as if there might be a dealbetween them. One day Hill said to Stickney, "You've asked me severaltimes to make the trip from St. Paul to Chicago over your line. NextTuesday, if you like, let's make the run by daylight."

They left St. Paul in Stickney's private car, running special, andwhen Mr. Hill had settled back in his chair, forthwith he began toquote, from a little book in his vest pocket, memoranda about his vastrailroad system.

"Stickney, on the Iron Range division last month we moved"—Mr. Hillmumbled through his whiskers as if he did a sum in mentalarithmetic—"let's see—three, four, and carry one—yes, five, tenmillion tons of freight at five dollars a thousand ton miles."

"That's nothing, Jim." Mr. Stickney had his pocket memorandum book upbefore his keen and handsome face. "Last month, over our Omaha-Chicagodivision, we moved twelve million tons at four dollars each thousandtons per mile."

"Stickney, you're lying!"

"Gosh, blink it, Jim, so are you."

Then they put away their books and watched the Mississippi Valleyscenery rolling past their shrewd and understanding eyes.

Sometime thereafter the headquarters of the Chicago Great WesternRailway were transferred from St. Paul to Chicago, and the heads ofsome of my friends among the high command had fallen, figuratively, inthe basket. Whenever I went to see the boss in Chicago, I no longerfound myself looking into the strong face of A. B. Stickney. TheStickneys were out; a new group had gained control. The new presidentwas Samuel Morse Felton. After my first conversation with him, I saidto myself, "From now on, life around here is going to be something."

Sam Felton was, they said, a railroad man of the old school. It wouldrequire a lot of space to list the railroads of which he had been thepresident and of which he was going to be the president. He hadstarted his career in 1868, when he was fifteen; he became a rodman,then an engineer, a chief engineer, a general superintendent. Why, hehad been president of the East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia Railwaywhen I had been just a sweeper in the Ellis shops. More than a scoreof railroads had been ruled by him before he ever laid eyes on me. Ofcourse, I was still a young and sensitive man, but I made up my mindto work nineteen hours a day, if that should be necessary, to keepeverything in flawless running order. I neglected no detail of my job.Almost constantly I was out on the line, riding in locomotive cabs,checking up, praising, blaming. Week after week, I would be away fromhome four or five nights out of seven, in my effort to keep the wholeof our spread-out mechanism accurately reflected in my mind.

One night after a trip that had lasted a week, I got home at sixo'clock, ate my supper quickly and then, dog tired, went to bed. Itwas nearly midnight when I was awakened. The telephone was ringing.The Oelwein dispatcher's voice said: "A wire from Mr. Felton. He wantsyou in Chicago tomorrow morning."

I rubbed my eyes and the back of my neck so as to become wide awake,pulled on my clothes, made sure I had my wallet, fat with annualpasses over all important railroads, and left my sleeping family. Icaught the next train, which arrived in Chicago early in the morning.It was 8:30 when I reached the president's office and was told by hissecretary to go right in.

There was a foot-high stack of correspondence between the old man'sarms, and his glasses were fixed half-way down his nose as he workedhis way through the pile.

"Good morning, Mr. Felton."

He looked up at me, fiercely; then dropped his eyes and went onreading. He did not say a word. I stood erect in front of his desk forsome minutes, and wrath was rising in me like a tide.

The Chicago morning papers were arranged neatly on a corner of theflat-topped desk which dominated that big throne room of the railroad.I took one of those papers, strode over to a chair near a window. Isat down, spread out the paper and put my feet on the wide windowsill. I was boiling mad. I was not reading anything in the newspaper Iclutched, but had time to read at least a column before Sam Feltonbarked at me: "What are you doing here, Chrysler?"

I got up. "Mr. Felton, I don't know. You sent me a telegram lastnight, asking me to be here this morning." He glared a full second.

"Oh, yes, oh, yes." He started through a lot of papers in a drawer,and when he raised up he was clutching in one hand, as if it were apiece of damning evidence, a train report. "Chrysler, how about thishot box on No. 2? We lost three minutes."

"Mr. Felton, I don't know."

"You don't know? You! The superintendent of motive power?"

"For a week I've been out over the division, inspecting the shops. Ifeel sure my chief clerk will have started an investigation on thatdelay." It was hard for me to hold a curb on my emotions, hard to bepolite, but I pretty nearly managed it: "As soon as I can get a littletime in my office, I'll make a full report on the matter."

"You ought to know now. I shouldn't have to ask for a report."

"Well, I don't know one so-and-so thing about it, for the reason Ihave given you: I've been traveling over the line for a week."

Then he started to moan and wail at me. I could feel the air goingdeeper and deeper into my lungs. Suddenly I plunged my hand into myinside pocket, and at the gesture Mr. Felton put his hands on the armsof his swivel chair and ceased to speak. What I pulled out was thesymbol of my job and my authority—that wallet full of railroadpasses. With a wide circle of my arm, I flung it down on his desk sohard that it bounced; and then I said —— Well, I was explicit.

Sam Felton never got a chance to close his mouth before I had stompedout of his office and slammed the door behind me. That is how I becamean ex-railroad man.

I went from Felton's office on that December day directly to theflight of stairs with worn, white marble treads by which one descendedto the basement bar of the Brevoort Hotel.

Possibly my recollection is faulty, but it seems to me that themahogany bar was quadrangular in shape, and certainly all of mymemories of the establishment are crowded with faces of old railroadfriends. Anyway, that is where I went to lick my wounds, and in themiddle of the morning, who should walk in but Bill Causey.

"What are you doing here so early, Walt?"

"What about yourself, Bill? You're supposed to be working."

"Come on, now; tell me all about it."

I told Causey all about the row, from its beginning down to my exitline as I left Felton's office. As the morning wore on, Causeyrevealed that his coming to the Brevoort was due to more than chance.Sam Felton, knowing we were friends, had sent him after me.

"Look, Walt; Felton's old enough to be your father. He doesn't wantyou to quit. You just happened to walk into him when he had a grouch."

"Well, he fixed the time for my call. I'm never going to give him thepleasure of firing me."

Other railroad friends arrived, and lacking any feeling ofresponsibility, I proceeded to enjoy myself while Causey, now andthen, plucked at my arm or my lapel, urging me to say I'd remain atwork. Bill stuck right by my side and we had our meals together thereat the Brevoort. The night train for Oelwein left at 9:30, and as Iheaded through the station, Bill Causey was at my heels, still arguingwith me to show some sense. The gateman stopped me just inside hisbarrier.

"Let's see your pass."

I had forgotten I had left my passes on Sam Felton's desk. I began tocuss, and Causey, for once that day, cut loose and laughed with realdelight. He stood by, kidding me, while I dug out of my pocket enoughcash to pay for my ticket home to Oelwein. All the way across Illinoisand into Iowa, through the night, Bill sat up with me, trying withfriendly words to get me into a softer mood. I was glad of Bill'scompany anytime, anywhere, but I was in no frame of mind to go back toFelton.

I arrived home to find my wife stirring, getting little Thelma fed andoff to school. I blurted out my news.

"What are you going to do, dad?"

"Get another job. I'll get a better one."

Well, if she was frightened by our plight, she never allowed me tosuspect it; always, by the finest kind of understanding, of insight,she has known just how to handle me. If she had criticized then, ifshe had reminded me that I was up to my ears in debt, I might haveflown off the handle. Instead, I got control of myself about asquickly as she filled my cup with coffee.

I went back to the office only to pack up my few personal belongingsand to tell my chief clerk that I was moving out. Then I went home andbegan to monkey with my automobile. I fussed around the house for aday or two, and when I had my mind made up, I telegraphed to Waldo H.Marshall, the president of the American Locomotive Company, applyingfor a job.

The last time I had been in Marshall's company I had been buyinglocomotives. I had bought a lot of locomotives from him. He had beenpresident of the American Locomotive Company for about three years atthat time and we were on the best of terms. He knew me to be a lively,energetic fellow and had been so frank in his admiration that I turnedto him naturally when I wanted a job. Building locomotives was thesort of work that I could do. Well, Marshall telegraphed back: "Youmust be kidding. Not possible you have left C. G. W." I convinced himafter a further exchange of wires and letters. Marshall then invitedme to go to Pittsburgh for a talk with James McNaughton, the company'svice-president in charge of sales. McNaughton was my kind of a man; hehad been through all the grades of the railroad machinist's trade fromapprentice to master mechanic and superintendent of motive power, andhad then become general superintendent of the Brooks Works andSchenectady Works of the American Locomotive Company; he was in hisfifties. He assured me, with great kindness, that I was coming to aplace where I could make my talents count.

"You've got the type of background we need, Chrysler. We'll start youoff as superintendent of the Allegheny shop." Superintendent? That hadan impressive sound, but when I translated it, in terms of work, intoa comparable job in railroad service, I realized that I had slippeddown several notches: I was simply a foreman, and when I went to workI was wearing overalls. However, I was getting better wages than mostforemen. They were paying me $275 a month.

The works manager of the Allegheny plant at that time was an elderlyfellow who had the crusty look of a cold locomotive's fire box. If hehad a sense of humor, I never detected it. He was tall, thin, and inthose years he wore a flourishing mustache that bent downward from hishidden lip in a drooping shape that fixed on him a lugubriousexpression.

The works manager had reason to feel sour then; he was being greatlytroubled, and had been for months, by a new efficiency system. It wasa method of scheduling the work, intended to give the firm a closergrip on costs, so that a job in one of the plants would cost justabout the same as a similar job in another plant. I suppose this wasintensely irritating to some of the old fellows who had been in theAllegheny plant for many years. The villain of the piece was anacquaintance of mine, a former superintendent of motive power on theChicago Great Western Railway who had become a vice-president of theAmerican Locomotive Company.

Well, I had rented a house, paying forty dollars a month to get one asgood as we had lived in back in Oelwein. It was just a few days beforeChristmas when I went to the train and hugged my family in a reunionthat put heart back into me. I had been mighty lonesome in the wintersmoke of Pittsburgh. We were determined that we would have Christmasjust as if our life had not been interrupted by a change. We managedto get our furniture delivered, and had it all unpacked and nicelystowed on Christmas Eve. The telephone had been installed and we weresettled again. I did not have much cash, what with moving expenses,railroad fares and meeting the usual payment on my note at VanVechten's bank. However, we had a small Christmas tree.

On Christmas morning, just when the children were squealing and givingother expressions of delight over their presents, the telephone rang.I stepped over a couple of dolls, a baby carriage and some blocks andpicked up the receiver.

It was the works manager; he did not say "Merry Christmas."

"Chrysler?"

"Yes."

"Say, your friend, the efficiency expert in New York, no longer isvice-president. He got fired yesterday. Maybe you better go down toNew York and see where you stand."

This fellow talking was the man I was expecting to go to work for onthe following morning. Wasn't that a Christmas greeting? There I was,a stranger coming to a new job in a town where I did not know my wayaround. I swallowed and with a wave of my hand tried to silencewhoever was making flat notes come from a little toy trumpet. Theworks manager kept on talking, convincing me the efficiency expert hadbeen fired. That did not trouble me in the slightest. I did not botherto explain to him that the president, Waldo Marshall, was my friend inthe organization. What felt as if a cup of cold water had been thrownin my face was the revelation that the works manager did not want mearound. Then he repeated himself:

"Yes, the thing to do, Chrysler, is to get on a train and run down toNew York. Find out where you stand."

"Say, I've got a better idea. If you want to know where I stand, maybeyou better get on the train and go down to New York and find out foryourself." Then I hung up on him and hoped that the crash would hurthis ear. I picked up the toy trumpet. It had three valves, and I didmy best for a little while to play the tuba parts of the overture fromWilliam Tell.

Downhearted? Not me! I had all the confidence in the world. The nextmorning I put on my overalls and plunged into my work. Three monthslater I did not have a warmer friend than the works manager.

What was more important was the change in me. The fun I hadexperienced in making things as a boy was magnified a hundredfold whenI began making things as a man. There is in manufacturing a creativejoy that only poets are supposed to know. Some day I'd like to show apoet how it feels to design and build a railroad locomotive.

A succession of swift changes happened in our lives there inPittsburgh. There had come to work for us the first servant we everhad, a girl, a little untrained foreigner. Mrs. Chrysler had neededhelp and we could afford, by then, to have a helper in ourhome—somebody who could clean up in the kitchen after Mrs. Chryslercooked; somebody to clean the front porch and to do what now is called"laundry," but what was "washing" then; somebody to mind the threechildren in idle time. My wife, until that girl was hired, had beentoo heavily burdened. Incidentally, that same girl remained with usfor two years after we moved to Michigan. When she did leave us, itwas to go back to Pittsburgh to be married.

I got a new car in Pittsburgh, having been able to discharge my debtto Ralph Van Vechten's bank in Chicago, and so be free to make a dealfor a Stevens-Duryea with a six-cylinder engine. On those Pittsburghhills I felt the need for something new. I had become the worksmanager of the American Locomotive Company. This promotion had come tome in a little more than a year and a half after I abandonedrailroading and took up manufacturing.

Almost from the start, I had been called assistant works manager, butuntil I knew my way around I rarely exercised the authority of thejob—in overalls roving the plant for weeks, getting acquainted with avariety of activities housed in buildings that covered many acres.Along one side ran the Ohio River and close beside it was our ironfoundry. Another huge building housed the truck shop. In another wasthe brass foundry and forge shop. Then there was that stimulatingplace, the erecting shop.

Our Allegheny plant began doing something it had not done during threepreceding years; it began to make money. Every locomotive is a specialjob, tailored to suit the customer. We had reached a point where wewere completing many new engines in our erecting shop. Each one, ofcourse, had been sold before it was built. Orders for millions ofdollars' worth of new locomotives came in—some of those orderscoming in the Duquesne Club, from talking with men like myself who hadstarted out as machine-shop apprentices, in overalls. In a machineage, can there be a better way to start?

David Francis Crawford would telephone me, "Chrysler, come over to theclub and have lunch with me. I want to talk about locomotives." He wasthe general superintendent of motive power of the PennsylvaniaRailroad Lines west of Pittsburgh; he had begun as an apprentice inthe shops at Altoona. Throughout our meal together we would talk shop,getting our minds to meet on the specifications for a new series oflocomotives. We were building all kinds of engines then; some were forthe New York Central Lines, for service way over in our Schenectadyplant's territory. One of the best customers was Loren H. Turner,superintendent of motive power of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railway.One day Mr. Turner, while we talked at lunch, gave us an order fortwenty-five new engines:

"Listen, Chrysler; I want to haul twelve Pullman cars on a one percent grade at sixty miles per hour. I am going to buy twenty-fivelocomotives that can do that kind of work. Now you go back to theworks and calculate your bid."

"Standard accessories? Injectors, lubricators——"

"Yes, standard accessories, but these locomotives must be able to haultwelve Pullman cars on a one per cent grade at sixty miles per hour.Remember that!"

Those were the only specifications we had, except weight. Ours was thewinning bid. My recollection is that the order totaled about$1,250,000; it would have cost twice as much to duplicate that orderlong before those engines were scrapped. We got one other big orderfrom Mr. Turner, given to me while we devoured a rare steak thesize of my forearm.

"Chrysler, I hear you're leaving."

"Going out to Flint, Michigan. We are expecting another baby in myfamily. I won't go till then."

"Then you'll have time to make some engines for me. It's no dealthough, unless you agree to stay long enough to put these enginesthrough your shop. That understood?"

"Oh, sure."

"Well, I want twenty-five switching engines."

"You'll get 'em, even if we have to work on Christmas."

Going out to Flint was the result of a telegram from a man whose namemeant little to me when I read it at the bottom of his message: "JamesJ. Storrow." He was inviting me to call on him in New York.

"Who is Storrow?" I asked a banker acquaintance at the .

"Oh, nobody; just the head of Lee, Higginson and Company. Then, too,you will find that he is a director of the company you work for."

"Well, if he wants to see me, I suppose I should go."

"You better had," the banker said.

"The message said he wanted to discuss an important matter."

"Chrysler, anything that Storrow wants to talk about to you will beimportant. How does it happen you were unaware that he is a directorof American Locomotive?"

"The only ones I have to think about are Waldo Marshall and JimMcNaughton; they're my friends."

No. 43 Exchange Place was the New York address of Lee, Higginson andCompany in 1911. I found it, not without difficulties, because I neverhad been in New York before that day. In my mind's eye I was stillseeing fascinating visions of the fantastically high buildings when Iwas ushered into Mr. Storrow's office. He got up to greet me, saying,"So you're the fellow who transformed our Allegheny plant from alosing venture into a paying one?" Of course, it was not me; the bestthing I had done in Pittsburgh had been to find the right kind of menfor the right jobs. Actually, I had hired back a lot of good ones whohad been fired before I came. But Mr. Storrow had not invited me downthere to discuss the affairs of the American Locomotive Company. Hewanted to know if I had given any thought to automobile manufacturing.

"Yes, sir. I've been thinking about it, off and on, for about fiveyears."

"Well, then, if you are interested, I believe it could be arranged foryou to go to work for the Buick Motor Company, of Flint, Michigan. Itis the most important of the group of companies that make up GeneralMotors. You know, I am now the chairman of the finance committee. Fora few months last winter I was president of General Motors. The jobI'd like to see you have is that of works manager for the Buick MotorCompany."

"Sounds good to me."

"The president of Buick is a Flint man of sterling character. He hasearned a great reputation as a carriage manufacturer, and we are allagreed that he is precisely the man to steer the company now. However,the automobile business is still new to him and he agrees with me thathe needs someone with a lot of machinery experience to run the works."

I nodded and tried to keep from looking too happy.

"A great future in automobiles. That's my opinion as a banker."

"That's the way I feel about it too. I'm a transportation man, yousee, and this is individual transportation——" I shut up then,afraid to talk when I was feeling so much excitement.

"Would you be willing to meet Mr. Nash in Pittsburgh?"

"Be glad to."

"Well, I'll arrange that, and he'll probably invite you to look overthe Buick plant. Remember, he is high-strung and——"

"Yes?"

"Just a word of advice: This is a great opportunity for the rightman."

About a week after I returned to Pittsburgh from New York, I got atelegram from Charles W. Nash, of Flint, Michigan. He named an earlydate when he was going to be in Pittsburgh, and asked if I would havelunch with him. I wired acceptance. Not many days thereafter I wasshaking hands with him for the first time in my office at the works.We went to the Fort Pitt Hotel for lunch.

I suppose Charley was sizing me up during that meal; I know he did nottell me much; we seemed not to be the same breed of cats. Oh, we werecordial enough but the ice really wasn't broken until we had finished.

"Want a cigar, Chrysler?"

"Yes, I smoke panetelas."

As I said this, his dark mustache widened in a grin of appreciation."You smoke panetelas? That's funny. I smoke them myself." In the timewe smoked those slender brown rods down to butts we got betteracquainted, and Nash asked me to visit his plant, the Buick MotorCompany, at Flint.

McNaughton tried to talk me out of going. I was getting $8000 a yearby then, and he fixed it so that my salary became $12,000. Onethousand dollars every month! My wife and I were entranced at the barethought of getting a raise that amounted almost to as much as my bestrailroad salary, that which I had been receiving when I quit theChicago Great Western. Nevertheless, curious and eager, I kept my datewith Nash at the Buick Motor Company works.

I was not with Charley five minutes after we shook hands. "I'll giveyou a pass," he said. "Takes you every place. Look around untiltomorrow afternoon. Come in right after lunch and we'll sit down andtalk things over."

I went to the little hotel to which he had directed me, put my bag ina room Nash had arranged for, and then went back to explore theautomobile plant.

What I saw astonished me. Of course I was a machinist, and I waslooking at workmen trained to handle wood. The bodies were being madeof wood. In a big carpenter shop, long wide poplar boards were beingbent and shaped in steam kilns. With wood they were admirablyskillful, for most of them had been carriage builders, but whereverthey were handling metal it seemed to me there was opportunity for bigimprovement. I saw a hundred such opportunities, so that I becameexcitedly eager, saying to myself, "What a job I could do here, if Iwere boss!"

Charley Nash fixed his eyes on me the instant I walked into hisoffice. "What do you think?"

"Mr. Nash, I'd like to come here. I think I could be a useful man inthis plant. I'm anxious to get into this business and with thiscompany."

"Well, you've formed your opinion very quickly."

"I saw enough to be able to make up my mind."

"For instance, what?"

"Men were painting the chassis of each car as they would paint thepanels of a carriage. I drive a car, and I know that by the time youget a new car home, all the under part of the chassis is splashed withmud; thereafter no one ever sees it."

Finally he said: "What salary do you want, Mr. Chrysler?"

"I've just had a raise, Mr. Nash. Over in Pittsburgh, when I told Mr.McNaughton that I was going to look at another job—well, they raisedme from $8000 to $12,000 a year."

I could see immediately that Charley Nash was getting ready to focushis attention on something else. His interest in me was gone; he justseemed to collapse, the way a tire does when its air is let out.

"In this business we don't pay such salaries." He was shaking his headfrom side to side. He was not bargaining; he was simply winding up anincident in his day. There was reason for that: $12,000 really was abig figure in Flint in 1911. He did not know me; I was an outsider.But I was not prepared to let this chance get away from me.

"Mr. Nash, what will you pay?"

He thought awhile and pursed his lips. He scratched his head.Underneath his hair, Mr. Nash was doing sums with pieces of my life.If I was getting $12,000, surely I would be expecting a larger sum totempt me from a job with people who liked me. Suddenly he sat upstraight and spoke.

"Mr. Chrysler, we can't afford to pay over $6000."

"I accept it, Mr. Nash." He looked bewildered. Before I had been withhim three months we were the best, the warmest kind of friends. Webecame friends, in fact, for life. Charley is a grand man.

•VI•

CONFLICTS IN A NEW CAREER

"Full Authority Is What I Want"

Jack Chrysler, our fourth and youngest child, was born in Pittsburgh.Although I was wild with eagerness to get to Michigan I stayed on hereuntil I was sure my wife and this young son were getting along well.

When I was not excited by my prospects I was sad. After all, untilthen I had devoted my whole life to locomotives, and I loved them.They are noble mechanisms! Whenever I realized that the decision to gowith the Buick Company would part me, forever probably, fromassociation with railroad engines and railroad men as my companions, Iwas afflicted by regrets. Aside from these feelings I had to stop andthink that I was taking my wife and children away from the comfort anddignity of the best situation I had ever achieved into a young andsomewhat raw industry. But the new chance was exciting; it excited meas pioneering chances always have excited my ancestors, causing themto cross the ocean to an unformed America, to move northward intoCanada, and then to go westward to the Kansas plains. I felt that samekind of thrill when setting out for Flint.

Certainly my entrance into the field of automobile manufacturing washappily timed. In that year, down in Dayton, Charles F. Kettering putthe first self-starter on a Cadillac and shipped it to Henry M.Leland in Detroit; electrical starting, lighting and ignition firedthe imagination of everybody in the industry; thereafter women mightdrive as easily as men. From that time on, everything splendid thathad been predicted for automobiles began to come true.

Yet most automobiles were costing too much money. I soon began to findout why; the industry had grown up in a series of booms. Money wasbeing spent recklessly by some; it was being wasted by others simplybecause they did not know how to curb waste. The great pressure onalmost everyone in the business was time. If a company wanted a newplant of any kind, someone with authority was pretty sure to ask thatthe plant be produced quickly.

Right after entering the Buick plant as works manager, I asked for thepiecework schedule. The clerk I asked looked at me blankly.

"The piecework schedule. These men out in the plant are being paid ona piecework basis. Where's the schedule?" There was some flutteringwhen my voice rose, but none around could produce such a schedule.There was no such record in the office that could be found. So Ihustled out of the office building and went to the stamping plant.

My assistant over there, with whom I was just getting acquainted, wasquite obliging. "Will you come in your office," I said to him, "so Ican see your piecework record?" There were probably three or fourthousand men working for Buick then; the stamping plant was filledwith machines and men.

"Oh, the piecework record! Sure! I've got it right here in my pocket."He pulled out a little sheet of paper and unfolded it, so I could seethe writing on it. There was nothing on that record about which kindwords could be said; it simply was not a record of what I wished toknow. In the Allegheny works of the American Locomotive, we had tobid $40,000 or so on a locomotive job; bidding low enough to get thejob and still make a profit. The only way we could do that was to knowto a penny what it was costing us to drill a hole and what it cost tomake an obscure little casting. All our locomotive work had beenscheduled, and that was never simple. We used a slide rule to find asound basis for our estimates; we felt we had to know precisely whenthe patternmakers would be through, how many days it would take tocast a cylinder, when the boilermakers, tankmakers, molders,machinists, and the other workmen, group by group, would be ready topass along what they had made. In that way, thanks to painstakingstudy of every detail of all operations, we could promise to completea locomotive on a certain day and keep our promise; moreover, we hadbeen able to bid low and still give the company its profit. Evenbefore working in Pittsburgh, we had been compelled to watch costs tothe penny. In the railroad shops we had to know the cost of rawmaterials and how much labor would be required before we began tobuild a locomotive.

But in Flint we were making automobiles, not just one or two, but manyevery day. So from that time forward we had a piecework schedule atBuick—one that meant something.

Among the many good men at the Buick plant was a fellow named ChetSmith. He became my production manager. One day, about two weekslater, we stood together watching operations in a room where chassisafter chassis was taking shape. In that time Buick was turning outabout forty-five cars a day. Henry Ford was making hundreds of cars aday; in the next year—1913—his production reached 1000 carsa day.

This Buick chassis room was in a large brick building; it must havebeen 70 feet wide and about 600 feet long. The roof was supported onwooden posts; there was a forest of these; they were nowhere more thantwenty feet apart. In long rows were structures the height of aworkbench. On these the chassis of each new Buick would be puttogether. Four men would come up with members of a frame and rivet ittogether. Then other men would bring the axles and fix them on; otherswould hang the springs. Then the gang of workmen would go to anothertable and resume; painters would go to work on the chassis. After thesandpapering, the frames were painted; but it was a primary coat, richwith putty. This coat of paint would not dry in less than twelvehours. Next day they would sandpaper the frame a second time, and thenpaint it with a coat of liquid primary. After drying twelve hours theframe would get another light sandpapering, after which it received afinishing coat of varnish to make it shiny; that meant twelve hoursmore of drying. All those workmen had learned their painting trade incarriage factories. Well, it was such matters that Storrow and CharleyNash expected to have handled.

"Chet, this is all wrong. We've got to get each chassis out of here intwo days instead of four."

"We can build a lot more cars if we do that."

"Of course. We can double our capacity, and we'll need more buildingsand a lot more men."

We cut out the sandpapering and the glazing coat, which was treatingmetal as if it were wood. When someone would undertake to argue thepoint, the answer was:

"Listen, what is the use of finishing up the hidden parts of a chassisas if you were going to put it in a parlor? This stuff is caked withroad mud on the first day it is used." Of course there were fewhighways outside the cities then, just country roads.

That change saved two days in building a chassis, and for a while wewere kept busy bringing the rest of the plant production up to meetthis change. But we had barely started; inside of six months we wereat those chassis operations again. By running the temperature somewhathigher, we succeeded in drying two coats of paint in just half a day.Well, that is how Buick began to improve its factory performance, cutcosts. Every minute of my time we were figuring out further ways toadapt carriage-craft operations to automobile building. With justthose changes in operation we succeeded in improving production fromforty-five cars a day to seventy-five, practically in the same spaceand with a most impressive saving. We knew we could do better, though,if we just kept on hunting out all kinds of waste.

Right in that same room where each Buick chassis was being made, weevolved a better working method merely by supporting the roof onstouter trusses and taking out the posts that were in every workman'sway. Perhaps it was a year later that we made another outstandingimprovement. Instead of having the whole room filled with tables whereframe members were riveted and where other operations proceeded until,one by one, each table supported a finished chassis, we had the vastroom empty of all but four or five tables supported on stanchions,with benches close at hand.

Beyond these, extending clear to the far end of the room, was atrough, a pair of tracks made of two-by-fours. When a chassis wascomplete with axles, springs and wheels, a little chain hoist was usedto lift it off the table to the floor, astride the track; then it waspushed along from hand to hand; two men put the fenders on, others inturn added a gas tank, and finally the chassis got its body. Once westarted making cars that way we had the whole scheme of massproduction going, although it was some years before people said "massproduction." We were just doing it without bothering about terms.

We were doing our painting before we started to assemble; in that waywe could have a stock of parts painted and ready without holding otherworkmen. Then we developed a way to squirt paint, using air pressure;it was the old principle of the atomizer. We went on and on with oneimprovement after another until, in that same room, instead of merelyforty-five cars we were making 200 cars each day.

Henry Ford, after we developed our line, went to work and figured outa chain conveyor; his was the first. Thereafter we all used them.Instead of pushing the cars along the line by hand, they rode on anendless-chain conveyor operated by a motor.

Nowadays, when you go into an automobile factory, you see a lot ofparts almost effortlessly put together and so smoothly that in aboutfifteen minutes what was just a naked frame when you began to watchhas become an automobile full of gas and oil, being driven off underits own power. Compare that with the four days that it used to take toassemble a chassis. Better still, call up a vision of the most costlyautomobiles of 1912; then take a ride in any one of the leastexpensive of the 1937 models. Believe me, it has been a thrillingquarter of a century for those of us who have been making automobiles,who have had our hands and brains involved with the details of thisindustrial triumph.

In my first years with Buick, there was a chance for sharp improvementin production any time we came upon a workman who was waiting formaterials.

"What's the matter here, my friend?"

"These crankshafts aren't coming along fast enough. Spend half my timewaiting." That would be the cue. When you had figured out a way tospeed the crankshaft flow, some other kink would be revealed. Startingwith the assembly line, we worked backward through the plant untileverything was tied in. Every new thing was an invention. As soon asone problem was revealed and straightened out, twenty other problemshad arisen. The motors began to get their shapes riding on a conveyorline; then the axles, crankshafts, camshafts; until now it would bedifficult to find an operation which requires men to exert theirmuscles like they used to. The workmen have machines to do theirbidding.

Out of our insistent needs, machine tools were developed. Amachine-tool salesman would no more than show his head inside myoffice than we'd be after him: "We have to have a machine thatcan——" Then he'd take his pencil out and write down whatwe needed; back in his home factory he would feed the problem to theengineers: "How can we do thus and so?" They would work it out,sometimes swiftly, sometimes not for months or even years. We kept onreaching out for better ways, for better things, until evolutionarychanges were occurring in the steel industry, in the machine-tooltrade, in the cotton fields down South, everywhere raw materials camefrom. We were insistent—imperiously sometimes. We were makingthe first machine of considerable size in the history of the world forwhich every human being was a potential customer.

Charley Nash was precisely the man needed to guide General Motorsthrough the condition in which he found it when he left theDurant-Dort Carriage Company in Flint to become the president ofBuick; he was greatly admired in the town, and William C. Durant hadwisely recommended him to James J. Storrow. Storrow spoke for theinvestment group. Nash may have known little about automobiles when hebegan in 1910, but he did know how to handle men; he knew how to run afactory. Above all, he was loyal; you could not hope to find a manmore honest. He never was the sort of fellow to becomereckless with anybody's money. Sometimes when he turned his thumbsdown on some expenditure for the Buick plant, would not let me buysome new machines we wanted, I'd tell him he was tighter than a barrelwithout a bung. "Charley," I'd say imploringly, in the manner of alittle boy, "please show me the first nickel you ever earned. Mr.Storrow says you've got it hidden somewhere."

Nash had gone with Durant when Billy started in the carriage businessabout 1886 or '87. Charley had been bound out as a boy to a Michiganfarmer; then he went into Flint and got a job with Whiting &Richardson, a hardware firm. He was a handy fellow to have around,because he had a knack for setting up agricultural machinery; they hada big farmer trade there. He was such a hard worker that Billy Durantwas impressed by him.

"How would you like to come over to the factory, Nash?"

Charley said he thought he'd like it: Durant gave him a wage of $1.25a day, and set him to work in the blacksmith shop. He had been thereonly a few days when he approached Durant.

"Say, Mr. Durant, I've been pounding iron for Mr. McCruttin, theblacksmith, but I'm wasting time. You can get a little power hammerthere. Wouldn't cost more than thirty-five dollars, and it would domore pounding in a day than I can do in a month."

Billy bought the hammer and put Charley at another job. Next time hesaw him he was working at a drill press on cart braces, but he hadrigged up his drill press with an overhead spring and brought it intoaction with a foot pedal, so as to keep both hands free. Young Nashwas handling about five times as many cart braces as his predecessorat that drill press.

"Charley," said Durant, "we'll get another man here. You see if youcan't straighten out the trimming shop for me."

There Charley quickly diagnosed the trouble. "Your purchasing agent isbuying cheap tacks; they are roughly made and cut the men's mouths.Besides, they are much too small; the men drop more on the floor thanare used."

Charley Nash had a real talent for manufacturing and he moved right onup until he was the production manager of the big carriage businessthat Durant and his friend, J. Dallas Dort, had built up from next tonothing until they were producing 150,000 vehicles a year. WhenCharley Nash went to work for Buick, though, and then became presidentof General Motors, he was working for General Motors and not for BillyDurant. They did not see eye to eye. Nash and Storrow had points ofview more nearly in focus. However, Billy Durant did not enter my lifeuntil a few years later.

When I had served three years as works manager at Buick, Charley Nashwas still paying me the same salary at which I had started with thecompany. In that boom town of Flint, I was almost conspicuous becauseI got relatively so little; or, so it seemed.

Executives out there sat in swivel chairs between a roll-top desk anda big flat-topped table. One day I walked into Nash's office andrested my knuckles on his table.

"Charley, I want $25,000 a year."

"Walter!" It was pretty nearly a scream, the way he uttered my name.

"Now, Charley, we've gotten along fine. We are making good. Here inBuick, we've got the one company that has been making money."

"Walter——"

"Just a minute until I have finished. I've waited a long time beforesaying this. When I came here I was getting $12,000; I took this jobfor $6000, and you haven't given me a raise. I want $25,000 a year,or I'm going to leave you."

"Walter, this is something I'll have to talk about with Mr. Storrow."I walked out, smoking one of my own panetelas.

In a couple of days I learned that Storrow had arrived in town. Nashand Storrow were in conference. Then word was brought that they wouldlike to see me down in Charley's office.

"What's this all about, Walter?"

"Not much to it. You know how I came here. You know I was getting$12,000, and now I'm getting $6000; after three years of the hardest---- I want $25,000 a year. By——"

"Don't get excited, Walter." Mr. Storrow did everything but pat melike a pet horse. "Don't get excited; you're going to get your$25,000."

"Yes? Well, thank you; and by the way: Next year I want $50,000." Iwas forty years old. When I got home, I really started to enjoy thatraise. I told my wife.

"Dad! I knew you'd do it!"

Those words contained everything I wanted to hear. In all our lifetogether, there never has been a time when she was putting theslightest pressure on me to change my ways. She's never nagged me,never thrown anything up to me; yet I am quite aware that I have madecountless decisions after calculations in which the decisive factorhas been my knowledge of what my wife would regard as becoming andproper. It was about the time I got that raise that we discussed anevening gown. She had denied herself a lot, I knew.

"Aw, get two," I said. But she shook her head. If our feet remained onthe ground—and I know they did—my wife should get seventy per centof the credit.

That year, 1915, when I began to draw an annual salary of $25,000, waseventful for General Motors. I used some of my salary to buy companystock, but I could not get as much as I liked, because the price wasrising swiftly. The Buick factory had become something to make any manwho worked there proud. However, although none of us knew it, thegentleman who had made Buick a great name, who had put General Motorstogether, was coming back; that was Durant, a genius—William C.Durant. His triumph was to be compared with Napoleon's return fromElba, only this time Napoleon was to win for much longer than 100days.

When I was still playing Indians and shooting marbles out in Kansas, aboy of ten or eleven, Durant was a young insurance man of Flint. Hehas told me that the business was paying him about $900 a year when hesaw a chance to become a manufacturer. He borrowed $2000 with which tostart, bought the patents and other existing rights of a road-cartcompany for $1500, and promptly sold a half interest to J. DallasDort, a friend of his, for $1000. Before he was forty, Billy Durantwas a millionaire; one who felt that he had barely started. This isnot the place to tell what bitter circumstances caused him to losecontrol of General Motors and his hand-reared pet, Buick; but havinglost, he proceeded to form another company, Chevrolet. The firstChevrolet was made in April, 1913; two years later, Billy Durant wasproceeding toward successful conclusion of a scheme whereby control ofthe giant General Motors would be regained for him by hiscomparatively little Chevrolet Company. Of course, Durant had a vastblock of General Motors stock to begin with; he had kept his originalholdings; members of his family, business associates, old friends andothers who had faith in his genius, had kept their stock. Some day,they felt, Billy would get back on top. In 1912, a year before thefirst Chevrolet was sold, his plan began maturing.

Three years later, on September 16, 1915, Billy Durant walked into theGeneral Motors stockholders' meeting. Quickly and quietly he assertedand established that he, the founder, was once more in control; thatis, Chevrolet controlled General Motors, and Durant, with the DuPonts, controlled Chevrolet. As Chevrolet was not a suitable embracingname, an exchange was made and the captor took its captive's title. Adivision was set up inside the magic circle so that besides Buick,Cadillac and all the others there was a new division henceforth to beknown as Chevrolet. Durant had spent $27,000,000 of Du Pont money toaccomplish this end.

Mr. Storrow had retired from the board in the preceding June; hisplace as chairman of the finance committee was taken by Louis K.Kaufman, of the Chatham and Phoenix Bank, of New York. Mr. Kaufman hadgiven tremendous aid to Billy Durant in his fight. I remember seeinghim for the first time, not long afterward, walking through the Buickplant. Our friendship which began then, has continued ever since. Hehas served through all these years on the General Motors board.

Meanwhile Nash and Storrow were persuaded we three ought to worktogether in something else. I was willing, provided we could make ourplan work. We wanted to buy out the Packard Motor Car Company; plants,agencies, everything. Mr. Storrow was coming out to Detroit to makethe trade. The negotiations had proceeded so smoothly until then thatwe counted on it as practically settled. Mr. Nash had resigned aspresident of General Motors as of June 1, 1916. I was general managerof Buick.

One day, who should walk into my office but William C. Durant; he wastaking over Nash's job as president of General Motors. He got rightdown to business.

"Mr. Chrysler, I'd like to hire you as president of the Buick MotorCompany."

"I want to be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Durant. If a plan on whichI am negotiating now goes through, I'm quitting here."

"This is a great company. You've been doing a splendid job."

"If this plan goes through, Mr. Durant, I'm committed."

Billy nodded, smiling with understanding. "How long will it take youto learn for sure?"

"Thirty days, I think."

"I'll be in Flint for thirty days. When you make up your mind, youcall me. I'd like to talk to you."

I cannot hope to find words to express the charm of the man. He hasthe most winning personality of anyone I've ever known. He could coaxa bird right down out of a tree, I think. I remember the first time mywife and I entered his home. The walls were hung with magnificenttapestries. I had never experienced luxury to compare with BillyDurant's house. In five minutes he had me feeling as if I owned theplace.

The Packard plan blew up. However, by that time Charley Nash had foundsomething else, the old Jeffery plant out in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Itcould be bought, Mr. Storrow told me, for less than $5,000,000.Charley was hot for it, and Mr. Storrow too. A couple of other GeneralMotors men, W. H. Alford and C. B. Warren, were joining, and Mr.Storrow, in urging me, said, "You will be one of the principal ownersand partners, getting satisfaction out of working for your owncompany." Even though this enterprise was beginning as a smallcompany, it had a tempting sound. One drawback was that the Chryslerswould have to become strangers in still another town, and we had beenstrangers in a lot of places. For the first time in our life together,my wife and I were really settled down. Finally, for that reason, Itelegraphed Mr. Storrow that I had decided not to join. That was awrench, because I thought the world of Nash and Storrow. Then Mr.Storrow wrote me:

Dear Walter:. . . You have my very best wishes in whatever youundertake and you may rely upon our cordial co-operation to theutmost possible extent at any time that we can be of assistanceto you. I am inclosing a circular showing how we are offering thestock of the Nash Motors Company, simply to let you know what weare up to. . . . Let me know sometime when you are coming to NewYork, and if I am in Boston, I shall be very glad to run over andsee you. . . . I do not want to let our friendship drop, and askyou to co-operate to see that it doesn't.

It never did; until the day of his death, James Storrow was one of mybest friends.

The resignation of Charley Nash left a big hole in the General Motorsorganization. He had been a vital factor in the success of thecorporation and I hated to see him go away. Not only was he a loyalfriend and a grand man but I knew him to be one of the country'sgreatest industrialists. The tremendous success that he has made atRacine with the Nash Motors Company is something any of the friends heleft behind him at General Motors would have predicted from the day heleft Michigan to go to Wisconsin.

Soon after I had made my decision, I telephoned Durant. He asked,"When do you want to see me?"

"Seven o'clock in the morning." I went to work early because it was myhabit to walk through the factories and get to my desk before theoffices opened. Seven o'clock found Billy Durant right on my doorstep.

I dropped into my swivel chair between my roll-top desk and my widetable; Durant seated himself on the opposite side of the table.I was going to ask him for a raise.

"I'll pay you $500,000 a year to stay on here as president of Buick."He just sprang it on me that way; he did not bat an eye. I couldn'tthink for a few seconds.

"Mr. Durant, the salary you offer is, of course, far and away beyondanything I expected, but——"

"Now, Walter" (we were getting well acquainted fast), "you just putaside, for the time being, all your plans of getting into business foryourself. I don't blame you for the ambition, but I ask you to give mejust three years of yourself."

"There's one thing——"

"You shouldn't run away from this proposition, Walter. Nash is going.But the boys here stood by you, and now——"

"They have stood by me, as you say, but I'm standing by them when Isay that I can accept only if I'm to have full authority. With theirhelp, I can run this property. I don't want interference. I don't wantany other boss but you. If you feel that anything is going wrong, ifyou don't like some action of mine, you come to me; don't go toanybody else and don't try to split up my authority. Just have onechannel between Flint and Detroit: from me to you. Full authority iswhat I want."

He was beaming at me then. I saw him touch his fingers lightly to thetable top for emphasis. "It's a deal," he said.

When we got our deal worked out on paper, it was even better than theoffer that had overwhelmed me in the office; he arranged for me todraw $10,000 cash a month, and at the end of each year of the threefor which I contracted to work for General Motors, I had the right totake the rest in cash or else to claim its equivalent in stock at theprice as of the day we signed the contract. Of course, I always tookthe stock.

Billy was a forceful character, so, I suppose, collisions wereinevitable. One day when I had been president of Buick about threemonths we were working out some new arrangement about our branches;Buick had sixteen branch houses then, one in St. Louis, one in KansasCity, one in New York, one in Chicago, others at scattered points; butone of the best was in Detroit. Each one of them was earning for thecompany about $200,000 a year; a nice business.

Well, it was then I had a visitor, Richard Collins, our former salesmanager—"Trainload" Collins.

He had quit Buick and moved over to Detroit; I suppose he did this soas to be near Durant. That was a natural move, since he was one ofDurant's close associates.

"What's on your mind, Dick? This is my rush day."

"Walt, I just drove over from Detroit in my car to tell you I'vebought the Detroit Buick branch from Durant."

"Oh, no, you haven't. I'm president of Buick."

"Oh, yes, I have." It seemed to me that he mocked my tone a little."That's why I came over. Want to talk to you about it."

"Listen, Dick; you can't talk to me about it. Even if Durant ispresident of General Motors, I'm running the Buick Motor Company.Don't you think I'm not." By that time I had put my coat on, crackedmy derby hat down on my head and was at the door.

"But, Walt, I've made the deal."

"You haven't made any deal. You might as well go downstairs and get inyour otherwise-than-Buick automobile and drive on back to tell Durantthat you have not bought the Detroit branch. I'm going to be thereabout as quick as you are, because I'm going right now."

That same afternoon I walked into Billy's office.

"I don't want to take up too much of your time, but have youforgotten the contract I've got with you to run the Buick MotorCompany?"

"Certainly not. What's happened?"

"Dick Collins came to Flint and told me he had bought the Detroitbranch. If he has, I'm through."

"Now, Walt, don't get excited. You know Dick Collins! He's been afterme for months about that branch. He coaxed and urged——"

"As long as I'm the president of Buick, I'm going to run it. If thereis any policy you wish to change, policies that concern all thecompanies, Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Chevrolet, and the others,just tell me, and I'll carry out your orders. But don't interfere withthe Buick organization. I'm responsible for Buick unless you'vechanged your mind about me; if you have, you've got my resignationnow."

"Now, Walt, Dick Collins hasn't bought any Buick branch."

"He says he has."

"You leave that to me."

"All right. Give me a memorandum stating that you have not sold theDetroit branch." He called in his stenographer, dictated what I hadasked for, and I went back to Flint, feeling better. I think it was ayear at least before we had another difference of opinion.

One day my drop-forge superintendent came to tell me, "Mr. Durantwants me to move over to Detroit and run a drop-forge plant forGeneral Motors." We were paying him $8000.

"Do you want to move away from Flint?" I asked.

"No, but Mr. Durant is going to pay me $12,000."

"You better go, then," I said.

As soon as I could get hold of Billy I asked, "If you want some manfrom here, tell me and I'll help you get him. But don't go into theplant over my head and interfere with my men, unless you want me toquit." Billy just could not help doing that sort of thing. If he saw aman he wanted, he waved a wand of gold. He offered to cancel thearrangement; of course that could not be done. It would not be fair tothe man. So I told him, "He's your man now, at $12,000."

A number of arguments on matters of that kind occurred during ourthree years together.

I remember I went to see him once and said, "Billy, for the love of---- please, now, say what your policies are for General Motors. I'llwork on them; whatever they are, I'll work to make them effective.Leave the operations alone: the building, the buying, the selling andthe men—leave them alone, but say what your policies are."

Billy laughed at me. "Walt, I believe in changing the policies just asoften as my office door opens and closes."

I wagged my head and said, "You and I can never get along." That's thekind of fellow he was, though; we'd fight, and then he'd want to raisemy salary. The automobile industry owes more to Durant than it has yetacknowledged. In some ways, he has been its greatest man.

I would think of Charley Nash and his warnings. Then I'd speak asgently as I knew how: "Billy, I'm getting all the money I want. Salarybe damned! Will you please leave the Buick organization alone?"

•VII•

MEN, MOTORS, AND MY WIFE

"I Will Go Back To Work"

I know Billy Durant believed that in Buick we had built a beautifulpattern of what an automobile-manufacturing company should be like.What disturbed him was that Buick was being built so strongly that itovershadowed everything else in General Motors; at least that was whathe said. What had been accomplished with Buick, Billy said, was whathe wanted to accomplish for Pontiac, Olds, Cadillac and the others. Hewished each one to be complete. I felt that Buick ought to be allowedto do its very best. Sometimes we found ourselves in arguments; butalso we had a lot of fun. When we saw something that we wanted, wecould go, or send, and get, generally, just what we wanted. Butsometimes it took more than money to get our way.

Down in Dayton there was a genius that we needed in Detroit. This wasCharles F. Kettering, a brilliant inventor. Some time after he hadmade the first electric starter, Billy Durant had bought from him andhis associate, Edward Andrew Deeds, their Dayton EngineeringLaboratories Company, the "Delco."

When the trade was completed Billy Durant came to Flint and discussedit with Nash in my presence. This was before I had become president ofBuick, while I was works manager. Billy explained that to getDelco it had been necessary to include in the purchase price somemoney for an air-cooled car which was being developed at Delco. Therehad been talk that this automobile might revolutionize the low-pricedfield. Turning to me, Durant said, "Now that we've got this air-cooledcar, what would you do with it?"

"Throw it in the ash can." In those days I spoke bluntly by habit. Isaw Billy Durant grin, and then he nodded in full agreement with myjudgment. What I felt was that he had made an important purchase whenhe got Delco. The aim, of course, was to reduce the costs of thestarting-lighting-ignition units. From the beginning of the automobilebusiness high costs have been a challenge; that is the reason men donot have to be rich to possess an automobile. Few Americans are sopoor they may not hope to own a car. Yet this is true only because theindustry has struggled to be able to sell its wares cheaper andcheaper even as the cars became better and better. Their steadyimprovement, of course, has been the fruit of inventive minds likethat of Kettering.

Becoming president of Buick, and first vice-president of GeneralMotors, in charge of operations, I was eager to get Kettering to leavethe management of Delco to someone else and come up to Detroit. Mostof my associates said I would never be able to induce Ket to leaveDayton, to leave his pet business, his friends, his home, his farm,and move to Detroit. I knew you could never tempt him much with money.Charley really does not care a hang about money. But I sold him withthe offer of an exciting job.

"You're the man to steer the whole engineering intelligence ofGeneral Motors," I said. What we were offering him was a chance tosolve mechanical and scientific problems endlessly, and I could seehis eyes glitter with desire. He took the job and thereafter GeneralMotors began to get the full use of the most important thing acquiredwith Delco. In Kettering the company had a bargain.

In the development of the great modern business corporations asservants of mankind, men have devised a creative force that transcendsthemselves. None of these corporations are perfect yet, of course; butbefore you condemn their crudities remember how young they are andthen ask yourself what other time in history can show anything tocompare with these teams of men, in capacity to enrich mankind, incapacity to extend human powers in almost any direction we may wish togo.

Kettering has become a great scientist; then he was an inventor, andwe wanted him because of his visions, because through him thereprobably would be revealed greater tasks for the force we represented.

Nourished by such a mind as that of Kettering of General Motors orFred Zeder of the Chrysler Corporation, a great corporation'sdepartmentalized intelligence becomes still greater; but to support aKettering there must be other kinds of minds, those of production men,of merchants, of mechanics, of advertising men and countless others.When all these minds, through organization, are made to function as asingle intelligence, each member of which is a special gifted part,why, then you can expect to produce magic. Nowhere in the world isthere a people with wealth so widespread as in America; nowhere isthere a people who have so much. It seems to me quite obvious that wedo not owe this difference to a few outstanding men; we owe it to ascheme of working whereby a lot of varied intelligences in a greatbusiness organization pool their most effective parts.

At a time when I was impatient to talk with Billy Durant about warcontracts, I got a train out of Detroit for New York and on thefollowing morning went to his office.

I seemed to be in a room full of Napoleons at various stages ofNapoleonic careers, and I decided to vanish from the scene.

I left Durant's office, caught a train to Washington, and wentdirectly to the office of Col. Edward Deeds, who had been associatedwith Kettering in Delco and now was in charge of aircraft productionfor the War Department.

"Chrysler, we need that Buick plant. We've got to have airplaneengines. I've been wondering when you were going to come down here andhelp us out."

"Well, here I am."

Within three hours I had an order for 3000 Liberty motors. I tookrolls of blueprints back to Flint.

At the plant, my own offices were made into a drafting room and westarted in on a twenty-four-hour schedule. We had cots brought to theoffices and slept there until we lost track of time. I remember thatwe did not go home for two weeks. Deeds had said: "Some of these othermanufacturers are three or four months ahead of Buick, but we are notgetting the production we must have; deliveries are slow. Can youfellows do better?" He had meant this as a challenge, so I passed iton to the organization.

The plant had to be tooled for this new operation and the young fellowwho was in charge of Buick tooling was the plant's master mechanic, K.T. Keller. Today he is President Keller, of the Chrysler Corporation.

I had liked Keller's looks the first time I had seen him, shortlyafter I had come from Pittsburgh to Flint to start my career as anautomobile man. Keller a month or so before had gone to work forGeneral Motors as a member of the central office staff, working mostof his time on Cadillac. He was only twenty-seven then, but already hewas an old hand in the automobile business. He had that same love formachines that had dominated my life, and a further bond between uswas that he had served a special apprenticeship in the Westinghousemachine shop, erecting, designing and engineering. When he was onlytwenty-four he was assistant to the superintendent of the Westinghouseautomobile engine department. Thereafter, deliberately, as a part ofhis own scheme of education he had worked at many jobs: chiefinspector of a Detroit factory making automobile axles, foreman of thegeneral machine shop of the Metzger Motor Car Company, with the HudsonMotor Company working on heavy repairs and chassis testing, and nextas chief inspector of the Maxwell plant. Keller had lots of fire andhis feet were on the ground; he was as stanch a fellow as you wouldwant to see. He had left General Motors and had gone to Indianapolis,where he was working for the Cole Motor Car Company, when I succeededin hiring him. He was less than thirty when he became master mechanicof Buick. He was a big factor in Buick's production of Liberty motors.When he was told to go ahead, a job was as good as done.

Thanks to Keller, it did not take long to make tools for the newoperations; but there were other difficulties growing out of the factthat certain phases of the manufacturing were going on outside ofBuick. For example, Ford had the contract to make all the cylindersfor the Liberties. This meant that we could not produce engines anyfaster than we could get cylinders from Ford, and I was fearful thatwe would fail to get our requirements as swiftly as we needed them.Then I found out that Ford was having trouble making the overheadcamshaft cylinder heads. We were making them easily. So I went to theFord plant and made a trade with Harold Wills.

In those days Harold was an important figure in the Ford organization;today he is with Chrysler. Not only is he a thorough manufacturer, heis a great chemist and metallurgist. One of the latest benefits forour organization of his research is a new alloy called molo steel. Butin that wartime hurry for production we had no thought of a futurewhen we would be associated in a corporation then unborn.

"Wills," I said, "you can't make those cylinder heads and we can.Let's trade, cylinders for cylinder heads." I had some of our cylinderheads with me, finished, ready for assembly. Harold had to consultwith Henry Ford and some Government official, but in about a week wewere able to complete the trade and then, at Buick, we rushed intoproduction. We had our first Liberty engine on test in two monthsafter that trip to Washington.

Shortly after we began deliveries on that first order for 3000twelve-cylinder Liberties we got another order for eight-cylinderairplane engines. By that time we were taking on all kinds of warwork: trench helmets, hospital equipment, trucks, tanks and otherthings of metal. There was so much work, so many things to be donefrom day to day, there was hardly time to think.

It had been my intention to discuss those war contracts with BillyDurant, on that hurried visit to New York, but I had gone aheadwithout consulting him. He never took me to task for that, however. Heknew we were busy, and he had his own hands full to boot.

Once I had gone to New York in obedience to a call from him; he wishedto see me about some matter. For several days in succession I waitedat his office, but he was so busy he could not take the time to talkwith me. It seemed to me he was trying to keep in communication withhalf the continent; eight or ten telephones were lined up on his desk.He was inhuman in his capacity for work. He had tremendous couragetoo. He might be risking everything he had, but he never faltered inhis course. He was striving to make completely real his vision of agreat corporation. Men, big men, came and went at his command. "Durantis buying" was a potent phrase in Wall Street then.

During a lull I gained his attention for a minute. "Hadn't I betterreturn to Flint and work? I can come back here later."

"No, no. Stay right here." I waited four days before I went back toFlint; and to this day I do not know why Billy had required mypresence in New York. Compared with what I had to worry me in Flint, Iknow that he had vastly greater worries.

For a month, or longer, we had been negotiating with a Milwaukee firmfor the frames for Buick in the coming year. Little by little we weremoving toward a deal; we were getting the price down. The Milwaukeeplant was operating at about forty per cent of capacity; they wantedthe business very much, and we were hoping to conclude a satisfactorytrade by making the organization realize Buick would be in the marketfor frames in other years. This matter was what occupied my mind on aday when my secretary interrupted me to say it was time I attended thebig booster luncheon of the chamber of commerce. As president ofBuick, I would be expected to speak.

In those days, during the war and afterward, Flint was afflicted witha serious housing shortage. The prize that had lured thousands ofstrangers there was good wages, work. Near by me, Dallas Dort wastalking; he was Durant's old partner in the carriage business, andlong a resident of Flint. He was the president of the chamber ofcommerce.

"Boys!" he shouted, and waved a telegram above his head as if it werea banner. "I've got great news for you." When they became silent, hesaid, "Here's a wire from William C. Durant. He says he has justauthorized the spending of $6,000,000 to build a General Motors frameplant in Flint."

The businessmen of Flint went wild at that, and none could blame them.Most of the millions, they felt, would pass across their storecounters over and over. Flint was booming! But I was feeling worsethan sour. Had that telegram that Dort displayed been a red flag andmyself a bull, I could have been no more enraged.

Then the toastmaster called on me for remarks. I suppose he expectedthem to be in keeping with the cheering.

I spoke to him from my seat. "I haven't anything to say—only this:not so long as I stay here will General Motors have a frame plant inFlint. Right now you lack facilities to house the men and women whohave been attracted here by work. What sort of a mess will we be in ifa bigger crowd is drawn into Flint?" Then I got up and left theluncheon.

The next day there was a board meeting of General Motors in Detroit,and Billy, smiling, brought up the subject of building a frame plantin Flint. I interrupted him.

"Why haven't you talked to me about this frame plant? That would beonly fair."

I was far from tactful or polite, I suppose, but I was mad. Myfeelings had been hurt and my great responsibilities ignored.

"The corporation needs——"

"How do you know this frame plant will cost $6,000,000?"

"Here's the estimate." He fluttered papers toward me; Billy could getmad too.

"Who made it?"

He named one of his cronies, a tireless worker.

"I'll bet you haven't got a layout for this six-million-dollar plant."Well, I confess freely that I have forgotten how Billy retorted to mychallenges; undoubtedly, he felt that a frame plant was vital to hisbigger plans.

I went on talking, "It would take two years to build a frame plant.Sure, it will be almost entirely automatic; but it will take threeyears to learn to run it. We can't recruit that kind of talentovernight. Mechanics of the kind required are not to be found aroundhere. It will cost more in five years than we would pay for frames inten years. We can go out right now and buy frames for General Motorsfor every car division, at a price that will save a million and a halfa year."

Billy and I were having it hot and heavy when Jonathan Amory Haskellbegan saying things to cool us off:

"That's quite a statement, Walter. We ought to listen, because you arethe production man at this table." Then he suggested to Durant that acommittee including Raskob, Haskell and myself be appointed toinvestigate the frame situation, to see if a single purchase of frameswould save as much money as I had said could be saved. Billy said,"All right."

We could yarn about that matter now and laugh, but at the time Irealized Billy Durant would be no more able to forgive such an affrontthan an Indian. The way he saw it, I suppose, was that I had putmyself athwart important plans of his. His head was filled withmatters unrevealed and unfulfilled.

Then I sent for the head of the firm that was making our Buick framesand offered him a fabulous order, subject to a satisfactory price. Wemade a contract, which was approved, whereby his company was to supplyframes for all makes of General Motors cars for a term of five yearsat a scale of prices sliding downward as quantities increased. As aresult of that pooled buying, the corporation in the next year saved$1,750,000 in comparison with the various prices we had paid forframes the year before. When the five-year term expired I understandthat contract was renewed for five years more. However, within a fewmonths after that dispute, my connection with General Motors ceased.Billy was nice to me after that, as nice as only Billy Durant knowshow to be, but I felt—indeed, I knew—he could not forgiveme for my heated opposition.

Durant and I had a couple of arguments in 1919. One, I remember, hadto do with my report on a tractor plant in Janesville, Wisconsin.General Motors had been buying into the tractor business, and I hadbeen delegated to go and see what had been bought. My judgment on theenterprise was not stated, I suppose, in tactful phrases.

"The Janesville Machine Company?" I echoed a question in our boardmeeting in the summer of 1919. "You've paid too much money for it. Iknow about the plant. I've been through it. I've seen theone-hundred-and-twenty-two-acre tract on which a new factory is beingbuilt. I don't like to see this company putting part of its strengthinto the tractor business, because it takes so long to get your moneyout. You've got to give three and even five years' time. Leave thatkind of business to the corporations that are geared to it."

Eventually, the company suffered heavy losses in the tractor business.But at that time there were many other items in the spending programthat I did not like. Billy Durant says that he did not like some ofthem, either, but at the time I was arguing with Billy.

"What am I roaring about? I'm roaring as a stockholder, if you reallywant to know. Everything I have in the world is in this company. Idon't want to lose it."

After the meeting Mr. Haskell came to see me. "You just flew off thehandle today; we all do that. So did Billy. He wants you to forgetit."

"O.K."

"You'll come back tomorrow? We want to finish the meeting."

"Yes, I'll come."

All those people were my friends; we still are friends; but in 1919 Ibelieved we were expanding too fast by far. During that year, theauthorized capital stock was increased from $370,000,000 to$1,020,000,000. Less than a third of the common had been issued;nevertheless, on paper, the company had become a billion-dollarcorporation. However, all my feeling, all my complaints, had to dowith the physical expansion. Besides the tractor business, the companywas taking over a variety of manufacturing enterprises. Thecorporation was getting many of its own sources of supply, of bodies,differential gears, and many other items. We were building newfactories and putting up houses for employees. They were putting up a$20,000,000 office building. They kept buying things and budgetingthis and budgeting that until it seemed, to me, we might come to adismal ending. Buick was making about half the money, but thecorporation was spending much faster than we could earn. So Iquit—this time for keeps—saying, "Now, Billy, I'm done." AlfredSloan and one other came to see me. Several years before, Alfred,after selling his Hyatt Roller Bearing Company to Durant, had becomethe president of a subsidiary company, which included Delco. Theytried to talk me into staying.

"No, I'm washed up. I just can't stand the way the thing is being run.All I'm anxious about now is to sell my stock."

Again I was visited by Amory Haskell, as fine a gentleman as I evermet.

"Walt, we think we are going to buy the Citroën plant in France. Wehave bought sufficient exchange to make the deal and we are goingsoon. We want you to go along to look over the physical properties, sothat you can give us a report from a mechanical standpoint."

"I've resigned, you know. If I can be of any use to GeneralMotors, I want to go. But it must be understood by you that I'mgetting out."

"We'll talk about that later," said Mr. Haskell.

"What is this going to be, this boat ride?"

"Whatever you want it to be, Walt. Just come along."

When I told Della, she said, "We've waited a long time to have ourfirst trip to Europe. If you are going, I want to go too."

"All right, honey; if I go, you go."

I reported this to Mr. Haskell. "How," he asked, "are we going to getpassports?" I showed him the palms of my hands; it was his problem.

He arranged for them; not only for Mrs. Chrysler but for Mrs. Sloan,Mrs. Kettering and Mrs. Mott. Charles Stewart Mott was avice-president of the corporation. Another who was in the party wasAlbert Champion, at that time head of the Champion Spark Plug Company.He was French by birth and spoke the language.

Many of the conversations we had on the boat were directed toward mystaying in the corporation. If anyone could have persuaded me, itwould have been Mr. Haskell; he was a wonderful man. I said: "I'vetried two or three times to reconcile my views with those of Billy.Maybe he is right, maybe I'm right, but I am leaving. I have workedtoo hard and too many years in this automobile game to see what I havegained dissipated now."

That was a delightful trip, and the friendship of the Sloans andChryslers, nourished in the intimacy of ships, hotels and onexcursions, became a warm thing that continues to this day.

I saw the Citroën plant, every part of it, and my written reportcovered fifteen or twenty typewritten pages. But what that reportmight have said more crisply was, "You'd be crazy to buy it. Youcould equip a brand-new plant in France for what it would cost tomodernize this old one according to American standards and in linewith our scheme of quantity production. Moreover, there is not inFrance the necessary volume of business." The outcome was a decisionnot to buy Citroën. So the company, having bought French exchange tobe ready to close a deal, proceeded to put the funds into Americanexchange. In the meantime dollars had gained over francs to such anextent that, I have been told, the company made $140,000 on our tripthrough exchange.

That year of 1919 I had been vice-president of General Motors incharge of operations, in addition to my role as president of Buick. Ihad been succeeded as general manager of Buick by Harry Bassett, anable fellow who had come with us in 1916, when the Weston-Mott Companywas consolidated with Buick. He had become my assistant at that time,and he kept stepping right along behind me. When my resignation wasofficial, he became the president of Buick and a vice-president ofGeneral Motors. When he died in 1926, the corporation lost a fine man.

Durant and Pierre du Pont did not want to see all my stock plumped onthe market, so they started negotiations with me. I think thetransaction was completed within two or three months after I hadresigned.

I was going to retire—that is what I told my wife. I was forty-five.I had no plans of any kind, but I had given myself completely to myjob for years, and, in consequence, I had neglected personal affairs.I had an investment problem, too, and that was why I wanted an officein Detroit. Yes, I was retired. I had nothing more to do, and wasn'tthat just fine and dandy!

The years had fixed on me a habit of becoming wide awake at sixo'clock in the morning. So I'd get up and drive sixty-five miles toDetroit, fiddle around my office and then drive sixty-five miles backto Flint at night. Four or five days a week I would do that; the restof the time I was hanging around the house. Men that I knew would comethere to see me; old employees, friends of young days when I wasmaking my living in overalls in roundhouses and shops, all sorts ofpeople. When a new hotel was projected, the natural person to head thesubscription list was the president of Buick, the town's outstandingindustry. A new golf course? Get Walter Chrysler on the committee.Without a guard outside my door, necessarily that sort of thingincreased when I was a man of leisure. Seemingly, the only men I knewwere fellows who smoked. Our house, Mrs. Chrysler said, reeked ofstale tobacco. She couldn't find a room where she could not hear thesound of deep male voices talking, talking, talking. Finally she spoketo me.

"I wish you would go to work." Because of her tone, I was relievedwhen she said "work." She added: "This isn't a home any more. It'sjust a place crowded with men. A sort of railroad station."

I grinned widely. She had said it first. It wouldn't seem likequitting on a promise if I changed my mind.

"Do you know what?" I said to her. "I will go back to work."

John N. Willys was in trouble in 1920; his Willys-Overland Company wasin terrible shape. That year the company was making cars that not manypeople seemed to want. Yet, under the optimistic influence of the busyyears of 1918 and 1919, when materials were hard to get and cars wereeasily sold, commitments had been made to take, during 1920, hundredsof thousands of bodies, tires and parts of all kinds, as well as newmachine tools to shape these things into automobiles. Willys hadplants at Toledo, Elmira and other> places. On top of all this, he wasbuilding a big new plant over in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The companywas headed for the rocks. Bankers wanted back the money they hadloaned the company. These loans totaled more than $50,000,000.

The bankers, represented by a committee, came to me. One of itsmembers was my old friend Ralph Van Vechten, of Chicago, who hadloaned me the money to buy my first car. Willys wanted me, too,although matters had progressed to a point where he had no real say. Ihad known John since my early days at Buick; he had a paint plant inFlint and was often there. Repeatedly he had proposed that I come towork for him. His efforts in that direction had stopped, of course,when Billy Durant made me president of Buick and raised my pay to halfa million. I was far from willing to plunge into the Willys-Overlandproblem. It was precisely because I had made a success at Buick,because of the reputation that I had earned there, that these fellowswere asking me to try to save their money for them. Suppose I failed?What would such a failure do to my reputation? I did not have to go towork again. Why should I? When I raised this point, both Van Vechtenand Willys took hold of me and argued. I told them then that I wouldmake a proposition: I'd undertake the job for two years at a milliondollars a year, net.

The bankers, figuring that their money was gone unless a miraclehappened, directed John to accept my terms. It was further agreed,because of my insistence, that I was to have full charge. John was tokeep his title, but he was to treat me as the doctor. My title wasexecutive vice-president. When that was settled in black and white, Iwent to work. Expenses had to be cut; that was clear to all. That waswhen I moved to New York. I was at the Biltmore first; then we had anapartment in the Carlton House.

One day right after I took hold, I walked into John's office. Younever saw another like it; magnificent. John had been a greatgo-getter from his beginning in the bicycle business. In his officethere was a splendid humidor, ornate with gold, a huge affair, richlystocked with fine cigars. John led me to the table which supportedthis luxurious chest. He raised the lid and pressed me to have acigar. I took one that must have cost fifty cents and lighted it.Then, when our cigars were burning, I spoke.

"John, I am here to cut your salary." He was drawing $150,000 a year.

"What's this, Walt?" John looked at me as an actor does when anothermuffs his lines.

"I'm cutting you to $75,000 a year."

He gave his head a little toss, and then he laughed. "I guess we'veput our problems in the right man's hands," he said.

I had a tough job, and John knew it; his whole establishment had beenrunning wild while John had been away. Bad management sometimes meansa lot of things I would not wish to discuss. Anyway, the lesson ofthose boom days has been well learned by all the automobile companiesthat I know anything about.

All that was bad in the Willys-Overland Corporation was due, really,to lack of competition, to the wartime boom and its easy money.Prosperity had made some of its officials too tolerant of things that,in any better managed corporation, would have been regarded asshocking. Willys himself had been away too much and certain of hissubordinates had got out of hand. We knew what expenditures wereproper, what were not, and required some executives to restore moneywhich they had, in my opinion, squandered. But the greatest service wewere able to perform was in adjusting all those too optimisticcommitments for parts—for everything from tires to bodies. Ofcourse, because of my years at Buick, the task of compromising allthose commitments was much simpler for me than it would have been forany banker. The manufacturers felt, with good reason, that for oneorder they agreed to cancel, they might look for vastly bigger ordersin the uncharted but promising future. They knew, too, that it wouldbe poor business strategy to enforce any contract that would helpdestroy a customer who was in trouble. Besides, in dealing with me, itwas useless for any of them to say that cancellation meant hardshipunless it were really true. I traveled everywhere that parts weremade, talked over long-distance telephone wires until my voice becamehoarse; argued; cajoled; and in a few months I had cut the company'sdebt by millions.

A lot of things had been going on inside that vast and sprawlingcorporation that had wholly escaped the attention of its management.

One day, when I was thinking about that enterprise, my secretary brokein and said, "There's an Army officer out here." She gave his name.

I remembered him well. I had met him in Washington during the war. Hehad been a tough, hard, fierce-eyed baby with red hair. Once, forthree days, I had wrestled with him over a shell contract. I was anindustrialist; he was an Army officer. I wanted that contract to docertain things for the corporation I represented. I thought we wereentitled to them; he did not. Could I fool him? Not by any shape thatI could give my arguments. Finally, when I was leaving his office, Ihad spoken to him pretty freely:

"Listen; if I can't have this contract the way I want it youcan—well, give it to some manufacturer who isn't so well acquaintedwith his costs. But I got to tell you that you are smart—mind, I'msmiling—but you are smart. And tough."

"A compliment, Mr. Chrysler."

"You bet it's a compliment. And say, when this war is over, if youever want a job, come and say so. I'll hire you."

Well, the war was over and there was this colonel, standing in myoffice in civilian clothes. As he came in the door he had called out,"Remember me?"

"Remember you? How can I ever forget you?" I cussed him affectionatelyand saw him grin.

"You said if I ever needed a job——"

"What salary do you want, colonel?"

"I've just spent about a year losing what money I had, trying to getsomewhere in the rubber business. You fix the salary."

"You're hired."

Just that quickly I had a general purchasing agent for the future. Iknew three things about him: He was honest; he was loyal; he hadability. That is all I ask from any man. I don't care how raw theability is; that can be developed through experience. But unless a manis loyal and honest, I don't want him associated with me.

The first job I handed to him was as tough as anything he ever saw inthe Army. I sent for him about three days after he went on the payroll, gave him the name of this company, told him what kind of thingsit made and what city it was in. Then I said, "It's rotten. That's allI can tell you. I want you to go there, stay a month or six weeks, andthen come back and tell me what's wrong."

"Fine," said the colonel. "I know less about that kind of businessthan any other you could specify. So, I'll have plenty of curiosity."

"You know as much about it as I do. Tomorrow you'll know a lot more.What I say is, it's rotten. When you can, report back why it is thatway."

In a little while the colonel was bossing that plant. We fired thepresident, and under the colonel it began to run so smoothly that Inever bothered with his report. But he found out plenty; I know that.Eventually, the colonel was to become general purchasing agent for theChrysler Corporation, after it had been expanded to include Dodge. Hehas spent millions and millions of dollars for us, and you couldn'tany more fool him in 1936 than back in 1917. After 1929 that formerArmy officer has been running our truck business and some otherdivisions of the Chrysler Corporation. He can handle any kind of ajob.

I might have cited any one of a score of my associates in order tohighlight the significance of what was shaping in my mind when I hiredthis man, Col. A. C. Downey. I wanted men that I could work with, fullof confidence in their integrity. From the day that I had left Flintto go to New York, I had been aware that for my purposes men were whatI wanted. One whose name was engraved on my mind as I left Flint wasK. T. Keller. That young man was a production man after my own heart.However, I did not let myself think too much of Keller then, nor ofothers that I was leaving. One thing I never have done: I never havebroken down one organization to build up another. I have been sensibleof a strong obligation to anything that has ever held my loyalty.Consequently, I had gone from Flint knowing that I was leaving manymen whose talents, character and companionship I would be hungeringfor in my future work, whatever it might be. Yet I think I never hireda man away from Buick. As months went on, many of them came to see meand asked for jobs. However much I yearned to have them, I would say,"Better stay where you are. You've got a good job. There's no tellingwhat's in store for me." To those whose qualities I admired, I alwaysadded: "But any time you are out of a job, come and see me. Thenwe'll have a talk."

However, in those first months away from Flint I met some other men.

The Willys-Overland Corporation had saddled itself with an airplaneplant, with a harvester company and with other subsidiaries, almostnone of which were doing it any good. But its harvesters andairplanes, if anything, were rather better than its automobiles. Thecompany had to make better automobiles if it was to survive. Over inElizabeth it had an unfinished plant, quite new. Some of the bankers'millions had gone into that place, which was vast. What could be madeby Willys that would sell? At that time I had agreed with John Willysthat we would add a new car to the line. That was how it happened thatI met Zeder and Skelton and Breer.

Those three young automotive engineers were wizards. They seemed to bethe parts of a single, extraordinary engineering intelligence; theirnames were Fred M. Zeder, Owen Skelton and Carl Breer. You never wouldfind, hunt high or low, three friends more harmoniously attuned,unless it might be those men of fiction, the Three Musketeers.

Zeder, a graduate of the University of Michigan, had been on his wayto becoming chief engineer of the Studebaker Corporation when, in1909, he encountered Breer, just out of Leland Stanford, Jr.,University and beginning an apprenticeship at Allis-Chalmers. Skelton,a graduate of the engineering school of Ohio State University, wasthen with Packard, in the designing rooms, where he was known as atalented expert on transmissions and axles. His first job had beenwith Pope-Toledo as early as 1905. Zeder brought these two men intothe Studebaker engineering department, and there they worked until1920. I knew them to be star engineers, brilliant in the field ofautomobile designing.

I had a corner of the Elizabeth plant partitioned off for them. Theywere the ones who were going to design the new car, the one that wouldtake the place of the mechanical "boggle" that, I had felt, wouldcomplete the ruin of the Willys Company if it were produced. I soonfound myself running over to New Jersey pretty frequently. Thoseengineers spoke to each other almost without using words, so well didthey understand one another. But what was thrilling was to discoverthat they understood me too. Whereas John Willys sometimes seemed tofeel that the company's problems could be met by a couple of newgadgets and a coat of paint, I was convinced that the country waswaiting for a better automobile than had yet been offered to it.

What was my future going to be? I had determined that I was going tomake somewhere, somehow, a kind of automobile that—I was beginning tofeel pretty strongly—was unlikely to be made in the Willys plants. Icommissioned Zeder, Skelton and Breer to proceed with the designing ofthe automobile about which they had been dreaming. They had setthemselves up as a firm of consultant engineers in an old building inMechanic Street in Newark. There they had moved their staff, theirdrafting tools and other implements of their profession. I used to seethem there, and what we had to talk about was wholly exciting.Necessarily and properly, the unfinished blueprints of what they hadbeen designing at Elizabeth they had left behind them. We believedthat was a better car than was running on the highways, but it had tobe left out of calculation, for a while at least. That was to becomeBilly Durant's Flint car. In the meantime, my banker friends had askedme to help them in another troublesome situation. This time it was theMaxwell Motors Company that was in distress.

•VIII•

REWARDS FOR A WORKMAN

"They Knew This Car Was a Sensation"

Right after the war all automobile companies had experienced a boommarket. Customers asked salesmen only one tough question, "Can youmake delivery?" If you could deliver automobiles you could sell them.For a little while this demand had helped some companies to overcomethe effects of abrupt cancellation of Government contracts. Impressedby these conditions, bankers had continued to extend credit to theMaxwell Motor Company until the total of its debt was $26,000,000.Then what had appeared to be a flourishing boom ended in a depression,the postwar collapse.

James Cox Brady was one who approached me on behalf of the bankers.Jim and his brother Nicholas had become my warm friends. I was eagerto oblige them, and they made their urgings stronger by getting theconsent of Willys for me to undertake the reorganization of Maxwellwhile still working to straighten out Willys-Overland. So I became thechairman of the Maxwell reorganization and management committee.

Although the Bradys hoped to see me continue with Maxwell, I was farfrom sure about it. The Maxwell had been in a disagreeable fight withChalmers, on which it had a lease, and there was such an entanglementof intercompany disputes that I began to believe it would be amistake to associate myself for long with Maxwell. Once I rememberleaving a meeting and saying, "I would not touch it with a ten-footpole." What I was saying I would not touch was later on revealed to bethe greatest opportunity of my whole life. However, the Bradys held meto my word, and in the meantime one of my gave me some good advice.

"Now, Walter," he began, "it seems to me that Maxwell is what you havebeen searching for; here it is right in your hand. But you must changeyour ideas of compensation. You got half a million salary from GeneralMotors and you got a million a year from Willys—because the bankerswere desperate. This is different. You are more than a production mannow; you have revealed yourself to be a merchandiser, and you arerevealing capacity in finance too. If you will collect your reward inthe future, through ownership and its attendant satisfactions, youwill fare better than ever before. But the salary ought not to be morethan $100,000."

I agreed, and I was given, besides, a contract of employment andoptions on a large block of stock.

There was about a year when I was spending a good many nights ontrains between New York and Detroit. Often those trips were made withNick and Jim Brady, my good friends; we had grand times together. ButI never shall forget the way the banking committee heard how Iproposed to get their money back for them, out of this company ofwhich they had become the not-too-happy owners.

"What! Lend Maxwell another $15,000,000? Have a heart, Walter!"

"Now wait a minute until you hear what I have to say. I want to payoff the creditors by giving them five millions in cash now, and forthe balance of the debt, one, two and three year notes at six percent. That gives the company a three-year breathing spell. If youwant to save Maxwell——"

"What about the rest of these fifteen millions?"

"Wait a little until you hear what I have to say. You want to get yourmoney back, don't you?"

"Sure! We want back the twenty-six millions already loaned."

"That money is in the plants in the form of materials, much of it infinished parts. When this is manufactured into automobiles that can besold, you'll start getting your money back."

"But what about these other millions you want us to lend?"

"I'll need that money to operate the company. But the car, as it is,won't sell. I'm arranging for its redesign. I'm going to cut theprice."

"How much?" They all had their pencils out.

I had put a price of $995 on the redesigned car; that showed a profitof only $5.

"Walter, you're crazy. You can't sell automobiles for a five-dollarprofit."

"I'm liquidating an inventory."

"But $5 on a car! It ought to be $100."

"Listen, we can move them at $995. Charge $100 more and they won'tmove. Not these cars!"

After Maxwell and Chalmers had been put through a friendlyreceivership we bought all the assets, Harry Bronner and I, for theaccount of the reorganization and management committee. The Maxwellcars, redesigned, at $995 were selling at a satisfactory rate, andactually the company's situation, braced by the fresh millions ofcapital, was greatly improved. However, on paper it was something weoften had to defend.

My friend, B. E. Hutchinson, did most of the defending after he cameto Maxwell in the summer of 1922, as its treasurer. Hutch had begunhis work with us by writing out of our list of assets items thattotaled about $11,000,000. Minus that amount the picture we presentedwhen we asked for credit was somewhat less rosy, yet it inspired arespect that began to grow. For that our corporation owes a lot toHutch. He was just a young fellow then, about thirty-four; he was aChicago boy who had gone, at sixteen, from Hyde Park High School toMassachusetts Institute of Technology. After two years, a part ofwhich he worked as a reporter on the staff of the Boston Globe, he wasback in Illinois, working with a shovel around the steel furnaces ofthe Grand Crossing Tack Company. When he was twenty-two he had becomesuperintendent of the open-hearth department there. He had variedexperiences in industry until, in 1918, he joined the staff of Ernst &Ernst, certified public accountants. It is Hutch I have in mind when,occasionally, I find myself advising the son of some old friend.Lately such a boy wanted me to help him get a job with an airplanecompany.

"You come to me for advice?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right, son, you are going to get some: Aviation, as you say, is adeveloping industry, but from what I can hear there are scores ofyoungsters after every job it has to offer. Why don't you get yourselfinto a field that gives you a chance to discover all kinds of chances,in or out of aviation? You know this country is filled with developingindustries. And there are lots of chances. You simply want to makeyourself smart enough to recognize them before the other fellow does.If I were you, I'd qualify myself for accountancy. I'd become anaccountant. Young accountants are sent around by their firms to auditthe books of companies everywhere. They have a skill that makes themmighty valuable in business; indispensable. They often get chances togo to work for the companies whose books they have audited."

B. E. Hutchinson is a perfect illustration of my argument. Because hewas well qualified Ernst & Ernst, in 1918, sent him to take charge ofthe reorganization of accounting and system of the American WritingPaper Company; a little later, when the assignment was finished, hebecame treasurer of the company. But his big chance came when theMaxwell Motor Corporation was being reorganized. No more bigopportunities in this country? There never were so many opportunitiesfor young men in the history of the world. If you miss one chance,that is no reason for brooding; there will be another if you keepalert and qualify yourself for opportunities.

I believed I had missed a great opportunity late in the spring of1922. My work with Willys was finished. The bankers had arranged for a$16,500,000 bond issue to retire the Willys-Overland loan, and thecompany was being put through a receivership. As a part of thecleaning-up process the big, idle plant over in Elizabeth was to besold at auction. The banks knew it represented about $14,000,000 oftheir money, but were ready to take whatever they could get for it.Our car was to be sold with the plant; that is, the blueprints of thatcar that Zeder, Skelton and Breer and their associates had designed.

"You could buy that new Elizabeth plant for Maxwell for much less thanit cost, Walter." One of the committee was tempting me. He knew theinside of the Willys situation and the inside of the Maxwellsituation. He knew it was difficult to exercise leadership where therewas so much bickering between groups of stockholders, bondholders andother kinds of creditors. I don't think he realized how much I hadbeen disappointed at the failure of the Willys Corporation to bringout the car.

I did not go to the auction myself, but had a representative on hand.He had authority to bid somewhat more than $5,000,000. But among thebidders was Billy Durant! Billy had been in the Elizabeth plantseveral times during that spring, had been there without any blaringof trumpets. He had been shown three cars in which this new motor wasmounted. There, in the vast spaces of that plant, he had ridden inone. Billy topped bid after bid and kept on until the representativesof General Motors and Maxwell had ceased to bid. Durant paid$5,525,000 for the plant and got a bargain.

Durant arranged with Zeder, Skelton, Breer and their associates todesign and furnish the drawings for a motor of the same type but of alittle larger size. Billy was convinced it had to be larger, to havegreater horsepower. He brought it out as the Flint, and it was anexcellent car. The trouble was that the price necessarily was high. Inthe Elizabeth plant he began building another car, one to compete withFord. It was called the Star, and before other difficultiesoverwhelmed Billy Durant there were 1,500,000 Star cars on thehighways of the country.

What a blessing in disguise my disappointment was! With the first cartransformed into Billy Durant's Flint, we had more time to appreciatethe possibilities of that other car on which Zeder had been workingwith Skelton, Breer and me. Although we experienced a good deal offrustration, building piecemeal as we were required to do,nevertheless a couple of these cars were made, a part here, a partthere, until they were complete—and costly. We tested them on theroads too. Those were exciting times.

Under an old car's shabby hood we had hidden the unsuspected power ofour new high-compression engine. Zeder and his boys had outdonethemselves. You could tell that any time a traffic cop's upliftedpalm stopped you in a group of cars. It was the most fun if thisshabby old testing car was halted between a couple of big ones, withsnooty chauffeurs at their wheels. At the whistle's sound we would bepast the cop and on our way, while behind us, open-mouthed, our chancerivals would just be getting ready to go into second gear. Whatflexibility we had! That is, by contrast with any other car thatrolled upon the highways back in 1923. The Chrysler car? Nobody hadheard about a Chrysler car. But we had dreamed about it until, as ifwe had been its lovers, it was work to think of anything else.

Any time I vanished from New York to go to that drab little factorybuilding in Mechanic Street on a Friday, as had become my habit, Iwould be lost to my family for the several days of the week end. I'dcall my wife, apologize and start to explain, when she would interruptto mock me: "Yes, I know. You're in New Jersey and you're going tostay through Sunday." Then, quickly, her voice would change. "Ofcourse I understand. Go ahead and stay."

Eventually, however, Zeder, Skelton and Breer were established in theold Chalmers plant at Detroit; we had it all cleaned out andrenovated. We were no longer fretting about broken-down companies; wewere thinking about plants and how they could be used. The new Maxwellboard had taken over that mechanical infant that we had been nursing,Zeder's high-compression engine. This was to be the heart of our newcar. After their several brave years of working in the face of muchfrustration it was a joy to turn over to the engineers the money theboard had authorized as payment and to bring them, as a unit, into theorganization to direct its engineering. Naturally, by then, I was inthe enterprise with all my heart and soul. It was already determinedthat the new car on which our hopes were founded would be called theChrysler. That was about the time I got a jolt from my friend NickBrady.

"Walter," he said, "Jim is desperately ill. I hate to be tied up inthe automobile business at a time like this. We hope to make a dealwith Studebaker."

I felt sick; but the Bradys were my friends, and so without any debateI agreed to toss in my options and cancel my contract of employment,provided an arrangement was worked out that would be acceptable to theother stockholders. It was clear that if Studebaker bought out theBradys, then Frederick S. Fish, chairman of Studebaker, would want tohead up the combined enterprises with the Studebaker president, AlbertR. Erskine. There would hardly be room for Erskine and Chrysler in onepasture lot.

Happily for me, that deal fell through, and once more I was burningwith enthusiasm for what was going on in the old Chalmers plant.

Then came bad news that was not a false alarm. Two banking firms hadagreed, several months before the New York Automobile Show of January,1924, to take $6,000,000 of the Maxwell Company's bonds at 92; thatwould net us $5,520.000. Hutch and I had believed this was a settledmatter until the bankers, with regrets and apologies galore, explainedthat they believed it wise to cancel the arrangement. That was a toughsituation!

On top of that we got the disheartening information that while theAmerican Automobile Chamber of Commerce would, of course, allot spacein which to show the 1924 models of the Maxwell cars, the rulesforbade allotment of space to models of a car which had not beenproduced and sold. Our Chrysler models were barred from the show! Wehad counted heavily upon creating a sensation with our new car.Through the public's reaction to its smarter lines, to its smooth andvastly greater power, we had hoped to make the bankers change theirminds about the loan. Already we had stretched our credit to thesnapping point, for it is never a cheap operation to retool a factoryfor a mass-production operation; nor can the work be done withoutmonths of preparation. We could not sell Chrysler cars unless we madethem. We could not hope to proceed with the making unless our feeblecredit was made strong with money from the bankers. It seemed to usthat we were pretty close to ruin before we had made a start. Ofcourse, none of my associates know the meaning of the word quit, butthis was a major crisis in our campaign.

The whole executive staff of the organization was there. Hutch waslooking at me, solemnly. Without discussion we knew what this might doto our credit position despite the tireless work of Hutch to make itstrong; we could expect it to hit our credit like a dynamiteexplosion. The bad news spread swiftly through our suite of rooms andI dreaded seeing Fred Zeder and his two partners, Breer and Skelton. Iknew how they would feel, because I felt the same way. A large part ofthe thrill after creating a great new automobile comes throughprofessional pride when you show it, with all your understandingfriends and rivals crowding around, yarning about your "job." Thegreat talents of this trio of engineers had given our beautiful carterrific power, style and grace. If we failed to show it they would bebitterly disappointed, and so would I, in ways more subtle than anycommercial loss.

Suddenly I began to yell for Joe. That was J. E. Fields, who today isvice-president of the Chrysler Corporation and an important factor inthe executive management. He was our sales manager then, agood-looking fellow and a great salesman. He had started sellingmachinery in Fargo, North Dakota, and gone from there to theNational Cash Register Company. When Hugh Chalmers left his big jobthere to organize the Chalmers Company in 1909, Joe Fields was one ofthose who helped him do it. Then Joe had gone with Hupmobile,directing its selling, but when I took charge of Maxwell-Chalmers hecame back. We needed him because he knew every dealer in the country.Well, this time I wanted Joe because he was a fellow who never haslearned how to take "no" for an answer.

Grand Central Palace, where the New York Automobile Show is held, iswhere the public pays admissions to see the year's new cars, but themen of the automobile industry always swarm in some near-by hotel;that year their rendezvous was the Hotel Commodore.

"Joe, you've hired plenty of hotel rooms. Go and hire the lobby of theCommodore. We'll have a show all right!"

Joe Fields did not stop to ask any questions; he simply vanished. Whenhe came back he fluttered a sheet of hotel stationery with somewriting on it. "Boss," he said, "we own the lobby."

Although we were not in the show, we stole it! From morning until lateat night a crowd was densely packed around us. Even before the end ofthat first eventful day we knew that our models were attracting moreattention than was being excited by anything on display in GrandCentral Palace. All our old friends of the trade came to speak to usin the lobby, to shake our hands and poke us in the ribs.

"Seventy miles an hour? Is that on the level, Walt?" There were shrewdbrains behind some of the eyes that were looking our new six over,inside and out. Now and then I would observe a rival manufacturer passhis fingers over the plush-covered seats, and I would know that he wasadding to his mental computation upholstery at $6 a yard. They knewthis car was a sensation, but what they most wished to know was itsretail price. A high-compression engine was something all automobilemen appreciated, but, until our car had appeared, they had treated itas a racing driver's luxury that would be offered to the public far inthe future. Yet here it was all ready to compete with what they had tooffer. That was why they were so wild with curiosity about theChrysler six's price. But we were keeping that a secret.

Then there came what we were waiting for, a nice, plump banker, anacquaintance.

"Your new car is attracting lots of favorable comment, Walter."

"You like it?"

"Oh, indeed, yes. Wheel base is rather short."

"We don't think so; it's an advantage in parking, you know, and it is160 inches over all. Moreover, this car has improved springing."

I was trying manfully to keep from showing any eagerness. Yet thisbanker had the means to give us what we so desperately needed.

As I talked with him the car exhibits were only a part of the show wewere putting on there in the lobby of the Commodore. The rest of itwas what we were doing by pretending to be carefree. Watching me youwould have thought I did not know how to worry. But the banker wasclearing his throat.

"We are willing to take five millions of Maxwell bonds."

"What price?"

"Seventy."

My heart seemed to drop down on my stomach. Then I got mad. Seventy!Why, that meant that by mortgaging itself for $5,000,000 Maxwellwould get only $3,500,000. In a few minutes he was walking away,having no doubts whatever as to how I felt about his offer. There wereother bankers in the lobby, and some of them spoke to me.

Ed Tinker, who was then president of the Chase Securities Corporation,was the next one who talked business. We dickered, seated inside thecar, with the doors closed and a ring of faces staring at us as if wehad been fish in a bowl.

I wanted ninety-six, I told Tinker.

"You'd have taken ninety-two, and glad to get it, Walt, a few monthsago."

"Ed, these people are wild about this car. It's got qualities theycan't buy in a $5000 automobile."

"You'll sell this car all right, Walt. Ninety-four, I guess if we geta bonus——"

"Ninety-six, Ed. And no bonus."

"Mister, if you don't let me out of this automobile right this instantI'll scream." Ed was mocking me with a voice that he had transformedinto a shrill falsetto of a desperate woman.

"Ninety-six."

"Ninety-four; and I'm going downtown right now."

Ed Tinker went, and suddenly I was scared. Suppose he changed hismind? Suppose some of his associates at Chase Securities disagreed?Suppose the offer of ninety-four should be withdrawn? The situationhad become overpowering. I knew we had to settle matters then andthere. I looked around for our young treasurer.

"Hutch, we're going down and clinch this offer."

Down in the Wall Street district Hutch and I stood on the curbstoneacross the street from the bank.

"I'll stay here while you go in, Hutch."

He crossed the street and vanished. I stayed on the curb. It was ablustery January day, but it was not the cold that made me shiver as Iwaited. I waited long too.

Tinker, I learned later, was not at his desk when Hutch arrived. Hehad gone out. Where? Second floor, to the barbershop.

Hutch took up the trail and found Ed reclining in the chair of aprivate little one-man shop, his face hidden under a mask of lather.

"We'll take your ninety-four," said Hutch, and straight up rose Mr.Tinker. "That is," said Hutch, "we can take it if you'll close with ustoday. Important matters require us to have your yes or noimmediately. Mr. Chrysler sends you word that it's now—or never."

Tinker wiped the lather off, put on his coat and with Hutchinsonreturned to his office.

"Three o'clock is the deadline," said Hutch.

"That's all right," Tinker assured him. "I think we'll make the deal."

"But Mr. Chrysler has to know by three o'clock."

When Hutch came back to me his eyes were shining, and when I had hisnews we went into a near-by cigar store to a public telephone. I askedfor Albert Rathbone, of Larkin, Rathbone and Perry, our lawyers, butsoon found myself talking with Rathbone's partner, Nicholas Kelly.

"Kelly, you got to get that mortgage signed by five o'clock tonight."

"It is almost three o'clock now, Mr. Chrysler."

"I don't care. Can't take any chances. Everything depends on this."

"All right. We'll get right after it, but it takes time to draw up acontract."

"Get started."

Hutchinson and Kelly, with men from the office of Rushmore,Bisbee & Stern, lawyers for the Chase bank, worked all throughthe evening. At midnight they got a fresh recruit. Eldon Bisbeearrived from some public dinner; he was in his dress clothes, whitetie, white waistcoat. At six o'clock in the morning they were still atwork and all of us saw the sun come up.

A very little while later the contract was executed and what wasalready, in my heart, the Chrysler Corporation, but still calledMaxwell, was out of the woods. We had our money, we had our car and wehad a live organization.

All through the week Joe Fields had been nagging me to tell him theprice of the new car. He was enthusiastic, but he was realistic too.

"That short wheel base, you know, is going to make them expect abargain." The wheel base was 112¾ inches.

"They will be getting a bargain, Joe. It's plenty long enough, and itwill be much easier to park than these longer cars. That's what youwant to tell your dealers."

"Say, I can get orders for this car right now. My arm would be tiredjust from writing, if only I knew the price—and if the price wasright."

I wrote something on a card then and handed it to Joe. As I walkedaway I saw that his big black eyebrows were rising toward his grayhair. The price I had fixed was the same as Buick, $1595.

Events proved that it was not too much. In the next few months Joe'sforces began to sell them about as fast as we were able to roll thecars off the line, in what had been the old Chalmers plant. But I wasdetermined that we were going to give better and better values in theyears to come.

There was no question about space for the Chrysler sixes when theallotments were made for the Automobile Show of 1925. In oneyear we had sold 32,000 of them, in addition to which there had been asharp gain in the sales of the Maxwell fours. The result for thatyear, which we began by creating a debt of $5,000,000, was a netprofit of $4,115,000. It was a good time to straighten out ourcorporation structure and so, in 1925, the Maxwell Motor Corporationbecame the Chrysler Corporation. That was about the time, it seems tome, that I had an interesting conversation with some of my bankerfriends.

Some of them had stock which they had taken in the reorganization, inplace of wiped-out debts. But when the stock got to sixteen thebankers could get out with a whole skin, and out they got, against myurging.

"Listen," I protested, "you have seen this thing come up from nothing.Aren't you foolish to sell now, just when you might hope for profit?"

"That's not the way we do business. We loaned money and the loan wentsour. We were in the hole and now we're out."

They meant it too. Whatever stock they sold I bought. I bought anawful lot of stock at fifteen and sixteen, stock that later was splitso that I got four for one.

That was about the time we got K. T. Keller in the ChryslerCorporation. He had wanted to come along when I left Buick and GeneralMotors, but I had said, "Stay here and whenever I see a job that willpay you enough, I'll send for you." After that, K. T. had becomevice-president of Chevrolet, in charge of manufacturing; then he hadbecome general manager of the Canadian Division of General Motors.

He was up in Canada when I sent him word in the winter of 1926 that Iwould like to see him at the Chicago Automobile Show.

When Keller came I was standing beside our show exhibit, and if youhad seen us you might have supposed it was just a casual conversation;but it was a warm reunion, for we two are kindred spirits.

"I've never had a job to offer you before," I said, "but now I canmake you a real offer." I told him what I could pay and then I asked,"Do you want to come with me?"

"Sure," he said. I made him general manager of Chrysler. He wasprecisely what we needed then, a great production man.

There were four Chrysler models in 1926; a "50," a "60," a "70" (theoriginal Chrysler in its improved form), and an Imperial "80." Thenext year saw us in fifth place in the industry, with sales of 192,000automobiles. That was 1927, ten years ago. You might have supposedthere was not a cloud on the horizon. Well, I was pretty happy, I'lladmit. A splendid corporation had spread itself around the world.Nevertheless, we could see that competition month by month was gettingtougher.

The primer lesson of the automobile business was: "Make your productso that all American families can afford to buy it." Now and againsome manufacturer would seem to forget that lesson. But we were notforgetting it. Each time we expanded our activities so as to make somepart we had previously been buying from an outside manufacturer, wehad been able to lower prices. The automobile business has grown towhat it is by steadily and rigorously eliminating waste from all itsmanufacturing processes. We had bought another plant across the streetfrom Chalmers; in this one, the Kercheval, we were making bodies. Butwe were still forced to buy too many parts outside. We were remindedof that each time we tried to get our Chrysler "50" on a better basisto compete with Dodge.

We were then compelled to buy all of our cast-iron parts because wehad no foundries. Dodge had a big foundry. We were paying out vastsums for forged parts, too, because we had no forge shop. Dodge had abig forge shop; Dodge had many plants filled with things for lack ofwhich our products were costing more than was necessary. Moreover,without the better control of costs such as we could achieve withbigger plants, there was no hope of dipping into that greatest ofautomobile markets, the one in which Henry Ford's only real rival wasthe Chevrolet.

We had done plenty of figuring, and knew that to exercise our fullmanufacturing power and talents we would have to acquire plants thatwould cost, if we had to build them, about $75,000,000. Where and howwere we going to round up that kind of money? Every time we gave thematter thought, we found our heads full of visions of the splendidplants of the Dodge brothers. The Dodge brothers had passed away, butthey had left a splendid name in the industry. They had beenmanufacturers for whom I had great respect. In the beginning they weremaking automobile parts for Henry Ford, and when they began makingDodge cars, in the same year that war broke out in Europe, they stillhad their minds focused on Ford, which was sensible of them. What theymade was a rugged mechanism that could be counted on to get over theroughest kinds of road, and to keep on going even after you came tothe end of the road. While the Dodge brothers lived, a Dodge caralmost invariably cost just about $100 more than a Ford, and those whoadmired it above any other car they could afford represented agenerous share of the automobile market. But in the year that I washired by bankers to take charge of Willys-Overland, both John andHorace Dodge died, about ten or eleven months apart. Four years latertheir widows agreed to sell the business to the New York bankinghouse of Dillon, Read & Company, and Clarence Dillon signed a checkfor $146,000,000.

I had become acquainted with Clarence some time after that event.

One day he walked into my office and asked me if I felt like doingsome trading.

"Hell, Clarence, I don't want your plant. What'll I do with it?"

Clarence is a good salesman. He did not leave right away. Of course wewanted that plant, and I don't think I fooled him much. I let him talkfor a couple of hours. We knew about the plants; I think we knewrather more about them than Clarence. But I listened pretty sharplywhen he tried to excite my envy discussing the handpicked salesorganization that had been inherited from the Dodge brothers. They hadalways boasted that it was the best sales force in the industry.However, I never let Clarence discover my eagerness, and finally hestood up to go.

"Walter, I'm going back downtown and talk this over with myassociates."

"All right, Clarence. Come in again, anytime."

In three or four days he was back and wanted to tell me more. I wasgruff and short on this occasion.

"It's too much money. We aren't interested. Of course, if it was abargain—but it's not. So what's the use of talking?"

"Now, Walt, don't shut your eyes to this. How else are you going tomake the Chrysler Corporation into a first-rank competitor of HenryFord or General Motors?"

"Clarence, we're doing pretty well. Can you show me another companywith a record to compare with the Chrysler Corporation? We've beengetting better, year by year."

"That's true, Walter, but I've been watching and you've got your headpretty close to the ceiling right now, unless——"

"It's too much money, Clarence. You keep right on worrying aboutDodge. Maybe it will come on the market a whole lot cheaper next year,or the year after. When a big outfit like that starts slipping it cango down fast."

"Dodge isn't slipping, Walter."

"I hear different."

"They got a fine name. They have had a fine product year after year."

"Sure, Clarence. I know. You paid $30,000,000 just for the goodwill.But that was when the company was making lots of money. How're youdoing now?"

"We're doing splendidly. Only I think your crowd could do much betterwith it."

Clarence kept supplying me with scraps of information during a monthor six weeks. Then, one day, he strode into my office and began tomoan.

"Walter, bankers got no business trying to run a great big industrialenterprise. What do I know about making automobiles and selling them?That's your game. Why don't you take this Dodge business?"

I looked at him for about a minute before I spoke.

"Clarence, I haven't time to talk endlessly. You are wasting your timeand you are wasting mine. Do you really want to trade? Then put yourproposition down on a piece of paper. Mind, your lowest price! Anddon't forget: I'm not making the proposition; you are bringing it tome. So you had better make it tempting. Set your price and then I'lltell you, yes or no."

Clarence said he would arrive at a price and then come back.

Already, I could see, he was doing sums in his head. Before he was outon the street I was talking to Hutchinson in Detroit. Hutch wasdirecting a great big job of figuring that was going on behind thescenes. This was going to be more than an ordinary trade. H. A. Davieswas working with him; he had been assistant treasurer when I took overthe management of Maxwell and had been shoulder to shoulder with Hutchwhen we were establishing credit relations with banks all over thecountry. Hutch and Davies were adding up everything we knew aboutDodge, so that we would be prepared when the dickering started. I didnot see Clarence again for ten days or so, but when he did come hebrought some typewritten sheets on which he had everything figuredout. That was when I brought in Hutch and called up Albert Rathbone,our lawyer. Dillon was drawing up a chair, right beside my desk.

"Not here, Clarence."

"What?"

"Not here. I'm bringing two people into this conference and you canbring a couple for yourself. You may get a sore throat from talkingbefore we've finished."

"Where do you want to talk?"

"We'll go over to the Ritz and get a suite of rooms, and, Clarence,we'll stay in that suite until we come to a conclusion, stay until oneof us says yes or no."

From the start of our negotiations we insisted that Dillon would haveto get the holders of ninety per cent of the Dodge stock to agree tothe plan; we were quite certain that we did not want to mergeourselves with a disgruntled minority.

"Ninety per cent of all classes of stock, Clarence, or else——"

"All right, Walter. Give me time enough."

"Two months. If we give you longer, the time for creating new carmodels will be on us and passed before the new management can get achance to function."

We stayed there in that Ritz suite, arguing, eating, smoking,sleeping, talking, trading, until five days had gone. When wefinished, all of us had bloodshot eyes from weariness; but we alsoknew a feeling of triumph. The terms provided that the ChryslerCorporation should pay $170,000,000 in new Chrysler stock and in theassumption of Dodge debentures. However, all of this necessarily hungin the balance for the two months during which Clarence was to obtainthe of the holders of ninety per cent of the Dodge stock. Our session inthe Ritz, as I recall it, was the end of May, and several times, thelatter part of July, Clarence came around to ask for an extension ofthat time limit which we regarded as crucial for the effectivefulfillment of our merger plans. Then when we were about forty-eighthours from the deadline Clarence begged for an extension. He waslacking 60,000 shares, he said, of meeting that ninety per centrequirement.

"Clarence, I can't do a thing for you. I can't do something for you atthe expense of the Chrysler stockholders. You know that."

"Great grief, Walter, I've got eighty-five per cent of the stock.That's more than is ever brought in on a deal of this kind."

"We'll agree on that, Mr. Dillon," said Albert Rathbone, "but this isanother deal. We said ninety per cent. You agreed."

"But, Walter, you want to make this deal."

"Yes, on the terms agreed upon."

"Here's what I'm up against: One of the large stockholders is inParis. She cannot get that stock into our hands in two days. That'swhy I can't put my hands on those 60,000 shares of preferred." Bankersunemotional? You should have heard and seen Clarence!

"Clarence, when the day comes we ring the bell, and the deal is offunless you deliver."

"Walter, I can't do it in two days."

"Clarence," I said, using emphatic words, "it has not been a matter oftwo days. It has been sixty days, lacking two. I think you can do it.But if you can't, the deal is off."

As Clarence rushed out of the office, seemingly in despair, even myown lawyers seemed to be looking at me with reproachful eyes. Yetthere was a happy ending, because Clarence, before the time limitexpired, somehow produced the 60,000 shares. That deal was closed July31, 1928.

Next morning Clarence came around to smoke a cigarette with me andgive me assurance we could let that great Dodge organization runitself, oh, for three months if we wanted to.

"Hell, Clarence," I said, "our boys moved in last night." They had,too, with K. T. Keller in command. Just before five o'clock in theafternoon, as the papers were signed, I had picked up the phone totalk with Keller in Detroit.

"We've bought the Dodge," I told him. "Put up your signs."

Those canvas signs, prepared several days before, bore this legend:Chrysler Corporation, Dodge Division. Squadsof Keller's men had the signs in big trucks, and when he got my wordKeller gave them the signal to nail them up on the Dodge plants. Atthe same time Keller, with half a dozen of his men, entered the Dodgeheadquarters and told the president of Dodge that we were running theplant from that moment. The next minute we were running it and theChrysler Corporation, by that act, had become a larger organization byfive or six fold. Incidentally, Keller was to become president ofDodge in 1929.

Downtown, in New York, in 1928, the consensus was: Chrysler's boughta lemon. That was the opinion of some minds that contained littleunderstanding of industry, and especially of the automobile industry.Buying the Dodge was one of the soundest acts of my life. I saysincerely that nothing we have done for the organization compares withthat transaction. We had, before the merger, an intensely sharpspearhead in the Chrysler Corporation, but when we put behind it allof Dodge our spearhead had a weighty shaft and had become a potentthing. Yesterday—this is May, 1937—we built 6294 cars; the daybefore, we built 6500, and so it goes, in what some people stillsuppose is a depression. Yet, had we lacked Dodge, there is no tellingwhat our situation would be today. For one thing, there would be noPlymouth car.

The Chrysler Corporation as of 1937 has no debts. Between thestockholders and the operating property represented by their 4,300,000shares there is no sort of mortgage, no preferred claim. Getting ridof burdensome interest charges was just one phase of the course wepursued to come through the depression so as to emerge stronger thanwhen it began. Who that lived through it will ever forget thebeginning?

Early in 1929 it had seemed to me that I could feel the winds ofdisaster blowing. I had a great responsibility as a trustee. In myhalf year of retirement from the automobile business after leavingGeneral Motors and selling my stock to Du Pont and Durant, I had giveneverything I owned to my wife and children. I put it into trusts whichwere made irrevocable. So, when I had gone to work for the bankers inthe Willys-Overland situation, I had been a man without capital.During 1929 my family's stocks had taken the shape of cash in thebanks. About the stuff I owned myself that year I was something lessthan smart. However, I came to the conclusion that what my boys oughtto have was something to be responsible for. They hadgrown up in New York and probably would want to live there. Theywanted to work, and so the idea of putting up a building was born.

Something that I had seen in Paris recurred to me. I said to thearchitects: "Make this building higher than the Eiffel Tower." Thatwas the beginning of the seventy-seven-story Chrysler Building.

The architects had made a plaster model—and in the toy-sized lobby,tinted Morocco red to simulate marble, the ceiling was supported onfour free-standing columns.

"It looks a little cramped, to me," I said. Until that point I thinkthe architects had felt I was taking rather little interest.

"A terrific load is carried by those columns in the plans as drawn."

"Um, but when people come into a big building they should sense achange, get a mental lift that will put them in a frame of mind totransact their business—how about this?" I reached my fingers throughthe ground floor of this skyscraper in miniature.

"Pull it out," said one of the architects. "That's just a piece ofcardboard, pegged in there." I did, and that little action involving achange in the plans cost about a quarter of a million.

"Could it be done?" I asked.

One of the architects was sketching on an envelope. He held up hissketch. He said: "It could be done this way, by making the lobbytriangular." Even as we made the change the steel for the subsurfacepart of the building was being fabricated. From that point on I hadall kinds of fun; spent lots of hours down on my hands and kneescreeping about the floor of my office—then at 347 MadisonAvenue—carpeted with the blueprints and the other drawings ofthe architects; made the final choice for the marbles in thecorridors; chose the veneers that make the interior of each elevatorcab seem to be the work of some extraordinarily gifted cabinetmaker.

"If the elevator cabs travel less than straight," I said to myself,"they will be more noisy than pistons in cylinders that are out ofround. I want them perfect."

So I gave orders as to how the plumb lines should be taken. Today, Ithink, we've got the finest elevators to be found. The city laws onlytolerated speeds of 750 feet a minute when we built. I insisted onpreparations for speeds of 1000 feet a minute, which the law nowallows. In consequence, with all the building occupied, the elevatorscan handle the peak-load crowd without delay. But such matters now areproblems for my son, Walter. He is running the building. He ispresident, and he knows his job.

When he was ready to go to work, I said, "You better learn somethingabout the building. It's yours; not mine."

"Where do you think I ought to begin, Dad?"

"Get down in the basement and learn what the other fellow's got to do.Go and scrub a few floors. Clean some offices. That way you can beginto see through the glasses of other people as well as your own." Hedid it, too, and then proceeded through various jobs until he was wellable to run the building. That enterprise is working now as in 1929 itwas planned that it should.

But you can be sure that when we started erecting that tall building Ihad no idea that ahead of me were the hardest, most troubled years ofmy life. I consider it fortunate for me that the building waspractically a completed project before the awful character of thedepression was revealed.

My wife and I like parties just as much as we did when we were anengaged couple out in Ellis, Kansas; we enjoy music and hearing thelaughter of our friends, but as the business situation grew moredisturbing she felt we should talk things over.

I told her: "If the Chrysler Corporation ever needed support, it needsit now; it needs me. So, five days a week I am going to be in bedearly and I'll be up early and off to work. On Friday nights, if youlike, we can go somewhere, to dinner, or a movie, or a show. But Imust be in bed by midnight. On Saturdays we'll stay up as late as welike. On Sunday nights I'll be going to bed early so as to be freshfor Monday morning. That is our schedule until this thing is over."

We stuck to that faithfully. Delia encouraged me. She knew she wasstill the wife of a workman.

Expenses of the Chrysler Corporation had to be cut during 1931, 1932and 1933. We had to cut salaries, reduce operations, retrench inalmost every way. There were bleak months when the plants, for lack oforders, were operating down to forty per cent of capacity. But nomatter how gloomy the outlook, I never cut one single penny from thebudget of our research department. I think Carl Breer, who runs theresearch, will bear me out in this. I can't recall that he was askedto stint on anything. The reason for that is something that any modernindustrialist knows and understands. Its research work is what will bekeeping any soundly managed industry alive and healthy five and tenyears in the future. As the depression became worse, as people becamemore gloomy, we grew bolder in our research. The things that weredeveloped in the laboratories in those dark days are the improvementsthat created a strong demand for cars in 1936 and 1937. Research isthe answer, if anyone should ask why modern cars are so much improved;it is why the automobiles of the future will be incomparably betterthan any we have seen.

But other things of vital importance were being accomplished in ourorganization through the years of the depression. After we had takenover the Dodge Corporation in 1927 we had a total debt of $60,000,000;that meant we had to make $3,600,000 to meet interest charges. All ofmy associates were agreed that we ought to keep reducing that debt,and we did. The man who became comptroller of the Chrysler Corporationand its subsidiary companies when that debt was biggest, in 1927, isLester A. Moehring. Mr. Moehring's job involves not only accountingand control, but also preparation of budgets and forecasts of what thebusiness may be expected to do. Thousands of clerks are kept busyunder Mr. Moehring so that he can boil out the essential figures whichthe Chrysler operations committee needs for its decisions. Thanks tosteadily accurate knowledge of the corporation's position, we dared topay debts until $60,000,000 of the Dodge debentures was down to$30,000,000. There came a day when, thanks to a splendid credit, weborrowed $25,000,000 at a very low rate of interest, added about$5,000,000 of our cash, and called the bonds. Finally, with some ofthe profits of 1934 and 1935, we got ourselves completely out of debt.

Even more important, I suppose, were the millions the corporation wasspending for new equipment in the years after 1929. We began 1937 witha demand that was far bigger than our production. If we had discoveredthat it was desirable to remodel a plant at that time we would havebeen unable to stop, except at an outrageous cost. Fortunately we didnot have to concern ourselves about plant improvements, because thefactory layout had been made almost completely new. So our vastmechanism for producing cars came out of the depression not only freeof expansion debts, but it is completely rehabilitated, almost as newand fine as a 1937 car.

But there is more to industry than money and machines. There are men.I worked too many years on account of my own family to be forgetfulthat it is for their women and children that men keep on working. Asof 1937 there were 76,000 people on the payrolls of the ChryslerCorporation. Can it be supposed by anyone who knows me that I amunmindful of that obligation? How could I be when I am so proud? Justas I used to see my father's locomotive as the machine that gave us aliving, so I now see and understand this enterprise I've helped tobuild as a more magnificent and infinitely more intricate machinegiving sustenance and other services to many. You just bet I'm jealousof it. I want it to be more and more successful in its operations, inall its human relationships; but no matter how proud I feel because itbears the name of Chrysler, I never fool myself that I did all this.Is our engineering superb? Yes, but that is because of Fred Zeder andhis associates. Has its export business flourished clear around theworld? We owe that to vice-president W. Ledyard Mitchell. Any greatindustrial corporation lives and grows only through the devotedservices of many who pool their intelligence and energy in a commoneffort.

I really understand it best, I think, when I go out to Detroit and sitat a meeting of the dozen younger fellows who are running thebusiness. I am a sort of grandsire there, the chairman of the board. Igot my start in overalls; so did Keller, the corporation's president;so did Zeder; so did Hutchinson; so did Skelton; so did Breer; so didMitchell; so did Byron Foy; and so did many of the others. We are, allof us who sit at that table, American workmen in the simple, exactmeaning of the term. Those who come after us in the years ahead willbe the same, and the reason for this is that there is no way for mento qualify themselves for what we do at that table except by work andlearning.

A POSTSCRIPT

Twelve years have passed since any further conversations with WalterChrysler might have been arranged. On May 26, 1938, he became ill andnever regained his health. He died August 18, 1940. Obviously his ownstory of his life has to end just where he left it. Yet there is muchmore to say about such a man. And it should be said.

His grandchildren and all of their generation on this continent shalllive as free beings on this Earth only if those Americans WalterChrysler typifies are left free to make things to the best of theirabilities.

They do not occur numerously. Unhappily we have no single enlighteningword to distinguish the rare kind of leadership for which WalterChrysler had been struggling to qualify himself in an amazing sort ofapprenticeship after he had completed his machine shop apprenticeship.

This son of Kansas pioneers, born in the vastness of the Westernplains, never allowed himself to forget that ours has been the onlynation thus far to span and prosper on a continent. This happened inNorth America only by means of mechanized transportation; first therailroad, then the automobile. Even now we are—or hope weare—in the process of making a greater nation by means of theairplane. Although he is remembered as a great manufacturer ofautomobiles, this American thought of himself as a "transportationman." Maybe there was a strain of this in his blood. But he took scantinterest in a genealogical researcher's report that he had a sea-goingDutchman among his forebears; one Captain Jan Gerritsen Van Dalsen;that in 1622 a Dutch mariner with this name had been in the New World,exploring a nameless stream, afterwards called the Hudson, with afleet of ships. As to that, Walter Chrysler made it plain to me he wasin accord with Jimmy Durante: "Ancestors? I got millions of 'em!"

Since Walter Chrysler died, however, he is seen to have developed apower of understanding transcending transportation and utterly vitalto the further existence of the people of the United States ofAmerica. He had created an outstanding institution among thosecompanies which, when challenged, made literally anything our countryneeded to withstand and overwhelm the enemies that were assaulting it.This is genius; so if we are ever to comprehend our nation's strengthand support it with our votes, we must coin a better word than"manufacturer" to specify the kind of American workman Walter Chryslerhad become.

During scores of centuries nations have made heroes of theirvictorious military leaders, with the result that always there havebeen ambitious youths struggling to qualify themselves for suchdistinction and honor. However, since World War II, it is plainly tobe seen that valor alone is not enough. Except for the power ofAmerica to out-produce her enemies, the only valid heroes alive todaywould be generals and admirals of Germany and Japan. There is no needto be less grateful to military heroes. There is no sudden need tomake heroes of our manufacturers.

Yet certainly there is desperate need in this Republic for a muchbetter and a much wider comprehension of how all that we cherish asAmericans depends on keeping the ways to advancement for the youngfree and unrestricted. Not the young workmen alone, however.

Consider the situation of Walter Chrysler when he left General MotorsCorporation at the beginning of 1920. In the preceding three and ahalf years, that company had paid him substantially more than$2,000,000. Obviously no ordinary reward could have lured him out ofretirement after only a few months' rest. He was really a free man,one free to do as he liked, and he liked to play as much as anyone.Moreover, he knew how to play. He loved music, hunting and fishing. Hewas willing to stay up half the night with friends and then go out andshoot ducks. Already he had discovered the excitement that is savoredby an understanding patron of the arts.

"Why should I go back?" This was the question he propounded to the twomen who were urging him to solve a problem. The Willys-OverlandCompany in 1921 was "in terrible shape." The $50,000,000 banks hadloaned the company might be lost, but, in the sight of a mancomfortably retired, what of that? Finally, when urging and imploringcontinued, Walter Chrysler made his proposition: $1,000,000 a year,net, for two years. This, of course, led on to the reorganization ofMaxwell and the birth of the Chrysler Corporation in 1925.

But suppose the 1950 scheme of taxation had been in force in thattime, especially those provisions of it which limit radically theincome any individual may receive. What then? To me, at least, itseems most unlikely that Walter Chrysler would then have exposed hisestablished reputation to great risks of failure. There would havebeen no Chrysler Corporation. The whole automotive industry would bepoorer and less effective now if during the preceding quarter of acentury it had lacked the stimulus provided by the aggressive andimaginative competition of Walter Chrysler's company.

In the last 25 years the Chrysler Corporation has enriched the economyand enlarged tax collections far beyond the $872,000,000 which it haspaid directly in taxes. Yet this huge sum of taxes, by itself, arguesoverwhelmingly against imposing a destructive load of taxation on thatwhich makes for individual incentive. Furthermore, a much largervolume of taxes surely poured into government coffers out of the $10billions spent for materials, supplies and services; also out of the$3 billions spent for wages and salaries and the $434 millions ofdividends. The $14 billions of net sales likewise represent a vast taxgain. Walter Chrysler sometimes expressed satisfaction because everytime he and his associates made a truck they made—potentially—ajob for someone who would drive the truck. Just as certainly, however,each one of the thirteen million vehicles produced by this companysince it began was a tax producer for as long as it was kept inoperation. Therefore, it does seem short-sighted of us as a people todamper down with confiscatory taxes the ambitions of our undevelopedChryslers.

Whether it makes sense or not, after 1920 Walter Chrysler was workingfor his family just as certainly as he had worked mainly on theirbehalf before 1920. This is why I think the place he chose for theenshrinement of his chest of tools—the tower of the ChryslerBuilding—was peculiarly appropriate. With those tools that he hadmade himself, he had "qualified" himself for the machinist's craft.Then, as a journeyman machinist, he was qualified for marriage.

He had an immense pride in the prowess of the Chrysler Corporation,but the Chrysler Building in New York City was strictly and peculiarlya work of love. "It belongs to the kids," he said to me one time. "Ihaven't got a nickel in it." For him, the building—certainly attimes—symbolized his feeling for his family's security just as surelyas in earlier times similar feelings found expression in the blockhouse of a frontier settlement. Nevertheless, the other institutionnamed for him, The Chrysler Corporation, is now revealed as vastlymore important to the real security of his family and of all otherAmerican families. The war was to give even a greater meaning to hislife than I, for one, had seen; and I say this believing I had seenwith fair understanding how wonderfully the meaning of America hadbeen revealed in his adventures.

Obviously money alone never had been the main spring driving him. Inhis boyhood he had been passionately eager to excel and as a man and amachinist all his adventures were flavored by that same passion. Onhis way up he had been constantly concerned to qualify himself forsome bigger field of opportunity, yet always with machines. Thecreation of the Chrysler Corporation was a logical accomplishment ofWalter Chrysler's life. Actually, of course, a manufacturing companyis itself a gigantic mechanism; one consisting of myriads of lessermechanisms that can be fancifully likened to the assemblage of musicalinstruments required for the production of symphonic music. Withoutmusicians, of course, the instruments are useless things. But evenwhen instruments and musicians are properly conjoined they wouldproduce noise rather than music except for their conductor. Happily,the Chrysler concept of a well organized manufacturing company tookaccount of the inevitable and constant need to replace machines andleaders.

It seems to me he had brought it to a point of excellence by 1937 andthat year, in one of our last conversations, he had said he was nolonger to be thought of as one of the men running the business. "Me?I'm just watching it," he said. He certainly was doing that.

One day after our work was finished and had been published in theSaturday Evening Post, he undertook to make me see how satisfyingfor him the actual response had been—and how surprising. Outsidehis office I had been shown an array of letters making a bulk ofseveral cubic feet and someone there had estimated 7000 had beenreceived. More were coming with each delivery of mail. Nevertheless,even after the first issues of the magazine were off the press he hadbeen sorely worried.

But for any delays and discomfort I had been subjected to because ofhis forebodings he was apologizing. He wasn't being mealy-mouthedabout it, either. He said: "I know I was difficult to get alongwith—and you were so patient!" This was not flowing entirely from asense of justice. He was trying to make me be the first tore-introduce a subject on which he himself had laid a taboo. Mycuriosity, however, had been freshly excited by a more recent taboothat had scarcely any importance to me. I had been told he had madebitter objections when he learned the magazine series was to beadvertised by one sheet posters in the subways, at railroad stationsand in other places where newsstand sales might be increased. Why hadhe objected?

"I was scared," he said.

"Of what?"

"Workingmen! They might go and write on those signs." Then, seeing Iwas still bewildered, he made a further effort to explain. That timehe succeeded as if by a lightning flash. "Like a horse out on the roadwithout blinders, I see too many things."

I should have understood without his explanation. For one thing, hewas sensitive or, as he would have said, "touchy." But the importantthing that made him so in this instance was his immenseresponsibility. Most of us have nothing comparable in our own lives tothat gigantic engine which had taken on life and grown so wonderfullyunder his ministrations.

The other taboo referred to was a book; that is, this bookwhich now appears thirteen years after the contents originally wereprinted in a magazine.

The project had begun in August, 1936, with George Horace Lorimer, theeditor of the Saturday Evening Post; not with Mr. Chrysler. I wasdubious. Several close associates of Mr. Chrysler had assured me thatlater on it might be possible to get his consent and cooperation, butamong them the consensus was that it would be useless to make such aproposal just then; further, that to try and fail would prejudice anyattempt made in an otherwise auspicious time. So I had tried tointerest Mr. Lorimer in somebody else's story and then he took painsto show me he really wanted the Chrysler story. Commonly a free lancewas concerned to sell him. This time the editor was striving to sellme.

The really astonishing thing to me was another aspect of the matter.Previously I had discovered that as a market for such wares as Ibrought to him Mr. Lorimer was quite uninterested in the lives ofautomobile manufacturers. Seemingly it was believed that if the storyof one was printed this might antagonize all the others. I had madethat discovery one time when I had been rash enough to suggest thereought to be a story in Chrysler. But having changed his mind, Mr.Lorimer proceeded to itemize the reasons why the Chrysler story couldbe outstanding. For one thing, there was the Chrysler Building whichhad been, briefly, tallest in the world. Further, there were millionsof automobiles on the streets and highways of the nation. Every carquadrupled the challenge to curiosity. On each of four chromiumedhubcaps the name Chrysler was inscribed. Clearly it was a name asprovokingly mysterious as that of the Count of Monte Cristo. Mr.Lorimer mentioned other reasons that seemed to increase journalisticvalue by tending to increase curiosity. The editor exposed the core ofhis enthusiasm when he spoke of the way Mr. Chrysler had strengthenedhis company during the depression. Then, however, Mr. Lorimer, indisclosing why a Chrysler story "later on" did not suit him, filled mewith dismay: he confided that he had decided to retire. He said: "Iwant this Chrysler series to run as the last story of a business man'ssuccess to appear in the Post under my editorship." On top of thathe offered to write a letter of introduction for me. So, after sendinga telegram to Mr. Chrysler requesting an appointment, I had gone backto New York; and Mr. Chrysler, after reflecting a few minutes,scribbled on Mr. Lorimer's letter: "Hello, Old Top. I'll go along withMr. Sparkes."

I was mightily pleased then. But several months later there had been achange. Even after thirteen years my unhappiness seems justified. Ihad found myself out on a limb further than I should care to go againin such a free-lance venture. Except for a brief bit of writing thatcould be done effectively only by the other party to thecollaboration, the Chrysler autobiography was approximatelyfive-eighths done; that is, to my satisfaction and that of Mr.Lorimer. But what I needed was a holographic endorsement somewhere onthe script, a simple "O.K. W. P. Chrysler, Sr."

Unhappily for me, the time I had intended to spend on this work hadbeen extended by many weeks because of interruptions in our scheduleof appointments. Lacking his approval, my written account of what hehad narrated in a series of conversations—recorded and transcribed bya stenotypist—had no status as a property in the field of letters.

I had been unable to see him for weeks at a time and then—inmid-December—there was a telephone call. "The Boss is back and hasthe morning free. Can you come over?"

Indirectly I had learned Mr. Chrysler had been appalled by somethingthat might be said to infest the copy as termites in a neglectedhouse. An awful lot of revision seemed to be indicated. Some of myimpatience to see Walter Chrysler had leaked out of me when I steppedinto one of those Chrysler Building elevator cabs. Indeed, I wouldhave been content to be lifted much more slowly in the shaft of thattowering structure than the 1000 feet-a-minute rise of which he was soproud.

Time and again after we began he had interrupted his narrative with anexclamation and an additional warning. The common purport of these hadbeen that I would be making trouble for myself if I used all that hewas then reciting. "I'll just take it out! I'll pencil it out!" Ifthose admonitions had been bricks, I think I might have built of thema structure taller than the Chrysler spire.

He had freshly read most of what he had recited to me just before theday I am recalling. His private office was fixed high up in a stratumof gale incessantly blowing—it seemed—in from the Atlantic. Thesound of it suggested there were poltergeist wailings just outside hiswindow panes. He had one of the typescripts on his desk between hisarms. So on that day especially I was conscious of the shrilling wind.

"Know what I want? Take all those out and stack 'em like cord wood."He was tapping with his finger where there was a circular pencil mark;what it ringed was a capital "I." "I'm afraid of all this 'I, I, I,I.'"

I felt better at once. His point was a sound and objective criticismof his story. No matter what proportion of habitual readers ofautobiographies suffer from an insufficiency of Vitamin B, surely allof them get an overdose of the "I" of other men. Something wasoperating here in Walter Chrysler of much greater significance than atfirst appears.

An essential quality of his importance in our times was his expertnessin organizing and directing the work of others. He never failed to beconcerned for the dignity of workingmen. Although he was frequentlyarbitrary and blunt in dealing with more important persons, he neverlet himself forget how it felt to be dressed in overalls with only abroom and cleaning rags for tools.

I remember one day a young fellow in grimy khaki was surprised by oursudden reappearance in Mr. Chrysler's private office. The man wasthickly belted in the harness of his craft. He was a window cleaner,and those who clean the windows of New York skyscrapers are regardedby the insurance companies as adventurers of the first rank. These menwere non-insurable not so many years ago and even today pay half againas much for ordinary life insurance as common men. This one was sullenfaced as he hastily gathered up his bucket, squeegee and chamoiscloth. Then Mr. Chrysler spoke to him.

"What's your hurry, Son?"

"You're busy. I'm getting out." No form of address from thisindependent cuss—at least not right away.

"Son, you don't have to go out. Get paid by the window, don't you?"

"Won't I bother you, Mr. Chrysler?"

"No, and if I'm bothering you, I'll use another room until you'refinished."

When the window panes were clean and the man had vanished, Mr.Chrysler made a somewhat cryptic remark. "I've been a nut about thatfor years."

"What?"

"Taking pains to make any workman I come across know I don't think I'mbetter than he is. Unless I do, he will. Watch me leave here somenight. I find things to say. 'It's a bad day' or 'kind of cold out' orsomething. I speak coming and I speak going. If the young man at theinformation desk on the ground floor has his back turned, I make apoint of it; he's got to speak to me. I say: 'Good night, Son.' Nowthey all speak to me as soon as they see me!"

A more emphatic man would be hard to find and when he recalled anadventure the recital would be as exciting as the climax of a goodsecond act. Yet all too many times the finish was followed by a suddenchange of mood as he realized afresh that behind my interest was apurpose. Suddenly he would exclaim: "You can't use that one. Hurt thatguy's feelings." Other times he would admonish me that a man "mustn'tblow his own horn." Yet he never really concealed his true feelingthat it was too bad a man can't give off tuba-like blasts now and thenfrom such a choice body of experiences as had befallen WalterChrysler. There was, for example, that time when the New Deal wasyoung and N.R.A.'s blue eagle was a most aggressive bird.

"That's what's wrong with N.R.A. Made no distinction between good andbad. The rotten apples and the sound ones all dumped into the samebag. There is a lot of good business in this country; far more goodthan bad and that's why so many business men are against theadministration."

He, incidentally, was not against it. But he was deeply proudof the company that bore his name, proud of the people making theirliving in its employment, proud of the products. Dangerously uglypropaganda against business—any and all business—had beencoming out of Washington as molten lava from an erupting volcano.

It was William C. Durant who told me about the time Walter Chryslerwas in a conference room in a Washington hotel together with otherleaders of the automotive industry, striving to establish a workable"code" under which they could go on making automobiles. Then GeneralHugh Johnson appeared among them. He was acting tough. He was going tomake everybody sign. "Make," he said, as if he alone spoke with thevoice of the U. S. A.

Concerning Hugh Johnson, among business men then, the common opinionwas that he seemed tough, rude and profane. Very suddenly the face ofWalter Chrysler was close to the face of Hugh Johnson and the hand ofWalter Chrysler, with fingers widely spread, was on the shirt bosom ofthe chief of N.R.A.

"Sit down, you gold braided so and so," he said. Then he pushed andHugh Johnson sat down with a grunt. Thereafter he listened for quiteawhile. All things considered, he heard a quite rational and welltempered argument.

"Get everybody in the United States thinking business in this countryis bad just because it is business, and you know what? Sure as Hellwe'll have a revolution. If government starts running all business andindustry it has to run the people. Run everybody. That's the danger.Bad as some business is, all the danger is on the government side."

After that part of the session was over, the meeting marked again for N.R.A. Everybody felt better. The General thereafteraddressed the manufacturer as "Walt" and the manufacturer, withmatching courtesy, called him "Hugh."

Walter Chrysler's leadership in the Chrysler Corporation did not endwhen death vacated his place as chairman of the board of directors;and it is far from being ended yet. The best witness to an aspect ofthis influence is K. T. Keller, the president of the Corporation.Shortly before the tenth anniversary of Mr. Chrysler's death, Mr.Keller said: "Often I would be puzzled if obliged to say what we havereasoned out for ourselves when a major decision has been made duringthe last ten or twelve years and what has resulted from heedingcertain cardinal principles of Walter Chrysler."

One continuing policy about which Mr. Keller is not in the leastpuzzled is the Corporation's rate of growth. A time came when thesetwo, with many disastrous cases of industrial over-expansion inmind, made a kind of pact never to tolerate expansion of the ChryslerCorporation more than ten per cent in any year. That, however, wasafter an adventure in which the Chrysler Corporation had establishedan expansion record by becoming suddenly five or six times its formersize. This was done to achieve a peculiar dimension which the peopleof the Earth who still are free desperately need to comprehend.

As its corporate life began in 1925, the Chrysler Corporation rankedNo. 32 in the automotive industry measured by annual production. Onlya few years later it was producing more automobiles than any othercompany except General Motors Corporation. To some extent this changehad been wrought by adding to Chrysler the immense manufacturing andmarketing facilities of the business the Dodge brothers left theirheirs and which had been sold to bankers. One time Mr. Chrysler saidto me: "The greatest thing I ever did was buy the Dodge." It was greatbecause thereby he got for the Chrysler Corporation what might bethought of appropriately as the essential tool of volume production.By putting Chrysler and Dodge together, Mr. Chrysler had made amanufacturing organization not merely bigger, but as he said, "bigenough." By this he was emphasizing that the company had been bigenough to apply the full benefits for volume production of ourgigantic American market. This was the crucial lack that had causedhim in 1920 to be so sure that Citroen, a French automobilemanufacturing company, had no proper place in the General Motorsorganization. Citroen was limited by the frontiers of France, by allthe customs barricades of Europe. Now, thirty years later and afteranother World War, adjustment of this same gigantic fault in theeconomy of Europe has become a major goal of our foreign policy. Agreat part of what we strive to buy with Marshall Plan funds is aWestern Europe made strong as the United States is strong. America ispotent productively because it is a unified market challenging to theutmost the ingenuity of American manufacturers.

Without the great volume which exists potentially in a great marketthere might be reason to deplore great size in a manufacturingcompany. But size is vitally necessary if a manufacturing company isto produce such things as Chevrolets, Fords and Plymouths.

This is an elemental fact about our outstanding strength as a nation.Yet it has been applied with great effectiveness thus far only becausein our past we had unquestioning faith in a form of government foundedon the rights of individuals. In recent years there has been muchpreaching with the lips about the free enterprise system and muchsinister practice tending to destroy that system.

Although an invalid, Walter Chrysler was still alive at the time ofDunkirk; that was when the war began for America, the end of May,1940. Pearl Harbor, a year and a half later was simply an unmasking ofhideous enemies already recognized. At the start of 1950 we seemed tobe waiting again to be surprised by a recognized enemy. On thisaccount, it is appropriate to consider the catastrophic affliction wemay fix on ourselves through our succession of witless surrenders toSocialists. Socialism is the antithesis of the order under whichWalter Chrysler evolved.

Think how greatly our production for the armed forces would have beenaffected during the last war had this American never been tempted outof Ellis, Kansas. Indeed, imagine the gain for our enemies in the lastwar if in 1925 they had somehow managed to discourage Walter Chryslerfrom proceeding with the formation of the Chrysler Corporation. Whocan say what we might not have been able to produce of all thatactually was produced. Here is the war production score of theChrysler Corporation:

Every time we had a conversation, it seems to me, he shed tears yetalways what started them was thinking of the past when he was a pooryoung man. Sometimes, at first, I mistakenly supposed that he wasfeeling sorry for himself. Finally I came to realize what it was thatso deeply moved him when he contemplated his inauspicious start,including those years of riding freight trains from town to town whenhe was hunting a chance to work and gain more experience. It wasgratitude, of course; gratitude to everything American that madepossible his great success. He told his story in the hope it mightinspire other lonely boys roving in the land to keep on trying.

[End of Life of an American Workmanby Walter P. Chrysler and Boyden Sparkes]