Whence Detroit

MEN, MONEY AND MOTORS--Theodore F. MacManus and Norman Beasley--Harpers ($3).

Thirty years ago Detroit was a far-seeing city. Horses still clop-clopped over its pavements but people were talking about steam and electric transportation. Those who were foolish enough to think of gasoline got what they deserved. They had faith in the ex-superintendent of the Detroit Edison Company, who promised to build ten cars for $10,000. He spent $86,000 of their money and they thought they were lucky to get him to resign. The urchins were right when they chased the gas buggies through the streets and shouted, "Hire a horse!"

Nobody said that in 1902 when President Theodore Roosevelt rode in a gas buggy, but the papers did say "Roosevelt's display of courage was typical of him." Nonetheless, Detroit was on its way. That year the Olds Motor Works startled the city by announcing a production of 4,000 cars, and that year the ex-superintendent of the Detroit Edison had his second company, the Henry Ford Automobile Co., fail.

The third company was called the Ford Motor Co. The bicycle makers John and Horace Dodge made parts. James Couzens came from the traffic department of a coal yard for $2,500 a year. They paid $75 a month rent for a building; $250 to the Dodges for the working parts; $46 for four tires; $26 for four wheels; $52 for a body; $16 apiece for cushions; and $1.50 a day for workmen (ten or twelve). The car cost $554 complete and $594 with a tonneau and sold for $750 and $850. Ford himself got $3,000 a year, but Frederick J. Haynes, later president of Dodge Brothers, refused to work for Ford at $2,500 a year, because he was not sure where the money would come from.

There were many optimists, however, and not a few successes; Ransonx E. Olds, who alone has had two automobiles named after him (Reo--his initials--and Oldsmobile); Walter P. Chrysler, railroad shop superintendent who borrowed $4,300, bought an automobile and spent a winter taking it apart and putting it together again to see what made it go; John Willys, high pressure salesman, who cashed a personal check for $330 at a hotel to meet the pay roll of the Overland Co. so he would not lose his sales agency, and who almost at once became simultaneously president, treasurer, general manager, sales manager, and advertising manager of the nearly bankrupt company.

Many of the automobile pioneers were frostbitten, ugly, rough-tongued, heavyhanded, but they spent nights in their half-built factories tightening nuts on rush orders with their own hands, and days in the offices of friends, trying to raise money and postpone payments. William Crapo Durant, twice head of General Motors, left a room full of irritated financial patrons to eat apple pie, and, mouth full, to roar full-chested laughter at a squib:

"But most of all I'm glad, oh Lord

You did not make me Henry Ford."

The Authors. Theodore F. MacManus is the head of MacManus, Inc., an advertising agency which has handled the accounts of Cadillac, Chrysler, Dodge Brothers, Hupmobile, and has made the phrase "Body by Fisher" known by all those who like beautiful girls. He has known the great and the near-great of the industry almost from the start. He looks at and writes of them as impeccable titans.

Norman Beasley, onetime Detroit newspaper man, was unwilling to see the volume completely unspiced. He knew that Henry Ford had promised, after the War, to return all his Wartime profits to the government; that he had supposed scruples against accepting War profits. The reporter wrote the Secretary of the Treasury, and was informed that "the Treasury records do not show the receipt of any such donation." The incident is glossed over. There is no mention of other scandals.