Magneto Man

Celebrated in Stuttgart one day last week with the fanfare appropriate to one of Germany's leading corporations was the 50th anniversary of the founding of Robert Bosch A. G. Happily the date coincided with the 75th birthday of its benevolent, snow-bearded founder, the man whose name throughout the mechanized world means magneto.

In Stuttgart, which Robert Bosch has showered with benefactions, the Bosch birthday is practically a municipal holiday. Last week in the best Nazi style his workers gave him a monster mass reception, which the aging tycoon thoroughly enjoyed. Vigorous, he still takes an active interest in company affairs, can still be seen almost any day trotting about his huge plant, can still climb 6,000 feet for a shot at a chamois on his great game pre-serve in Bavaria.

It was in Stuttgart that Robert Bosch first set himself up as a maker of magnetos with little capital except his ingenuity and training, part of which was gained in a short turn in the U. S. in Edison's laboratories. In early days the Bosch magneto was used on stationary internal combustion engines, was not adapted to an automobile until 1896. And it was not until Bosch began to make a high-tension magneto with high-tension spark plugs-- a simplified ignition system--that Bosch became an international name. By 1912 he had made 1,000,000 magnetos.

A U. S. unit was formed in 1906 prospered swiftly with the expanding U. S. motor industry. By the time it fell into the clutches of the Alien Property Custodian in 1917 it was an exceedingly valuable piece of property with a plant of its own in Springfield, Mass. For nearly a decade the U. S. company was in almost continuous litigation arising in part from the unsavory record of the Alien Property Custodian's office, in part from the re-entry of Robert Bosch into the U. S. market under his own name after the War. Legal question was who had the rights to the name Bosch, the U. S. company, by now completely independent, or Robert Bosch himself. In 1930 a truce was called under the terms of which the U. S. company took over the German Bosch subsidiary set up in the U. S. after the War, agreed to market German Bosch products, got the benefit of German Bosch research.

In honor of this truce the U. S. company was appropriately renamed United American Bosch Corp. Deep in the automobile equipment business. United American makes horns, starters, generators, windshield wipers, ignition systems for Henry Ford. Other lines include radios, Diesel engine accessories, gas appliances. Magnetos are still Bosch's most profitable line. Every winner of the Indianapolis Sweepstakes for the past eleven years has had Bosch ignition. United's best year was 1928 when it took in $13,400,000, kept $1,000,000 profit. Deficits were the rule during the depth of Depression, though by last year the company was into the black by $250,000.

Financially the Wartime loss of his U. S. properties was no great blow to Robert Bosch. Most of the stock in the U. S. branch was owned by company officials. After the War he branched still further into automotive accessories such as brakes and the famed Bosch horn, a noise-making instrument which was as much of an innovation as the Klaxon. German Bosch is currently booming on the Nazi-fostered upswing in the German automobile industry. Like United American Bosch, Bosch A. G. today is a highly diversified enterprise, making phonographs, refrigerators, electric tools. It pioneered the solid injection principle which put the Diesel engine on wheels, has a stake in the film industry. In its offices, branches and vast plants it employs 20,000 workers.

By temperament Boardchairman Bosch is paternal. He sits high in German industrial councils, is no friend of unionism. But he goes in strong for social service, old-age pensions, home-building loans to employes, was the original German high-wage-&-short-hours man. Once when a Junker chided him for his generosity, the first citizen of Stuttgart declared: "I don't pay good wages because I have lots of money. I have lots of money because I pay good wages."

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