Jet-Propelled Individualist

The Thompson Trophy Race is as famous among aviators as the Indianapolis Memorial Day race is to daredevils of the track. Sponsor of the race is Cleveland's Thompson Products Co., now the biggest maker of jet engine components before that, the valve producer of the world.

Thompson's boss, Frederick C. (for Coolidge) Crawford, 62, onetime (1943) president of the N.A.M., is as full of zip and noise as a racing engine. In the head-cracking '30s, he defeated every attempt of the C.I.O. or A.F.L. to organize his plants, damned unions and the New Deal. His tart tongue often got him into other trouble; on a World War II visit to France he denounced resistance forces as Communist bandits.

Crawford stirred up so many controversies that people often failed to notice an important fact: his company is not only well run but also among the fastest-growing in the U.S. By last week it had grown so big that President Crawford needed more help with day-to-day duties, more time for big decisions. He moved himself into the new job of chairman, moved his longtime right-hand man, John D. Wright, 47, into the presidency. Said Chairman Crawford, who is still top policy man: "In this business, you've got to live in the future."

Frozen Mercury. Fred Crawford, civil engineer (Harvard, '14), joined Thompson as a millwright's helper in 1916. Under one of its founders, an ex-welder named Charles E. Thompson, the 15-year old company had already built a tidy business making auto valves. In World War I, its business almost doubled, and Thompson branched into aircraft, making valves for France's Spad fighters. By 1929, when the Thompson Trophy was created for Cleveland's National Air Races, Crawford had moved up to vice president and general manager. At Thompson's death* in 1933, Crawford took over a company with gross sales of $3,000,000. He ran it so well that last year its sales topped $270 million-- a growth of 8,900% in 20 years--and its net profits are estimated at $9,500,000.

In art, the growth was due to World War II, when Thompson doubled its size almost overnight with a new $30 million government-built plant. But it was also due to the fact that engineer Crawford proved himself an expert manager. He brought in able young men, gave them room to grow, encouraged initiative. New President Wright, for example, started in with a Cleveland law firm as a legal consultant to Thompson, soon won a $100,000 tax refund for the company. Impressed, Crawford took him on as his own assistant when he became president, gave him ever-growing responsibility.

Thompson kept adding to its products now makes 80, boasts that the only one it ever had to drop was the automobile crank. It has helped develop such things as aircraft valves containing liquid sodium inside as a coolant; an engine valve cap that turns slightly with each strike, thus eliminating warping and pitting; an alcohol-water injection system to get more power out of gasoline; simplified valve tappets; improved fuel pumps and piston rings.

The jet age brought Thompson's biggest opportunity. The company's long experience in machining tough metals to fine tolerances made it a natural to turn out such small, exact and tough parts as the thousands of tiny blades needed for every jet engine. Through a big advance in metallurgy, Thompson now makes such blades out of powdered iron and a copper alloy, eliminating a great deal of waste. It has also succeeded in casting incredibly intricate parts by pouring mercury into a die, freezing it and dipping the mercury pattern in liquid ceramic to form a mold. Then the mercury is let run out at room temperature, and parts are cast from the ceramic mold.

Warm Relations. Crawford has been just as successful at handling human problems. Although union organizers denounced him, Crawford regarded himself is an old-fashioned liberal, who distrusted any encroachment on his freedom including unions. "The more each person can take care of himself," says Crawford "the stronger we'll be." He rewarded sensible suggestions from his workers, made swift promotions of promising men. He set up pensions, medical dispensaries, provided good food in company restaurants at cheap prices. He talked with workers to get their gripes, often made shop addresses to keep them informed. In such talks Crawford likes to call the company "an Ol' Brown Hen," which will keep every body warm if they keep her fat and feathered.

"The unions call me a fascist," says Crawford, "but I have nothing against unions per se. [He now has both A.F.L. and C.I.O. unions in companies he has bought.] But if a union merely wants our people just to increase its membership it has no place here. But if a union leader can show me how to improve production, resulting in better wages, and increase workers' enthusiasm, I'll love him."

Says Individualist Crawford: "We try to create an atmosphere in which the brain takes wing. A man here can feel free to propose crazy things. We stimulate dreaming."

* At his request, Flyer Jimy Doolittle, 1932 trophy winner, dropped his ashes over Cleveland from a plane.

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