Glacier County chief., 1940-08-30
GEN ERAL
HUGH S.
jon N SON
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timed Fs.i~- xs,tS
Washington, d. C
WALTER CHRYSLER

tne HedQ OF tne table.
During his prime that could well
have been said of Walter Chrysler
by the whole automobile industry
excepting Henry Ford. Now Wal
ter Chrysler is gone. He was one
Of the industrial giants of the magic
period of expansion beginning with
the World war. Industry isn't pro-
ducing men of that type today.
Maybe the new crop is a better
type. 1t certainly is a more pol
lshed type but it lacks the sturdi-
ness, initiative and drive of the gen.
Grafton that started working with
its hands and knew-in addition to
business strategy and tactics &C.
CURED later-every operation in the
shop.
Eager to Do His Bit.
have worked with or across the
table with him on many occasions in
the past % years. His going
wrenches me, as l think it does
everyone who knew him well-like
the loss of an old army messmate.
The first time I met him was in
the old industrial relations days of
the World war. Those were not un-
like those Of MIRA, in which we were
very close.
With reputation for being about
the toughest trooper in the industry,
he was really complete softly on
the sentimental side. One evening
when the going was toughest in NRA
literally working 10 to 20 hours a
day-he asked me to 60 to dinner
with the heads of his industry. When
complained that l didn't have
time, he carried me off almost bod
lily on a compromise that it would
only be an hour.
With the coffee, he pushed his
chair back and said: Il want to take
minute to tell you about an ex-
perience of my early youth. 1t
started off innocently enough about
a prospecting trip in the Rocky
mountains with an old sourdough
named Deadeye Dick. In about five
minutes he had that bunch of hard
shells either rocking with laughter
or dizzy with establishment. 1t was
a masterpiece of old-time frontier
lying that would have made Mark
Twain green with envy. 1t went on
and on with never tagging of inter-
est, a pause for breath or a failure
of each succeeding whopper to top
the earlier ones with fantastic imag-
cry. When he stopped l suddenly
awoke to the fact that it was after
midnight and I swore fuently in
the language we both understood SO
well.
''Aw shut up" he said gently.
You needed that lettingdown to
keep from blowing up. That was
the only way I could think of to
get you to take it,
Shouldered Too Much.
But he never learned to take his
own medicine. Like Franklin Roose-
welt and like Wendell Willkie-I fear
he insisted, until recent years, on
doing everything important himself,
delePatine little or no responsibility
and driving himself without mercy.
sadly believe that if Walter Chrys-
Ter had himself done more letting
down to keep from blowing up, l
wouldn't be writing this piece for
many years and his country would
have had the services in this crisis
of one of the greatest masters OF in
dustrial production the world has
seen. He was only IS.
MUST BE MORE DEFINITE
Mr.. Willkie has a right and duty
to make one last utterance in gen
eral terms. He has used that priv
ilege up in his acceptance. Now
he must be definite.
Considering all the difficulties of
the times and the circumstances, his
opener was a good job. 1t reads
better than it sounded. But these
sympathetic qualifications won't do
the candidate any good except with
people who are for him anyway. 1t
was his job to win over the indie
pendents, the luke-warm and some
opponents. None of these will make
excuses for anything less than per-
lection as each individual voter
measures perfection.
With all its textual excellence
there were two deadly but correct
able SHIPS, possibly resulting from
an effort to condense. Mr.. Willkie
neglected specifically to guarantee
labor against employer" interior
ence with collective bargaining. On
agriculture he slipped back as far
as Harding, Coolidge and Hoover
into a generality offensive to farm
ers because it was used to fool them
for IL years. In these two fields
certain words and short phrases
have become symbols of whole eco
nomic essays and Mr.. Willkie, new
to this kind of language, adopted
poisonous phrasing. That error can
be retrieved in his speeches on these
issues. feel sure that his thinking
there Is straight