Roy D. Chapin: The Man Behind the Hudson Motor Car Company

V. Revolt At Oldsmobile

CHAPTER V REVOLT AT OLDSMOBILE i^LDSMOBILE, thanks to the Detroit-New York trip and V^>/ its sensational results, was now enthusiastically committed to the one-cylinder runabout. It opened up a new and untapped market. Production in 1902 rose to 3,299 cars. The company became at once a leader in the low-priced field, and it was able to attract a number of bright young men like Roy who were willing to work for low pay in order to learn something of an industry which promised excitement and adventure; and the runabout had turned the Olds company into a handsome profit-maker. In the first years of the Olds operations in Detroit, while Roy Chapin was with the company, there were various young men added to the staff who later became noted in the motor industry . Howard E. Coffin came down from Ann Arbor to work in the engineering department. R. B. Jackson also obtained a job with the concern. Another youngster, six months older than Chapin, was F. O. Bezner who had had some experience with National Cash Register in Dayton and was employed by Olds as part of its purchasing staff. Guido Behn was in the drafting department. Charles D. Hastings and C. B. Wilson, who were in an older group, were office manager and general manager respectively. Closely affiliated with the Olds personnel as suppliers were Carl Fisher who was a founder of the Prest-o-Lite Company, Benjamin Briscoe, and John F. and Horace E. Dodge (the Dodge Brothers). Roy, therefore, from his earliest days in the business, was intimately acquainted with many men who, like himself, were 35 $6 ROY D. CHAPIN due to become leaders in the automobile field. It was during this period that he first met Henry Ford who, then operator of a small shop, helped Roy to repair one of the early Olds cars. Roy's relationships with Carl Fisher were considerably closer, as Chapin became an investor in Prest-o-Lite and in 1903 bought half of a patent owned by Fisher on an automobile boot, similar in type to that used today. Roy became sales manager of Olds in 1904, and, in fact, was handling the work of the position for about a year before his promotion was formally recognized. This was no exalted office which handed out contracts with a lordly air. It was a job of barehanded selling, the task of finding merchants throughout the country who believed in the automobile and were able to pay cash on the nail for every car delivered to them. The policy of shipping all cars to dealers c.o.d. grew up in the automobile industry through sheer necessity. All the factories were short of capital, and Wall Street was actively opposed to the financing of the automobile industry. The National City Bank, for example, warned its customers of the risk involved in such investments, and the record of failures among motor companies justified the warning. Roy won the sales managershipjob, as he had the stewardship at the fraternity house, because there was little competition for that difficult and unpalatable task. Most of the men attracted to the motor industry were those with an inventive bent of mind. They turned to engineering design and production work. Success in such a department seemed the quickest path to fame, as Olds, Haynes, Duryea, and other pioneers had already demonstrated. Moreover, an efficient working automobile was still the basic essential for the success of any company. The man who could perfect a better design of car—and in all makes there was vast room for improvement—was sure to get recognition , and might be able to obtain capital to start a company. Roy, too, had a keen awareness of the importance of engineer- REVOLT AT OLDSMOBILE 21 ing and an alert eye for structural details, but he had an even stronger flair for sales and promotion. He had a passion for travel, for meeting new people, and for persuasion. The sales job satisfied those desires. In selling he was a new type. He was never a desk-pounder, rarely raised his voice, and never slapped a back; but he had a gift for low-pressure convincingness. He could be eloquent on occasion, and usually prepared his campaigns with advance scouting, research and strategy. While his colleagues were working on engineering and production difficulties, Roy was travelling in many sections...