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Roscoe Martin Smith
- Wayne State University Press
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Roscoe Martin Smith 1894-1991 'You've got a dynasty all your own." —Charles E. Sorensen* Roscoe Smith, an electrical engineer, was best known as . manager of Ford Motor Company's outlying plants, also known as Henry Ford's Village Industries. These hydroelectric manufacturing plants, numbering as many as twenty-four at one time and together generating more than 16,000 horsepower, demonstrated Ford's belief in the value of waterpower in providing industrial employment to rural areas. Roscoe Martin Smith was born on a farm in Johnson County, Indiana , on January 22, 1894. His parents were Ernest D. and Nancy Ellen DeHart Smith. When Roscoe was about six years old, the family moved to Indianapolis, where he started school. His father worked as a cabinetmaker , and they stayed in Indianapolis about three years. Then the family moved to Cass, Indiana, a mining town where Ernest Smith bought a barber shop and became a barber. Roscoe finished seventh grade in Cass before moving with the family to Deming, New Mexico, where he finished high school in 1911. Nicknamed "Rock," he was the oldest of six children, with a brother, Earl, and sisters Mabel, Helen, Hazel, and Blanche. Between 1911 and 1913, Smith went west as many boys his age longed to do. He stated he "did a little of everything.,. He worked for Cheno Copper Company, where he was a helper on a 150-man track gang; for Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, where he worked on tipple as well as underground; and for the U.S. government on Elephant Butte Dam at Engel, New Mexico. During Smith's schooling and working experience, he was especially interested in electricity. In 1913 he enrolled in an electrical apprenticeship course at American Electric Company back in Indianapolis. With * From the oral reminiscences of Roscoe M. Smith, recalling a statement by Charles E. Sorensen when Smith had charge of the Rouge Electrical Manufacturing Department. 259 Henry's Lieutenants evening study, he soon completed both the apprenticeship and the electrical engineering course from International Correspondence Schools. On March 27, 1915, Smith married Gladys Irene Chambers, daughter of Morris and Cora Hall Chambers. The couple set up housekeeping in Indianapolis, but before long work became scarce, and the Smiths moved to Detroit, where Roscoe was employed by the Detroit Edison Company in its experimental shop. The 1916 Detroit City Directory lists Smith as an electrician living at 360 25th Street. The Smiths had two children: Roscoe M. Smith, Jr., born March 4, 1916, and Marion J. Smith, born April 2, 1918. Smith obtained a job at Ford Motor Company on September 11, 1916, as an electrician maintaining overhead motors in the flywheel department. After about a year, he was transferred to electrical maintenance in the starter and generator armature department, where he stayed until January 1919. He then became foreman of a production job in charge of twelve armature winding machines. In September 1920, he was promoted to assistant general foreman. Soon after this promotion, the Smith family moved to 11611 Nardin Avenue, which was their home for the next fourteen years. After six years of electrical manufacturing experience at Highland Park, in 1925 Smith was notified his department was being moved to the new Rouge Motor Assembly Building in Dearborn. At the Rouge, Smith worked under a building superintendent who recognized that he knew little about electrical matters himself and let Smith supervise his department with very little interference. This gave Smith opportunity to lay out new machines and inaugurate a variety of automated operations for producing starters and generators more efficiently. By 1927, his department was producing 10,000 starters and generators per day. At the Rouge, Smith was able to cut costs of manufacturing sufficiently to greatly impress Charles E. Sorensen, then top man at the Rouge. Smith's chief competition in building starters and generators was the Electric Autolite Company. In 1927, during the changeover from Model T to Model A, Ford gave the starter-generator business to Electric Autolite, and Smith's department was temporarily abolished. At that point, Sorensen assigned Smith to the "student's course," more recently called management training. Smith was only thirty-three years old and, although possibly not aware of it, was being groomed for higher management assignments. The training program required working in departments engaged in engine, chassis, body, trim, and painting—all major aspects of building an automobile. Smith completed this training in May 1928. 260 Sorensen next assigned Smith to a group...