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

I. Blazing the Trails of Tomorrow

CHAPTER I BLAZING THE TRAILS OF TOMORROW IT WAS a large audience of men that October afternoon in Constitution Hall, Washington, D. C. There were, in fact, more than a thousand delegates, from sixty-four different countries , the most representative global conference that had ever been held in Washington. Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of State, rose to make the opening remarks for this Sixth Congress of the Permanent International Association of Road Congresses, on the afternoon of October 6, 1930. It was a meeting which evoked the shades of Daniel Boone, of Lewis and Clark, of Julien Dubuque, of the young surveyor Washington, of America's trail blazers down to almost modern times, for it celebrated the governmental recognition of the new era of highways brought about by the automobile and motor travel. In the first quarter of the Twentieth Century, every obstacle had been placed in the way of the development of America's highways, by inertia, by vested interests, by skeptics. Even after some twenty million of Americans were driving cars, there was an aloofness in various official quarters as though motor transportation were some passing fad, like mah-jong; but a few persistent, far-seeing men, notably the president-general of this gathering in Constitution Hall, year in and year out had fought for the cause of American highway travel. They had opposed strangling taxation, had promoted engineering and financing standards, and, above all, had affirmed that the motor vehicle was the people's transportation and deserved recognition from their Government. Now in 1930, after many years of struggle, 2 ROY D. CHAPIN official sanction had crowned their efforts in a signal manner. The United States in a few years had outstripped the rest of the world in its highway development, and here, at this conference , delegates from the various nations had been invited by the United States Government to exchange views and knowledge on highway transport for the benefit of all countries. After a few words of welcome to those from other countries, Mr. Stimson called upon the president-general of the Congress, Roy D. Chapin, of Detroit, Mich. A well-groomed, self-possessed man rose to speak, and drew the audience to him with the flash of a radiant smile. He had a young, oval face, with prominent brooding eyes which looked upon the world through nose glasses. His nose was evenly formed, his cheeks rosy, and his lips inclined to fullness. His brow was broad and of medium height, topped by a generous amount of dark hair which was parted on the left and brushed back firmly and smoothly. He wore a cutaway coat, a wing collar, a gray and white striped tie, and a white carnation in his buttonhole. He gave the general appearance of a handsome young member of the Diplomatic Corps. So this was Roy Chapin. All of the delegates had heard of him, though hundreds had never seen him before, and the latter were taken by surprise at his youthfulness. His was a name already written into the history of highways. His hand had been active in earlier road gatherings at home and abroad, and his public utterances on the future of highways dated as far back as 1905. There was reason for many to expect to see a sedate veteran. Roy Chapin's business career also would supposedly have marked him as an older man. He was founder and chairman of the board of the Hudson Motor Car Company, one of America 's largest manufacturing concerns. He had introduced the first closed car to sell at almost the same price as the open BLAZING THE TRAILS 3 touring cars, in an era when a sedan body was a luxury. This innovation, as Chapin's friend, the late Edsel Ford, observed, had vastly enlarged the scope of motoring in America and had made the automobile industry a stabilized, all-year business instead of a seasonal one. Chapin's first low-priced enclosed car, known as the Essex, had been followed by a score of competitors, and the open touring model in all automobile lines, which hitherto had been the standard type used by the public, soon gave way to the sedan and coupe. The "pleasure car/' used mostly for vacations or other pleasure riding, within a few years had become an all-year car, an everyday means of transportation for businessmen, factory workers, professions, in agriculture, and...