Читать книгу Story of the automobile - H. L. Barber - Страница 9

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Unfortunately at that time, the licensed association had not the grasp on patent protective measures, engineering work, standardization, etc., that obtains in the present national organization, and the real mission of the licensed association never became wholly evident to the public. But the organization did its part in laying the foundations of the industry. It made the handwriting on the wall for popular price so large, that every man who subsequently invested a dollar in automobile making read, pondered and agreed. It placed popular price and standardization of mechanism in the same category—linked them so that the words of the Detroit automobile manufacturing wizard became axioms. The Detroit genius had proved that the depth and capacity of the automobile market was exactly in ratio to the possible price reduction. Amazing but true, the big men said, was the field that the lower priced car opened to the thoughtful maker of cars. Manufacturers began to talk of some day building and selling as high as a million automobiles in one year. Others calmly declared that when the motor car sales in cities began to “slow up,” there would be still more than 5,000,000 prospects in the agricultural districts. Others drew diagrams intended to show that there would be a market for any priced cars that were built in this country, the few persons with large incomes assimilating all the high priced cars, and the many with average incomes absorbing the quantity production at popular prices. All allowances were made for the increase in the cost of labor, materials such as steels and other metals, leather, etc., and some even went far enough to include the possibility of a foreign war on large proportions and its effect upon the industry.

No one gave concrete thought at that time to the possibility of a skillfully conducted partial payment organization of a national nature that would aid the small salaried man in buying his automobile on time payments. But that came about and still is working out its part in the great economic scheme of distribution of the factory output. The makers did not essay digging into the dealers’ and distributors’ plans for moving cars delivered to them for cash from the factories, and they were not bold enough to say they could finance any time payment and chattel mortgage plans. But many of them admitted the great value of the plan, if a distributer, through a proper alliance with his banker, could make sales in that manner and realize his money. The public learned well, early, that the maker of cars rarely consigned any automobiles to a dealer. The maker sold for cash—the draft had to be presented by the dealer or distributer before he could unload the freight car. It would be legitimate business, the public said, for any automobile dealer to finance himself so that he could sell cars on time. On time today is a mighty big phrase in the industry. It means many a car added to the annual output.

With the growth of incomes in the United States the statisticians found there were more than 6,000,000 people in this country with annual incomes of more than $1,200, and 3,500,000 with annual incomes of more than $1,800. All these things aided in installing confidence in the big men of the motor industry. Quantity production became the password for the manufacturer. A new development in distribution was wonderfully improved—dealers from all over the country were brought to the factory of the car maker, and after a convention of a few days, the dealers were invited to sign up for the coming year, nominating the number and type of models they would buy. The maker pored over his order blanks when the dealers left, made his plans for material accordingly, and there was only prosperity in each automobile factory, as a rule, for the remainder of the year. The orders were indicative of, safely speaking, sixty per cent of the signed total. Some makers took chances and built very close to the total agreed on by the dealers, and, except in few cases, the scheme worked out. Today the maker studies all conditions and accepts the orders of his dealers, setting the figure of output after numerous factory conferences.

Makers who could point to an annual production of, say 400 cars, took counsel among themselves, and some 50 increased their factory efficiency and financial responsibility that they can now point to an output of as many cars in one day as they made early in their manufacturing experience in one season.

The writer recalls one manufacturer who, about nine years ago, had an output of about 500 cars for one season. Only recently he paid close to a quarter of a million dollars, if indeed his extra expenses did not bring the total to $300,000, to conduct a twenty-one day convention at his factory covering a site of seventy-nine acres, at which dealers from the four quarters of the country were entertained. He had daily meetings in the big halls of his administration building, and his lieutenants carefully outlined to all the plans of the company for the year, and exploited the line of models.

“We have $30,000,000 in materials purchased, and expect to get all this material when we need it for manufacturing cars,” said the big man to his dealers. “But the war in Europe has caused many problems of price and quantify to arise, and heaven only knows what the material situation will be after July 1. I advise you to order all the cars you need—think well of your requirements—and stick by that number. Then you will not be like many are bound to be, who are indifferent to manufacturing conditions—you will have cars to meet the biggest demand the industry ever has known.”

That automobile president had the pleasure of meeting thousands of dealers, speaking to more than one thousand of them daily, and with his factory production manager he figured the probable needs of his country-wide organization of dealers and branch houses for the year. It is significant that the few changes he made on his early winter production table, which the writer was permitted to scan, were made only in the “increase columns.”