Q&A: The Builders and Titans of Our Century

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GREGORY SHAMUS / REUTERS

Former vice chairman of the Chrysler Corporation, Bob Lutz

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WALTER ISAACSON: It changed all of American industry, not just the auto industry. It was what—

ROBERT A. LUTZ: It changed everything.

It changed the world. It changed the world. I mean, I would think, if I was asked to vote now, I'd make him man of the century because you could argue that nothing changed the face of human society as much as the mass affordability of the automobile.

WALTER ISAACSON: And the assembly-line as an industrial process—

ROBERT A. LUTZ: Well, but that's what I mean.

The affordability of the automobile came from the division of labor as represented by the assembly line. And that was Henry Ford's invention. It was his vision. It was his vision to make an automobile affordable for everybody in the whole world, and so far it's come pretty close.

WALTER ISAACSON: Well, it is one of the themes of this century — mass produced products, where, you know, coming off an assembly line, everybody getting the same thing.

ROBERT A. LUTZ: And mass transportation, and—

WALTER ISAACSON: Yeah, but you were— you were sort of questioning Geraldine when she was talking about her industry in an American-centric way.

The auto industry — do you put ????Aiigi Toyota [sp] up there with him?

ROBERT A. LUTZ: I like Toyota. I think in the— in the list that all of us got to look at, I saw some notable absences. I would say Pops Honda, Soichio Honda, who went from being a penniless laborer who put little motors, war surplus motors, on bicycles, became a huge force in the world's motorcycle industry and then transitioned to cars.

But certain ????????Aiigi Toyota and some of the executives around him like ????Taichi Ono [sp] who invented many of the techniques that we now ascribe the Toyota production system — formidable force, without question. I would feel very comfortable with putting Toyota up there, but I'd still put Ford in first place.

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: It's an interesting question because sometime in the '30s the company really ran out of gas — if you will — was in desperate trouble and had really begun to lose out to the genius of Alfred Sloane and the way he pulled the General Motors Corporation together to make it really the dominant company of the century by many measures.

The question that I think you have to ask — and it's really one of definition — is whether a master of the corporation or even the corporation itself belongs in a consideration of builders and titans.

ROBERT A. LUTZ: Yeah.

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: Or whether we're solely focusing on the individuals.

WALTER ISAACSON: Darla, who was the best manager of this century, speaking of that?

DARLA MOORE: Man of the century ought to be — person of the century — is who cobbled together this system that we have, which is the most incredibly healthy economic, social system the world has ever known. How was this system cobbled together so that we have everybody from Henry Ford to Bill Gates that we can all hold up as icons?

WALTER ISAACSON: And the century starts with J.P. Morgan, right?

DARLA MOORE: The century starts with J.P. Morgan, although arguably you could say he's figure of the 19th century. But really he, of the— of that group would fall into the 20th century because around 1908 they underwrote the largest stock offering of the time, which was the first billion-dollar corporation in the United States — billion dollars.

And it was—

WALTER ISAACSON: U.S. Steel?

DARLA MOORE: It was U.S. Steel. And it was $1.4 billion capitalization in 1908, when the entire capitalization of manufacturing in the United States at the time was $9 billion.

WALTER ISAACSON: Remember the young kid who figured out how to underwrite it for him?

DARLA MOORE: Yes, and became the first president of U.S. Steel, which was Charles—

WALTER ISAACSON: Schwab.

DARLA MOORE: —Schwab.

WALTER ISAACSON: Which also helped bring consumers into this notion by the way.

DARLA MOORE: Charles Schwab, which also interestingly— Every time something extraordinary happens from a financial standpoint throughout our history, there is great hue and cry in reaction to it. And there was enormous government reaction to— "there must be something sinister or evil or wrong with somebody that could raise that kind of money for a stock."

And then, Charles Schwab promptly went out and built a 75-room mansion replete with bowling alleys and art galleries and everything that you do when you come into that kind of enormous wealth all of a sudden.

So, that's something that doesn't change throughout the century. We do that insanity.

But I would put J.P. Morgan up as one of the cornerstones because he brought the concept of large institutional money to large industrial companies.

WALTER ISAACSON: Speaking as a banker and a venture capitalist, throw in some others. Up to Mike Milken.

DARLA MOORE: And he was the— he was—

I put him as the institutional money.

WALTER ISAACSON: But Charlie Merrill— Charles Merrill— some—

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