"South Bend 3-7111."
''Atlanta calling Mr. Erskine."
"Who is calling in Atlanta?''
"Mr. Woodruff."
"Is that you Bob?"
"Yes, hello Russel. I have an important plan I want to talk over with you."
That, in effect, is the way it began, four weeks ago. Out of the telephone conversation a meeting was arranged in Manhattan. And out of the meeting last week came a plan by which Studebaker, subject to the formality of a stockholders' ballot, will acquire White Motor Co.*
White's vendor was its chairman, Robert Winship Woodruff, 42. Mr. W'oodruff became Atlanta's biggest businessman in 1923 when he resigned as vice president and general manager of Cleveland's White Motor Co. to become president of Atlanta's Coca-Cola Co. Although from 1923 to 1929 President Woodruff devoted his working hours to Coca-Cola (sales went from $24,000,000 to $39,000,000), he remained a director of White and so close a friend of the late Walter Charles White that a type of dual management almost existed between the two companies. When in 1929 President White, an expert driver, was killed in an accident, the directors elected Mr. Woodruff to succeed him. He accepted with the remark, "I guess I will have to live in a Pullman." For a year Mr. Woodruff held both presidencies. Then he resigned as White's chief executive and became chairman. For some time it has been rumored that he and other big White holders wanted to sell out in order to give more time to their own businesses. But the reports have always coupled White to its biggest competitor, Mack. And despite the close friendship of Alabama-born Albert Russel Erskine of Studebaker and Atlanta's Woodruff, news of their telephoning and meeting came as a complete surprise.
Both companies are venerable. In 1852 Harry and Clement Studebaker began making covered wagons in South Bend. Seven years later Thomas White perfected a sewing machine. The Studebaker covered wagons were joined by electric cars about 1900, chiefly because of the foresight of Frederick Samuel Fish who had entered the firm in 1891. Son-in-law of one of the five Studebaker brothers who joined in the business, Mr. Fish, 80, is now chairman of the company. White's entrance into transportation came at about the same time. First roller skates were added to sewing machines, then bicycles. The company was profitable, frugal Thomas White often saying that a man loses value if he is paid more than $5,000 a year "because he spends all his time thinking about how to invest it." In 1899 Founder White and his three sons were rich enough to buy a Locomobile steamer. Tinkerish by nature, they soon were at the boiler and saw a way to improve it. The Locomobile company was not interested, so the Whites built a steamer of their own in 1900. They soon were in commercial production and obtaining a tight grip on all steam patents. The result was that other manufacturers turned to gasoline engines, started propaganda against steamers. In 1906 White offered to license its patents but found no takers. Quick to sense the change, the management turned to gasoline engines although it did not waver in its belief that steamers were safer, faster, more economical than gasoline cars.