(3 of 6)
Wamegonian. Sixty years ago Henry Chrysler used to drive a wood-burning locomotive across the plains of Kansas. Fifty-eight years ago a son was born to him in the town of Wamego, Kans. Walter Chrysler from boyhood was a wizard with machinery. At 1 7 he quit school to become an engine wiper at 5 ¢an hour. He took a course in mechanical engineering from International Correspondence Schools. At 33 he had already driven through all the branches of railroad mechanics to the position of superintendent of motive power and machinery for the Chicago & Great Western. From that job he went to American Locomotive Co.'s Pittsburgh works as assistant manager. A year later he was promoted to manager. But it was in the automobile business that Chrysler first proved his ability as an executive as well as an operating man. In 1912 Charles W. Nash, who had succeeded Durant as head of General Motors, put him in charge of Buick. For two years Chrysler kept a cot in the factory. Buick's production jumped from 40 to over 500 cars a day. When Durant made his comeback into General Motors, Chrysler became vice president in charge of GM operations. But Durant and Chrysler quarreled. In 1920 Willys- Overland which had just gone on the post-War rocks hired Chrysler to pull it off. Then Maxwell Motor came to him with another salvage job. Maxwell had only 50 active dealers, had 26,000 unsold cars piling up demurrage in freight yards all across the country, had $20,000,000 in debts. By the time Chrysler had rehabilitated Maxwell, it was his company. In 1924 he brought out his first car under his own name, a car with a high speed motor, low slung, built for traffic. It caught public fancy and for the first time its maker began to make money hand over fist.
Neck Out. Walter Chrysler swam atop the great boom of the twenties. He bought Dodge at a grand price. He plunged into the fiercely fought small car field, setting up Plymouth as a competitor of Chevrolet and Ford. He acquired an estate at Great Neck, L. I. He built his skyscraper in Manhattan. He became a collector of fine oriental rugs and tapestries. He had his life insured for $1,000,000. The whole glittering world of the boom beckoned to him and he responded. It would have been hard to find a man who, in the language of the market place, "had his neck farther out" in 1929. It stuck out almost as far as the necks of the giraffes which he had had collected in Africa for the Washington Zoo. His Chrysler Building, built to house a population greater than that of Wamego, was not completed until almost a year after the bubble burst. Chrysler Motors had expanded at the top of the boom, to face a dwindling market. It was some satisfaction to him that in 1932 Plymouth was the only car of the Big Three to increase its sales (18%) but when he footed up the bill for that year Chrysler Corp. had a loss of $11,254,000. Yet the hard-driving operating man who had denied himself none of the plush upholstery of the boom showed that he had lost none of his skill when it came to Depression.