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Flypaper. Before going to Packard, Alvan Macauley had worked for John Henry Patterson's National Cash Register and for American Arithmometer Co., forerunner of Burroughs Adding Machine. When about to leave National Cash Register, Mr. Macauley was somewhat embarrassed over breaking the news to Mr. Patterson who, though gifted, was also explosive. Fortunately, Mr. Macauley's departure was tempered by an even greater embarrassment for Mr. Patterson. When Mr. Macauley went in to tell his employer of his new job, he found his chief, just back from Europe and wearing a pair of French flannel trousers, sitting on a sheet of flypaper. Mr. Macauley, horror-stricken, gaped at Mr. Patterson. Mr. Patterson, sensing something amiss, felt his rear end, arose with a yell. By the time Mr. Macauley had helped remove the flypaper from Mr. Patterson's pants and apply turpentine to Mr. Patterson's person, the head of National Cash Register was in no mood to become excited about Mr. Macauley's future.
At Arithmometer, Mr. Macauley had his troubles. The man who was then president resented his arrival and shortly resigned, taking with him 52 executives and keymen. Left behind was only one man who knew anything about adding-machine design. Arithmometer was then doing business in St. Louis. Mr. Macauley quarreled with the city government because it refused to let him connect two buildings with a bridge across an alley, moved the whole Arithmometer personnel and plant to Detroit in 1905. Five years later came the call to Packard and in 1916 the presidency of the Packard works.
Until 1930 the Macauley administration was largely a record of continued expansion, continued prosperity, continued earnings. Back in the beginning, Packard decided to embrace high-quality small production, forego low-price mass production. In the years right after the War its cars sold at $6,000 and no pre-Depression Packard could ever be bought for less than $2,000. As the volume producer in the high-priced field, the company during the last five years of the Coolidge Era (1925-29): 1) took in $411,000,000; 2) made $86,000,000; 3) paid out cash dividends of $50,000,000.
120. Depression hit high-priced cars harder than any other group in the industry. Packard sales dropped from $107,000,000 in fiscal 1929 to $14000,000 in 1934; cars sold dropped from 44,634 to 6,552. In 1932 Packard tried to keep its salesmen and dealers from starving to death by marketing a light, 8-cylinder car priced at $1,750. The model failed, was withdrawn after only a few thousand had been sold. Meanwhile, as the quality market continued to shrink, Mr. Macauley in 1934 decided upon another invasion of the relatively low-priced field. This time he marked his car clear down into the thousand-dollar level, produced the 1935 One Twenty. Month ago Packard announced the 1936 One Twenty, differing from the 1935 model chiefly in having a 120-h. p. engine instead of 110 h. p. The new engine created a new slogan ("A horsepower for every inch'') and resulted in the sales-point, odd for Packard, that the new One Twenty can "run away from a Ford."