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Few years ago he used to spend some of his evenings in the machine-shop in his basement, just tinkering, but lately he has had no time for that and it has been taken over by his 16-year-old son Richard. Last summer Richard built himself a one-lung automobile in the basement shop. Said his father, with the characteristic wrinkled grin that makes his eyes disappear: "A good mechanic's job—and I didn't help him." His other son, Robert, 27, is a Chrysler research engineer. No seeker for a college degree, he went to work for Chrysler after high school. "I gave him a four-year college course in the shop," says his father today, "and I think now that he's a damned fine mechanic."
For the first two years in his new job K. T. Keller steered Chrysler Corp. through some muddy business roads, but Chrysler's sales hit their top in 1937: $769,807,839. And when Chrysler's report for the first six months of 1939 was published in August, he had some sensational news for U. S. business. After a miserable depression year, Chrysler's sales had jumped to $342,788,293, up a whacking 82% from the first half of 1938. For the rest of this year Chrysler, like the rest of the U. S. motor industry (see below), can see nothing but smooth going ahead.
But to K. T. Keller that is no more reason for taking life easier than it is for any other Detroit motormaker. "This game," he says, "isn't a puzzle that you can lay down and pick up again; it's like a bridge hand and you have to play it every minute."
Last week, K. T. Keller was busiest in the engineering department where Chrysler's smart research staff is already busy on 1941 models. It is there the first work is done on K. T. Keller's only recipe for a successful business: "Put out a good product: if it's lousy, you better quit."
To this realistic philosophy, to a pragmatic genius which stems from the machinist's bench and burgeons in a burning urge to put out a good product in quantity for low-priced sale, the U. S. motor industry owes its spectacular growth in the U. S. Most of its topflight executives, men like Ford, Chrysler, Knudsen and Keller, had nothing but their two hands and a kit of tools when they went to work.