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¶ In law, Chief Justice Earl Warren read out the Supreme Court's unanimous order calling for desegregation of public schools "with all deliberate speed"—a classic application of the unchanging principles of constitutional law to ever-changing, everyday U.S. life.
But the decisions that men saw changing the skylines of the cities, turning poor farm land into prosperous factories (and parking lots), bringing new credit and buying power into backward areas—these were the decisions of American businessmen. (In fact, while the Supreme Court attacked segregation in schools, businessmen attacked it in industry by: 1) raising living standards of Southern Negroes, and 2) teaching whites and Negroes to work side by side in new Southern factories.) All through the year, industry exploded to catch up with the twin demands of the mid-20th century: a rapidly rising standard of living and a long-range increase in population.
Everywhere that industry grew, the managers studied how to pull all the far-flung parts together and make them work more efficiently—so that, in effect, shareholders, executives and workmen would get increasing return from an hour's productive work. And what they studied hardest was the amazing efficiency of General Motors and how it had achieved it.
Shares for All. Like most of today's great corporations, G.M. achieved it because giants of old had laid the foundations with big, visionary ideas. The man who founded General Motors was William C. Durant, an ex-carriage, ex-bicycle, ex-wagon maker who first hit the jackpot by backing an auto designer named David Buick. In 1905, Billy Durant capitalized Buick for a staggering $10 million, three years later tried to corner the auto manufacturing business. (Henry Ford agreed to sell for $8,000,000, but at the last minute Durant's bankers backed away from the $2,000,000 down payment.) Durant settled instead, in 1908, for a combine that included Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Northway and Oakland, and called it the General Motors Co. Detroit called it "Durant's folly" until, in 1910, G.M. sold $34 million worth of automobiles and netted $10.5 million (since it was before taxes, literally).
When Durant's optimistic expansions and mergers ran him out of cash, the bankers began talking of the "saturation point" in the auto market, and moved in on him. After Durant went out of G.M., he drew on his enormous prestige with mechanics and investors alike, to found Chevrolet as part of a plan to regain control of G.M. In little more than a year, Chevrolet was valued at a fabulous $94 million. He offered a bargain trade of five shares of Chevrolet for one of G.M., while he also bought G.M. stock (G.M. stock went from $82 to a high of $558 within a year). Thus he gained control of G.M. and added Chevrolet to the corporation. Meanwhile, the Du Ponts had become large G.M. stockholders, and when Durant went under in the 1920 crash (trying to bolster the price of G.M. stock), they bought him out. *