Clarence Dillon and Walter Percy Chrysler were eating lunch at a Manhattan club, some four miles from Wall Street, May made fair weather outdoors. Mr. Dillon had just returned from one of his frequent idlings in Europe (this was three weeks ago) and looked almost robust.
Physically he is frail, and, when working hard, fidgety. The condition is largely the result of an accident a score of years ago. He was on a week-end visit at the country home near Milwaukee of Ann McEldin Douglass, his fiancee.* Mrs. Douglass with the young people was at the railroad station. Along the tracks went an express train, and across the tracks a huge St. Bernard dog. The train batted the huge dog through the air. The dog struck Mr. Dillon in the stomach and knocked him toward a lamp post. On the way he struck Mrs. Douglass and broke her arm. At the post he struck his head. There was a concussion of the brain, fear of a fractured skull, and weeks of convalescence. When he became well he and Miss Douglass were married, and went to Europe for two years ($8,000 railroad damages paid expenses). Although he spends one to three months each year in the woods with his son, hunting and fishing and strolling, he has never recovered the vibrant strength of his childhood in Texas, of his youth in Massachusetts (Worcester Academy, Harvard '05). He still has a bump on his head from that accident.
Walter Percy Chrysler, sitting opposite Mr. Dillon at that mid-Manhattan luncheon, seemed a mighty smith. But when he spoke, his words were as precise, his phrases as concise as Mr. Dillon's suaver ones.
They talked about motor cars. Mr. Chrysler spoke of his four models—the four cylinder Chrysler "52" selling at $670 f. o. b. Detroit, and of his three sixes, the "62" in the $1,000 class, the "72" at $1.545 & up, the Imperial "80" at $3,000 and up. He mentioned the new six, to be called the "De Soto," to be made by a separate corporation; and to be sold for $900. He referred to Dodge Bros., which Mr. Dillon controls; to its "Standard Six" at $875, its "Victory Six" at $1,045 and its "Senior Six" at a minimum of $1,495; to Graham Bros, trucks, which Dodge Bros, also make. He, motor maker, asked questions of Clarence Dillon, investment banker, about Dodge Bros, factories, dealers and finances. Mr. Dillon asked about Chrysler Corp.'s factories, dealers and finances.
Postprandially the two men decided that Dodge Bros, and Chrysler Corp. might in some fashion consolidate to the benefit of their stockholders, employes, dealers, customers.
There followed action of amazing and utterly unprecedented speed. Engineers and accountants for both met the very next week in a Detroit hotel. Before each other they placed statistics and reports on every detail of their respective operations. Great businessmen trust each other in such fashion.
Assaying did not take long; the engineers hastened to Manhattan with analyzed data. Mr. Dillon, solitary in the great silence of his soundproof office downtown, studied them. Mr. Chrysler, less sensitive to racket, studied them at his office in midtown Madison Avenue. When he went to his Park Avenue home four blocks away he was preoccupied, and servants avoided disturbing him.