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And Sloan saw to it that G.M. was fast on its feet. He kept the mighty organization as fluid and quick-moving as a small company, as competitive inside the corporation as the auto industry was outside. Example: if a G.M. division can buy a part cheaper from an outside company than from a corporation division, it is perfectly free to do so. In the same way G.M.'s cars fight each other for their share of the market. In war, G.M. showed the same fluidity. Example: it was the only auto company which made planes in an auto plant. It took on the hardest jobs it could get from the Army & Navy; Mr. Sloan likes to crack tough nuts. In all it turned out an incredible total of $12 billion in materiel.
No Dictator. Supple and spry as it is, G.M. is still too big a behemoth for one man to run. Sloan does not attempt to do it alone. G.M. is run by what is roughly equivalent to an army's general staff. The chief of staff is Mr. Sloan. It is his mind that plans, his hand that guides. The staff is made up of a policy and an administrative committee. These committees create the broad strategy for G.M., and eight smaller committees, made up of G.M.'s officers, board members and division heads, work out the tactics. Within the strategic plan, the divisions run almost as freely as independent companies. Not long ago Mr. Sloan remarked: "If the whole General Motors central organization should be hit by an atomic bomb, Pontiac could go on just exactly the same."
Pontiac and all the other 41 divisions would go right on because the division heads are, in effect, a general staff for production in themselves. At the top is Charles Erwin Wilson,* 55, who gets $151,000 a year plus bonuses. White-haired, slow-talking, he bossed G.M.'s conversion to war, is now guiding it back to peace. In the U.A.W. strike against G.M., it is Charlie Wilson who will sit down and face the union across the bargaining table. Sloan has never done the actual bargaining with the U.A.W. An engineer by training, C.E. stepped into Big Bill Knudsen's place when Knudsen went off to war, soon showed himself a tough, quick-witted bargainer, and superlative production man as well.
Under him are the division heads:
¶ Oldsmobile's Sherrod E. Skinner, 56, a onetime Navy machinist.
¶ Pontiac's Harry J. Klingler, 56, who made his mark as a Chevrolet salesman before he turned to production.
¶ Cadillac's Nicholas Dreystadt, 56, who learned his fundamentals in Germany's Mercedes plant, put them to good use turning out the best U.S. light tank, the M-24.
¶Chevrolet's Marvin E. Coyle, 57, who will have the tough job of designing and selling the smaller and cheaper Chevrolet which G.M. plans to make.
¶ Buick's Harlow H. Curtice, 52, who helped push Buick up to the top spot of G.M.'s middle-priced autos.
Strategic Bombing. As the battle lines were drawn last week, the U.A.W. lined up its own general staff: Secretary-Treasurer George F. Addes, 35, ex-metal worker and leader of the union's far-left wing; Vice President Richard Truman Frankensteen, 38, now running for mayor of Detroit; Walter Reuther, 38, boss of the union's left-of-center faction; and President Rolland Jay Thomas, 45, balance wheel between the warring Reuther-Addes factions.