Business: All Change!

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Most notable personal milestone in the one-generation industry occurred when one of its pioneers chose to retire into the chairmanship of the company bearing his name. He was Charles Williams Nash, 68, who once owned 20 sheep and little else, whose fortune grew with the Industry until it was said to have made him 100 times a millionaire. Earl Hansen McCarty, 46, succeeded him as president. Mr. Nash began as a carriage-trimmer in the old Flint Road Cart Co. From 1912 through 1916 he presided over General Motors, having rehabilitated the old Buick Motor Car Co. He then formed his own company. Its home is in Kenosha, where also is the famed bedmaking Simmons Co. Scotch-descended Mr. Nash's specialty is cost-paring and Nash can now break even if it sells i.ooo cars a month. In its early years it jumped production rapidly but canny Mr. Nash sensed the tapering demand, stopped his expansion in time. During the trying third quarter ending Aug. 31, Nash came out $183,000 better than even while General Motors, whose third quarter ends in September, showed a $4,400,000 loss. Chairman Nash works no less now that he is chairman; most Nash papers pass over his pinewood desk. He is a mighty hunter, a fervent fisherman, a famed cook. These and other chiefs, the Royal Family of the Industry, were proud of their changing wares last week. For while their kingdom has reached maturity and stability there is one change that has never changed—the continual approach to cheaper and better transportation. And prouder than the Royal Family were the Industry's engineers. The Automobile Show is really their show. The new models on display were dissected a thousand times by their prying minds. Dignified men lay prostrate to gaze at the marvels of a new clutch. Nor will the observation of the engineers end in Manhattan. If Chrysler's Fred M. Zeder is curious about the new Pontiac he may have one sent to his plant and placed on his "Belgian Road." a machine which shakes and sways and jolts a car until finally some spring breaks or some nut wiggles loose. And if Packard's famed Major Jesse Gurney Vincent is curious about somebody else's chassis he may order one bent and twisted until he knows its points as well as if he had designed it. Just as inquisitive, just as skeptical, are the Industry's other engineers, including such men as Studebaker's Delmar ("Barney") Roos, Hupmobile's Frank E. Watts, Reo's Horace T. Thomas, Auburn's Herbert Snow (formerly with Winton Co.), Hudson's S. G. Baits, Franklin's E. S. Marks (designer of the improved air-cooled motor), Nash's N. E. Wahlberg.