Business & Finance: Pancho Villa's Boy

In Toledo, Electric Auto-Lite Co.'s Chairman Royce G. Martin, 68, is only the second biggest employer (8,000 workers in six plants).†But he is the world's biggest independent maker of auto parts. His company not only turns out 400 different items, ranging from sparkplugs to windshield wipers and tail lamps, but it is growing fast. Last week Martin broke ground for a new $2,000,000 plant, which will increase his employment by 1,000 and his sales an estimated $10 million a year.

The new plant's product, said Martin, will be an armed-forces electronic product "so secret that I cannot discuss it . . . The first phase is for $30 million, and the total may reach $150 million." It is so intricate that Martin will transfer his most skilled workers and supervisors. "We have the know-how in Toledo," says Martin. "I've found it's easy to transplant a rose, but it's damned hard to transplant an oak tree."

The Border Captain. Hickory-tough Royce Martin is himself a transplant from Texas, where he was born in Clint (pop: 770). He has always had a way with metals and money. An orphan at 9, Martin moved to Chicago, finished school at St. Aloysius Academy, and got his first feel of metals working in the toolshop of Chicago's Felt & Tarrant Mfg. Co. (marine motors). He first got the feel of money when he returned to Texas, and later went to Mexico as a railroad shop foreman.

While in Juarez, Mexico in 1909, Marin met famed Rebel Leader Pancho Villa, who asked him to help run his revolution. Martin worked for Villa for seven years, taught the illiterate rebel how to write his name in the sand with a stick, and became so close to him that Villa called him "My Boy (one of the three English phrases he knew). In 1916, when Mexican government forces were closing in on their stronghold, Martin escaped, taking Villa's wife and children to New Orleans, thence to safety in Cuba.*

Martin returned to Texas and organized a corporate beachhead from which to make raids as daring as Villa's. He got control of Brooklyn's Safe-T-Stat Corp. makers of radiator thermometers, later absorbed competitors (Moto Meter Co. Nagel Electric, National Gauge) into Moto-Meter Gauge and Equipment Corp.

The Master Salesman. In 1934 he turned his roving eye toward Auto-Lite, which had been making ignition parts ever since 1911 and had more than 50% of the business. But Auto-Lite had lost Henry ford, its biggest single customer, because Henry decided to make his own electric parts. Auto-Lite was also in bad repute because of a bitter strike in which trigger-happy Ohio national guardsmen shot and killed two strikers and wounded five others. Martin was able to talk Auto-Lite's founder, the late Clem Mininger, into a 2½-for-one swap of Moto Meter's stock for Auto-Lite's, and soon after Martin became president. In 18 years he has boosted Auto-Lite's sales from $14 million to $271 million, and profits from $1.2 million to 1952's net of $9.8 million.†