Show GENERAL HUGH S JOHNSON washington D C WALTER CHRYSLER wherever the mcgregor sits is the head of the table during his prime that could well have been said of walter chrysler by the whole automobile industry excepting henry ford now walter chrysler is gone he was one of the industrial giants of the magic period of expansion beginning with the world war industry producing men of that type today maybe the new crop is a better type it certainly is a more polished type but it lacks the sturdiness initiative and drive ot of the generation that started working with its hands and knew in addition to business strategy and tactics acquired later every operation in the shop eager to do his bit I 1 have worked with or across the table with him on many occasions in the past 22 years his going wrenches me as I 1 think it does everyone who knew him well like the loss of an old army messmate the first time I 1 met him was in the old industrial relations days of the world war those were not unlike those of in which we were very close with a reputation for being about the toughest trooper in the industry he was really a complete softy on the sentimental side one evening when the going was toughest in literally working 18 to 20 hours a day he asked me to go to dinner with the heads of his industry when I 1 complained that I 1 have time he carried me off almost bodily on a compromise that it would only be an hour with the coffee he pushed his chair back and said 1 I want to take a minute to tell you about an experience peri ence of my early youth it started off innocently enough about a prospecting trip in the rocky mountains with an old sourdough named deadeye dick in about five minutes he had that bunch of hard shells either rocking with laughter or dizzy with astonishment it was a masterpiece of old time frontier lying that woud have made mark twain green with envy it went on and on with never a nagging flagging of interest a pause for breath or a failure of each succeeding whopper to top the earlier ones with fantastic imagery when he stopped I 1 suddenly awoke to the fact that it was after midnight and I 1 swore fluently in the language we voth both understood so well aw shut up he said gently you needed that letting down to keep from blowing up that was the only way I 1 could think of tc get you to take it shouldered too much but he never learned to take his own medicine like franklin roosevelt and like wendell willkie I 1 fear he insisted until recent years on doing everything important himself delegating little or no responsibility and driving himself without mercy I 1 sadly believe that if walter chrysler had himself done more letting down to keep from blowing up I 1 be writing this piece for many years and his country would have had the services in this crisis of one of the greatest masters of industrial du production the world has seen he was only 65 MUST BE MORE DEFINITE mr willkie has a right and duty to make one last utterance in general terms he has used that privilege up in his acceptance now he must be definite considering all the difficulties of the times and the circumstances his opener was a good job it reads better than it sounded but these sympathetic qualifications wont do the candidate any good except with people who are for him anyway it was his job to win over the independents pen dents the lukewarm luke hike warm and some opponents none of these will make excuses for anything less than perfection as each individual voter measures perfection with all its textual excel excellence lenc e there were two deadly but correctable slips possibly resulting from an effort to condense e mr willkie neglected specifically to guarantee labor against employer interference with collective bargaining on agriculture he slipped back as far as harding coolidge and hoover into a generality offensive to farmers because it was used to fool them for 12 years in these two fields certain words and short phrases have become symbols of whole economic essays and mr willkie new to this kind of language adopted poisonous phrasing that error can be retrieved in his speeches on these issues I 1 feel sure that his thinking there is straight HATCHET MAN ICKES the new deal campaign against willkie started with a barrage of gas mud and fireworks which reveals nearly all its weapons and ammunition in one triple blast bullitt flynn and ickes I 1 know that mr ickes would not deliberately lie but he should have known that whether mr willkie belonged to tammany whether he haa fact not opposed insull instill whether he ija opposed la guardia whether he is still head of any utility are cold statements of fact easily checked by bj anybody |