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Show 'WayBackWhen 9 By JEANNE MOTOR EXECUTIVE WAS A DAY LABORER WILLIAM S. KNUDSEN, vice president of General Motors, hardly gave promise to the casual observer of being executive material mate-rial 30 years ago. Born in Denmark Den-mark in 1880, he came to the United Unit-ed States at the age of twenty, with $30 in his pocket. His first job was as a reamer and riveter in a New York shipyard, and later he worked In the railroad shops at Salamanca, N. Y., repairing locomotive boilers. Knudsen had worked in a bicycle plant in Denmark, and he finally obtained a job as a bench hand in ; a similar factory in Buffalo, N. Y. The result? In five years Knudsen Knud-sen was manager of the bicycle factory, the Keim mills which Henry Hen-ry Ford bought in 1911. During the next ten years, he worked closely with Ford in the development of mass production of automobiles. In 1921, he joined General Motors, where he steadily advanced to his present position as one of the most prominent men in the whole automobile auto-mobile industry. There is so much in liking the work you do that, even if offered more money at something I did not like, I think I would stick with the thing that appealed to me more. And I would be thinking of my own success in doing that. For, when we are working on things we like, we can put in more extra hours, we take more extra pains, we can do a better job. Doing the things we like, we tire less easily. We are inspired toward finding better ways, and we are able to contribute so much more than we may be actually paid for at the moment t that advancement cannot fail to , be rapid. I FLIVVER KING WAS A SIMPLE MECHANIC TIME is so short, so swift in passing, pass-ing, we should never be at los3 for how to use it. The question should not be "How can I kill this evening?" but rather "Do I need to take this valuable time for fun, or is there something important I can do with it?" Consider the life of Henry Ford. He was born on a farm near Dearborn, Dear-born, Mich., in 1863. The oldest of five children, Henry helped his father fa-ther with the plowing, shucked corn, mowed hay, cut grain, dug potatoes, pota-toes, and milked cows. Time never nev-er hung heavily on his hands. Mechanically Me-chanically inclined, he rigged up a small machine shop on the farm and repaired watches at night for the village jeweler. After finishing the local public schools, the farmer boy left for the city to seek his fortune. for-tune. In Detroit, he obtained a job as a mechanic's apprentice and the fortune he received was $2.50 per week. When he was twenty-four he returned to the farm and ran a sawmill, experimenting in his spare time with a steam car. There was never a question in his mind about what to do with time. His father was not in sympathy with Henry Ford's experiments, so he again went to Detroit, and worked for a power and light company com-pany as an engineer on the night shift. During the seven years that he was there he became general manager; and night after night, at home, he worked far into the morning morn-ing hours in developing a gasoline motor car. Success came from his experiments at last, and in order to popularize the new vehicle, Henry Hen-ry Ford built racing cars and drove them himself in race after race. You know where Henry Ford stands today. His life is the story of time well used. It is an example worth re- membering the next time you are wondering "how to kill time." I WN'U Service. |