These are all
assembling plants, but in twenty-two of them parts are also
manufactured. They had stopped the making of parts but they went on
assembling cars. At the time of shutting down we had practically no cars
in Detroit. We had shipped out all the parts, and during January the
Detroit dealers actually had to go as far a field as Chicago and
Columbus to get cars for local needs. The branches shipped to each
dealer, under his yearly quota, enough cars to cover about a month's
sales. The dealers worked hard on sales. During the latter part of
January we called in a skeleton organization of about ten thousand men,
mostly foremen, sub-foremen, and straw bosses, and we started Highland
Park into production. We collected our foreign accounts and sold our
by-products.
Then we were ready for full production. And gradually into full
production we went--on a profitable basis. The house-cleaning swept out
the waste that had both made the prices high and absorbed the profit. We
sold off the useless stuff. Before we had employed fifteen men per car
per day.
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