Viewing page 78 of 99

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

19

Thus endeth the excerpt from AI&SE paper. Of course, the proof of the pudding was in the eating and by 1940 the New Haven had bought 20 Alco-GE 660-hp 100-ton switchers for general application on various 6-wheel and 8-wheel steam switcher jobs. No further 0901-0910 type were built because they were quite special and could not compete pricewise with the standardised Alco product with GE electrical equipment.

****

My other big project during the first half of 1937 was the proposition and subsequent order for the two 125-ton 1,000-hp switchers for the River Rouge Plant of the Ford Motor Company. The proposition must have been initiated early in the year because the locomotives were sold, designed, built and shipped by about the first of September. The diesel-electric locomotive was not completely new to Ford because they had acquired one of the early Ingersoll-Rand-GE 300-hp 72-ton units as well as an IR-GE 600-hp 108 ton unit in March 1930. By 1937, the 300-hp unit had run 45,000-hours and the head had never been off the engine. This had duly impressed the Ford people. However, when they decided in 1937 that they were at last ready to buy some additional diesels, they wanted around 1,000-hp and I-R wasn't in a position to furnish anything close enough to Ford's wants to be able to even bid on the job as I recall it, and therefore we offered a design using two six-cylinder Cooper-Bessemer engines and somewhat similar to what we'd already produced for the Monongahela Connecting Railroad of Jones & Laughlin Steel.

At that time, at least, I believe that the Rouge Plant was the largest automobile factory in the world. Moreover, it was to a large degree an integrated operation, having, for example, its own steel and glass manufacturing facilities. I have forgotten how many cars a day were built there but it seems to me it was in the thousands. I was shown through the plant early in the negotiations and I remember that I was absolutely flabbergasted at the size of the operation. And not only did they make their own steel but they brought in their ore in their own fleet of ore carriers from the upper lakes. Also they had a tremendous generating plant for producing their own power for operating the factory. The number of employees was 20-30,000--I can't recall the exact number but it was a staggering figure. Moreover, these employees were not organized at that time. In fact, I believe that Ford Motor remained unorganized until 1941, Mr. Ford believing very strongly that he could offer his employees more than the union could. Because of this labor situation in 1937, I was to be almost a witness of one of the most famous labour-management confrontations in the history of unionism. I was well impressed with that part of the Ford organization with which I dealt on this job and I can still recall much of the work we did together.