Viewing page 18 of 80

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

20

[[underline]] H.K. Porter Co. [[/underline]]: This was an old locomotive company in Pittsburgh which would produce any kind of locomotive you might want up to around 100 tons -- steam, diesel, gasoline, mechanical or electric drive, thermos bottle, just about anything. Porter had recently been acquired by a young man named [[underline]] Thomas Mellon Evans [[/underline]] who was one of the famed Mellon family. Tom has had his ups and downs over the years but has managed to create the reputation of being a ruthless, hardbitten, unprincipled entrepreneur and I'm sure from my own personal experience with him that the reputation is well deserved. Moreover I'd not be surprised if today Tom is a multi-millionaire as a result. But if I had to do business the way Tom has in order to make a million, I'd forget it. And I doubt if he has very many friends in this world. I'm sure he had no friends among the other builders. He certainly had no friends in the War Production Board. He warned GE that he was going to put us out of the locomotive business. He tried to get me ejected from WPB. He thumbed his nose at WPB repeatedly and got away with it save for a slap on the wrist. He far oversold his capacity, deluded and disappointed many customers, had a crummy product, and was awarded an Army-Navy E for his remarkably fine performance. He got away with murder and it was a miracle that someone didn't murder him before he got through. H e was without question one of the most miserable boobs it's possible to imagine and yet he's made a fortune and is famous. So much for H.K. Porter, once a proud old company with something to be proud of.

[[underline]] Vulcan Iron Works [[/underline]]: Vulcan was located in Wilkes Barre, Pa. and was an old producer of small steam locomotives and had undertaken to build diesel-electrics in the smaller sizes. I never visited their plant so I'm not really familiar with their entire product line but believe it included boilers, heat exchangers, tanks and similar things. Vulcan had participated in some standardization talks on the diesels and as I've already indicated had a minor interest in mine locomotives presumably for the hard coal field of north-eastern Pennsylvania right in the middle of which they sat. There were three of their men I remember and liked: [[underline]] Ralph Smith [[/underline]], the sales VP in 1941, and "one of the family" as I recall, [[underline]] Tom MacLachlan [[/underline]], their ace locomotive salesman, and [[underline]] Joe O'Brien [[/underline]], their factory manager. Tom was an ex-pro basketball player and one to the straightest-shooters in business that I remember, a happy contrast to Tom Evans, who took advantage of Vulcan right and left in the small steam locomotive business for the Army. Vulcan were so conscientious about their responsibilities to both the Army and their civilian customers that they turned down and gave away civilian orders rather than jeopardize Army deliveries while Porter gobbled up everything in sight including some of the work Vulcan rejected and then let the civilian business sit

Transcription Notes:
Transcription typo fix: 'and Army-Navy' to 'an Army-Navy'