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                                                                              ╚January 2, 1956

Man of the Year:Harlow Curtice

First Among Equals



    When the Founding Fathers set these words--A New Order of
the Ages--in the Great Seal of the United States, they had in
mind a social order that would guarantee the individual political
and personal freedom under law. They only dimly foresaw that they
were also establishing a new economic order that would break the
bonds of scarcity that had bound men's actions, thoughts, hopes
and dreams in earlier times. In 1955 this new order of the world
-- the free, competitive, expanding American economy -- not only
showed the world the way to a plenty undreamed of only a few
years ago, it was also the keystone of the defense of the West
against the Communist world. Because the U.S. was strong, the
West was strong -- and more prosperous than it had ever been.

    "Our prosperity could never exist," said Sir Norman Kipping,
director general of the Federation of British Industries,
"without a prospering United States."

    "Let's face it," said Wilhelm Vorwig, general manager of the
German Automobile Manufacturers' Association, "our present
achievements are based on the copying of the American economy."

    Because of the success of the American economic system, the
U.S. rolled through 1955 in two-toned splendor to an alltime
crest of prosperity, heralded around the world. Much of this
prosperity was directly attributable to the manufacture and sale
of that quintessential American product, the automobile. Some
8,000,000 of them were produced and sold, and a good half of them
were made and marketed by General Motors under the direction of
President Harlow Herbert Curtice -- the Man of the Year.

    Yet this production alone would not make Harlow Herbert
Curtice, 62, the Man of the Year. Nor would the fact that he is
president of the world's biggest manufacturing corporation -- and
the first president of a corporation -- and the first president
of a corporation to make more than $1 billion in net profits in a
year. Curtice is not the Man of 1955 because these phenomenal
figures measure him off as first among scores of equals whose
skill, daring and foresight are forever opening new frontiers for
the expanding American economy by granting millions to colleges,
making new toasters that pop up twice as fast, or planning
satellites to circle the earth. Harlow Curtice is the Man of
1955 because, in a job that required it, he has assumed the
responsibility of leadership for American business. In his words
"General Motors must always lead."

    How does Curtice lead?

    Bet a Billion. In the early days of 1954, there was gloomy
talk of a slowing -- and possible end -- to the postwar boom.
Though the economy was still strong, business was falling off
and the total of jobless was growing, along with uncertainty
about the future. In this critical period, "Red" Curtice stood up
before 500 of the nation's top businessmen and industrialists and
gave his own pronouncement on the future. General Motors he said,
would spend $1 billion to expand its plants for the increase in
auto sales to come. Screamed the headlines: G.M. BETS BILLION:
NO SLUMP.

    Curtice was aware that the U.S., with its growing population,
growing bank accounts, growing suburbs and decentralized
industry, could well afford to buy more new cars than it ever had
before -- if everyone had confidence that the boom would
continue. As head of G.M., with more income and more resources at
his command than most sovereign nations, he was in the best
position to do something about confidence. As a result of his
billion-dollar bet, confidence spread throughout G.M.'s own
sizable world. The 514,000 employees in 119 plants in 65 cities
in 19 states quit hoarding for layoffs and began buying -- among
other things, autos. By midyear most of the 17,000 Chevrolet,
Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile and Cadillac dealers in the U.S. were
selling more new and used cars than they ever had before. Some
21,000 independent G.M. suppliers had to step up their buying of
steel, copper, aluminum and other materials. Ford Motor Co., $500
million already ticketed for expansion, added $625 million last
spring to expand its plants. Then Chrysler added another billion.
Meanwhile, Curtice had upped his own expansion spending to $2
billion. On all sides, other businessmen also raised their own
sights, putting more dollars into pockets to spend, and sending
the economy booming through 1955's record year. Says Curtice:
"People had money and credit. I think I pushed them off the fence
to the right side."

    Time for Decisions. The Russians, of course, did not like
Curtice's kind of confidence, but they finally gave up their
repeated predictions of an early collapse the U.S. economy and,
for a brief period even showed signs of thawing the cold war.
Because that brief thaw took place while U.S. military and
economic strength remained steadfast, 1955 was not -- as many
thought it might be -- a Year of Decision. It was, rather, a Year
of Decisions, as the U.S. turned from preoccupation with crisis
to get on with the business of making America work. Items:

    -- In literature, Novelist Herman Wouk upset the cliches by
letting Marjorie Morningstar discover the difference between
modernist sophistry and durable values like home, faith and
family. Marjorie Morningstar was no masterpiece, but she
indicated that American intellectuals could find their voices
after years of what the late Russell Davenport called "this
inability to explain to others our most cherished goals."

    -- In giving, Henry Ford II announced the Ford Foundation's
grant of $500 million to privately supported colleges,
universities (for increases in teachers' salaries), nonprofit
hospitals and medical schools; including Ford's record-breaker,
private foundations, prospering with business, passed along
nearly a billion dollars in grants during 1955.

    -- In labor, George Meany, the plumber who has never been on
strike, became president of the new, 15-million-member American
Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.
Among his first acts: a friendly speech to the National
Association of Manufacturers, and a suggestion that unions invest
their millions in housing projects. Among his reasons: union
members are now in such high income brackets that they can no
longer qualify for Government-subsidized low-rent housing.

    -- In law, Chief Justice Earl Warren read out the Supreme
Court's unanimous order calling for desegregation of public
schools "with all deliberate speed" -- a classic application of
the unchanging principles of constitutional law to ever-changing,
everyday U.S. life.

    But the decisions that men saw changing the skylines of the
cities, turning poor farm land into prosperous factories (and
parking lots), bringing new credit and buying power into backward
areas -- these were the decisions of American businessmen. (In
fact, while the Supreme Court attacked segregation in schools,
businessmen attacked it in industry by: 1) raising living
standards of Southern Negroes, and 2) teaching whites and Negroes
to work side by side in new Southern factories.) All through the
year, industry exploded to catch up with the twin demands of the
mid-20th century: a rapidly rising standard of living and a
long-range increase in population.

    Everywhere that industry grew, the managers studied how to
pull all the far-flung parts together and make them work more
efficiently -- so that, in effect, share-holders, executives and
workmen would get increasing return from an hour's productive
work. And what they studied hardest was the amazing efficiency of
General Motors and how it had achieved it.

    Shares for All. Like most of today's great corporations,
G.M. achieved it because giants of old had laid the foundations
with big, visionary ideas. The man who founded General Motors was
William C. Durant, an ex-carriage, ex-bicycle, ex-wagon maker who
first hit the jackpot by backing an auto designer named David
Buick. In 1905, Billy Durant capitalized Buick for a staggering
$10 million, three years later tried to corner the auto
manufacturing business. (Henry Ford agreed to sell for
$8,000,000, but at the last minute Durant's bankers backed away
from the $2,000,000 down payment.) Durant settled instead, in
1908, for a combine that included Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac
Northway and Oakland, and called it the General Motors Co.
Detroit called it "Durant's folly" until, in 1910, G.M. sold $34
million worth of automobiles and netted $10.5 million (since it
was before taxes, literally).

    When Durant's optimistic expansions and mergers ran him out
of cash, the bankers began talking of the "saturation point" in
the auto market, and moved in on him. After Durant went out of
G.M. he drew on his enormous prestige with Chevrolet as part of a
plan to regain control of G.M. In little more than a year
Chevrolet was valued at a fabulous $ million. He offered a
bargain trade of five shares of Chevrolet for one of G.M., while
he also bought G.M. stock (G.M. stock went from $82 to a high of
$558 within a year). Thus he gained control of G.M. and added
Chevrolet to the corporation. Meanwhile, the Du Ponts had become
large G.M. stockholders, and when Durant went under in the 1920
crash(trying to bolster the price of G.M. stock), they bought him
out. (Four months later, he incorporated the $5,000,000 Durant
Motors, which, on the strength of his name, had $31 million in
orders before it had a factory site. He got out of automobiles in
1926, lost everything in the 1929 crash, and died in 1947 at 85.)

    Redheaded Energy. Billy Durant endowed G.M. with optimism
(1921 was G.M.'s only deficit year), a reputation for good
automobiles, a flair for sales, and a spirit of unsophisticated
boldness and high adventure that is still the hallmark in
Detroit. The man who cast G.M. in present its mold is Alfred P.
Sloan Jr., an engineer by training and an organizational genius
by instinct. He became president five years after his company
(United Motors) was merged with G.M. With him he brought a new
concept of decentralized organization that is probably as
significant to the science of corporation management today as
the U.S. Federal system is to political life. Sloan bred
independence and intramural competition, handsomely rewarded hard
work and the inquiring spirit. He welded all these diverse
talents into a powerful management team that was designed to
develop leaders just as engineers develop cars. As G.M.'s
eleventh president, Harlow Curtice is as surely a product of
General Motors as Dwight Eisenhower is of the U.S. Army.

    Curtice brought little but redheaded energy with him when,
with only a business-school education, he landed a job in Flint,
Mich, as a bookkeeper for the AC Spark Plug Division of G.M. in
1914. His energetic curiosity led him behind the ledger down into
the plant, to find out what his figures meant in terms of men and
production. In a year he knew AC so well that, at 21, he was made
comptroller. At 36 he was AC's president and one of G.M.'s
junior-grade hot prospects. Put in charge of ailing Buick, he
pulled the division out of a mid-depression slump, ran it through
the war years. It was the fourth-biggest-selling car when he was
boosted to a G.M. vice presidency. In 1948, as the postwar market
got rolling, G.M. President Charles Wilson made Curtice an
executive vice president. Three years ago, when Charlie Wilson
went to Washington to be Secretary of Defense, Red Curtice, at
59, became president. His current salary, plus bonuses: more than
$800,000 a year.

    "The rough process of elimination at G.M.," says a knowing
competitor, "absolutely prevents a phony from getting that job."

    Legitimate Prince. Curtice would be the first to snort at
the suggestion that he is a throwback to Billy Durant -- because
his Sloan-bred sense of organization rebels at the memory of
Durant's wild and woolly ways. But Curtice, the corporate
statesman, and Durant, the irrepressible, share an uncanny
instinct when it comes to the average American's feelings about
automobiles -- an
even sharper sense than the engineering-minded presidents between
the two who developed the annual model change and the customer
research system. Curtice is generally typed as a supersalesman,
but he is much more: he is the legitimate prince of the auto
buyers, in close communion with his subjects, the size of their
garages, their chance for advancement (say, from Chevrolet to
Pontiac), their bank accounts, and the exact degree of new
styling, e.g., the panoramic windshield required to make them
accidentally stop by a dealer to see how much he might give on
the old car.

    Red Curtice loses some of the friendly crinkles around his
eyes when he settles down between his two desks to run the
corporation from the 14th floor of Detroit's General Motors
Building. As he scans the reports from G.M.'s earth-girdling
ventures in autos, Frigidaires, diesel locomotives, radios and
earth-movers, he becomes again the eagle-sharp comptroller who
can tell from figures how men and machines are doing. His
predecessor, rumpled Engineer Charlie Wilson, used to gab
cheerfully with friends, and occasionally gave friendly advice to
some of his lesser competitors, such as Nash and Kaiser. Curtice
rarely finds time for such activity, a fact that has not endeared
him to his fellow corporation executives outside of G.M. For
example, Curtice is a member of the Department of Commerce's
Business Advisory Council but hardly ever attends the meetings.

    But inside G.M., Curtice's brisk efficiency is genuinely
respected. Wilson used to keep the staff (including Executive
Vice President Curtice) waiting around for hours while he made
decisions. But Curtice is swift in decision and rarely wrong. If
executives do not expect compassionate sympathy, they do
expect -- and get -- justice. One result: there is little
infighting in G.M.'s executive suites. Says Executive Vice
President Albert Bradley: "We are all living in glass houses,
and we go to great lengths to play fair with each other."

    Fast Company. No G.M. president could ever be a dictator,
even if he had the inclination, because the unwritten
constitution of G.M. has its full quota of checks and balances.
Big decisions at the top are made in committee, and the president
must sell the top committees (of which he is a member) on his
policies before he can execute them. Curtice had to sell the
powerful Operations and Financial Policy Committees (which report
directly to the board) before he could bet his big billion in
January 1954. Says a fellow committeeman: "He prepares his
presentation for the committees just as if he expects 100%
opposition."

    The committee system can move fast when it has to: for
example, after the laments of a few G.M. dealers were widely
publicized in the hearings before Wyoming's Senator Joseph C.
O'Mahoney last month, Curtice and the Operations Policy Committee
went into session one Sunday, came out that evening with a far-
reaching decision to extend all G.M. dealers' contracts from one
to five years. This also indicated how the committee system can
put pressure on Curtice. He thought that the complaints of
dealers were exaggerated, that he did not have to pay much
attention to them. But other top men thought that Curtice was
wrong, and they made no bones about saying so.

    The G.M. constitution reserves considerable power to the
semi-sovereign, ever-competitive divisions. Curtice could
probably fire a divisional vice president outright if he wanted
to act out a Hollywood version of the tycoon, but he would not.
The unwritten law demands that such a grave personal decision be
discussed up and down the committees. A divisional vice president
with the prestige of Buick's Ivan Wiles spends a huge operating
budget as he sees fit, and goes to the top only when he thinks
his actions might affect the other divisions, or when he wants
new capital.

    Fast Recovery. Only in emergencies does Curtice move in and
take over. Soon after he became president, he stepped in to
straighten out the Allison Division (aircraft engines), which was
in trouble because it had been afraid to invest money in research
and development unless armed forces orders were assured. By
contrast, Competitor Pratt & Whitney had sunk millions in engine
development.

    In 1953 G.M.'s Engines Vice President Cyrus Osborn told
Curtice that there were three alternatives for Allison: 1)
continue as is, "which is ridiculous"; 2) get out of the business
entirely; or 3) make the moves necessary to ensure leadership.
Curtice said that he would "only be satisfied with leadership."
Together Curtice and Osborn spent three months visiting military
and airframe people, then laid out a $74 million investment to
produce "a whole new family of aircraft engines."

    Last week Curtice and Eastern Air Lines Chairman Eddie
Rickenbacker jointly announced that Eastern's 40 new Lockheed
Electra airliners, scheduled for service in 1958, will be powered
by $26 million worth of Allison turboprop engines.

    Since Curtice's drive for leadership is as relentless as a
turnbuckle, his success has naturally brought some new strains
for G.M. In the furiously competitive race for auto sales,
relations are more tense between G.M. and its major competitor,
Ford, than ever before. Ford executives, who used to meet G.M.
friends for a Sunday round of golf, now only nod perfunctorily
when they bump into the G.M. crowd at the Bloomfield Hills
Country Club. G.M. blames Ford for giving in last summer to the
United Automobile Workers' Walter Reuther on the guaranteed
annual wage. Fordmen blame G.M. for keeping silent while Reuther
turned on Ford first.

    Stop Sign. Curtice's problems in Washington are tougher to
deal with. With annual sales ($13 billion) almost twice as large
as those of the second-largest corporation (Standard Oil Co. of
N.J.), G.M. is an ever-tempting political target. Moreover, some
of Eisenhower's economic advisers are complaining about the rapid
increase in consumer credit (up $4 billion in the first nine
months of 1955, to $34.3 billion), and at the automobile
industry's $14 billion share of it (although repayments are
remarkably regular and repossessions low). Because Defense
Secretary Wilson is an ex-G.M. man, G.O.P. politicians have
tactfully suggested that he taper off on G.M.'s defense
contracts. They are now down from 19% of G.M.'s business in 1953
to less than 10% in 1955, although Pentagon purchasing agents
give G.M. topmost marks for quick decisions and on-schedule
delivery.

    Over in the Justice Department's Anti-Trust Division, the
trustbusters keep a close watch on Curtice. The Administration
tactfully told him to settle for no more than 50% of the auto
market and keep out of trouble.

    Curtice will not -- and for reasons that are fundamental to
the vitality of any large, competitive corporation. "If you stand
still," says G.M. Chairman Sloan, now 80, "you go behind."
Competition demands efficiency, and the whole efficient, smooth-
running corporation could soon turn sour, as the Allison Division
did, if it were forced to slow down to an artificial pace.
Profits, in a modern corporation, have a function beyond
providing earned surplus and dividends (and taxes). Under G.M.'s
cost-accounting system, they are the key indicator of worth of
divisional management, worth of product, personnel policy and
planning.

    Curtice refuses to talk in percentages of the car market-
talks instead in terms of expanding gross national product. "We
have 3% of the G.N.P. now, and we won't have any less than 3% in
1956," he says. Translating into automobile figures, he predicts
1956 U.S. auto production at 7,060,000 (plus 1,190,000 trucks)--
down about a million from 1955. G.M.'s share, if it holds its
own, will be 3,500,00 cars.

    Dawn Patrol. Curtice's genial competitor, Chrysler President
Lester Lum ("Tex") Colbert, thinks he works about as hard as any
man should, trying to get Chrysler back to 20% of the automobile
market. "But most every Monday morning when I'm shaving out home
in Bloomfield Hills," says Colbert, "I hear old Red Curtice's
airplane flying in from Flint. And every Friday night when I'm
home and tired and walking my dog, I hear Red Curtice flying home
again." When he is in Michigan. Curtice spends most of his week
nights not in his home in Flint but in the nine-room suite in the
G.M. Building. On top of this, he is often on the road for days
at a time. During the course of a year he probably glad-hands
more people than the President of the U.S. But he likes it all --
the headaches, the demanding hours, and the vast rewards.

    In many ways he lives a life that is beyond the comprehension
of most of his car owners. Platoons of subordinates jump when he
twitches. Garages filled with gleaming limousines and beaming
chauffeurs stand ready to transport him wherever he desires. A
private 18-plane air force of multi-engined, red-white-and-blue
airplanes is at his disposal. Private secretaries and
public-relations men take care of bothersome detail, see to
it that Cadillacs, hotel suites, restaurant tables and theater
seats are there when and where he wants them. High-salaried
assistants smooth his path, greet him wherever he arrives, order
his drinks, fetch his newspapers.

    Beneath all the glitter, Curtice is regarded by friends as
essentially still the small-town boy who came out of Petrieville,
Mich. He likes to watch the fights and The $64,000 Question on
television, read the papers, hunt, watch the Detroit Tigers (the
night games only). He puffs casually on Luckies, likes his Scotch
and soda strong and unstirred. His idea of Saturday fun in Flint
is a run through the Buick plant in the morning and a poker game
with his City Club cronies in the afternoon. He lives in a
relatively modest red brick corner house, with a three-car
garage. In the garage: his wife's Buick Roadmaster convertible,
daughter Dorothy Anne's Buick Century convertible, and his
personal, flashy Buick Skylark convertible, now being hopped up
with a new experimental engine and transmission.

    Safe at Home. Flint is the world's most General Motorized
city, and it says more about the state of the nation today than
volumes of statistics. To begin with, the tricked-up Buick of the
highest salaried man in the U.S. is hardly noticeable among the
bright new Buicks and Chevrolets along Flint's main streets.
Flint is the home of the main Buick and Chevrolet plants, the
Fisher Body. AC Spark Plug and Ternstedt Division (G.M. auto
hardware).

    There is a job in the Flint area for virtually anyone who
wants one. Of a work force of 135,400, some 86,700 are employed
by G.M. The 83,000 hourly employees draw wages averaging $100 a
week -- with some skilled oldtimers at the forge plants earning
$10,000 a year, Flint has an automobile for every 2.8, persons,
v. a nationwide average of one for every 3.7. Nearly 80% of the
residents own their own homes, and 80% of the homes have
television (even though 15-or 20-ft. aerials must be stuck on
rooftops to pick up Detroit). Spending is heavy, but savings
accounts are going up too. "People have got money," says
President E.S. Mulholland of Flint's largest department store.
"They feel safe."

    Sitdown Strike. In 1937 much of Flint was sprayed by tear
gas as the U.A.W. staged its first major sitdown strike against
G.M. Today most people agree that the U.A.W. raised Flint's level
of prosperity by getting its members a bigger share of G.M.'s
increasing income by continuing to increase the income.

    Management and employees are a little proud of the fact that
G.M. was the first automaker to accept the labor-dispute umpire
system (in 1940), first to hitch link wage increases to
productivity. Last year G.M. lost an average (nationwide) of only
three minutes in labor troubles for each wage earner. Today's
happier version of the sitdown in Flint occurs when local U.A.W.
leaders, G.M. brass and civic bigwigs sit down at a luncheon
meeting to plot the Community Chest campaign.

    Flint's current No. I campaign is culture. The city is
building housing projects, new churches, school buildings and a
huge $5,000,000 civic center. In addition the Flint Junior
College is expanding to become the nucleus of the new Flint
campus of the University of Michigan which will open next
September. One of its main structures: the Harlow H. Curtice
Academic Building. Flint's adult education program has an
enrollment of 40,000 people, who study everything from classical
languages to the fine art of tying trout flies. The Flint
Community Music Association comprises 42 independent groups,
including a symphony orchestra civic opera, and square dances
that draw as many as 5,000 people -- dancers all.

     This Town & Flint. Give or take a few dollars and a few
square dancers Flint could represent -- qualitatively -- almost
any industrial city in the land. It could be Arlington, Texas,
which jumped in population from 7,000 to 35,000 in five years,
as new plants moved into the area between Dallas and Fort Worth,
drawing most of their new employees from agricultural areas.
It could be Los Angeles, which added as many factory workers
in the past five years (27,400) as in the previous 21. Or even
New England, which put its brains to work and found new research
and electronics industries after textiles slumped. Or Buffalo,
Cleveland or Toledo, little Detroits all, and all building in
anticipation of the opening of the Lake Erie portion of the St.
Lawrence Seaway in 1959.

    How far is Flint from London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Mexico
City and the other cities of the non-Communist world? Not far, in
the sense that a prosperous, strong U.S. economic system is
clearly the basis for the record-breaking prosperity of the whole
free world.

    What's Good for Flint. In another sense -- the sense of
setting an example -- Flint is farther away but getting closer.
Britain, eyeing the freely competitive U.S., has this year been
hearing its strongest parliamentary attacks on monopolies, and
may wind up with the first anti-monopoly bill in its history.
Last summer, news of the U.A.W. Ford guaranteed annual wage
agreement rocked the national convention of France's
2,000,000-member Confederation Generale du Travail, and seriously
weakened Communist control in today's booming Federal Republic of
Germany, an industrialist who has not been to the U.S. to study
production methods is not seriously listened to. In Mexico,
Sears, Roebuck & Co., G.M. and Ford have raised wages, granted
pensions and health plans, and given Mexico's unions new leverage
for working on rich local capitalists. In Saudi Arabia the
Arabian American Oil Co. has staked hundreds of local bright
young men to prosperous careers as importers, contractors,
teachers. (Its American methods have also created a feeling of
sullen restlessness among other natives who are just discovering
what the good life looks like.)

    Harlow Curtice does not go in much for high-flown economic
or social theory, but he is convinced that what Flint has found
to be good can be emulated by the rest of the world. Thus, since
late 1954 he has committed G.M. to $200 million for European
expansions, primarily of its Opel plant in Russelsheim-am-Main,
Germany, and its Vauxhall plant in Bedfordshire, England. Also,
he is bucking local resistance to move both companies toward the
annual model change. He wants to create a secondhand market so
that cars can be bought by everyone. At the same time, he is
pressing European automobile men to move with G.M. toward a 40-
hour week, while maintaining the rate of pay of the current 48-
hour week.

    Newer for New. Some American thinkers shake their heads at
the materialism and the waste implied in the annual model change.
But, as in Billy Durant's day, their thinking takes no account of
the nature of the American system, where something newer must
replace the nearly new so that those who cannot afford the newer
can still afford what was once new, whether it is a house, a
sewing machine or a car.

    But even the sleekest, hottest automobiles, as the proudest
new car owner will ruefully admit, are not ends in themselves,
but only means -- means to roll free of the city into the
countryside, to swing from the farm into town for a school-board
meeting or a movie, to move the family across the country to find
a better job, or to drive the kids to school and the beach and
pick them up again. And so it is with the economic system that
Harlow Curtice represents. This, too, is but a means to something
far beyond fad and fashion, perhaps to a new level of community
enterprise and culture-by-plan, as in Flint. Not far distant is
the time when Americans need spend comparatively little time
earning a living. Then they will be able to unleash their
considerable powers for cultural, ethical and spiritual
accomplishments of a magnitude yet unimagined.