Business: Baldwin Directors

Two gentlemen of Detroit, in Manhattan last week, were the victims of a Philadelphia mis-understanding. They, C. R. Bitting and R. F. Shields, had gone to Phil-adelphia early in the week expecting to be made directors of Baldwin Locomotive Works. They conferred with Chairman Thomas S. Gates and President Samuel M. Vauclain of Baldwin Locomotive and presented their credentials, voting stock proxies of the six Fisher Body brothers of Detroit.* They were told that not enough Baldwin Directors were in Philadelphia to make up a quorum. Mr. Bitting and Mr. Shields went to Manhattan to “enjoy the sights.” Next day in Philadelphia Baldwin directors met, transacted routine business, noted that their locomotive and car business was not particularly good (railroads seem to have sufficient rolling stock), elected no new fellow directors. Their next meeting was scheduled for late in September. Baldwin Locomotive “Works seemed a good investment to the Fisher Brothers. It is the largest locomotive works in the U. S. It owns high priced real estate in Philadelphia, which it is vacating for cheaper land at Eddystone, Pa. It can adapt its factories to the manufacture of Diesel and other marine engines, as has its competitor, American Car & Foundry Co., now a great maker of motor boats. With the Fisher brothers on the close terms they are with General Motors, observers fancied the Baldwin Works as a possible further adjunct of that vast corporation. A new, comparatively small creature could be pictured entering the cartoon published last month by the New York Herald Tribune, entitled “The Behemoths at Play.” This cartoon showed a hippopotamus (General Motors Corp.) swallowing an elephant (U. S. Steel) which had by the tail a rhinoceros (E. I. du Pont de Nemours Corp.) which was swallowing the hippo.

Baldwin Locomotive Works is capitalized for 75 million dollars and controlled by 200,000 shares of common stock and 200,000 shares of preferred stock. During the past eight months the prices of the common shares have been the amazement of the stock markets. They have sold for as low as $143.12½ a share, for as high as $261 a share. Apparently someone was seeking control, or a large say, in Baldwin Locomotive’s affairs. Arthur W. Cutten, opportune Chicago grain operator, was known to be one heavy buyer of the stock. But last week it was learned that he had bought only 35,000 common shares. The “misunderstanding” in Philadelphia revealed that the Fisher brothers had taken up more than 100,000 common shares and a smaller block of preferred. This holding clearly entitled them to representaton on the directorate though it did not constitute control. President Vauclain chose to be cryptic about the apparent fight “misunderstanding” and apparent fight for Baldwin control. “I know of no fight,”he said. “I couldn’t tell you anything about the matter. . . . The only thing in which I am really interested is the sale of locomotives.” His friends could well picture how Mr. Vauclain’s long, humorous upper lip drew down when he said that. He was obviously temporizing, playing a part, and he is skillful and prompt at playing parts when necessary. The overnight discovery of a quorum last week recalled Mr. Vauclain’s tactics when, at the start of a rail strike, labor delegates visited the 25,000 non-union workers in his “little foundry.” In 20 minutes he had jailed all the delegates.

He was told he had no right to jail them. He retorted: “But they’re in jail, aren’t they? You’ve got to act quick when you’re facing a crisis.”

On Nov. 24, 1832, the Philadelphia Chronicle printed this item: “It gives us pleasure to state that the locomotive engine built by our townsman, M. W. Baldwin, has proved highly successful. In the presence of several gentlemen of science and information on such subjects, the engine was yesterday placed upon the road for the first time. All her parts had been previously highly finished and fitted together in Mr. Baldwin’s factory. She was taken apart on Tuesday, and removed to the Company’s depot, and yesterday morning she was completely together, ready for travel. After the regular [horse-drawn] passenger cars had arrived from Germantown in the afternoon, the tracks being clear, preparation was made for her starting. The placing fire in the furnace and raising steam occupied 20 minutes. The engine (with her tender) moved from the depot in beautiful style, working with great ease and uniformity. She proceeded about half a mile beyond the Union Tavern, at the township line, and returned immediately, a distance of six miles, at a speed of about 28 miles to the hour, her speed having been slackened at all the road crossings, and it being after dark, but a portion of her power was used. It is needless to say that the spectators were delighted.”

Ninety years later, in May 1922, another train pulled out of the Baldwin Works at Eddystone, Pa. It was labeled the “Prosperity Special” and consisted of 20 monster locomotives, each with ten driving wheels as high as a man’s head. Smaller locomotives pulled and pushed it across the continent to Los Angeles. This train constituted only a part of one order filled that year by the Baldwin works, a new herd of 50 freight movers for the Southern Pacific R.R. Hitching the monsters together and delivering them all in large groups was a publicity stroke conceived by Samuel M. Vauclain who has put on the selling end of his business a head of steam proportionate to the pressures carried by his latest products.

Samuel Vauclain learned to love locomotives, the way other men love horses, as an apprentice in an Altoona (Pa.) roundhouse which his father superintended. He learned to build them at the Baldwin works in Philadelphia, rising in 36 years from foreman to president. He has never given up his workingman’s habit of reporting for work at 7 a. m. But it is as a salesman that he has chiefly succeeded. He sold locomotives in Europe when people thought Europe was too War-poor to pay for anything. He took his pay in oil, bonds. Once he sold an idea to an irate Irishwoman. She was the empress of a Philadelphia slum section he wanted badly to buy up for expansion of the Baldwin works. The lady had refused to sell and move out, and had wrathfully bade her neighbors do likewise. Mr. Vauclain put on an old straw hat, sauntered down her street and reclined in the sun opposite where she sat glowering on her porch. Neither spoke. After half an hour he strolled away. Next day he appeared again. Her sociability overcame her ire. “Phwat are ye sittin— on the sunny soid for?” she called. “Because I haven’t been invited to sit on the shady side,” he called back. She invited him over. He made friends. Before long he had hired her to superintend the moving of her neighbors.

* The brothers are Fred J., Lawrence P., Charles T., Edward P., William P., Albert J.