RUSSIA: Austin’s Austingrad

Soviet Russia is one of the countries which glow translucently on an electrically-lighted earth globe in the office of a man in Cleveland. The man is not vain, but last week he looked with kindling pride at a point on the globe 270 miles east of Moscow, near Nishni Novgorod and between the Oka and Volga rivers. On that point he has pledged himself to build in the short space of 15 months a wholly new city for 25,000 Russians. The Soviet Government has agreed to pay him for his work $50,000,000—in dollars, in Cleveland. The contract—largest of its kind in Soviet history—was signed last week. Contentedly, masterfully, President Wilbert J. Austin of Cleveland’s famed Austin Co. (engineers and builders) turned from his glowing globe to speak crisply of his biggest, most distant deal. “Soviet Russia has adopted the method any large industrial concern in this country would use in a like undertaking,” said Mr. Austin, slim, alert, decisive. “It has sent out its engineers to make a survey of the latest and best methods of doing what the country wants done. “Following this research the job was to find an organization that could do the work. Evidently the American idea of doing big things in a big way appealed to the Soviet representatives. The job has come to an American concern. “However, it did not come overnight. We have been working more than eight months on this proposition.” From bustling but incurably old-fashioned Nishni Novgorod flashed details of how the proposition was finally put through by Austin’s eager, resourceful Executive Vice President George C. Bryant Jr., sire of three daughters and a son who returned to their Cleveland school last week after summering near Pontiac, Mich. Summering in Russia, Mr. Bryant has been in consultation with Soviet engineers who calculated that the new $50,000,000 city could not possibly be built in less than four years. Six bids from European concerns were made on that basis. Then said Austin’s Bryant: “We can do it within 15 months.” Replied the responsible Soviet official, according to despatches, “The contract is yours. You will receive a large bonus if you complete the work in less than 15 months. In compliment to your company we shall probably call the city Austingrad.” Austingrad will be the Detroit of Red Russia. Primarily it is intended as the Soviet focus of motor car manufacture, and $20,000,000 of the contract will be spent on car and tractor plants built for the latest type of straight line mass production. Three hundred motor vehicles per day will represent not peak but conservative average production. From Austingrad skilled Communist service station men will go out to spread through pastoral Russia the gospel of mechanics and motive power. In the U. S. the Austin Co. has laid out the famed proving grounds of General Motors, built a foundry for Cadillac, put up in record time the Oakland-Pontiac plant. Similarly in Austingrad there will be a proving ground, foundries for grey iron, malleable iron, brass, aluminum, and separate but coordinated shops for every phase of automotive construction—bodies, radiators, wheels, springs. Even the water and sewage systems will be laid by Austin, and the contract price includes a theatre, library, civic centre, fire department, laundry, electric and gas plants, schools, office buildings, homes and dormitories for factory apprentices. There will be, of course, no church. Specifications call for such typically U. S. details as automatic fire sprinkler systems in all buildings. Few concerns would dare contract to build such a city in 15 months. Gigantic specialist, the Austin Co. keeps in stock all essential parts of a carefully standardized line of buildings, is expert at getting these assembled by local labor. Thus only Austin engineers will go to Austingrad and all the actual assembling and construction on the spot will be done by Russians. From the founding of the company in 1904 it has sloganed: “Undivided Responsibility”—the idea that every phase of constructing a factory, an airport or a city like Austingrad should be covered by a single contract, the company to be responsible for everything.