Word: bigs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Big Steel's extra cut to its stockholders implied that steelmen expected the boom to continue. Said U.S. Steel's Chairman Irving S. Olds: "There has been little letup, almost no letup, in demand for steel." Bethlehem Steel's Chairman Eugene Grace entered a mild dissent: he had already detected some "softening in demand for many lines of steel." But Grace, who may have hoped by such talk to ease some of Washington's pressure for steel expansion, was not really pessimistic. Said he: "Even with the softening, I feel pretty safe in saying that...
Botts in Africa. This well-fed, big-sinewed Cat had grown from a kitten bred in 1904 by Ben Holt of Stockton, Calif. Some of the farms around Stockton were marshy, and Holt spent years trying to build a tractor that wouldn't bog down in them. He designed one that would move on a track and pick it up and lay it down as it went-the first Caterpillar. As demand for the new-fangled invention spread east, Holt opened a branch plant in East Peoria. That became the main plant after the Holt Manufacturing Co. merged with...
Boss in Peoria. But big Cat hit its fastest pace after 1941, when Louis Bontz Neumiller stepped into its $75,000-a-year presidency. Unlike Earthworm's whip-cracking President Gilbert Henderson, Neumiller is a surprisingly mild-looking, soft-spoken man-a moderator more than a boss. As his friend Author Upson puts it, Neumiller "just sort of grew up with the company." He started at 19, as an engineering clerk ("I always tried to get the desk nearest the boss's door"), worked up through drafting-room superintendent, parts manager, service manager, sales executive, and, after...
Neumiller took over the big job just when Government and Army ordnance people were suggesting that Cat convert to ordnance manufacture. But Neumiller stubbornly said he knew better; the Army would need his earth-moving equipment far more than anything else he could learn to make. He was right. Cat turned out almost $500 million worth of equipment, including bulldozers. During most of the war, bulldozers were needed so badly that they had the same Double-A priority as tanks and planes...
Finance. When stockholders brought a bankruptcy suit against the Tucker Corp., President Preston Tucker won 60 days to produce financial backing from an unnamed "angel." Last week Tucker reported that the backer had backed out. But, he said, five others-including "an Eastern syndicate, a West Coast syndicate, two big companies and an internationally known banker"-were interested. Chicago's Federal Judge Michael L. Igoe said he didn't "have the least bit of confidence in [Tucker's] statements," but he gave him until March 3 to put up the cash or close down his shop...