Word: general
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cartoon capitalist who not only moved over to the right side-he also bought the tracks. The camera discovers him, in sleek middle age, roaring it up as the beast of the board room of the Eastern & Portland Railroad, whose cringing miscellany of vice presidents is pleading with the "general," as he likes to be called, not to ruin a poor helpless widow (Doris Day) and her two small children. With surly reluctance, he consents to make a nominal restitution to the "miserable broad" for her shipment of lobsters that died on the siding because of his penny-wise policies...
...could expect in the future and what might well send Wall Street's stock market higher still was contained in the predictions of industry's executives. Ford Vice President Charles R. Beacham predicted that auto sales in 1959 would top 1958 by 40%. U.S. Rubber General Sales Manager Herbert D. Smith predicted record sales of 94.5 million tires this year for the replacement market, to say nothing of the 29 million tires that go on new cars...
Heavy electrical equipment makers also reported healthy improvement in new orders. General Electric's large steam-turbine-generator department said that orders thus far this year are almost equal those for all of 1958, while Allis-Chalmers' backlog of unfilled orders has risen 72% since the end of last year, now stands at $225 million, a record peacetime total. Other sectors of the capital-goods complex, such as generator makers, locomotive builders, and construction equipment manufacturers, reported rising new business. Summed up McClure Kelley, president of Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton (machine tools, road-building equipment): "The improvement comes from...
...enduring mysteries of U.S. business is how a product can suddenly catch fire with consumers or, at times, just as suddenly lose favor. Nearly 30 years ago, General Motors' William S. Knudsen, a Danish immigrant bicyclemaker turned automan, was the one who lit the fuse under Chevrolet and sent it out ahead of Ford as the most popular U.S. car. His reward was the presidency of General Motors. Three years ago, Big Bill Knudsen's son, Semon Emil Knudsen, took on a similar job: he was made boss of G.M.'s sputtering Pontiac division, thus became...
...Pontiac job tied all the work together. Knudsen's first move after he became general manager was to go to the styling center. He knew what was wrong with Pontiac; it had a "grandma image" in the customer's mind. He wanted to change it so "teenagers would shout, 'Cool, man, real cool.'" The 1957 Pontiac was only 30 days from pilot production, just 60 days from volume production. Walking around the car, Knudsen announced abruptly: "Let's take the silver streaks off. That's the biggest change we can make." The stylists were...