>> good afternoon. my name is william pelfrey, and my book is billy welford and general motors the story of two unique man at a legendary company and remarkable time of american history. before we start this afternoon, i want to emphasize that i especially honored to be talking about my book care of the renaissance center general motors headquarters especially in light of the headlines that everyone is reading across the country today. when i started this book more than two years ago, i had no idea that the timing would be such that it is. before i begin my but also like to thank a few people that made this event possible. c-span and book tv, of course, but also birth of pruitt at borders

bookstore here in the renaissance center, adrienne hecky, i dream coming into the rest of the team at amicom books. christine durham, the manager here of the renaissance center, and finally come ed snider and john mcdonald of general motors corporate communications who facilitate of all of the audio and visual set up. as background i but also like to give just a brief summary of my own riding writing credentials. i started writing as a soldier infantryman with a rifle company and a heavy order platoon in vietnam. when i came back to the world i wrote the first vietnam lawful posted by a and infantrymen which was nominated for the national book award and the national endowment for the arts fellowship. from there, i began writing about vietnam and south asia for "the new york times,"

the atlantic monthly and the new republic. from there somehow ended up in the foreign service and was at the embassy is in pakistan and venezuela come and then did another vietnam novel called hamburger hill in conjunction with a film of the same name. but as they say all roads lead to the trade and i ended up to joining general motors in 1987 and was soon writing speeches for jack smith who became ceo in 1992 and for john became the chairman of the board of the same year. i left general motors to return to my own riding full-time just about four years ago when jack smith retired, and ever since then i have been more less consumed by this latest book. you can ask my wife who i am proud to have with me today. with that background as preface what i

would like to do today is offer a few comments on how billy alfred and general motors came to be and then an excerpt about the characters incredible legacy is coming and those legacies are timely year than ever today. to set the stage for questions. first, why i wrote the book. by the way, when i started doing the research three years ago, i had no idea how timely it would be, but i also had a full head of dark hair and my wife can also attest to. what really intrigued me at first is the dearth of knowledge and information about the men at the center of the story, the portraits on the cover. billy durant and alfred sloan. billy durant was the founder of general motors and created single-handed against all and in defiance of the community especially the house of morgan.

the and unlikely character you can not dream up in hollywood. the son of an alcoholic father, raised by a single mother when single mothers were shunned and a high school dropout. by that time he was 21, he was the highest volume cigar salesman in the state of michigan. before he was 40 come he was the world's biggest manufacturer and seller of the horse-drawn wagons and carriages. never content to rest on his morals always looking for the next new thing he took over the management of the struggling car company alled buick motors in the year 1904. durant had absolutely no background in automobiles and knew nothing about how they worked and how to build them in volume. but within three years, buick was the number one selling car in america. from there, he went on to create general motors only to lose control of its not once but twice. and when alfred

sloan and terse the picture the drama intensifies. billy actually hired alfred a. 1916 when he bought a company called roller bearing that he had taken charge of 15 years earlier. he hired alfred because he knew a good manager when he saw one and he also happened to know sloan was afraid his largest customer named henry ford was about to take the business in house and leave sloan high and dry with the production capacity. that was arguably the most hiring decision of the 20th century. but the end of approaching from the sidelines as sloan transformed it into america's industrial icon. sloan was durant's opposite in all respects, masai say the to precise. they were like oil and water. they were at odds over

how they were managing all of the companies he brought in to general motors. his frenetic style and failure to establish the central control drove him absolutely at the wall. in fact, slow and actually prepared his resignation for general motives and accepted the job offer when push came to shove in the showdown in 1920, billy was out the door and up the street while alfred tore up his resignation and soon took the command. that is just a two-minute synopsis of the story. in the history of business or for that reason the human species. a few years ago they made a movie about howard hughes, the aviator built on his obsessive compulsive tendencies. compared to billy durant, howard was love middle class and ebenezer scrooge was a wild man compared to alfred sloan

and yet the story has remained unknown outside of a small circle of karnack and historians while the name henry ford is almost been canonized in popular legend. by the way, billy actually came close to buying the ford motor company on two different occasions only to have a by henry himself the last minute. it's all the kind of material no screenwriter could invent but the story has never been told in a single narrative. the original general motors building here in detroit is one of the state leased buildings i've ever been in. in fact it was the largest office building in the world and its designated as the national historic landmark. as with many landmarks there's also a legend behind that building. general motors the longer occupies the site, but if you

go there today and bring a pair of binoculars you can still see the letter d carved into the corners of each corner above the 15th floor. the building was originally going to be named the durant building in honor of the company's founder. they had already cut the letter d into the corners when he was thrown out of the company he created. when the building was finished was called the general motors building, but nobody got around to removing it. the legend of course is that the letter d was billy's way of getting back to the management team that threw him out, all of whom had been brought into general motors. the point of the story is even though they lot of people here in detroit know about the letter d, i always found that not many people seem to know or care about how and why billy disappeared from the scene. in fact there's virtually no material on durant in the company archives.

it's as if he had come and gone without really having done much to read when you would ask people what out durant you usually hear that he was a wheeler and dealer, gambler and oor manager but not much more. even more surprising, when you ask about alfred sloan command succeeded speed and turned the company around, it wasn't that different. a lot of people could recite his famous business strategy is to centralize operations and coordinated control bill would change the game for all competitors but again if you look in the archives you could find hardly anything about sloan the man. he legend and of course it was just the way that he wanted.

what i found when i started researching what in the up being this book mainly in durant's personal papers and dozens of out of print manuscript in the books written in the 1920's. there were further than the wheeler and dealer and he was less than the gene yes. the more obvious it was that you could never tell the story of billy and alfred without telling the story of their peers all of whom as it turned out or just as strong willed and fascinating in their own ways as durant and slow in and their destiny tied to the interactions that they had with billy and alfred. the men like david to make that invented the process for bonding porcelain to metal that made the plumbing fixtures possible and then went on to create a buick motor to lose control of it within a year billy within the dying in

the board of the traits harper hospital. then like henry the master of the precision manufacturing who took over a company that had been started by henry ford, renamed it cadillac and then sold to general motors only to have a falling out and then started getting another company called lamken only to watch it go bankrupt by his original nemesis henry ford. the list of characters kept growing and it's even more complex in the social change that shaped each man not to mention general motors. the further i got from ne fred to tie it all together in a single compelling narrative. as i mentioned before, i started digging and i had a lot more hair and with a

lot darker. i found dozens of books and articles about all the characters written by the people that were there but in the 1920's and 30's, and guess what, they were all as dirt, none of them captured the character and the passion of these amazing men. so the challenge of the conundrum is how to bring it together and to do justice for them all. and then, i picked up an excellent book or a helen brandt's sea biscuit about the legendary racehorse. you might not think of a connection between sea biscuit and general motors, and i didn't either until a further -- until i read the first chapter, which talked about charles howard on the west coast in the 1930's. the story of how general motors' founder nd successor to get from

obscurities to the world's largest enterprise was much like the story of sea biscuit the unlikely horses. sea biscuit rose from nowhere to capture america's imagination in the race against the war might get a marble, the disputed champion of the day. but general motors did the same thing against ford motor. general motors was sea biscuit, durant and sloan with the oil and water trainer. ford motor was more admiral and henry ford was even more unpredictable owner and trainer. by the way, the race between general motors and ford motor did indeed capture the imagination in the 20's. there were stories every week in every newspaper across the country about how sloan and four were going neck-and-neck and they were profiled in the new york daily news the way fox is profiled in today's sports

tabloids. so with that string of the horse race the took command and started molding itself into what became the book. and what i found is that uniquely american story. victory and defeat, stumbles nd comebacks, and tragedies. today the story of the way they ut general motors together and made it grow as timely as it is dramatic that he and the entire u.s. auto industry in the midst of an unprecedented restructuring or still dealing with the consequences of what these two giants want for the auto industry in america. that is a short version of how i came to write the book. i'd like to read one passage from the end of story, the human side of the story about what happened to billy after he was

forced out of general motors the last time in 1920. although it's sad and even tragic keep in mind a billy himself remained the eternal optimist through it all. always looking for that next deal, always confident he would put off. the story is quite the opposite of course an insurer we will get into that in more detail in the question and answer session. while alfred sloan jr. transform gen general motors and the icon of efficiency and success, his new dreams ended hollow. in september 1938 he stood up the door of the estate on the jersey shore who were carried away still pursuing their dreams and schemes that were from mining to toothpaste,

razor stand beer he borrowed $30,000 from the then wealthiest man in michigan thanks to his original partnership with billy durant, and $20,000 from alfred sloan cony there was ever repaid. in january, 1940, sloan finally reestablished the personal contact inviting him to attend the deep fritz celebration of general motors 25 million vehicles rolling off the assembly line. billy sat at the able, and sloan led him by the hand to introduce him to the executive sand and dealers. a was billy's last appearance at the institution that he had created singlehandedly and against all odds. when the portions of the men more adventures of the white collar man were excerpted in the saturday evening post he wrote alfred a letter thanking him for what he called the handsome

complement's in the article. fittingly, the letter also included a reminder that there was more to success than the science of management. this was billy the high school dropout fighting to alfred sloan right into the phi beta kappa. i do wish that you had known me when we were laying the foundation in speed and action seemed necessary. you're absolutely right in your statement that general motors justified a different the fed of channelling after the units were enlisted and you with your training and experience some of it yourself with reliable sound judgment and a vision and devotion to the cause which is enabled you to build the general motors of today is truly great institution. but to sum up the early history of general motors reminds me of the following story from the civil war. the general wheeler

who came up from the ranks led major bloomfield at the battlefield of chattanooga. and speaking at the engagement, the general said right up on that hill is where the company of nfantry captured the calvary general unit couldn't be. the nfantry cannot capture the calgary to which the general replied but, you see, this infantry captain did not have the disadvantage of the west point education, and he didn't know he couldn't do it, so he just went ahead and did it any way. that was billy durant. sloan had a letter typed on general motors stationery that focused on his own reasons for writing his

book and made no direct reference to anything in durant's letter. that exchange of letters was the last known direct contact between the former colleagues. while catherine remand lovingly at her husband's side through all the triumphs and tragedies, they had no children of their own. after the crash of 1929 they had less contact with his daughter marjorie and their son from billy's first marriage. cliff who gained fame as a california playboy and race driver with no steady job died of a heart attack in 193710 years before his father. ironically, his first ex-wife led to the legendary after divorcing cliff quietly began ending them money to help with their living expenses. the money came from a trust fund that billy set up for her as a

wedding gift when she married. he daughter marjorie who'd gone through three divorces and struggled to maintain the image and lifestyle of the debutante drifted into drugs after her ather's fall from wall street. just five months after his death in march of 1947, marjorie was for buying and selling illegal narcotics. the story was reported in the new york daily news on september september 16th, 1947. for 39 years to the day after million greeted general motors. mercifully her story to read it from the press after that had lined along with her father's legacy. not until august, 1958 during general motors 50th anniversary did believe received public recognition for the greatest and the most

improbable of all gimble's and achievements the founding of what had become the world's largest industrial enterprise. rather than a plaque or statute billy's marker is an inconspicuous 10-foot square slab of granite big enough to use for a stage rising just to feed off of the ground in a park in flint michigan. the onetime protege and employees who'd taken for the leadership alfred p. sloan jr. was retired and sitting on the general motors board of directors of the time. sloan didn't attend the ceremony or the immigration however. the marble slab was laid by flinched rather than general motors durant memorial sits in the middle of the cultural center opposite of the entrance to the alfred sloan museum also built by the city if went better than general

motors. today despite the name, the cultural center is dominated by empty parking lots and the weeds surrounding them. there are two flagpoles the top of the platform but most days by flags flying. the polls are scratched with graffiti and the grass is packed with weeds. most passers-by do not seem to otice the platform itself. they're mainly schoolchildren on bus excursions redican curious pilgrims eager to soak in the culture. in the end, he plays of the way the american dream itself please out in today's media culture. perfectly sculpted for 15 minutes of fame. his life in contrast remains shrouded beneath the veil of the unrivaled success of both men's passion general motors. as his

name disappeared from the business world, his general motors continues to set the standard and raise the benchmark for the rest of the automobile industry and indeed all business until his death in 1966. today the debate continues about whether many large companies including general motors stuck with his original organizational management paradigms' for too long in the face of competition from beyond the united states. ell the lessons learned -- well the lessons learned from how he it up to that general motors to the changing well the lessons learned from environment especially in the aftermath of 1920 be heated by a different generation of managers and executives. what ever be possible for any large enterprise to achieve the kind of turnaround he accomplished and then continue to grow for some years? the answers to such questions grow more complex as

the change and reaction accelerates. of the legacies and adole. >> in the front row. >> great book, mr. pelfrey. one question have listed in irony. i noticed in your book you say >> in the front row. >> great book, mr. pelfrey. one question i have listed in irony. i noticed in your book you say that general motors was a top seller of the vehicles in japan prior to world war ii and there's the irony. what appened there?

scence brought for the world rew all the more relevant to those who would be players. you can trace the roots of the the challenges to a man named douglas mccartsdzyur. he was put in charge of reconstruction in japan and one of his first decisions -- and it was a decision made by him alone, was that no u.s. automobile manufacturer would be allowed to reenter the japanese market. hard to believe that scrapen should rebuild its economy by its own boot straps. needless to say, no one envisioned what that boot strap

economy would become. the japanese in fact studied sloane's business strategies and henry ford's pattern of mass production. as we all know, had the advantage of what macarthur had brought, namely a government that was nurturing the industry and in fact developing the industry strict -- almost exclusively for export rather than the home market. look at europe after world war ii, it was exactly the opposite situation. general motors had been a strong competitor in europe as hadford motor company before the war war. but after the war with germany in such ruins general motors had decided that it would not reenter european markets strictly for business reasons. they didn't see the market coming back for many, many years, if ever. but alfred sloane received a

phone call from macarthur's counterpart in europe, general clay, who was in charge of reconstruction. and clay almost literally begged sloane to bring general motors back in to europe for patriotic reasons. clay was afraid that if general motors did not establish a presence, no other industrial companies would. and that if general motors did reenter the german market, with its prestige and image it would bring others behind. so despite the advice of his own management team who said this is a bad business decision, sloane did reenter europe. the opal brand is still a leader in europe today. again, the opposite of the situation in japan. that's why i say the whole story -- hollywood couldn't have written it. full of twists and turns and colorful characters like that.

>> a great book, by the way. there's a line in here that i'm almost done reading it. you were talking about the second ouster of billy durant. it says the day of the tinkerer and dreamer was gone. the day of the manager had dawned. and i was curious as to what you thought would -- about which style of leadership works best in today's world. durant's or sloanes. >> in that passage, billy durant in a sense it really was the dawn of a new era. the auto industry had been created by men who had no usiness background at all.

beyond, and alfred sloan the transformation he created in general motors putting his famous business strategy of the decentralized operations and a centralized control marked the end of today when one man alone like billy durant could pull off a deal or come up with the new car brand durant was the epitome of the intuitive salesman visionary. he would see an idea, get an idea, see an opportunity and go with it, period. sloan was the opposite, of course. he was the ultimate organization man. in sloan's general motors, decisions were made by committees rather than by one man up in flint and the world would never be the same. that's the kind of transition i was referring to there. gives you one example of the

difference between the pioneer, one-man-alone style of durant and sloan's concept of corporate management. in 1908, shortly after creating general motors with buick as the cornerstone, billy acquired a company called oldsmobile. oldsmobile had actually built first mass produced car in america and had dominated the market for about four years but it had fallen on hard times when billy bought it. they needed a new car. in fact, one of the jokes at the time was that billy paid a lot of money for a bunch of billboards and a song. oldsmobile was first company to do billboard advertising and there was a song back then called "my merry oldsmobile" which was actually the most popular song in america. but billy knew that the oldsmobile team was

demoralized. they were losing money. they had just been bought by a man who none of them knew. so what did billy do? billy, the salesman, he dropped in on the entire management team in lansing, michigan, unannounced, and said boys, don't worry, we're going to come up with a car and we're going to succeed. and then, unbeknownst to anyone, he raised his hand and three colleagues entered the room with the body of a buick, just the body. a buick 10. he had arranged secretly to have that body shipped to lansing the day before. he showed the body to the engineers and managers who still didn't know what was going on. and then he said, does anybody have a cross-cut saw? and people scuried. they came up with a cross-cut saw.

and he said, ok, here's how we'll create a new oldsmobile. and he asked one of his own colleagues to proceed to cut the body of the buick into quarters. not unlike solomon cutting the baby in half. the he extended each quarter of the body about six inches so you had a longer, wired design. he said, that's your new oldsmobile. they proceeded to build the oldsmobile from buick parts. the first time that that had ever been done in the industry, and by 1980, it was standard practice throughout the industry. needless to say, within days, probably within minutes, billy had the oldsmobile team pumped. the car came to market in less than a year and indeed, within less than a year, oldsmobile was profitable again. similar situation in 1926 under lfred sloan. alfred had created the famous

price ladder with chevrolet covering the bottom of the market, cadillac, the high end. one of the car divisions that durant had brought into general motors was called oakland. oakland was the weak sister of the five brands. sloan and his team knew they needed something directly above chevrolet, between chevrolet and oldsmobile. and oakland was not cutting it. so rather than the billy durant approach of one man coming up with the idea and just going with it, they formed study committees, studied whether or not they should create a new brand and a new car, for about a year. finally decided to do it. they came up with a new engine and that was the key, the most powerful six-cylinder engine on that end of the market. but to build a car without giving durant any credit, they took a page from billy durant's book, they used chevrolet parts

to build the pontiac. car was on the market in record time and was an immediate hit. same basic decision but entirely different way of arriving at it. today, i would compare the two styles with the two guys that created google. i mean, those are clearly billy durant characters. sloan, i think the closest clone, as it were, would be bill gates. bill gates and steve jobs arguably created the p.c. market but of course they had their falling-outs but they had very different approaches to business. steve jobs remains much in the billy durant school. when he comes up with an idea, he goes for it no matter what, the ipod being the latest example. bill gates has said many times that he is a student and admirer of the sloan school of

management. the trick, of course, is to get both of those styles in one company, and even tougher, in one leader. much easier said than done, which makes business today much the same kind of horse race you had when i was talking about eabiscuit and war admiral. >> when you were going through your research, was there anything that really surprised you, like, wow, i didn't know that? putting it together in context is awesome. but was there anything shocking to you that really you didn't conceive was going to occur? william: there were many surprises, and the more surprises you get, the more you get bound by the research, you create your own problem in how to put it all together. but the most surprising thing to me was all of the business contributions that durant

made. as i said in my remarks, most people who even know about him in detroit, they picture him as a salesman and a wheeler and dealer, but in fact, he's responsible for many firsts, not only in the auto industry, but business in general. i mentioned the idea of shared components for different products. that started with billy durant. the assembly line actually started with billy durant and his lieutenant, charles nash, up in flint, when they were building horse-drawn carriages. henry ford gets a lot of credit for the assembly line. he actually mechanized the assembly line which is certainly a milestone in the industry but durant was building wagons on the same kind of layout up in flint. the difference was that the people moved rather than the parts on the line. just one more unknown durant contribution was the idea of etail finance.

billy durant and his financial adviser -- actually, the treasurer of the company, another colorful character named john rasco, in 1919, created a company called gmac, which has been making its own headlines in the last few months. before gmac, if you wanted to buy an automobile, you either came into the showroom with cash in the barrel, or you got a bank loan on your own and most banks would not loan money for an automobile. durant's idea was, why don't we finance the purchase of the vehicle and make it easier for the customer. it not only revolutionized the way automobiles were sold but all kinds of big-ticket items, especially household appliances. that precedent was set by billy durant. and there are several other, again, fascinating stories. just one story i haven't told about durant and it has really

made me think, since the book has been finished. first person to read the advanced galleys of the book efore it was published was a man name david cole who is arguably the most respected auto analyst in the world. while he was reading it, he called me several times to give me feedback, and then when he finished, we got together for lunch. we ended up talking about three hours about durant and sloan and what's happening at general motors today. but one of the first things he said was, you know, looking at everything that durant did, the way he would start companies, buy companies, absolutely be obsessed with the idea of the deal, and then fail to manage them, the way sloan managed them, i think that billy durant probably had a.d.d., attention

eficiency, before anybody knew about it. and that really made me think. if you accept that, even as a possibility, just think -- i mentioned the howard hughes' story. what durant had to overcome in his own mind to accomplish as much as he did. it's an incredible story, an incredible man. and just think what durant might have done if, indeed, he had a.d.d., and there were a treatment for it back then, who knows. it might have been a story of triumph to triumph rather than riumph to tragedy. again, it's a fascinating human story for me, and that's why i could not -- i had to write the book. ny more questions?

audience: i guess two questions. one, in your research, sloan seems to be very much a mysterious-type character. what do you think, at his core, what drove him to, say, achieve what he did, and i guess, secondly, if sloan were around today and he saw g.m. today, how do you think he'd view the situation? not necessarily revenues, but what do you think his assessment of the major problems are? william: well, the first question, for sloan, general motors clearly was his life. he was married, had no children, very deliberately kept his own name out of the headlines. in fact, he created the general motors public relations department in the 1920's so that he would not have to deal

with reporters, and he insisted from his p.r. department that his name was never mentioned in the stories. it was always general motors. in his second book, "my years with general motors," it's a 472-page book, there's less than one page devoted to his own life and he only talks about his mother and father and his brother. totally private man. the company truly was his life. there were all kinds of jokes about how obsessed he was with the company. he was known inside general motors as silent sloan. when he spoke, people listened, though. there's only one recorded instance of sloan ever doing a transaction not directly related to general motors. he had no known hobbies, although i suspect he read a lot of books. his wife and several friends convinced him that he needed something for leisure in the late 1920's.

so he decided to buy a yacht. he paid $1 million for the boat, he called it "the renee." it had a full-time crew of 43 people, at a cost of $120,000 a year. but sloan, in this case, maybe not unlike durant, he got bored with the boat very quickly. he only took it on a few cruises and he ended up selling it for $175,000. i suspect that's the only loss that alfred sloan ever took in his life. the second question, how sloan would view events today. one thing i learned in the research, of all of those characters and how the world kept changing even in the 1920's and 1930's. you cannot judge a man outside of the context of his times. i think it is safe to say that sloan would be proud that general motors is still here.

not many people -- not many companies have survived that long, especially when you think about the core business. i mean, general motors has basically been building one product, namely the automobile, or nearly 100 years. you didn't ask the question this way but i'll go out on a limb, maybe get myself in trouble with a few friends in the media, but i have been in trouble before. when i look at the situation today at general motors and the way it's been covered, especially here in detroit in the last few months, the parallels to 1920, in particular, are many, but sloan had the advantage of arguably taking a much worse situation than today.

i mean, general motors was really on the ropes -- excess capacity up the wazou, ndebted. the company has been capitalized at a billion dollars all through the issuance of stock. there was so much debt that nobody really knew how much there was. but sloan had the advantage of being able to move in and operate in a business environment as opposed to today's media culture. and i talked to several friends n the media, and they will even admit, the news business has changed, in many ways, not unlike the automobile business. the competition is incredible. especially with the cable news networks and local television. the pressure is always there to have a story and i hate to say it, but in some cases, that's almost close to creating a

story. and the reporters know they're under the pressure to do it and i truly think that in some cases they don't feel good bout it. like to get just one recent example, for the benefit of the c-span audience. just a week ago, a little more than a week ago, all of a sudden, someone started a rumor in detroit that general motors is going to be firing salaried people like it never has before. some of the speculation was even that they're going to let go half of their salaried work force. before you knew it, this was the only story on the news in detroit, especially the television stations. they were talking about black tuesday, people being told to bring their laptops, bring the key to their office, general motors was reserving conference rooms in every building of the

company to let people know that they were going to be out the door. and guess what, tuesday morning rolls around, a total of fewer than 500 people were let go. that's a lot of people by a lot of standards but a lot of companies, i.b.m. in particular, have let go a lot more people than that and you haven't had that kind of frenzy in the media. and just imagine what that kind of reporting does to the people who are affected. i can't imagine having been a salaried employee last week, with all of that speculation going on. and it was, in the end, nothing but speculation, as have been, in my opinion, a lot of stories even in the national media. i wrote for the "new york times" for a while and my editor was a guy named harrison salsbury, a legend.

i guarantee you that a lot of these stories would not have been in the "times" or the "wall street journal" in his day, which wasn't that long ago. it is speculation, it is not journalism. that's all i'll say about the news media. i'll see what kind of reviews i get now. audience: you talked about oil and vinegar between the two men and then you also talked about other pioneers and their stories and the conflicting stories. do you have a couple of specific stories that will be fun to hear? william: the guys that immediately comes to mind is henry leland. again, hollywood couldn't have written it. henry leland was like sloan, a child -- or like durant, i'm sorry, a child of the civil war, although he was older than durant. he was too young to enlist in the union army but his brother id and his brother was

killed. and in his own legend that he's told, he never got over that and considered himself a patriot above all else killed. throughout his life. in fact, he was one of the most highly skilled machinists of the day during the civil war and decided to shift jobs to machine rifles for the union army rather than the engines that he preferred but after the civil war, he started a machine shop, moved to detroit, and immediately had a reputation as the most precise machinist round. a guy named ransom olds started oldsmobile. when he built his first car, he immediately went to leland to build the engine because of leland's reputation for precision and quality. leland not only built the engine for that car which was an immediate hit, he went one step further and built another

engine on his own, much more owerful and efficient. he presented the engine to olds and olds said, forget it, i'm not going to retool my plants and change my car just because you got a better engine, we're doing fine, thank you. well, of course, in a few years, olds was in the tank and needed a new car. leland said, ok with you, buddy, so he turned around and went to the backers of another guy in detroit, a guy named henry ford. ford had already managed to alienate one group of financial backers with his first company which was called the detroit automobile company. it failed. henry's reputation was bad as a businessman. but yet he got another group of backers led by the mayor of detroit, guy named mayberry, who happened to be the wealthiest man in detroit.

they backed ford on the premise that ford would come up with a car that could be built in volume and make money. ford did not think there was much urgency in making money ith the car. he kept trying to perfect it and perfect it, to the point where the word got out that his backers were getting very fed up. leland heard about it, went to ford's backers, and they were immediately impressed with his engine and on the spot they said, you're in, henry's out. henry was out on the street. they gave him $900, and the rights to proceed with a race car that he was developing, which is another story. but leland immediately renamed the company "cadillac motor" in honor of cadillac, founder of detroit, and it happened to be the 200th anniversary of detroit's founding. leland made cadillac a success

on the basis of his fanatical obsession with precision and quality. when billy durant created general motors, he wanted cadillac for those reasons. he went to leland three times, made him an offer. each time, leland upped the ante, raised the price. and each time, he insisted on cash. each time, durant, at least in his papers, claims that leland had given him no inkling that he was going to up the price at the last minute. long story short, durant finally did bring cadillac into general motors in 1909, but part of the deal was that leland would be allowed to continue running cadillac basically as an independent company. that was fine with billy because he was focused at the time on more acquisitions. leland went on to gain the

reputation as a hard task master, to say the least, very difficult man to work for, as was henry ford and most of the other characters. leland, using his patriotic mantle, announced to the world in 1917 that he was resigning from general motors for patriotic reasons. the united states entered world war i in april of 1917, started to build liberty engines. these were aircraft engines for the u.s. army. cadillac told the press that -- leland told the press that he had to resign from general motors because billy durant did ot support the war effort, durant did not want to divert production to war-time material. billy durant immediately sent a telegram to leland saying, prove to me that you resigned

of your own free will. he sent four telegrams. leland never replied. finally, again, compare this to today's media culture -- finally durant went to the press directly and showed the memorandum and the signed resignation. durant had actually fired leland because leland would simply not follow durant's orders, and would not proceed to integrate cadillac with the rest of the general motors rganization the way that billy's right hand at the time, the chairman, pierre dupont, wanted it. leland went on to build liberty engines on his own for the army but the war ended and within a year after that, leland turned around like all of these guys, created another car company, called it lincoln in honor of his war hero from the civil war.

the problem was, the first lincoln was reviewed by the press at the time as a clone of the last year's cadillac. did not take off in the market, and again, long story short, lincoln motor ended up going bankrupt. henry leland ended up -- just picture this. leland, the guy who forced henry ford out of his second company. leland ended up going to henry ford begging him to help him out. henry basically said, sorry, henry. when the company, lincoln motor, finally went bankrupt, it was sold at auction and there was only one bidder for the assets, henry ford. ford actually did hire leland as an employee but needless to say, it was a tense situation. leland did not stay long at lincoln.

lincoln, to this day, lives on under the ford motor umbrella. leland died, not in total poverty, but far less the man he was and in obscurity in the 930's. again, there are so many stories like that, and the amazing thing is, it's never been told from the perspective of the human drama of all these guys. that's what i wanted to do. the readers can judge how well we did. one more question. audience: it's not quite a question, bill. i have to tell you that when i was at the m.i.t. sloan school, it was a requirement for us to read "my years with general motors" and we were tested on it. and it was quite boring. and i just wanted to thank you and i hope the students in the future at m.i.t. get to read this instead.

so thank you. william: maybe both of them. i actually saw -- writers shouldn't do this. but the mention of amazon.com because it's almost like cars, they discount. i saw "billy, alfred, and eneral motors" is actually being offered combined with "my years with general motors" and you get a better deal if you uy both books. one more question. audience: congratulations on your success and what's next for bill pelfrey? william: i don't know. as i said, it was two years full-time with the research and the writing.

i know i'll write something else but i don't know what at his point. i've thought about two things. several people have tried to get me pumped to do a history of my unit in the army, 22nd infantry, which is one of the most decorated but least glorified units in the army, going back to the war of 1812 and vietnam and most recently, they were the unit to capture addam hussein. but i don't know at this point. another story that i'm closer to and i don't know how i would do it, a dear friend of mine, a writer, named harry caddell, wrote first book about appalachia, and now he comes with the cumberlands, saw a lot

of action in world war ii, leg nearly shot off. that book singlehandedly created national awareness of the problems in the coal fields in eastern kentucky, which is here i'm from. and robert kennedy and john kennedy visited harry and he led them on tours. he had 15 seconds of fame, but the media and the country lost interest in what was happening in eastern kentucky, particularly the strip mining at the time, and he ended up with alzheimer's and took his wn life. i don't know what i'm going to do next. well, i certainly want to thank everybody again for coming.

and thank c-span and book v. william: borders bookstore here in the renaissance center is right there. if you buy it, i will sign it. hanks again. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national able satellite corp. 2016] captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption contents and accuracy. visit ncicap.org >> you're >> you are watching american history tv. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. >> next, house speaker paul ryan joining other house and senate members to unveil a statue of invent thomas edison. each state is entitled to display two statues of prominent citizens in the capitol. ohio voted in 2006 to replace

one of theirs with the edison statute. -- statue. the 50-minute ceremony features the house speaker. >> ladies and gentlemen, the speaker of the united states house of representatives, the honorable paul ryan. [applause] speaker ryan: oish! i love that, even from a badger fan. welcome to the united states capitol. this is an exciting day. today we're unveiling the latest addition to the national statutory hall. every state contributes two statues put on display throughout the capitol and the ohio delegation decided that one of their state statutes, former governor william allen, wasn't