Good afternoon. My name is william pelfrey, and my book is Billy Welford and and generalfred 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 CenterGeneral 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. Cspan and book tv, of course, at borders pruett 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 MotorsCorporate Communications who facilitate of all of the audio and visual set up. As background i would also like to give just a brief summary of my own writing credentials. I started writing as a soldier infantryman with a Rifle Company and a heavy motor platoon in vietnam. When i came back to the world i wrote the first vietnam lawful vietnam novel, 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 and venezuela. 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 lead to detroit 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 fulltime just my own writing fulltime 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 singlehanded 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 worlds biggest manufacturer and seller of the horsedrawn 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 Called 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 alfred sloan enters 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 contentious hiring decision of the 20th century. But the end of approaching from the sidelines as sloan transformed it into Americas Industrial icon. Sloan was durants opposite in all respects, masai say the to all respects, introverted, precise, methodical. 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, sloan had 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 twominute synopsis of the story. It is one of the most Amazing Stories in the history of business. 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 tame and 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 car nuts 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. Its 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 ive 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 is a legend behind that building. If you go up there today and bring a pair of binoculars you can still see a d carved into each corner above the 15th floor. The building was originally going to be named the durrant building. Stonemasons had cut the ds into the corners. When the building was finished it was called the General Motors building. The legend is that the letter his way of getting back the point of the story is even though a lot of people in detroit know about the letter, i always found that not many people seem to know or care about how and why Billy Durrant disappeared from the scene. Durrant no material on in the companies archives. It is as if he had come and gone without really doing much. He was a usually hear wheeler and dealer, a gambler and a poor manager, but not much more. When you ask about alfred sloan, a man who turned the company around, it wasnt that different. Of people could recite his two favorite Business Strategies. A lot of people know he created the adding that created the annual model change, which changed the game for all citizens. If you looked in the archives you would find anything that she would hardly find anything about sloan demand you would hardly find anything about sloan. That was just the way he wanted it. What i found when i started researching what would end up being this book, mainly mainly in durants personal papers and dozens of out of print manuscript in the books written in the 1920s. What i found as he was far more. Han it wheeler and dealer sloan was far 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 sloan work. Were tied totinies 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 dining in the charity ward of your s death with Billy Durrant, who ended up ward in the charity detroits harbor 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 lincoln only to watch it go bankrupt by his original nemesis henry ford. The list of characters kept as dided kept growing its even more complex social change that shaped each man, not to mention General Motors. The further i got from one fred thread to tie it all together in a single compelling narrative. Before i started digging in my head a lot more here and it was a lot darker. Started digging, i had a lot more hair and it was a lot darker. I found dozens of books and articles about all the characters written by the people that were there but in the 1920s and 30s, 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, seabiscuit, about the legendary racehorse. You might not think of a connection between seabiscuit and General Motors, and i didnt either, until i read the first chapter, which talked about charles howard, the horses owner, who happened to be the biggest buick dealer on the west coast in the 1930s. Thats where i found the strength to start pulling. The string to start pulling. The story of how general motor founder and successor to get from obscurities to the Worlds Largest enterprise was much like the story of sea biscuit the unlikely horses. Sea biscuit rose from nowhere to capture americas imagination in the race against the war might admiral, the undisputed 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 floor admiral, was floor admiral was war 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 20s. There were stories every week in every newspaper across the country about how sloan and four ford were going neckandneck and they were profiled in the New York Daily News the way fox boxers are profiled in todays 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 and comebacks, and tragedies. Today the story of the way they put General Motors together and made it grow as timely as it is dramatic that he and the entire u. S. We are still dealing with the consequences of what these two wrought for the Auto Industry and america. That is a short version of how i came to write the book. Id 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 its 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 pull it off. Sloans story is quite the opposite of course an insurer we and im sure we will get to that in more detail in the question and answer session. While alfred sloan jr. Transform gen General Motors and thats General Motors into 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, while all furnishings were auctioned off and 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. Neither loan was ever repaid. In january, 1940, sloan finally reestablished the personal contact inviting him to attend the detroit celebration of General Motors 25 million vehicles rolling off the Assembly Line. Billy sat at the table, and sloan led him by the hand to introduce into the crowd of executives and dealers. It was billys last appearance at the institution that he had created singlehandedly and against all odds. When portions of sloans first memoir were excerpted in the saturday evening post he wrote alfred a letter thanking him for what he called the handsome complements 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 writing 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. Youre absolutely right in your statement that General Motors justified a different the fed of different method of channelling after the units were different method of handling the units after they 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 infantry captured the calvary general unit couldnt be. The infantry 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 didnt know he couldnt do it, so he just went ahead and did it any way. [laughter] 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 durants letter. That exchange of letters was the last known direct contact between the former colleagues. While catherine remand lovingly at her husbands 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 billys 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 exwife led to the legendary after divorcing cliff quietly began sending 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. The daughter marjorie whod gone through three divorces and struggled to maintain the image and lifestyle of the debutante drifted into drugs after her fathers 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 her story faded from the press after that headline along , with her fathers legacy. Not until august, 1958 during General Motors 50th anniversary she did billy rant Billy Durrant received public recognition for the greatest and the most improbable of all gimbles and achievements the founding of what had become the Worlds Largest industrial enterprise. Rather than a plaque or statute billys marker is an inconspicuous 10foot square slab of granite big enough to use for a stage rising just to f