STUDEBAKER PLANT VISITED BY AGENTS

The New York Times
October 3, 1909

Branch Managers from Many Cities Attend Annual Convention.

MAKE TOUR OF INSPECTION

Taken Over Large Establishment in Autos—Elated Over 1910 Outlook.

Twenty-four Studebaker branch managers spent the past week in their annual convention at South Bend.  While the week was taken up with purely business matters, there was a pervading spirit of elation over the fact that during the past year Studebaker automobile business has increased in volume from $2,000,000 to over $40,000,000.

Among other incidents of the week was a tour of inspection in Studebaker electric cars through the mammoth carriage and wagon factory at South Bend.  This plant covers an area of about two miles square.  The buildings are mostly four and five stories high.  The tour of inspection of each floor and over the system of tramways which run over the roofs and connect the various buildings, covered a distance of a little more than twenty-four miles.

Obviously such a trip could not be made even in a day on foot.  By the use of electric vehicles, however, using the big elevators to ascend from one floor to another and then driving through the entire labyrinth of aisles on each floor, ascending to the next, and finally to the roof, the trip was made in one afternoon, with plenty of stops for careful inspection of methods and models.

From South Bend the party of branch managers, in company with J. H. Studebaker, President; F. S. Fish, General Manager of the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company; Hayden Eames, General Manager of the Studebaker Automobile Company; Clement Studebaker, Col. George Studebaker, C. A. Carlisle, and other members of the Executive Board, made a trip by special car to Detroit, where the plants in which are manufactured the Studebaker-E-M-F "30" and Flandera "20" cars; then on to Elyria, Ohio, where the Garford factory, which manufactures the Garford "40."

The branch managers returned to their various centres of operation highly elated over the prospects for the coming year, although all equally confident that the output of the various Studebaker models, comprising though it will over 40,000 automobiles, yet will be less than half sufficient to supply their needs.