Constants and variables 98, poets and peasants edition
Article in Collectible Auto, Dec 2015, tells the story of Walter Chrysler taking over Maxwell, first turning it into a better car, then leveraging it into his own brand. WPC was working as a Turnaround Man for bankers, and he was advising both Willys and Maxwell. Willys was overextended by unwise mergers but had a good car. [And STILL has a good car 96 years later!] Maxwell didn't have a good car. WPC stole engineers from Willys and set them to work on Maxwell, then took over the company.

In other words, WPC made his money the old-fashioned way, by hard work and lots of theft.

At the end of the article WPC is quoted:

There is in manufacturing a creative joy that only poets are supposed to know.

This doesn't sound like the usual press agent or ghostwriter product, so I'm going to assume it's a genuinely heartfelt quote. It's damn close to poetry.

The first part is VASTLY more important now than in the '20s. Men are meant to make things. A man who can make things and see them to completion is happy**. A man who can't make things because all the factories have moved to Bangladesh is not happy. He may jump off a bridge or he may turn to crime.

Make or break.

But the latter part is wrong now, and I'm not sure it was valid then. Only poets are supposed to experience the joy of creation? Certainly false now. The purpose of a poet is to drive readers to suicide and then commit suicide. Death all around, no joy at all.

Most paid poets in the '20s were on God's side, making more beauty and value, enriching the lives of readers. Did they experience a special joy? Seems likely, but impossible to prove.

= = = = =

**Personal sidenote: I'm a man, so I'm meant to make things. This morning I reached completion on the current courseware project (pending some mopup stuff like indexing and grouping for LMS) so I'm HAPPY this morning.

Labels: Asked and unanswerable, Constants and Variables, Make or break

  ¶ 5:57 AM