| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Donald T. Critchlow. Studebaker: The Life and Death of an American Corporation. (Midwestern History and Culture.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1996. Pp. x, 273. $39.95.

Despite its flaws, this is clearly the best book yet on the failure of Studebaker as an automobile manufacturer. It is emphatically a policy study, for Donald T. Critchlow's primary concern is how management decisions were made, not styling or horsepower. Tradition played a significant role in shaping corporate culture and strategy at Studebaker, until rejected by new executives in the 1950s. 1

In 1852, Henry and Clement Studebaker opened a small blacksmith and wagon-making shop in South Bend, Indiana. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company made a plausible claim to be the world's largest vehicle manufacturer. The five brothers were demanding but paternalistic employers who put a strong emphasis on quality, creating "a unique institutional mentality" (p. ix) which carried over into the automobile age. The firm moved reluctantly into automobiles, led by Frederick Fish, the son-in-law of John M. Studebaker, the last of the founding generation. In 1911, Fish yielded control to Wall Street interests that took the Studebaker Corporation public and recruited the dynamic Albert R. Erskine to lead the firm into the new era. It was Erskine who closed out the wagon business in 1920 and made Studebaker one of the leading independent automobile manufacturers of the 1920s. Erskine skillfully portrayed Studebaker as a generous and caring firm that paid good wages and offered attractive benefits. Late in the decade, Erskine tried to expand into both luxury and low-priced models, a disaster worsened by continued payment of generous dividends well into the Depression. By March of 1933, Studebaker was in receivership and Erskine was unemployed. . . .

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