Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1910 — A Big Automobile Factory and Some Regulations. [ARTICLE]

A Big Automobile Factory and Some Regulations.

The big factory of the Buick Motor Car, Co., of Fli|jt, Michigan, covers 44 acres of floor space. This includes a building 800 by 360 feet, three stories. It is said this is the largest building in the world devoted entirely to manufacturing automobile motors. The sipn of 0,000 has been expended on the floorelone in this building. Almost as imposing in size is the building which is devoted to the production of sheet metal. This is 830 by 152 feet. This building will be three stories in height like the present building of the Buick plant, the Buick maintains its policy of limiting all possible operations on each model to one building devoted to that purpose. At the Buick a new model means a new building. One of the other numerous buildings is a hardening room, 311 feet by 70, in which under the direction of P. T. Rickhelm, president of the American Gas Furnace Co., an absolutely new, though thoroughly tested system oF hardening is installed. The additions have brought the firm’s roll of employes up to a total of 9,000. An idea of the immensity of the Buick plant may be gleaned from the fact that its payroll will cost close to $400,000 a month during the coming season, for which it has already made arrangements for a total budget of <520,000,000. A new testing department is established, in charge of a chemist of national reputation, at which samples of all materials, notably the metals, will be submitted to rigid investigation and where the firm will maintain a metallurgical experimentation bureau. Designs of all the cars pass through the hands of experts, for ratification and plans for the standardization of parts.