Chris the Whittler

In the post-office in Algonac, Mich., sits Chris Smith, chewing tobacco, swapping stories with his small-town cronies, whittling small models of boats. He is founder, and his son Jay is president of the largest mahogany motorboat company in the U. S.* Last week Chris Smith & Sons Boat Co. had cheering news for President Hoover and his industrial conferees: the company had just received the first order in the history of the industry for a solid trainload of motorboats. Fifteen carloads of Chris-Craft boats, with a factory list value of $115,000, were ordered by the Minnesota Marine Corp. for distribution in Minnesota. Further, the Company announced that unfilled orders were at a new all-time peak for the season, that employment and payroll were at the highest level for any December in its history.

Whittling out duck decoys first gave Chris Smith the idea for a motorboat that would be short, broad, flat so as to ride on top of the water instead of cutting through it. This revolutionary design, now largely used in speed boats, produced the first boats to make 60 m. p. h. in a contest. In designing his early boats, Chris Smith used no blue prints. Instead, he carved out a small wooden model of the hull. With this in his pocket he went to nearby Walpole Island, picked out a likely looking tree for his boat, and carefully watched over its cutting and seasoning. Now there is a factory to turn out his boats by the hundred, but he still likes to get his own hands on the boats in his workshop. Brown and weatherbeaten as one of his Indian friends, Chris Smith is a most unassuming captain of industry. He has one and only one boast: that the Algonac post-office has been raised two grades through the importance of Chris Smith & Sons Boat Co.

In the corporate title the "& Sons" is far from being a fiction. The four Smith boys now run the business, Jay as President, Bernard as Engineer, Owen as Buyer, Hamilton as General Factotum. Jay, who resembles his father but is more businesslike, was a real water baby. He ran passengers in his father's launch before he was old enough to start the engine; his aquatic stunts earned him the title of "the baby water wizard." As Gar Wood's mechanic he won many a race in boats built by his father.* Chris-Crafts tenders are popular among yachtsmen (General Motors' Alfred Pritchard Sloan recently bought one for his new yacht, the Rene) because the hardware and woodwork of each one is contrived to harmonize with that of the mother ship. Of every 100 Chris-Craft boats turned out in Algonac, 13 are destined to zoom over foreign waters. Scandinavians use them as a means of commuting among the fjords and inlets. Many are shipped to Australia. The only practical means of travel in much of the South American tropical zone is the network of jungle waterways. Colombian explorers and the Ford rubber plantations in Brazil use Chris-Craft sedans. While Chris Smith chews and whittles in the Algonac postoffice, his boats are being sold by dealers all over the U. S. and in 20 foreign countries.

*Among the largest motor boat builders in the U. S. are, for cruisers, Elco, American Car & Foundry (ACF), Matthews, Consolidated Ship Building Corp., Banfield; for runabouts, Chris Smith & Sons, Horace E. Dodge, John L. Hacker, Gar Wood, Sea Sled.

*The last boat built by Chris Smith & Sons for Gar Wood was Miss America II in 1921. Today Gar Wood has his own boat factory.

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