Background
John Willys was born on October 25, 1873, in Canandaigua, New York, the only son and second of the three children of David Smith Willys and Lydia Muncil N.
John Willys was born on October 25, 1873, in Canandaigua, New York, the only son and second of the three children of David Smith Willys and Lydia Muncil N.
He attended the Canandaigua Academy but at the age of fifteen he and a friend established a laundry, which they sold after operating it for a year.
Willys then entered a lawyer's office, but his predilection was for business, and he was soon selling and repairing bicycles.
In 1898 he went to Elmira, New York, and bought the Elmira Arms Company. Specializing in bicycles, within five years he was doing an annual business of $500, 000. During this period he undertook the sale of Pierce motor cars, made in Buffalo.
In 1901 he sold two cars and by 1903 had disposed of twenty. In spite of this modest beginning, he developed a robust faith in the future of the automobile business.
In 1906 he organized a sales company and assumed the task of handling the entire output of the Overland Company, of Indianapolis, Indiana, forty-seven cars a year. During the money stringency of 1907, by clever financial maneuvering, he managed to fulfil his own commitments, keep the company running, and finally to buy it out. Securing control of the abandoned Pope-Toledo plant at Toledo, Ohio, he installed the Overland Company there.
In 1908 he produced 465 cars, now called the Willys-Overland; in 1909, 4, 000; and, in 1910, 18, 200. The profits for the first eight years were estimated at $6, 000, 000. As he himself stated later in his career, he started with $7, 500 borrowed money, took over a firm which was $80, 000 in debt, and in one year was $50, 000 ahead, while the next year showed a net of $1, 000, 000. He also invested heavily in concerns making automobile parts and accessories.
In 1912 he bought a motor-truck company. As his wealth increased he began collecting paintings and giving costly entertainments. He reduced the working hours of his thousands of employees without reducing their pay, but the fact that many skilled workmen, having moved their families long distances, received good wages for a time and then were laid off permanently - an evil common to motor-car production - caused bitter complaint. After the First World War he greatly increased his plant capacity and accumulated a large stock of materials.
In 1919 he organized the Willys Corporation, a holding company for his many interests. His troubles now began to increase. The Willys-Overland Company suffered in leadership; he was forced to cut wages because of rising competition and his heavy commitments based on expectation of a continuing boom period, and a strike resulted; he found difficulty in getting short-term loans. He managed to keep the company going by conservative manufacture and sales, but the Willys Corporation had to be liquidated in 1921.
As a heavy contributor to the Republican campaign fund in 1928, he seems to have expected a diplomatic appointment, for he sold his common stock in the Willys-Overland Company, just before the depression began in 1929, for $25, 000, 000, and became chairman of the board of directors instead of president of the company. On March 1, 1930, President Hoover appointed him ambassador to Poland.
He resigned on April 25, 1932, because, according to his own statement, President Hoover asked him to do so as "a patriotic duty".
The Willys-Overland Company had failed in March 1932 to get a loan from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and after his resignation Willys again took charge, but in 1933 the company defaulted on loans, owed taxes, was unable to meet its payroll, and went into receivership. Under a friendly court action, Willys himself became receiver, was reelected president in 1935, and had permission to continue manufacturing cars, but the company was still in receivership when he died on August 26, 1935, at his home in The Bronx, New York City, of a stroke.
Quotations: "Certainly it is true that the constant striving for something better-the price of progress-adds to the total of human happiness. It stimulates industry by creating new wants. It multiplies opportunities for the employment of brain and brawn. And it bridges the gaps between peaks of prosperity and helps take up the slack during times of reaction. "
On December 1, 1897, John Willys married Isabel Van Wie, they had a daughter. In 1934 his wife obtained a divorce from him at Miami, Florida, and in July of that year he married Florence Dolan.