(Mary Long) Along this busy highway, you see Fords, Chevrolets, Toyotas, Nissans, and the odd Cadillac of today.

Gone are the cars of yesteryear... the Pierce-Arrow, the Hudson, the Duesenberg.

And there's another car missing today...the Anderson.

Perhaps this car is not quite as historical as some, but it has a wonderful claim to fame.

The Anderson car was built in Rock Hill, South Carolina, by John Gary Anderson.

The last Anderson car was completed in 1925.

If you would like to have one of these, there are only 11 left.

Even if you could persuade the owner to sell, it would cost you over $35,000.

Our story is not so much about the Anderson car as about the man behind the car, John Gary Anderson.

♪ ♪ ♪ Let's begin the story of the Anderson car creator right here where it ended.

Here is a modern textile plant in the heart of Rock Hill, but in 1925 it was an automobile plant, the home of the Anderson car.

Finally, after 10 years of excellent production, the very last Anderson car rolled from the lines in 1925 through the gates and into history.

As we study the personality of the creator of this car, we have three sources concerning his life and his personality... first, his autobiography, and second, mountains of papers which his family has very carefully preserved, and third, the memories of his family.

You will hear from the members of his family who gathered one afternoon in the parlor of Anderson's home in Rock Hill.

There are two stories here, one of John Anderson the enterprising industrialist, and the other of a man whose grandchildren still refer to him as "Other Papa."

This is the sight of the plant of the Anderson Motor Company built in 1919.

In its prime, the company was turning out 35 cars a day, filling orders for dealers all across the country and in Europe.

But in 1925, that came to an end.

We don't want the story of the car right now.

We want the man behind the car.

Who was John Gary Anderson?

He began his life in a period of American history that is one of the most tragic in the history of our country.

John Gary Anderson entered, as he put it, "this veil of tears," on November 27, 1861, in Lawsonville, North Carolina.

The South he came to love was torn apart by the Civil War.

He would grow up in the days of the Reconstruction South.

Before he was six years old, two tragedies would come into his life, the death of his father from tuberculosis and the death of his younger sister Annie.

In 1870, death strikes the family again with the passing of his mother.

He writes in his autobiography that he has lost his "best and dearest friend."

At nine years old, John Gary Anderson is now an orphan.

He was raised an orphan, extremely poor, without enough to eat, when he lived with his granddad in Lawsonville.

They had no salt, he talked about quite a bit.

They would take a horseback ride to get salt.

This had a lot to do with what drove him.

He was raised a poor boy, didn't have anything.

He was determined to do something.

In the next few years, young John Anderson would display a characteristic which would stay with him.

He had a personality trait which would enable him to turn impending disaster into unqualified success at almost every turn.

At 12 years of age, John Gary Anderson entered the world of business.

It all started with a simple apple peeler-slicer.

While living with his maternal grandfather, he had observed the family struggle during the post-Reconstruction years.

He decided with an apple peeler-slicer he would enter the world of business and make himself some money.

He wrote, "My status was immediately changed "in the twinkling of an eye from an ordinary little shaver to an operator and financier."

After a lot of peeling and slicing, he was able to deliver 300 pounds of dried apples to a nearby store, and he made his first profit of $20.

In 1877, he moves to Rock Hill, after a brief stint as a printer's devil at the Reidsville, North Carolina, news.

While living with his grandfather Anderson, he works in a grocery store and restaurant, but soon moves on to work for "The Herald," which is still published in Rock Hill.

The printing work with the newspaper lasts awhile, but Anderson is on the move again.

After a variety of ventures, he settles upon a grocery store an d dry goods business.

This expands to include farm machinery, and here the seeds are planted fo r the Anderson Motor Company.

By 1886, Anderson is married with one child and has begun a business that will lead him to the automobile.

At this point, John Gary Anderson really gets moving.

He tries one business, then another.

Anderson sets up shop on a shoestring, fixing everything from cotton gins to buggies and even occasionally making furniture.

After a series of partnerships in buggy companies, he finally establishes the Rock Hill Buggy Company.

With it, he builds the town's first telephone system.

To save time going to the train depot to check on parts shipments, he strings a line between his office and the station.

A few years later, he sells the phone company when it grew to a number of subscribers.

...to give away the telephone company.

(John Gill) Every time Mama gets talking, she says, "Papa did this."

I say, "Your papa wasn't all smart.

"He kept our buggy business and gave away the telephone company!"

(Mary) Rock Hill Buggy becomes one of the finest made in the world.

Anderson refuses to continue the tradition of painting buggies black and begins to turn out multicolored buggies with silver-plated trim.

This is to become the hallmark of his manufacturing career.

The buggies sell like hotcakes!

(John) A fellow wrote from the deep part of Georgia, Pine Mountain or something, said, "There's a young doctor "who lives 7 miles from this place.

"He'd had a rather late afternoon call in the buggy.

"When he was on the way home, the horse shied away "and took off and bounded into the railroad track, "up a 6-foot embankment, through the woods, "and ran about 2 miles, and practically nothing happened to the buggy!"

He said it was indestructible!

(Mary) During these good years, Anderson is not only building buggies, he is actively involved in his community and the wider business world.

He forms the Rock Hill Chamber of Commerce and serves as its first chairman.

Anderson is interested in the economic success of his beloved South.

In 1911, when cotton prices fall due to a large crop, Anderson turns his attention to the economy.

He comes up with what will be known as "The Rock Hill Plan" and works with politicians and farmers from Texas to the Carolinas to help salvage the South's economy.

As early as 1909, Anderson's son John Wesley becomes interested in the new horseless carriages.

He convinces his father to allow him to produce an experimental prototype.

It is at the urging of his sons Wesley and William that Anderson begins to look into the automobile business.

If it hadn't have been for Uncle Willie and Wes, he might not have gone into the business.

(man) He was up in years when the automobile came along.

I think those two boys pushed it more.

It had to be done.

Buggies were a thing of the past.

(Mary) With a firm business reputation behind him, John Anderson goes to Detroit in 1914.

He visits the factories of Ford, Paige, Hudson, and Continental.

He returns to Rock Hill convinced that the day of the horseless carriage is at hand, and that the buggy business is over.

By 1916, he makes his first six cars and sells them all.

In his autobiography, he describes the transition from buggies to cars.

"The automobile, while new in many respects, "was a kindred line.

"Our equipment was suitable to handle it on a small scale.

"The logical thing, therefore, was to get into the game as soon as we could."

And also, "The undertaking "wasn't half as difficult as we expected.

"In fact, the process was as easy, if not easier, than making buggies."

In 1917, the entry of the United States into World War I slows down the automobile business.

Despite lack of parts and supplies, the motor company plugs along, building as many as 50 cars.

The war brings a government contract Anderson's way.

He begins making small trucks for the storage of army hydroplanes.

To get the government contract, Anderson quotes the government a price of $500 each.

The government is delighted with the prices.

It had been paying $1500 each for the trucks.

Anderson gets a contract for 3,000 trucks.

The war ends sooner than expected, and he only delivers 100 of these, but he is now fully into the motor vehicle business.

In the boom years that follow World War I, the company grows.

By 1919, Anderson builds a new factory in what is now downtown Rock Hill.

With the completion of a second building, the company is up to 35 cars a day by 1920.

Recording the success, Anderson writes, "We had been successful in our carriage business "with the largest and most efficiently managed "concerns in the country.

"I felt in my bones we could hold our own "against all comers, no matter what we undertook.

"In fact, to be perfectly frank, "I didn't think anything I made up my mind to undertake could fail permanently."

Despite the demands of running a multi-million dollar automobile business, Anderson remains close to his family.

One example of this remains in the memories of his daughter Alice Anderson Gill, for whom he built a very special car.

A little violet-colored roadster.

My mother and I were in Asheville, and we saw this Biltmore homespun cloth that was so beautiful.

I got a sample of it and sent it to Wesley.

When I got home, they met me at the station, because you didn't go anywhere on a plane or flying.

We went in-- well, how did we?

(John) By train.

Went by train, yeah.

They met us at the station with this violet roadster.

(woman) How old were you?

(John) Probably at Winthrop.

(Alice) I was grown enough to just go wild!

I wish I had kept it!

(John) Oh, boy, I wish you had too!

(Mary) In the postwar period, business is good.

The Andersons are selling well all over the country.

Much to his dismay, the cars are selling better outside South Carolina.

Anderson says he sells more cars in Detroit than in his home state where he has 3,000 stockholders.

He is happy with the quality of the car and the speed at which this company is moving.

His belief that anything is possible if you work hard is bringing results.

But his undaunted optimism and personal drive will undergo a major test very soon.

In the mid-1920s, a depression sets in, and all automobile sales drop.

In Detroit, Ford cuts his prices by $175.

Anderson cuts his by $200, but even at that, his least expensive car, a touring car, still sells for $1900.

By 1922, desperate to rebuild sales, Anderson comes out with a less expensive car, the Light-Six.

The introduction is made with a big dealer's convention in Rock Hill and lots of fanfare.

Almost on the spot, the newly encouraged dealers sign up for 4500 cars.

Still, the Light-Six commands a price tag of more than $1100, while Henry Ford's models sell for as little as $298.

Anderson sticks to his slogan of, "A little higher in price, but."

He refuses to cut back on the quality of the cars and to employ mass production techniques, and sales suffer.

The next staggering blow to the company comes from one of its parts suppliers, the Continental Motor Company.

For the new Light-Six, Anderson had bought the new Red Seal 6Y motor from Continental.

The Red Seal is a lemon.

The motors had been bored out while the metal was still green, or untempered.

The result for new owners of the Light-Six was that after about a week the engine blocks warp and the motors stop cold.

All the years of reputation building, from the buggy to the automobile days, begins to erode.

Buyers who had paid higher prices for the quality of an Anderson, find their shiny, colorful, new Andersons stranded on the side of the road, while Henry Ford's mass-produced, drab, black horseless carriages whiz by.

The failure of the Continental Motor Company's Red Seal 6Y brought the first major damage to his reputation as a high quality manufacturer.

During this period, dozens of other car manufacturers went out of business.

The period from 1910 to 1930 wa s one of intense competition, but experimentation took its toll on many of these manufacturers.

Most were absorbed by larger conglomerates or disappeared altogether.

Fledgling General Motors was having its troubles too.

In the 1920s, General Motors wa s saved from economic failure by the DuPont corporation's takeover of its shares.

The Anderson, even with such inventions as the foot dimmer switch, was one of the many to be lost during the last years of the vintage cars.

The end of the Anderson car may be equally shared among several factors, only a few of which were within An derson's direct control.

While Ford and what became General Motors spent time and money in assembly line procedures, Anderson stuck to his time- honored, handcrafted approach in putting together automobiles at a time when his cars cost more than twice as much as a Ford.

He was selling quality.

An article written by the Sm ithsonian Institution in 1966 places the blame for the failure of the company on the uncompromising stand made on prices.

His price was much too high.

In fact, it was noncompetitive.

Other problems arose from lack of financing for cars.

The banks of the time were distrustful of automobile loans.

Thus it was difficult to find financing for Anderson's or anybody else's cars.

There was no sympathy from the banks which financed the Anderson Motor Company.

They demanded payment in full for their notes.

In 1925, John Gary Anderson turned to the public, to the town of Rock Hill, and to the banks for financial assistance.

He was turned down cold.

By the next year, all holdings of the Anderson Motor Company were sold at auction to satisfy a $53,000 tax bill.

The Anderson Motor Company, even though it went bankrupt in 1925, was a successful company, to the place that Mr. Duke offered Other Papa financial backing if he would move to Charlotte.

From what I've been told, the Chamber of Commerce, "We'll do anything you want done...stay here."

He also had the opportunity to merge with General Motors.

It's been told he had more money than General Motors.

This is before DuPont money got into General Motors.

They just wanted him for his money.

But it was a successful company, definitely.

(Mary) He is disappointed by the refusal of his adopted hometown to help keep the motor company alive.

Even while things were good, even in Rock Hill where the whole economy was benefiting from the company, people were buying Fords, not Andersons.

It was a source of irritation to him that they would buy classy trimmings from an Anderson and put them on their Fords to dress them up.

In the ten years the Anderson Motor Company was around, there were nearly 7,000 Andersons put on the road.

He had brought a factory of more than 600 workers with a payroll over a million dollars a year to the town, and when the chips were down, they didn't lift a finger to help.

Disappointed, he writes, "If I had picked up and established "the buggy factory in Cincinnati "when I first began the manufacture of buggies, "I'd have been better off financially.

"Rock Hill would have loved me just as much.

"If the automobile plant had been in Detroit, "I'm certain we'd have taken our place among the leaders "and swept on to fame on the flood tide that carried many others to the pinnacle of success."

Anderson blames his age for not being able to pull his company out of its troubles.

"At above 60, I had lost something-- "desire, vitality, enthusiasm, staying power-- "that I had at 35.

"I couldn't put the necessary fire and punch "into a practically lost cause, "to save the ship from foundering.

I just couldn't."

As we read these words, written a decade after the closing of his company, we can still feel his frustration and his helplessness.

Anderson spent the last years of his life living between Rock Hill and Lakeland, Florida.

He dedicated his time to his family, to golf, and the writing of the autobiography, itself a monumental work for a man in his seventies.

In this autobiography, we get a picture of the faith he had in hard work and ambition.

His motto was, "You can do it!"

He passes advice along to the next generation through his autobiography.

"I do not care what it is... "if you love intensely whatever you set out to do, "you can do it, "or it will lead you to some other avocation that you can do profitably and well."

We have the picture of a man driven by some force of personal nature to succeed against all odds.

John Gary Anderson is a living example of his own advice.

He did things well.

He built a reputation for his quality buggies and automobiles, which live in the minds of auto fanciers today.

Many small automobile manufacturers, when the automobile became popular, either went into bankruptcy or were absorbed by the older, more established automobile manufacturers.

But the Anderson car stands taller than the rest.

John Gary Anderson stands taller than the rest for two reasons.

One, his firm belief in building a quality item without compromise.

And the second reason he's important is because during the years of his Anderson buggy works and later the automobile concern, he put his hometown and state on the map.

When you see an Anderson descendent drive one of the cars in a parade or exhibit it in an auto show, you can say with great pride, "There goes that car that was made in South Carolina!"

♪ ♪ ♪ Program captioned by: CompuScripts Captioning, Inc. 803.988.8438 ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪