This gave Willyums a great wide opportunity to ventilate his views on the crying necessity for cooperative action among manufacturers.
He dictated a letter that was all muscle and fibre. In it he urged the importance of all manufacturers organizing for their mutual protection. He stated that only through unselfishness on the part of Each, could the good of All be served; and original things like that.
Willyums then drafted another snorter to send out to such other manufacturers as he was on speaking terms with, and he pleaded with them to put their shoulders to the wheel and make every sacrifice for the furtherance of the Cause.
He said that any man who would not give up his time whole-heartedly to the work was a stumbling-block in the march of Progress, and he coined other metaphors and epigrammatic phrases that made his letter sizzle and spit like a war-whooper at the Big Grove.
When the “copy” was typewritten and delivered back to Willyums to read and enjoy, he scanned it hurriedly a few dozen times and then handed it to his Advertising-Manager and told that groove-dweller to cut out all the personal pronouns so the Trade wouldn’t think it came from J. Ham Lewis and then gallop the letter off to all the names on the list.
The responses that fluttered back were very encouraging. Everybody seemed strong for organizing at once, and several letters indicated subdued excitement.
A number of leading manufacturers soon got together and perfected a temporary organization and selected a name for the new Association that read like a serial story.
Business matters of a pressing nature prevented Willyums from attending the first meeting, but he wrote a strong letter of endorsement and it was read at the morning session and was much enjoyed by All Those Present as well as himself.
At this Conference it was decided to hold a big meeting of the whole Trade and get things going like a busy shipyard, and the place and date were fixed well in advance so that nobody could stall out.