Helsinki Congress of the International Economic History Association, 21-25 August 2006: Session 93 Equipment goods and mass brands American business spreading modernity into France? Strategies

Une histoire pour l’avenir. Merlin-Gerin, 1920-1992, Paris, Albin Michel, 1992.

173 Quynh Delaunay, Histoire de la machine à laver. Un objet technique dans la société française, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1994, pp. 124-125. “For long the American machines in France were seen as typifying the automatic machine.” American patents succeeded one other, especially for the control processes in semi-automatic or fully automatic machines and water level controllers, etc. Bendix (1949), Hoover (1947), Whirlpool (1956), General Motors (1959), Ibidem, p. 184. “Curtis, the first global brand, now manufactures in France top quality and solid equipment with American technology. Thermostats, cold air systems, engines, hermetic compressors, directly imported from American factories.”, Revue des arts ménagers, May 1956, Ibidem, p. 228.

174 The license for the manufacture of phosphorus and its derivatives, for twelve years and for France and Belgium and their colonies and technological assistance for the expansion of a factory. It was paid a royalty on every ton of phosphorus thus made. Ibidem.

175 Note Investissements américains récents dans les sociétés françaises, 24 November 1955, Archives historiques du Crédit lyonnais, Deef 59909/2/9910.

176 Pierre Cayez, Rhône-Poulenc, 1895-1975, pp. 176-177.

177 Belgium, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland and Sweden.

178 Dekachimie manufactured the components needed for the production of polyurethane foam. Note Investissements américains dans les sociétés françaises, 1964, Archives historiques du Crédit lyonnais, Deef 02067/1 be 0635.

179 For example, the four page advertisement in L’Express, 23 March 1967.

180 Advertisement in L’Expansion, December 1966.

181 Advertisement in L’Expansion, March 1967. Bally was a manufacturer and distributor of footwear.

182 (Puerto Rico and South Carolina). Dow had twelve factories in Europe in 1960-1962.

183 The Manufacture normande de polyéthylène (Manolène) made polyolefine resins in this factory at Gonfreville-L’Orcher. Cf. Pierre Cayez, Rhône-Poulenc, 1895-1975, p. 182.

184 Claude Doucet, Fenwick, 1884-1984 : L’équipement industriel, du négoce à la production, thesis for the University of Paris 4-Sorbonne, 1997.

185 « Le capital américain en France », Économie et politique, n°5-6, 1954, p. 153.

186 Cf. also the website [www.ingersollrand.com/aboutus/history].

187 The website [www.detroitdiesel.com/Corporate/History]. The GM Diesel branch, which was created in 1938, turned into the Detroit Diesel Engine Division in 1965. Then, with its merger in 1970 with the Allison branch, formed the Detroit Diesel Allison Division. 

188 In 1950, Continental Foundry & Machines associated itself with the Aciéries de Longwy for the manufacture of pilger rolls for continuous mills. United Engineering & Foundry did the same with Société française des cylindres de laminoirs J. Marichal-Ketin, a subsidiary of Forges & aciéries de Firminy. In 1948, Driver-Harris associated itself with the Usines et aciéries de Sambre & Meuse for the manufacture of high temperature steel. In Note Investissements américains récents dans les sociétés françaises, 24 November 1955, Archives historiques du Crédit lyonnais, Deef 59909/2/9910.

189 Note Investissements américains récents dans les sociétés françaises, 1964, Archives historiques du Crédit lyonnais, Comité de coordination des études, Deef 02067/1 be 0635. In 1961, American Can had a share in Établissements Sudry’s capital, which manufactured machines for the canned foods industry.

190 In 1964, Hispano-Suiza signed an agreement with Rolls-Royce to jointly manufacture the Tyne turboprop engine. Snecma bought over Hispano-Suiza in 1968. In 1965 Rolls-Royce allied itself with Turboméca to develop the turbojet engine Adour for the Franco-british fighter Jaguar.

191 Unipol and Lesieur merged their jointly held subsidiary Eurosoya with Cargill’s own subsidiary Indu-Soja, to create the joint subsidiary Soja-France, and the factory at Saint-Nazaire, which captured a third of the market when it opended in March 1970. Cf. Tristan Gaston-Breton, Lesieur. Une marque dans l’histoire, 1908-1998, Paris, Perrin, 1998.

192 This factory also manufactured plastic packages along with the Cotupia machines.

193 Allis Chalmers (tractors, bulldozers, graders, loaders, angledozers, etc.) was taken over by Stokvis, which was itself a subsidiary of a Dutch group, bought the factory at La Guerche-sur-l’Aubois (Cher) and its turnover of 163 million francs. Note Investissements américains dans les sociétés françaises. Comité de coordination des études, 1964, Archives historiques du Crédit lyonnais, Deef 02067/1 be 0635.

194 Advertisement in L’Expansion, February 1970.

195 Advertisement in L’Expansion, November 1968.

196 See the chapter by Sophie Chauveau in the same book.

197 Monsanto sold Avadex (a weed and grass killer for cereales) from 1960, before taking up Lasso (a selective weed killer for maize) in 1974. Cf. the website [www.monsanto.fr/apropos/france].

198 Note by Jean Rivoire, Sociétés à participation américaine en 1963, Archives historiques du Crédit lyonnais, daf 02067-1.

199 One hundred thousand dollars were invested in 1949. Note Investissements américains récents dans les sociétés françaises, 2 février 1950, Archives historiques du Crédit lyonnais, Deef 59909/2/9910.

200 Dana was created in 1904 based on Spicer patents and turned into an automobile parts company. Cf. the website [www.dana.com/centennial].

201 It was in 1953 that Harry Ferguson came together with Massey Harris (itself created by the merger in 1891 of Massey, established in 1847, with Harris. Archives historiques du Crédit lyonnais, Deef 59815. Cf. also the websites [www.ytmag.com/cgi-bin/ntracz.pl ?m=massey]. [www.masseyferguson.com].

202 The author had himself used a Pony for agricultural purposes in Haute-Savoie at the beginning of the 1960s…

203 It consisted mainly of the Farmall wheeled tractors (15hp and 20hp) (with a capacity of 7,500 units). Note Investissements de capitaux privés américains dans les pme, 25 September 1955, Archives historiques du Crédit lyonnais, Deef 59909. Mira Wilkins said in The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise that International Harvester already had a factory at Croix before 1914. Perhaps it was an accord with Wallut which was later turned into an ownership.

204 In 1950, International Harvester injected 2.8 million dollars for the manufacture of its tractors under the brand names MacCormick and Deering. Note Investissements américains récents dans les sociétés françaises, 22 February 1951, Archives historiques du Crédit lyonnais, Deef 59909/2/9910. Cima (the Compagnie industrielle de machines agricoles) had been established in 1923 for the manufacture and sale of MacCormick equipment. It merged with Wallut in 1934 and manufactured the MacCormick and Deering brands of agricultural equipment. Archives historiques du Crédit lyonnais, Deef 59815.

205 Massey-Harris-Ferguson’s production figures went up from 6 400 in 1953 to 28 800 in 1956, International Harvester’s from 28 200 down to 16 900.

206 Note Investissements américains dans les sociétés françaises. Comité de coordination des études, Archives historiques du Crédit lyonnais, Deef 02067/1 be 0635.

207 Otis was established as early as 1853-1868; cf. the website [www.otis.com].

208 The United States produced machine tools worth 4.82 billion dollars in 1980, ahead of Germany (4.69) and Japan (3.81). France lagged well behind in eighth position, with 0.97 billion dollars).

209 Note de Jean Rivoire, Sociétés à participation américaine en 1963, Archives historiques du Crédit lyonnais, daf 02067-1.

210 Jonathan Love (ed.), Jane’s Major Companies of Europe, 1976, London, Janes’s Yearbooks, 1976, p. D164.

211 Bendix’s share went up from 47 to 50 % in 1967, with Rothschild retaining 1 %.

212 Cf. the website [www.goodyear.fr/company/information]. In 1966, Goodyear had 88 factories spread all over the world, of which two were in France, one at Havre (rubber) and the other at Amiens.

213 But Goodrich preferred to withdraw from the French market and sold its 25 % stake in Colombes to Michelin in June 1965.

214 Firestone was the first to sell its radial tires in 1971. In 1968, Graham Hill won the F1 Championship on Firestone radials.

215 After having created an engineering subsidiary in France in 1968, Pullman, the second largest manufacturer in the world, took over two companies which controlled Cimt-Lorraine, which had a factory at Lunéville. The agreement was signed in June 1969 and finalized in June 1970. The firm used the Trailor brand name for its semi-trailers and then also for its containers. It held 30 % of the French market.

216 Cf. the website [www.allischalmers.com]. Cf. Walter Peterson, An Industrial Heritage: Allis Chalmers Corporation, Milwaukee County Historical Society, 1978.

217 Cf. the website [www.clarkmhc.com/historytimeline]. Clark also had its own subsidiary, Ingersoll-Rand.

218 Marrel manufactured [scraper bowls / skip hoists / skip buckets] for heavy duty trucks in eight factories with 2,200 employees.

219 In February 1970, Harris bought over three fourths of Marinoni, the leader in the French printing industry.

220 Dresser specialized in gas engine systems for compression and energy. It had at its disposal 22 factories all over the world. In 1968, it merged with the Wayne group. Cf. the websites [www.dresser.com] and [www.wayne.com].

221 La Rochette and the Chantiers & aciéries de la Loire (Cafl) sold their share of Air Products, which thus found outlets for its iron and steel works and stationary in Savoie, the l’étang de Berre and at Saint-Etienne (with Creusot-Loire). Air Products was established in 1940 at Detroit: cf. the website [www.airproducts.com/aboutus/companybackground].

222 Cf. the chapter by Patrick Fridenson in the same book.

223 L’Expansion, April 1971, p. 88.

224 In 1970, Jeumont-Schneider and Cge-Alsthom jointly occupied the sixth position world wide with 2,000 megawatts, far behind Ge (18,000 mw), Westinghouse (18,000), Gec (14,000), Siemens (6,000) and Bbc (6,000).

225 “Comment Claude-Paz s’est fait manger’’, L’Express, 28 November 1966, pp. 58-59. In spite of some stiff competition from the likes of Ge and Philips, Itt bought over this company which had been created in 1933 by Air Liquide, then the sole French producer, before Mazda-Philips.

226 Jonathan Love (ed.), Jane’s Major Companies of Europe, 1976, London, Jane’s Yearbooks, 1976, pp. D123-124.

227 Cf. Steven Tolliday, “The origins of Ford of Europe: From multidomestic to transnational corporation”, in Hubert Bonin, Yannick Lung & Steven Tolliday (eds.), Ford. The European History, 1903-2003, Paris, P.l.a.g.e., pp. 153-242.

228 Gordon McKibben, Gillette, op. cit., p. 47.

229 Cf. the website [www.culligan.fr].

230 Till the merger of Scott and Kimberley-Clark in 1970.

231 Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise, pp. 70-71. The factories at London, Anvers, Milan, Paris and Barcelona were concerned.

232 Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise, p. 295.

233 Gillette, p. 63.

234 “Procter & Gamble’s Bonux, a new, low-sudsing detergent better suited to French washing machines, was an even bigger hit [than Tide]. As sales accumulated, P&G built a second detergent plant near Paris and began to export to Italy”, Dazell & Olegario, op.cit., p. 103.

235 “P&G en France : 50 ans”, the website [www.prochedevous-enligne.com/archives/p.id_35_type_article_numero_51].

236 In 1950, Caterpillar gained its first European foothold in England. Later, factories were also opened in Austria, Belgium and France.

237 Henri Morsel & Jean-François Parent, Les industries de la région grenobloise, Grenoble, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 1991, pp.162-163.

238 Sabrié & Dottelonde, op.cit., p. 86.

239 Uniroyal-Englebert owned a factory at Compiègne-Clairvoix, which produced two million tires annually by the end of the 1960s, a fifth of which were exported.

240 Cf. Henri Morsel & Jean-François Parent, Les industries de la région grenobloise, Grenoble, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 1991, p. 215. HP was at that time more of a world leader in electronic measuring instruments, before venturing into administrative data processing and office automation.

241 Advertisement in L’Express, 7 April 1969. Though TI’s ancestry goes back to 1930, Ti was actually born in 1951 for the manufacture of transistors and, from 1953 onwards, of semi-conductors. Cf. the website [www.perso.wanadoo.fr/fabrice.montupet/tihisto].

242 Cf. the internet site: www.manpower.com/mpcom/history.

243 Michaël Grunelius, op. cit., p. 168.

244 One of the first examples is that of David Kearns, Xerox’s Executive vice-president of International Affairs in 1975-1977, who supervised Fuji Xerox and Rank Xerox, and thus the French market. He became executive president of the group in 1977 before being appointed ceo in 1982-1990.

245 He came back to France in 1971 as the deputy ceo of Dba-Bendix Lockheed Air Equipment. He went on to become the director general in November 1972.

246 Michel Herblay, “La fin de l’évangile selon Itt”, L’Expansion, September 1972, pp. 120-126.

247 Robert Serravalle, “Comment l’Oncle Sam achète l’Europe”, L’Expansion, December 1969, pp. 111-118.

248 “Enquête annuelle d’entreprise, 1970, fichier des liaisons financières Dafsa”, Table II.7, in Bernard Guibert (et alii), La mutation industrielle de la France, tome 1, La collection de l’Insee, E31-32, November 1975, p. 86.

249 The official suspension of the export of capital issued by the United States in January 1968 and the crisis of May-June 1968 in France did not seem to disturb the flow in any way.

250 Robert Serravalle, “Comment l’Oncle Sam achète l’Europe”, L’Expansion, December 1969, pp. 111-118.

251 Robert Serravalle, “Comment l’Oncle Sam achète l’Europe”, L’Expansion, December 1969, pp. 111-118.

252 Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Business, pp. 344-345.

253 J.C. Cohen & P. Fondanaiche, « Les participations étrangères dans l’industrie française en 1971 », Économie & statistique, n°52, January 1974, extracts from table 7.

254 Ibidem, extracts from table 6.

255 For example: Claude Julien, L’empire américain, Paris, Grasset, 1968.

256 “Le capital américain et la France” , in La France et les trusts. Special issue of the monthly review Économie et politique, n°5-6, 1954, pp. 141-162.

257 Ibidem, p. 161.

258 Cf. Georges Suffert, “The very thought that American values are being implanted in the place of the old European values is, truly speaking, unbearable to the French.”, in “Devenons-nous Américains”, L’Express, 24 July 1967, pp. 17-21. Cf. also the denouncing of the social practices in an American multinational in Paris in a novel by René-Victor Pilhes, L’Imprécateur, Paris, Seuil, 1974.

259 Marc Clairvoix, « Le retard de l’Europe s’aggrave », L’Expansion, June 1968, pp. 72-75.

260 Renato Mazzolini, « L’Europe des affaires est en panne. Pourquoi les grandes firmes européennes n’arrivent pas à fusionner », L’Expansion, October 1973, pp. 155-163.

261 Goodyear (turnover of 18 billion francs in 1968), Firestone (12.5), Uniroyal (8.5), Michelin (7), Goodrich (6.5), Dunlop (6.4), General Tyre (6), Pirelli (5.8), from: Robert Serravalle, « Comment l’Oncle Sam achète l’Europe », L’Expansion, December 1969, pp. 111-118.

262 Maurice Roy, « Le cauchemar de M. Debré : Bull », “Mr. Debré’s nightmare : Bull”, L’Express, 2 January 1967, pp. 8-10.

263 Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, Le défi américain, Paris, 1967 ; The American Challenge, New York, 1968.

264 Gilbert Veyret, « La France cherche ses business schools », “France in search of its business schools”, L’Expansion, May 1968, pp. 113-116.

265 Robert Serravalle, « Comment l’Oncle Sam achète l’Europe », “How Uncle Sam bought over Europe”, L’Expansion, December 1969, pp. 111-118.

266 Article in L’Express, 21 August 1967, p. 22. Michel Debré was Minister of Economy and Finance from January 1966 to May 1968.

267 Titles appearing in an article in the daily Le Monde, in June 1977.

268 Sema had at that time 2,000 employees.

269 “What did the victory at Le Mans mean to Henry Ford? A victory of the heavy industry, of mass production. The third biggest giant in the world, Ford made a turnover of 58 billion with 365 000 workers. And 4 600 000 vehicles sold in 1966. » L’Express, 19 May 1967.

270 The weekly L’Express, 19 April 1965, p. 32.

271 L’Express, 25 January 1965, p. 25. Renault produced only 453 000 cars in 1965 as agaisnt the 4.2 million made by GM, the 2.7 million by Ford and the 1.255 million by Chrysler, behind even Volkswagen (1.170 million), Fiat (945 000) and Bmc (608 000).

272 Itt already owned the Pompes Salmson since 1962 and could have become the European leader, beating to the second spot the German giant Ksb.

273 « Schneider entre le mark et le dollar » (“Schneider caught between the Mark and the Dollar”), title in L’Express of 27 October 1969. « Argument choc de l’entreprise américaine : la somme des entreprises françaises face aux regroupements allemands, anglais et japonais. » (“The shocking argument put forth by the American enterprise : the entire mass of French enterprises against the Germans, English and Japanese.”).

274 “The Westinghouse corporation was thinking of restructuring and regrouping most of its European licensees. This group would include Jeumont-Schneider (turnover of 650 million francs), the Acec (1,100), the Italian firm Marelli (350) and the Spanish company Cenemesa (200). Westinghouse’s controlling interests would be retained by a holding company presided over by M. Armand and headquartered at Luxembourg. Westinghouse would then begin a vigorous development program for the members of this group” by injecting a fresh sum of 250 million dollars and a transfer of technology. “Westinghouse would give a large degree of autonomy to the management of this European entity […]. It’s main objective being to use the power of this company to help in the rapid development of its European subsidiaries, facilitated by the common technology.” Note “Plan Westinghouse”, September 1969, Simon Nora files, archives of the Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po Paris.

275 « Étude sur la restructuration de l’industrie du gros matériel électromécanique », (A study of the restructuring of the heavy electromechanical equipment industry) Note for the Prime Minister’s cabinet, 21 July 1969, Simon Nora files, archives of the Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po Paris.

276 « Grandes manœuvres européennes », L’Express, 11 November 1968, p.102.

277 « Étude sur la restructuration de l’industrie du gros matériel électromécanique », (A study of the restructuring of the heavy electromechanical equipment industry) Note for the Prime Minister’s cabinet, 21 July 1969, Simon Nora files, archives of the Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po Paris.

278 Note by Simon Nora, in « Étude sur la restructuration de l’industrie du gros matériel électromécanique » (A study of the restructuring of the heavy electromechanical equipment industry), 21 July 1969, Simon Nora files, archives of the Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po Paris.

279 Note « Plan Westinghouse », September 1969, Simon Nora files, archives of the Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po Paris. “I am led to believe that if we get the feeling that France, by saying yes to Westinghouse, has decided to become just a European base for the American giants, Alsthom would not be able to cement any fruitful agreement with Bbc, Asea or Siemens,” Gérard Worms, 25 September 1969,