Other highlights (32)
“He was quick to enlighten me that Kaiser did not engage in lobbying in the classic sense. Instead, he led me to a host of relevant issues, from antitrust to regional economic development, on which Kaiser became an agent of government policy.”
“*Whenever the others say something or other can't be done, Kaiser says: ''We'll attend to that for you,'' and the others have to go along.
*M”
“In the summer of 1942, "fabulous" Henry J. Kaiser burst like a comet across the national sky. His West Coast shipyards had performed production miracles during the dark days of America's first six months in World War II, a time when merchant shipping across the Atlantic, a target of German submarines, was deemed the most crucial bottleneck to overcome for America's war effort. 1 He had made headlines for his magnesium enterprise and for the steel plant he was about to build, both of which provided the "arsenal of Democracy" with a West Coast alternative to sluggish East Coast producers.
Kaiser was introduced at the National Press Club in July as "the modern”
“Kaiser went on to describe a road to entrepreneurial success in terms that diverged from America's well-worn, self-made path, instead passing through the nation's capital along the way: "That is the first place you build it, and you keep steadily there all the time while you are making aircraft and while you are making ships, because you have got any number of people to see people who control the things that you need. . . . You have got to help them get the things. Anybody can come in and say, `Goodness, I need this. Don't you see how badly I need it?' Anybody can do that, but you have got to come to Washington and say, `Here is a way. Now I know this is right, see if I am right,' and if he thinks you are right he is tickled to death you came." 2”
“Kaiser's organization provided his generation's most telling case study in the role of governmental relations in American entrepreneurial success. Henry Kaiser, then, looms as a significant figure in American business history because of the extent of his involvement with the federal government at a time when distinctions between the public and private economic sectors were rapidly diminishing.”
“the story of the relationship between the federal government and what I call a "government entrepreneur."”
“Even Henry J. Kaiser, the most powerful businessman in the West, could not”
“Kaiser's enterprises offer a view of the changing opportunities in this environment for government entrepreneurs during the first half of the century. Kaiser was one of many successful road builders during the "good roads" movement of the 1920s, a major dam builder during the West's golden age of public works in the 1930s, and America's most widely publicized shipbuilder during the war years. Finally, he was the most prominent western industrialist in primary metals after World War II.”
“Kaiser's appetite for enterprise was legendary: he attempted ventures in any and all sectors of the economy. "Find a need and fill it" was his motto, and he launched more than a hundred businesses in a host of fields, ranging from construction to basic metals to health care to consumer products to broadcasting. Apparently, when Kaiser was in doubt, he started another company rather than wait for proper alignment of the economic heavens.”
“Kaiser did, of course, choose not to enter all industries, but such exceptions some of which have become nuggets of corporate folklore appear to prove the rule. In the 1920s, for example, Kaiser was offered half-ownership of a cemetery in Berkeley, California. An associate presented the idea as "a business that keeps growing." Kaiser would have none of it: "I don't want to wait until somebody dies to make a profit."”
“experiences with class systems, geographic limitations, and dashed hopes of revolutionary change, to limit their expectations of change, Americans had quite a different worldview, one less respectful of authority.”
“Warren Susman writes that "American business enterprise . . . appropriated the frontier past for itself and insisted that the pioneer spirit was being carried forward by modern industrialism," a spirit of "individuality, independence, and self-direction."”
“They cite James Oliver Robertson's account of Gilded Age captains of industry, who could "ignore the clamor of public opinion" and rise "by economic means alone" (with little expression of social conscience) but whose entrepreneurial individualism was nonetheless attractive to the public whose interests they ignored.”
“America's ethos of individualism not only puts a premium on entrepreneurship but creates a tendency to cast entrepreneurs as shapers of their own world (the economic equivalent of "he was born in a log cabin he built with his own hands").”
“Americans long to believe that the rules, natural or man-made, do not apply to America or its heroes, fictional or real.”
“Huck Finn finally vows to escape the hypocritical rules of "civilizing" influences and light out for the territories.”
“Jay Gatsby, however, discovers too late that only America's hereditary aristocracy can ignore the rules.”
“Kaiser also established an experimental laboratory in 1943 to pursue ideas that came from both within and outside the organization. Kaiser was deluged with fan mail by this point, much of which included ideas for inventions. The role of the "hobby lobby" was to turn these dreams into reality. According to popular belief, only an innocent would invite the public to contribute; jaded eastern business was too set in its ways to listen to the common sense of the man in the street.”
“Kaiser's enthusiastic cooperation with the media's and the public's insa-
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tiable appetite for American heroes he was, in Morris Udall's phrase, "unavoidable for comment" helped forestall the need to develop an extensive public relations function within his organization.”
“it seemed as though Kaiser needed no public relations assistance because of his combination of charisma, conviction, and capability. 23 Reconstruction Finance Corporation head Jesse Jones, aware of Kaiser's gifts of persuasion, told him: "I don't want you to deal with anyone around here but me. You'd talk them out of their watches, and when I'd ask them about it, they'd say, `See, he talked me out of my watch, isn't it wonderful?'"”
“If Kaiser wanted something, he would turn Washington upside down to get it, even if this meant personally carrying the requisite papers from office to office or "bombarding" the decision makers with telegrams.”
“."28 Kaiser demonstrated the dramatic success government entrepreneurs could achieve by being nimble enough to seize the opportunities presented by an activist government. His enterprises represented a confluence of administration policy and entrepreneurial zeal.”
“In late 1942, Kaiser shifted again, from contract seeker to industrial statesman, as an apostle of postwar economic prosperity. Kaiser spoke frequently of America's coming need for transportation, housing, and medical care, while implicitly promising to back up his words with enterprise. Finally, Kaiser became politically active in August 1944, heading an organization to get out the national vote when voter turnout was the key re-election strategy of the Democrats.”
“Only Margaret Suckley knew that her cousin Franklin Roosevelt had earlier put Kaiser at the head of his list.
In May 1944, FDR told his cousin that he thought Kaiser would be the best man to succeed him.31 The publication of her record of this conver-
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sation in her diary fifty years later did not create even a ripple of reaction, although it represents the only time after 1940 that Roosevelt is on record as mentioning a possible successor.”
“Although the personalities of the sometimes abrasive Kaiser and usually smooth Roosevelt contrasted, their attitude and organizational temperament did not. Above all, they shared the classic American "can-do" attitude. The can-do president and the can-do entrepreneur shared a boundless optimism and personified the possibilities. And they were both nearly irresistible: few men in Washington have been more convincing in one-on-one situations than Roosevelt and Kaiser.”
“Margaret Mead expressed concern about both figures, warning: "If the war should ever come to seem a battle in which Roosevelt and MacArthur and Kaiser are supermen father figures who do our fighting or our thinking for us while we simply watch the show then there would be danger, for such an attitude would bring out not the strengths of the American character but its weaknesses." 32 She was responding to the fact that, in an age of authoritarianism overseas, both Kaiser and Roosevelt created institutions at home characterized more by a cult of personality than by any dominant strategy or structure.”
“John Kenneth Galbraith writes that "in any large organization with varied and complex tasks, power passes down to those who are in daily touch with the action and have the resulting knowledge."”
“Kaiser pursued entry into the metals industries and other defense work using a personal, idiosyncratic approach to government officials rather than an institutional and hierarchical one. At one point during the war, one of Kaiser's managers complained about "the Navy." Kaiser responded: "You know there is no such thing as the U.S. Navy! It's just
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a bunch of guys down there in Washington. Now which one is your problem?''”
“Even Henry J. Kaiser, the most powerful businessman in the West, could not
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have achieved his success in shipbuilding, steel, dam building, or aluminum without a healthy relationship with the executive branch.”
“Roosevelt shared Kaiser's distaste for bureaucratic rules or structures that might get in his way. As Roosevelt biographer Frank Freidel puts it, he ''dearly loved a semblance of insubordination."”
“Roosevelt proudly recalled how well he bypassed bureaucratic red tape: "From Feb. 6 to March 4 [1917] we in the Navy committed acts for which we could be, and may be yet sent to jail for 999 years. We spent millions of dollars we did not have. . . . We went to those whom we had seen in advance and told them to enlarge their plants and send us their bills."37 Although Roosevelt oversaw the takeoff of the modern bureaucratic state, he had little patience for many of its organizational features. As president, Roosevelt devised another way to circumvent a recalcitrant bureaucracy: he created new agencies to do what he wanted. While Roosevelt established agencies in the public sector, Kaiser created enterprises in the private sector.”
“Kaiser was not a one-man show in Washington; he had effective agents operating on his behalf, most notably his Washington representative, Charles F. ("Chad") Calhoun. In contrast with some other Washington
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representatives, whose principal role was to arrange meetings for executives with government officials, Calhoun offered Kaiser advice on myriad policy and organizational decisions. While Kaiser seized the headlines, Calhoun assembled contacts, collected information, and reported on the prevailing mood in Washington. More than any other individual in the organization, Calhoun was the driving force behind Kaiser's entry into industries ranging from magnesium to aluminum.”
