Henry Kaiser

"Henry Kaiser hated being alone; this helps explain his work habits and personality. He stayed up late, frequently talking to groups of people. By 4:30 A.M. he was often out of bed, talking long-distance to men scattered around the world. Whenever he had a new idea—and he commonly had a score or so daily—he reached for the telephone. His interactions with others were complex. He had thousands of acquaintances and hundreds of “associates,” but few, if any, close personal friends. He appeared incapable of simply kicking off his shoes and ignoring business for a full evening, let alone for any longer period."

"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."

"Henry Kaiser was by no means typical; he was more venturesome than the average entrepreneur. It is Kaiser's apparent uniqueness, his ability to push the edges of the envelope of possibilities, that makes him an ideal figure through which to trace the evolution of twentieth-century government entrepreneurship."

"Because Henry Kaiser was a New Deal favorite, it was assumed in many circles that he was an ideologue. Kaiser and his associates were, however, above all practical men. In trying to obtain government support for a steel plant, for instance, Kaiser was perfectly willing to do business with the New Deal's nemesis"

"Henry Kaiser was said to have once remarked: "Contractors are all alike. . . . They start out broke, with a wheelbarrow and a piece of hose. Then, suddenly, they find themselves in the money. Everything's fine. Ten years later they are back where they started from with one wheelbarrow, a piece of hose, and broke." Kaiser later denied making the comment, but it was an apt description of the industry's early days."

"Contracting in the early twentieth century was a booming business. From the inception of Henry Kaiser's paving business in 1914 to the eve of the Depression in 1929, America's population increased by nearly 25 percent, while manufacturing output and new construction nearly doubled. During the same period, construction of highways, roads, and streets Kaiser's segment of the business tripled.10 The growth of road building in California (Kaiser's future base) was fairly representative of this construction boom. As of November 1910, "there were 28 contracts and day labor jobs under way on the state highway system, involving 280 miles. On July 1, 1922, there were 152 contracts and day labor jobs with a total of 1,063 miles."11"

"Henry Kaiser was a broad-gauged thinker with an infectious sense of mission. The world is filled with thinkers; what made Kaiser an American archetype was his ability to bring his ideas boldly to fruition. This is exemplified in the way Kaiser hired experts to mechanize construction work: instead of doing so to squeeze a little more profit out of small jobs, Kaiser did so as a means to tackle large jobs he otherwise would have been unable to perform. Therefore, a construction legend was born in large part through the way he used various means of risk reduction to enable him to climb higher mountains."