KAISER, HENRY JOHN
During the first part of the twentieth century Henry Kaiser (1882–1967) became one of the most prominent business entrepreneurs in the United States. Because he built most of his businesses in the western United States, he played a major role in developing the economy of that region. By the end of his life he had founded Kaiser Paving, Kaiser Steel, Kaiser-Frazer Automobile Corp., Kaiser Aluminum and Chemicals, Permanente Cement, Kaiser Industries, and the Kaiser Health Plan, the largest health maintenance organization (HMO) in the United States.
Born in 1882 in upstate New York to German immigrant parents, Kaiser was the youngest of four children. He began working full time at age thirteen in a dry goods store in Utica, New York. His boundless energy, optimism, and creativity showed in most things he did. By age seventeen Kaiser had taken up photography, just as the nearby Eastman Kodak Company was pioneering major advances in photographic equipment. He began as a partner in a small photographic studio, and by age twenty-one had opened a successful string of photography shops on the east coast of Florida aimed at servicing the tourist trade.
Looking elsewhere for more business opportunities, Kaiser made his way to the west coast of Canada and started a cement paving company. Before long, he expanded his operations to Washington, Oregon, and California. Later his headquarters moved from Canada to Oakland, California.
Kaiser's major work began as an extension of his cement company. He earned a reputation for fast, high quality work as a road builder and expanded his operations to build highways. In 1931, Kaiser joined an incorporated consortium of contractors known as Six Companies in order to contract with the federal government to build the Hoover Dam. He served as a liaison between the contractors and the government bureaucrats. Later he was similarly involved in building major portions of the Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams on the Columbia River.
With the outbreak of World War II (1939–1945), Kaiser recognized that the war would enlarge the prospects for business by increasing the need for rawmaterials, such as aluminum, steel, and magnesium. Between 1939 and 1941, he advocated greater business involvement in war preparations. After 1939, Kaiser became heavily engaged in the shipbuilding industry, primarily the building of cargo ships. He attracted national attention during World War II, gaining the reputation of a "Miracle Man" and the "Number 1 Industrial Hero" because of the speed with which he built ships crucial to the war effort. Kaiser ignored the usual methods of building ships bottom up from the keel; instead he employed assembly-line methods. (His reputation was so well established that President Franklin Roosevelt (1933–1945) considered him as a vice presidential running mate in the 1944 election.)
Kaiser made his share of enemies in business. When eastern steel shortages began in the United States prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor (December 12, 1941), Kaiser began to make his own steel. The large steel industries of the east were outraged. After World War II began, however, much of the anger against him fell away as the nation entered into a spirit of business cooperation to support the war effort.
Kaiser joined in a business partnership with Joseph Frazer in 1945 to manufacture automobiles that featured streamlined body curves and eliminated old-style wheel fenders altogether. Kaiser-Frazer quickly became the fourth largest producer of automobiles in America. It was a short-lived enterprise, lasting only until the early 1950s. At that time Kaiser-Frazer could no longer compete with Detroit's Big Three: General Motors, Ford, and the Chrysler Corporation. Nonetheless, Kaiser-Frazer automobiles were visionary and changed the shape and design of modern cars. Though Kaiser's automobile business was a business failure, the company inspired car owners with a new vision of what cars could be. Moreover, despite dropping his car venture, Kaiser continued to develop his aluminum and chemicals companies which had been created to aid the production of his modern, lightweight cars.
Kaiser's aluminum company was, overall, his most profitable enterprise. After World War II, however, the Kaiser Corporation became a multi-faceted empire. His company's personal health care program, Kaiser Permanente, eventually grew to become the largest health maintenance organization (HMO) in the nation.
Kaiser was a successful and creative businessman who was known as a "workaholic" because of his addiction to his work. In 1954 he moved with his second wife to Hawaii but never retired; leisure did not interest him, and he had few hobbies. Though he remained seriously overweight, he enjoyed good health until near the end of his life. He died in Hawaii in 1967, at the age of 85, still involved with the many successful business projects he created.
FURTHER READING
Adams, Stephen B. Mr. Kaiser Goes to Washington: The Rise of a Government Entrepreneur. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Cobbs, Elizabeth A. The Rich Neighbor Policy: Rockefeller and Kaiser in Brazil. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Foster, Mark S. Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989.
Heiner, Albert P. Henry J. Kaiser, American Empire Builder. New York: P. Long Pub., 1989.
Loeb (Carl M.) Rhoades and Company. Aluminum, an Analysis of the Industry in the United States. New York: Loeb (Carl M.) Rhoades and Company, 1950.
