"Start Swinging!"

“Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition— in having put forth the best within you.”

            The son of an immigrant cobbler from tiny Sprout Brook in upstate New York, Henry Kaiser had a huge knack for putting things together—big things, industrial things. He made waves, literally. His fearlessness in the pursuit of the American dream made him a role model to millions in the 20^th century.

            He left school at the age of 12 or 13 to become an errand boy. It was a sign of things to come. Here was a young man who was restless, always on the move. Between 1898 and 1900, he worked at not one but three photography studios. He became a traveling salesman. Then he owned his own photo store in Lake Placid, New York. Then he owned four more in Florida.

            Bess Fosburgh saw what a catch he was. They married in Boston in 1907. She was from a well-to-do family, and her father may have urged his new son-in-law to find more substantial employment.

            The on-the-go Kaiser got into the construction industry in the Pacific Northwest. He sold heavy equipment and building supplies. That led to work managing road construction and public works projects. He was the right man in the right place. The northwest was still fairly wild territory, and there was much money to be made putting in roads.

            Smaller jobs got bigger. Soon all his construction deals were in the millions. He got a big break that vaulted him into the big leagues. He was invited to become part of a group of six companies that had wangled a deal to build 750 miles of roads and 400 bridges in Cuba, all in a three year period—A $20 million project ($250 million in today’s money).

            It was a huge challenge in a foreign country, and he excelled at it. “Problems are only opportunities in work clothes,” said Kaiser who one biographer called an “imaginative pragmatist.”

Legendary landmark

            That was just the beginning. This consortium of companies known by the meat-and-potatoes name of “The Six Companies” in 1931 won the deal that truly put Kaiser on the map. They built a massive dam on the Colorado River—Hoover Dam. Between 1931 and 1936, as many 20,000 men labored to build this 726-foot-tall structure. Today this legendary landmark supplies power to 20 million people in three states.

            By the late 1930s, it seemed as though there was nothing Kaiser couldn’t do. His conglomerate employed 250,000 workers. They made steel and cement. They dug coal. And they built ports, blast furnaces, and airplane parts, and made weapons.

            He also built a few ships. That would swiftly change. To win the war and to help its allies Britain and the Soviet Union, America had to build troop ships and freighters—lots of them and fast.

            In his country’s moment of need, Kaiser rose to the challenge. “I always have to dream up there against the stars,” he said. “If I don't dream I will make it, I won't even get close.”

            Ship building had once been fairly leisurely. It might take six months to construct a ship from the keel up. Kaiser threw that strategy out the window. He adapted techniques of mass production to shipbuilding. For example, the home building industry uses modular construction techniques. It puts together parts of homes off-site and assembles them where the house is being built. That’s what Kaiser did with ships. And instead of painstakingly riveting steel panels together in drydock, his workers welded them, saving much time.

His labor policies were new and different, too. He hired women and African-Americans in large numbers.  What’s more, Kaiser became known as one of the nation’s most enlightened employers. He offered the world’s first pre-paid health insurance program to his employees in 1938. He became famed for his ability to work closely an peacefully with unions.

Less than five days

When Kaiser got into shipbuilding, it typically took 230 days to build a substantial ship. He cut that to 45 days and then to less than 20 days. One of his crews even built a ship in less than five days. (It was a stunt was for wartime publicity purposes.)

He never took credit for all his innovations. Kaiser knew that to be successful he had to surround himself with the best people. "I make progress by having people around me who are smarter than I am and listening to them,” he said. “And I assume that everyone is smarter about something than I am."

Uncle Sam named the freighters EC2 ships. All were 441-feet-long and nearly identical. They weren’t made to look pretty. People dubbed them ‘Ugly Ducklings.”

That changed when President Roosevelt attended the christening of the first 14 of these ships in September 1941. The first ship to slide down the ways was the Patrick Henry. In his speech, Roosevelt recited the climax of Henry’s legendary speech, saying “Give me liberty or give me death.”

 Just as Henry and the other Founding Fathers brought liberty to America, Roosevelt told the world that these ships would bring liberty to Europe. Thus, the ‘Ugly Ducklings’ became known as Liberty Ships.

Between 1941 and 1945, Kaiser built 2,751 Liberty Ships at 18 shipyards ranging from Portland, Oregon, and Richmond, California, to Baltimore, Maryland. By 1943, those yards completed three ships a day.

Kaiser so impressed Roosevelt that he put the industrialist on his short-list of possible vice-presidential candidates in 1944, even though Kaiser had never been in politics, never campaigned for anyone, and didn’t belong to the Democratic Party.

He was a man who simply got things done and feared no challenge.

And he enjoyed a good joke. It’s said that on one occasion when a woman was visiting his office, he asked her if she’d like the honor of christening a Liberty Ship.

When she said she would be delighted to do so, Kaiser found a bottle of champagne. He led her through the clanging hustle-and-bustle of the busy shipyard to an empty dry dock.

Once there, he handed his puzzled guest the bottle.

“But there’s nothing there!” she exclaimed

“Never mind,” replied Kaiser, looking at his watch. “Start swinging!”

MORAL: Build on your successes, no matter how small.

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