Five fascinating lessons from the world's greatest business tycoons
Our new collection of original obituaries celebrates 50 of the greatest business tycoons the world has seen. Men who transformed the lives of ordinary people, whose names live on today in some of our biggest household brands, and many of whom grew fabulously rich from often impoverished backgrounds. Men like oilman John D. Rockefeller, car magnate Henry Ford, razor pioneer King Gillette, pneumatic tyre inventor John Dunlop, and cocoa producer George Cadbury.
We drive their cars, eat their chocolate, ride on their tyres and shave with their razors, yet know so little about their stories. Tycoons: Original Obituaries of 50 Business Pioneers who Shaped our World seeks to put that right by revealing how these giants of commerce dominated the industrial age of the 19th and 20th centuries, often ruthlessly crushing competitors who dared to get in their way. Their stories offer some salutary lessons for today’s would-be entrepreneurs.
Most business tycoons paid their workers well, and treated them with respect (even if they didn’t much like trade unions)
In 1914, Henry Ford shocked America by introducing a profit-sharing plan that distributed $10m a year to his employees. He set the minimum wage in his factories at $5 a day, about twice the then average. He gave a bonus of $2 for workers who kept their homes clean, employed social workers to look after the welfare of employees and their families, and provided free medical care and legal advice.
The fervent Quaker George Cadbury embarked on a great social experiment in 1879, moving his factory and his 500 workers to a new village called Bournville, outside Birmingham, which had been specifically designed for them to his meticulous specifications. Every (subsidised) house had a garden, and there were orchards, playing-fields, schools, clubs and a church.
Despite making vast fortunes thanks to capitalism, some embraced socialism
King Gillette, the founder of the safety razor bearing his name, planned to build a “World Corporation”, a billion-dollar organisation that he said would obliterate the evils of commercial strife, eliminate crime and create a super-Socialist community. He described this utopian world as one where no gold was to be hoarded and there would be no want for material necessities or luxuries.
When they could destroy their rivals, few showed hesitation
John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil, was said to have become the richest man in the world by crushing his competitors by unfair means, while Jay Gould, a railway speculator who rose from a barefooted boy in Delaware to amass a $100m fortune, received scathing rebukes on his death. One read: “In his reckless contempt for honor, justice, mercy or morality, he transcends the giant speculators of the world. He leaves a hundred millions of dollars accumulated by gambling, swindling and fraud. We don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but there is no other way to describe Gould and the methods by which he acquired his enormous fortune.”
Success doesn’t come overnight - and requires a lot of hard graft
Asa Candler, the founder of Coca-Cola, made the initial batches in a small shed, personally stirring the kettle in which the syrup was manufactured. Sales in his first year amounted to just 500 gallons - about the equivalent of 63 drinks a week. Today, more than 13 billion servings are sold every week. In 1903, the first year that the Gillette Safety Razor Company operated, only 51 razors and 14 dozen blades were sold. The next year: 90,000 razors and 15m blades.
It doesn’t always turn out right, or end well
David Buick, whose name adorns many cars in America to this day, spent a fortune on his dream of “horseless carriages” for all, and reaped only ruin in return. The would-be automobile tycoon died penniless in a shabby flat in Detroit, even as thousands of cars bearing his name passed by on the roads outside. Likewise, John Dunlop, who invented the pneumatic tyre, went to his death bemoaning the poverty of his own financial reward as compared with the enormous wealth of the industry he spawned.
You can read more about these great business tycoons in our book priced at £8.99, or e-book here.