Wall Street Journal: Founding Families
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-195- (EMN: The following article appeared in the Wall Street Journal for May 18,1979. Brooks McCormick is descended from William Sanderson McCormick and Mary Ann Grigsby. Mary Ann was a daugh ter of Reuben Grigsby of Hickory Hill and a granddaughter of "Soldier John" Grigsby.) The factors tnal JIIIHlau:~ agamst continu VOL. CXCIII NO. 98 * .. ing family operation of big companies are well known, of course_. Death and taxes almost always Founding Families result in families seil ing off their stock in McCormicks' Tenure the companies their forebears founded - and losing their influ At Harvester's Helm ence over company affairs. Public owner ship, the form most Matched at Few Firms big concerns take, generally isn't friendly to nepotism_ Despite Obstacles, the Clan Sons sometimes aren't anxious to fol Runs Show for 148 Years; low in the fathers' footsteps for personal reasons, and fathers sometimes return those But Era May Be Ending sentiments_ There's also the enduring notion that it is somehow shameful to employ one's family An Outsider Wielcls the Ax name and position to succeed. "The younger generations of wealthy families frequently have a sense of guilt about inheriting great Sta//Reportero/ TH.' WALL STREET JOURNAL wealth," says psychologist Harry Levinson, CHICAGO-Hanging above the desk of who heads the Levinson Institute in Cam Brooks McCormick here is a picture of a bridge, Mass_ "Many of them feel a need to Chicago factory as it looked in 1861. demonstrate their competence to them The factory dated to 1847, when Cyrus selves," and this course often leads away Hall McCormick took the reaper he invented from the family company. from Virginia to Chicago and built the Mc Tall, quiet-spoken Brooks McCormick, Cormick Reaper Works near where the Chi who is 62 years old, isn't anxious to talk cago River joins Lake Michigan. about such feelings, or anything else that Today, International Harvester COo, the might imply that his family ties got him to multibillion-dollar concern that sprang from the top of International Harvester. While he will discuss company affairs readily, he This is the fourth in a series of sto speaks of his family and his motivation for ries about the present-day members of joining Harvester only with reluctance. He some of America's great families_ regards family matters as private, although he says "I'm very proud of my antece dents." the revolutionary invention, makes its head- I quarters in an office building on the same A Cousin as Mentor spot. And Brooks McCormick, a great He attributes his own involvement in the grandnephew of Cyrus Hall McCormick is corporation mainly to his admiration for his its chairman. ' cousin, Fowler McCormick, who headed In International Harvester and its predeces ternational Harvester during the 1940s. and sor companies have been in business for 148 who hired him. "He was quite a remarkable years now. and in all that time a McCor- I man-thou~htful and introspective-some mick either has headed it or has been wait- I one I looked up to," he says. But he adds: Ing in the wings to do so_ It's a record of "My father (Chauncey, who was a company family management that few large Ameri director) probably encouraged me, too." can corporations can match_ Actually, while Brooks McCormick is a latter-day relative of International Harvest er's founder, his own family came into the company by the Circuitous route of mar riage. -196- He is descenaea not trom C'yrUS McCor mick but from Cyrus' younger brother, Wil Cyrus, however, did play an important liam Sanderson McCormick. William's role in the development and manufacture of widow sold her interest in the concern to Cy the device,and its revolutIonary nature is rus shortly after William died in 186&. Years undeniable. The early reaper combined later, Brooks's father was married to Mar wheels, blades, knives and mechanical fin ion Deering, of the Deering Harvester Co. gers on a horse-drawn platform, allowing family. In 1902, Deering Harvester was one two men to harvest as much wheat in a day of the four companies that merged with the as five men could by hand. Later refine McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. to form ments increased its output considerably, of International Harvester. course. "My father came into the company as a Along with the cotton gin, the reaper was representative of the Deering side," Brooks the first step in freeing Americans from the notes. "You might say I came in through land to man the factories of the Industrial the back door. It was really an accident of Revolution. It also freed the wheat farmers history." of the Northern American prairies to fight the Civil War. Without the reaper, said Sec William's Line retary of War Stanton in 1862, "the Union That isn't the only quirk or irony in the would be dismembered." history of what surely is one of America's great industrial families. Even though Cyrus Colorful and Controversial McCormick is credited with inventing the Cyrus headed the company tliat manufac reaper, brother William',s descendants-not tured his machine until he died in 1884. He his-have since achieved the greatest prom· was succeeded by his son Cyrus and then by inence. another son, Harold F. Harold was chair William's line includes William McCor man of International Harvester until his mick Blair, now 95 years old, who founded death in 1941, the year his son, Fowler, be the Chicago brokerage and investment-bank· came president. By that time, the compa ing house of William Blair & Co. Two of his ny's business had grown to include trucks sons, Edward McCormick and Bowen, are and construction machinery as well as farm equipment. senior partners of that firm. Fowler McCormick was colorful and con One of William's grandsons was pub· troversial, both in his personal and business lisher Robert R. McCormick, who made the lives. At age 32 he married Fifi Stillman, Chicago Tribune newspaper one of the na the divorced, 53-year-old mother of one of tion's staunchest (and loudest) voices of his Princeton University classmates. In the conservatism before he died in 1955. His re 1940s he fought a long and successful court latives still are among the owners of the battle to have two adopted children taken closely held Tribune Co., one of the nation's from his sister, Muriel McCormick Hub largest publishing concerns. bard, on ground that she wasn't a fit While Robert McCormick was preaching mother. conservatism from the pages of his newspa In business, Fowler stood out in his day per, a great-granddaughter of Cyrus McCor as a pioneer in nondiscriminatory hiring. mick bought the New Republic magazine, When Harvester built plants in Louisville, one of the country's best-known liberal jour- Ky., and Memphis, Tenn., after World War Please Turn to Page 15, Column 4 II, it made a pOint of offering jobs to blacks and promising to promote them if they nals. She was Anne Blaine "Nancy" Harri made the grade. It later stuck to that policy son, a union organizer and lobbyist when she in the face of wildcat strikes by some white met and married Gilbert Harrison. The Har- workers. risons published the New Republic for 20 Fowler McCormick reSigned as Harvest years before selling it in 1974. er's chairman and chief executive officer in Mrs. Harrison died two years ago at age 1951; he and President John L. McCaffrey 58. The Harrisons' four children-one a law had clashed Jver corporate strategy, and yer and the other three in college-are the board of directors backed Mr. McCaf among the few living direct descendants of frey. Fowler's exit ended 120 years of unbro Cyrus McCormick. The only others are ken McCormick leadership of the company members of the family of Anita Oser, who Cyrus started: lives in Europe. But by that time, Brooks McCormick al The invention that launched the McCor ready was well on his way to restoring that mick saga-the reaper-isn't fully under leadership. He had been hired out of Yale stood by most Americans even though it has University by Fowler in 1940, and after the long been a standard part of grade-school usual entrance-level executive jobs was history books. Contrary to popular belief, it heading the company's operations in Brit didn't leap full-blown out of the brain of Cy ain. He became executive vice president in rus McCormick in 1831; rather it incorpo 1957, president in 1968 and chief executive rated elements developed by a number of in officer in 1971. "I clawed my way to the ventors, including Cyrus's father, Robert. It top," he says in a rare, jesting reference to was only after years of court battles, and his early career. the purchase of others' patent rights, that Cyrus built a machine that was superior to others of its type. -197- Destined to Rise But of course, his co-workers and superi ors at the company were well aware he was destined to rise_ "I felt honored that they would place him under my direction," says Harald Reishus, a retired Harvester vice president who was Brooks's boss in the 1940s_ "He never flaunted his background, but I felt he would be running the company in time_" "The Last of the Moblcans" By the time Brooks McCormick reached Yet that is a satisfaction his own children the top, however, Harvester was headed for apparently will not know; none of the four the bottom.