https://www.amazon.com/Romance-Drama-Rubber-Industry/dp/1258360748?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1258360748
(Stated first edition bound in brown cloth with paper titl...)
Stated first edition bound in brown cloth with paper title labels. Top edge gilt, frontis plate A near fine copy in a poor dust jacket. Rubs to the book's spine tips and corners. Dust soiling to the edges of the upper page block. The dust jacket is tanned and dust soiled. The rear panel has a 2" x 4" piece missing along the lower spine seam. Chips and tears along the edges, with the front panel missing a 3/4" x 2" piece at the upper right corner. The upper 1" of the spine is chipped away.
https://www.amazon.com/Men-Rubber-Harvey-Samuel-Firestone/dp/B00085OM24?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00085OM24
He was born in Chicago, Illinois, the eldest of five sons and a daughter born to rubber magnate Harvey S. Firestone and Idabelle Smith, a musical composer and a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). When he was two, his father founded Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. , in Akron, Ohio.
The young Firestone graduated the Asheville (North Carolina) school in 1916 and entered Princeton that same year.
He played polo and tennis while in college.
Despite taking time off to get his pilot's license and joining the U. S. Naval Aviation Corps during World War I, he graduated with a B. A. in 1920.
During the summers of 1916, 1918, 1919, and 1921, he accompanied his father, inventor Thomas Edison, car manufacturer Henry Ford, and naturalist John Burroughs on camping trips to the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York.
On June 25, 1921, he married art collector and socialite Elizabeth Parke; they had four children. Firestone joined his father's corporation in 1919, and was actively involved in its management for almost half a century. He persuaded his father to establish an executive recruiting program aimed at bringing recent college graduates into the firm.
He also did much to secure the company's international expansion. In 1926, as vice-president of Firestone Plantations Company, he toured the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Sumatra, Ceylon, and Liberia in order to determine the best new sites for rubber production.
At the time, Great Britain and the Netherlands controlled over 98 percent of the world's supply of raw rubber. In the fall of 1926, the younger Firestone negotiated a ninety-nine-year lease of one million acres with the Liberian government--land that had been allocated previously to black nationalist Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association.
Firestone even won federal approval to set up a radio transmitter to maintain contact between company headquarters in Akron and field offices in Liberia.
In 1928, he was instrumental in opening the company's first overseas plant in England. He visited Argentina in 1930 and made arrangements for a Firestone factory there.
In 1933, he opened a Firestone plant in Spain. He did the same in Switzerland in 1935, and the following year established another in South Africa. Firestone operations in Liberia were complicated by charges of American imperialism and collusion with dishonest Liberian officials.
In 1930, a special international commission appointed by the League of Nations issued a shocking report charging the Liberian government with perpetuating "slavery, forced labor, exploitation of the native tribes, and financial corruption. " Liberian authorities disputed the findings and conducted protracted negotiations with the League.
Firestone personally defended the family name and company record in Africa (and elsewhere) on "The Voice of Firestone" radio broadcasts Monday nights on NBC.
In 1932, he published a compilation of his radio speeches entitled The Romance and Drama of the Rubber Industry. With company operations in the Black Republic seriously compromised, he and his father lobbied for American military intervention. Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt rejected their appeals.
In 1935, Roosevelt "resolved" the dispute by extending American financial aid in return for cosmetic reforms. Continued tensions between the Americo-Liberian elite (descendants of freed slaves) and native Africans culminated in the Liberian civil war, which began in 1989. Harvey S. Firestone, Sr. , founder of the firm, died in 1938, although his son did not become president of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company until 1941.
In 1940, when access to foreign markets was endangered by Japanese expansionism in Asia, Firestone helped develop synthetic rubber factories with assistance from the government's Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Production began in 1942. Already a huge conglomerate, the company tripled its size during the war. Firestone also created the company's Postwar Planning Division, which made plans for diversification even before the end of the war.
He was reappointed nine years later by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, Firestone offered to supply the military's rubber requirements.
He was also offended by McCarthyism, and in 1951 accepted Truman's request to join the President's Commission on Internal Security and Individual Rights, chaired by Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz.
When Congress refused to remove legal impediments to allow the commission to operate, Firestone and the others resigned in protest. Firestone ran the corporation his father founded until he stepped down in 1963 at the age of sixty-five.
During his fifteen-year tenure, sales doubled, and the number of foreign plants grew from twenty-four to forty-one. He continued as chairman of the board for the next three years, and wrote a book: Man on the Move (1967) was a light-hearted, comprehensive history of human transportation, "from caveman to spaceman, " on land, sea, and air. He retired from serving the company in 1969.
He died at his estate in Akron.
In 1948, he took over as chairman of the board and company chief executive officer. Firestone was a Republican, but not particularly partisan. Although his father had vigorously supported Herbert Hoover in 1932, the younger rubber tycoon made peace with Roosevelt--especially during the war years. He was considerably closer to Harry Truman, and even dined at the White House. A staunch internationalist, Firestone supported establishment of the United Nations, and served as director of the UN Association of the United States. In 1950, he accepted Truman's invitation to join the International Development Advisory Board. Firestone, who owned estates in Akron and Newport, Rhod Island, was active in philanthropic, educational, and religious affairs throughout his long career. With his brothers, he established the Firestone Foundation in 1947.
(Stated first edition bound in brown cloth with paper titl...)
Firestone operations in Liberia were complicated by charges of American imperialism and collusion with dishonest Liberian officials.
Firestone was a Republican, but not particularly partisan.
Firestone was also active in the "Nixon Foundation, " and was supposedly making arrangements to buy the president's boyhood family home in order to turn it into a museum.
In 1983, it was dissolved into separate branch family foundations. He served on the national council of the United Negro College Fund; was a trustee at Princeton, where he donated money to support the Harvey S. Firestone Library erected in his father's honor; was active in the National Conference of Christians and Jews; founded the American Association against Addiction in 1968; and was appointed to the governing board of the United Service Organization (USO) by every president from Harry Truman through Richard Nixon.
As a child, his first ride in a car was in one that his father had bought to test new pneumatic tire designs.
He served on the national council of the United Negro College Fund; was a trustee at Princeton, where he donated money to support the Harvey S. Firestone Library erected in his father's honor; was active in the National Conference of Christians and Jews; founded the American Association against Addiction in 1968; and was appointed to the governing board of the United Service Organization (USO) by every president from Harry Truman through Richard Nixon.
Although his father had vigorously supported Herbert Hoover in 1932, the younger rubber tycoon made peace with Roosevelt--especially during the war years.
During the summers of 1916, 1918, 1919, and 1921, he accompanied his father, inventor Thomas Edison, car manufacturer Henry Ford, and naturalist John Burroughs on camping trips to the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York.
On June 25, 1921, he married art collector and socialite Elizabeth Parke; they had four children.
On June 25, 1921, he married art collector and socialite Elizabeth Parke; they had four children.
