Out of the Blackout

A favorite gag on the West Coast used to be: Foster never speaks to Kleiser and Kleiser never speaks to Foster, they just make signs. But war's dimouts and blackouts ruined the gag, pushed Foster & Kleiser, biggest West Coast outdoor advertising sign men (second biggest in the world), into doing much more than making signs.

Hopping outside the sign business was no trick for F. & K.'s white-haired, red-faced president and general manager, George W. Kleiser. He had never expected to be in it in the first place. He was a dentist in San Francisco with $10,000 and a hankering to get into some business "where the work goes on while you sleep." Then (1900) he met slim, sign-wise Walter Foster, who pointed out that outdoor signs work 24 hours a day. So Kleiser and Foster picked up a $75,000 advertising business in Portland and Seattle for $5,000 cash (they gave notes for the rest), expanded it up & down the coast, were grossing an average of $5,500,000 yearly when war blacked out the West Coast billboard business.

Next, Camouflage. When war came, President Kleiser desperately cast about for jobs to keep his 1,000 painters, artists, draftsmen busy. Why not camouflage?

A government contract for $500,000 was easy to snag. Not so easy was the search for a camouflage covering which would be nonreflecting and flexible, yet would take paint so well that the flat-surface buildings, roads, trees, rocks painted on it would trick the eyes of Axis airmen. The company finally hit upon 1 1/2 in.-mesh poultry wire, to which chicken feathers are glued with an asphalt adhesive. Because feathers are tough to handle, stick together on damp days, swirl around in the smallest breeze, methods and machines had to be devised to handle them. A special plant was designed to make the wire (20,000 sq. yd. daily) and feed the feathers (25 lb. to every 100 sq. yd.) on to it. (The feathered mesh is sprayed with a neutral color, ready for pattern painting.)

If the pattern calls for buildings, trees or a complete scene, this is painted from blueprints on laid-out rolls of mesh. Rolled up, marked for reassembling, the mesh is shipped overseas to hide airdromes, tank farms, gun emplacements. So well has the mesh worked that it is fast replacing spun glass and steel wool camouflage covers. Boasted Camoufleur Kleiser: "A robin built a nest in one of our fake trees in Seattle. It has to be good to fool a robin."

Bricks and Stuff. Pleased with the camouflage job, the Government asked F. & K. to turn out 300,000 adobe bricks to build bomb shelters, protective blast walls around important installations. Although the firm had never made a brick, it took over a Sacramento brickyard, finished the contract in jig time, is now building up a stockpile. The Government next wanted barracks and housing projects painted. F. & K. painted them. Fortnight ago President Kleiser and Vice President Foster got together in their San Francisco offices, rosily viewed the balance sheet. For the year ended March 31, gross income was $6,164,624, a $263,107 increase over the previous year. Net income was down only slightly to $316,955. Completed or in progress were 100 Government contracts, totaling $3,000,000.

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