Wheels for the World

As he started on a tour of his empire last week, Board Chairman Harvey S. Firestone Jr. of Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. took a long look ahead at the industry's future. "In ten years," he said, "world rubber consumption will climb 52% to 4,400,000 long tons annually. If demand is to be met, plans to expand must be put into effect now." Firestone did more than talk, he backed it with cash. His company announced plans for a $5,300,000 tire factory and a plantation in the Philippines which, starting in 1957, will roll out 100,000 tires a year at capacity and go a long way toward making the bustling young republic self-sufficient in rubber.

Beyond the Philippines, Firestone was already deep in the biggest worldwide expansion of its 56-year history. In the past year alone, Firestone has spent or earmarked:

P: $4,000,000 for a new tire plant at Havana, Cuba, to be ready by 1957; plus more millions to expand existing plants in eight nations (England, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, Switzerland, Spain, Argentina, Brazil); a big share of the $12 million cost of a new synthetic rubber plant which it will operate in Great Britain with other companies.

P: $50 million to buy two synthetic rubber plants, to expand production and make Firestone the first U.S. company to manufacture its own petrochemical synthetic ingredients--styrene and butadiene--in two huge plants abuilding at Orange, Texas.

P: $2,500,000 to replant part of its vast, 90,000-acre rubber plantation in Liberia, West Africa with higher-yield (300% more rubber) trees in a program which will eventually boost the plantation's production some 25% to about 44,000 tons annually.

From Block to Chip. Although it is the youngest of rubber's Big Four (after Goodyear, U.S. Rubber, Goodrich), Firestone is the world's second biggest rubber company, just a shade behind Goodyear, with 1955 sales of $1.1 billion and a peak profit of $55.4 million. Firestone's start in 1900 was as hard as the jolting, solid-rubber tires of that day. It had to buck furious price competition and inflexible patent monopolies, waited three years before turning its first profit. Then it moved fast. Founder Harvey S. Firestone Sr. developed one of the first pneumatic tires, went on to pioneer the first practical nonskid tire by stamping "FIRESTONE NONSKID" in raised letters on the smooth surfaces. Before he died in 1938, Firestone sales were well past the $500 million mark.

A quiet, precise executive, Harvey Jr., the eldest son, stepped into his father's shoes at the age of 39. As a toddler he had pulled the lever to start the first Firestone tire plant operating, and like his brothers,* he went to work climbing through the ranks after graduating from Princeton. As president during World War II, he turned to synthetics, made Firestone the first U.S. company to produce man-made GR-S rubber on a large scale.

Corporals & Snow Tires. Today Chairman Firestone is busy diversifying. Once tires were 95% of the business; now they are 60%. The world's biggest producer of natural and synthetic rubber (1,000,000 Ibs. daily), Firestone makes several thousand rubber products, from the tiniest vacuum seal to 4-ft. snow tires for arctic tractors, plus truck-wheel rims, jet-engine parts, Corporal missiles, refrigerators, food mixers, golf clubs, electric clocks, plastic luggage, textile yarns and thousands of other items.

Like his founder-father, who gave millions to bring culture and civic beauty to Akron, Harvey Jr. believes that U.S. business must spend abroad for civic improvements, in addition to the cost of doing business. Firestone has spent millions in Liberia for roads, schools, hospitals, medical-research centers and power plants, once even lent the country $2,500,000 to help get its finances squared away. Says he: "It is only logical for a corporation to realize that the privilege of doing business carries with it an equal responsibility for the overall good of the community."

* Raymond C., 47, now executive vice president; Leonard K., 48, chief of the California subsidiary; Roger S., 44, head of the plastics subsidiary.

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