Man from Easy Street

Ever since he first wooed the future Mrs. Graham with a mid-Depression vow ("Stick with me and we'll be on Easy Street"), Wichita's lively William L. Graham has been making the promise come true. He began with a $200 bank loan in 1936, and at 46 he is worth an estimated $20 million in Kansas oil and real estate. Along the way his talents for enterprise and friendship proved so overpowering that he once sold the late Dale Carnegie a house in Wichita an hour after they met. ("If I couldn't be myself," said Carnegie, "I'd want to be Bill Graham.") Graham's home address (renumbered every year): 1957 Easy Street.

As he began a leisurely round-the-world vacation in June with his wife and six children, even trim, tireless Bill Graham felt like shedding the cares of business for a relaxing look at exotic sights. But he could not relax as he saw the grinding poverty and encountered the stifling state control and the huge capital shortage that pervades Asia. "Everybody seemed to be sitting around without hope. Nobody seemed to know about free enterprise and what made it click."

"A Few Young Guys." Dropping vacation plans in Bangkok, Graham called in reporters, announced a plan to give five willing and able local enterprisers "the same chance I had when I was young." He wanted "a few young guys with good ideas and initiative who believe in private enterprise." Terms: a $5,000 Graham loan to get started, profits to be shared 50-50 until the borrower could buy out Graham by returning the original loan. Said Graham: "This is business, not charity."

As Thai newspapers headlined the proposition, ideas poured in for everything from an opium den (rejected) to importing Linotypes (encouraged). Last week, when Graham reached India, where he offered to launch five more borrowers, the influential Times of India printed his picture on the front page. Scores of young businessmen who missed him in Calcutta pursued him to New Delhi, where his mailbox at the Imperial Hotel was jammed with 500 loan applications before he arrived, and the telephone never stopped ringing.

Though the socialist-minded Indian government viewed Graham with undisguised distaste, coolly turned down his suggestion for a five-year tax moratorium on small new businesses, a dozen prominent private Indian businessmen eagerly offered to co-invest some $140,000. The Punjab National Bank offered to investigate loan candidates free of charge, promised to consider later loan requests from Graham selectees.

Pork & Soccer. Aspiring borrowers lined up outside Graham's hotel suite for four days straight, displayed every conceivable kind of sample, from homemade shoes to bedsprings. Best candidates: a bicycle framemaker with only $700 in cash but potential orders totaling $10,000; a group of young leather workers ready to turn out soccer balls by the hundreds as soon as they can get the cash; a young hog farmer with a growing surplus big enough to start a cannery. "I haven't had as much fun in years," said Graham. Then he deposited $25,000 of his own money in the Punjab Bank as the start of a lending fund which he hopes will grow and grow.

No one knows better than Free Enterpriser Graham that his loans will be only a drop in the bottomless Indian bucket, while perhaps 20% of the borrowers are likely to fail in their businesses. But as Graham moved on to the Middle East at week's end to continue his interrupted family vacation, his open-handed demonstration had been worth a hundred propaganda pronouncements on U.S. capitalism. "You don't have to be a millionaire to put up $5,000," said Graham, hoping to encourage other Americans into backing small Asian entrepreneurs. Said Indian Hotelman Mohan Oberoi: "Send us 5,000 more Bill Grahams."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.