Henry J. Kaiser (1882–1967) businessman and entrepreneur

Kaiser was born in New York in 1882. After holding a number of menial jobs, he moved to Spokane, Washington. He learned the construction business and began to bid on public works projects, first in Canada and then in the United States. He also participated in building the major Cuban highway in 1927 before returning to the United States.

During the early years of the Depression, he bid for work on the proposed Boulder Dam on the Colorado along with a group of other construction companies. It was the largest building project ever proposed until that time. After successfully completing it, his company worked on other large public works projects, including the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. The Grand Coulee Dam followed. He also worked on the Shasta Dam in California, not as a contractor but as a supplier of cement. By the late 1930s, he had developed a reputation as an efficient builder who brought projects in under schedule and at great profit to himself.

World War II saw Kaiser enter the shipbuilding business, doing contract work for both the British and American governments. He began building ships for troop and cargo transport and often completed them in as little as one week, breaking all records in the process and acquiring a reputation as one of the war’s best-known entrepreneurs. After the war he continued in the steel business, and Kaiser Steel became one of the country’s major manufacturers. He also dabbled in automobile production and developed a car named after him, the Kaiser. One of his major investors was Cyrus EATON, but the cars went out of production after several years due to competition from the Big Three automakers. In the 1950s, he turned his attention to land development and helped develop a sizable portion of Waikiki on Oahu, in Hawaii.

At his death in 1967, he was still chairman of Kaiser Industries, an organization that involved steel, home building, and aluminum. Kaiser’s lasting legacy is found in the health care organization that evolved out of his own organization, in which it provided health care to his construction workers. The Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program became one of the earliest and largest of what later became known as prepaid health maintenance organizations, or HMOs.

See also NEW DEAL.

Further reading

• Adams, Stephen B. Mr. Kaiser Goes to Washington: The Rise of a Government Entrepreneur. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. 
• Foster, Mark S. Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989.