The revolutionization of the Seversky Aircraft Corporation factory on Long Island was nothing short of miraculous. It was just a few months ago that it was a stumbling workshop, a disheveled pile of half-finished work and back dues that lived on through the sheer, demented optimism of its founder. It was now a glorious shrine of American industrial modernism.
The cavernous main hangar, once dark and jammed up, was now lit up and obsessively organized. There were production lines—in the sense that now there were actual lines—stretched out with pitiless rationality that worshipped efficiency at all costs. Ezra walked the floor with his new plant manager and laid out flows based on lean manufacturing ideals he'd gleaned from his 21st-century memory, ideals so refined they wouldn't get codified for fifty years.
David Sterling, the irreplaceable chief engineer whom Ezra had promoted and turned loose, was giving the skeptical reporter from Fortune magazine the grand tour. The reporter, named Cutler, had walked in expecting to write one of those pieces about yet another Wall Street buccaneer breaking up a company for salvage. But he was being treated to the future.
"See for yourself, Mr. Cutler," Sterling stated, his voice full of pride he hadn't known since he was years younger, "the secret is the monocoque construction. A stressed-skin fuselage permits a stronger, lighter airframe with greatly improved aerodynamic qualities for its class when compared to more conventional approaches."
He didn't nod towards a bomber but to the prototype on the ground. It was a lovely all-metal twin-engined plane highly polished to mirror finish. It sat low to the ground, it was powerful and beautiful. "This is the Seversky Model 14, the 'Executive.' It carries eight passenger commuters readily enough, cruises at over two hundred miles per hour, and its range is just short of the thousand miles. It will get New York to Chicago on one tank."
Cutler whistled admiringly despite himself. "There's nothing quite like it to be found in the market."
"No, there is not," concurred Sterling. "Mr. Prentice does not think he competes. He thinks he makes new markets where there is no competition."
This was the public ruse of Ezra, the blind for the masterstroke of misdirection. In padlocked facilities on the other side of the airfield, the newly named department "Advanced Projects Division," Sterling's best engineers worked in secret on blueprints for long-range bombers and heavy fighters that tested the very boundaries of aeronautical science. But the company for the popular eye, the one that appeared on the magazine spreads and the quarterly reports, was an innovative constructor of civilian aircraft.
Ezra didn't wait for the marketplace to seek him out. He used the black book. He took advantage of his unprecedented access to the heads of the American industrial and financial leaders. He made personal demonstrations of the Seversky Executive to the board of the Standard Oil of New Jersey, to the president of the Chase National Bank, to the heads of his own extensive railroad interests.
The sales talk was simple and overwhelmingly successful. "Gentlemen, time is the most valuable asset to you. It takes two days to the New York to Texas refineries by railroad. With this plane, it will take under ten hours to reach there. What is two days of the time of your best men worth?"
The orders came in thick and fast. He was not just selling planes; he was selling speed, efficiency, and prestige. He was literally shaping the corporate air travel marketplace himself.
His strategy with the other purchases was just as shrewd. The Van Norman Machine Tool Company in Massachusetts was no longer on the brink of bankruptcy. With Ezra as its leader, they were no longer promoting general-purpose lathes to struggling factory yards. They pitched their critical intellectual property product now: the advanced patents for the process of precision milling.
Ezra took the train to Detroit. He didn't call on the stubborn isolationist he knew Henry Ford to be, but on the more enlightened leadership of Chrysler and General Motors. He demonstrated to them how the Van Norman machines could grind engine blocks and transmission gears to an intolerable tolerance hitherto thought to be unachievable, producing stronger, more efficient, and quieter engines. He didn't try to sell them the equipment. He offered to license them the patents.
The royalties constituted a stream of gold, flowing directly from the very core of the automotive industry to his treasury. He was making money from innovations, creating anew and enormous stream of income completely independent of government contracts or whims of the stock exchange. His industrial enterprise was becoming money-making machine unparalleled in its power.
Nevertheless, this success was a harsh shock to the established order. The old-money industrial barons, men who between them had partitioned the American economy with Senior back in the last generation, were incensed. Their comfortable cartels and gentlemen's agreements were being dismantled by this upstart new player who refused to or could not play by the rules.
The meeting occurred on the premises of the New York Yacht Club, one of the power centers of the East Coast establishment. Blevins, the steelman who ambushed him, was a towering red-faced man who, for years, had been one of Senior's contemporaries and rivals.
"Prentice," Blevins grumbled, his tone low. "A word." Blevins crowded him against the club's famous model room. "Your actions are causing tremendous... instability. You're driving up labor costs with your generous wages at the aircraft factory. You are stealing the finest engineers. You are disturbing the natural order of things! Your practices are rapacious and unseemly."
Ezra slowly downed his drink, his eyes cold and devoid of deference. "Mr. Blevins, the 'natural order' with which you are so at ease is one of comfortable inefficiency and stagnant technology. You run your mills as your father ran them. I am forging companies for the twentieth century, not the previous one. If you are not competitive on the grounds of higher wages and better technology, then that is the failure of your vision, not the fault of my method."
He just built himself another formidable opponent. But the sheer, undisputed size of his success was building bulwarks around him. It was difficult to attack someone whose businesses were not merely new but blazingly successful.
The final vindication was to come at the quarterly meeting of the main trust of the Rockefeller family. It was a formal event, held in one of the serious boardrooms downtown. Junior came, with his characteristic entourage of right-wing bankers and lawyers, all of whom for months had murmured about the irresponsibility of Ezra.
They sat paralyzed with shock as the new financial chief of Ezra—a spare, unobtrusive man hired away from General Motors—announced the results of the new industrial investments. The figures were astonishing; the airplane company that used to be the debt sinkhole was projecting to earn a pretty profit; the royalties on the machine tool patents were better than expected. The entire portfolio was generating more free cash flow than half the family's "safe" railroad and utility legacy holdings were earning collectively.
Once the presentation was finished, Ezra turned around to confront his brother-in-law directly.
"You see, Junior," he said, his voice calm but with the typical whiff of triumph, "our 'warmongering,' as I know you called it, is proving to be sufficiently good for business. In all honesty, it is extremely good for business that it is making me feel it is time to make a proposition."
He added to the suspense. "For the sake of family harmony and to recognize the worth of your own good works, I would be happy to use a portion of these profits to double the annual donation for your Rockefeller Endowment for Advanced Scientific Inquiry."
The ploy was checkmate. He had cleverly used his box office success to embarrass his chief critic as well as pour more funds into his covert atomic program, all behind the impermeable veneer of noble, high-minded philanthropy.
Junior was stuck between the rock and the hard place. His heart was set with conflicting passions: indignation at having been so skillfully outmaneuvered, and the irrepressible joy at watching his personal baby get so much money. He could not turn down the "tainted" money and look small-time jealous.
"That is... very generous, Ezra," he managed to say gritting his teeth. "The foundation accepts."
The war was over. Ezra had emerged victorious. He had proven his armory could, when there was peace, become a very money-generating tool. And he had just forced his deadliest enemy to help him perfect his secret sword.