Torch, Spring 1986

Loren M . Berry (left) is described by The Forbes Four Hundred as a "poor boy" from Wabash, Indiana. Afree enterpriser at the age of eight , he sold horseradish door-to-door. Arriving in Dayton, Ohio , in 19!0 with $20 in his pocket, he persuaded telephone companies to let him sell directory ads which earned him the nickname "Mr. Yellow Pages." Today, L.M. Berry and Company is one ofthe largest publishers worldwide of Yellow Pages ($700 million sales annually). His son John W. Berry (right), Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, is one of the leading advocates offree enterprise in the nation and has continued to build the company onfree market principles. methods of record keeping were inadequate. He conceived of a mechanical device that could record and handle cash transactions. The cash register was born . After many false starts and the early pangs of fai lure, a company was formed to produce and distribute the product. NCR persevered to become a giant international company employing over 60,000 people . The cash register was a device that met a need . But the important thing is that in a free society, without government help, private enterprise created jobs for the benefit of everyone - the workers, the customers, and the owners. Charles Kettering, one of the early pioneers at NCR, invented the self starter, founded Delco, and was the largest stock holder at General Motors. He was once asked, "If you lost your monetary assets, what would you do?" He responded, "I'd seek out things that people need and don't have that they'd be willing to spend money for. And then I'd produce them . That's the opportunity that exists in a free society ." Losing his job as sales manager at NCR was the best break Tom Watson ever had . He had dreamed of a new type of record keeping system. His idea was to capture information at its origin and then to be able to use that information in a variety of ways without rewriting it. The concept included punching holes in designated locations on a standard size, semi-rigid card . A machine would then read the holes and print out the information in numerical and alphabetical form. Watson's idea was the basis for the great IBM organization which is considered by many the most outstanding organization in the world today . In 1984 it had the largest profit of any U.S. industrial company. We can hardly estimate the millions of jobs it has provided. Ross Perot was a successful salesman for IBM. He sensed that American business needed an organization that could handle their total computer operations, including equipment, systems, people, supplies, and facilities, at a lower cost than they could do it themselves . So he left IBM in the 60's and started Electronic Data Systems (EDS) with one employee, himself. He built an outstanding international organization of thousands of people, all of whom had earnings well above the norm. In 1984 General Motors bought EDS for $2.5 billion dollars. Perot is a brilliant entrepreneur who has consistently demonstrated he understands a basic concept for motivating employees and winning their loyalty . That concept is: Your employees don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. About a year before the hostage situation in Iran, the Iranian government refused to pay EDS for some computer work. EDS served notice that they would remove their equipment if Iran didn't fulfill its contract. The Iranian government still refused, and they imprisoned two EDS people. When all negotiations failed, Perot organized a task force from his own company to rescue the prisoners . He went to Tehran 6