Before World War I, Kimberly-Clark was a struggling newsprint company. The recession had caused demand for newsprint to drop. Their research group, led by Ernst Mahler, visited Europe and learned about creped wadding technology - which they brought back to replace lost newsprint production. When war broke out, they convinced the war department to use this cellulose wadding for use as a filter in gas masks and as a substitute for cotton to fill the desperate need for dressings and bandages in European field hospitals. When word reached Wisconsin that Red Cross nurses were using celucotton for sanitary napkins, the company began developing the first commercial sanitary napkin; sold as Kotex beginning in 1921...and thus... a new product was born because newsprint production had dropped off.
The commercialization of his creped wadding technology led to the establishment of a multi billion dollar industry in the United States and around the world. From this, Kimberly-Clark created dozens of creped wadding products, including such trademark names as Kotex and Kleenex.
In 1929, Mr. Mahler was one of the original founders of the world-famous Institute of Paper Chemistry, an affiliate of Lawrence College. The institute became a major contributor to the technological depth and breadth supporting the paper industry. Further, it has been a source of highly-trained scientific and managerial professions for the paper industry. Mr. Mahler served the institute as its first president and as board chairman. Later he was made honorary chairman.
Mr. Mahler also helped found the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI) and was the recipient in 1932 of the gold medal award for contributions to the industry. His part in founding the institute and TAPPI were cited by Brown University when it awarded him an honorary doctor of science degree in 1937.
During World War 1I, he was a member of the purchase policy division of the Army Service Forces and helped formulate policies, review legislation, and implement utilization of small war plants. For nearly five months in 1945, he was in Europe as an expert consultant in charge of paper production and organization rehabilitation of the paper industry in Belgium, Holland, France, and Germany. Mr. Mahler also served as a member of the United States Reparations Commission in Russia, Berlin, and Potsdam. In 1946, he was awarded a certificate of appreciation from the War Department and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Mr. Mahler retired in 1952.
[Ernst] Mahler was an entrepreneurial genius whose innovative ideas and leadership, over a period of about 20 years, transformed [Kimberly Clark, a] once-small, insular newsprint and tissue manufacturer into one of the largest paper corporations in the world, which gives prosperous employment to more than 100,000 and produces products (which Mahler helped to innovate) that are now used by more than 2 billion people. Mahler became enormously wealthy, of course. Yet his personal fortune was insignificant when compared with the permanent prosperity he generated, not only for his own company but for the hundreds of thousands who work for industries which his genius ultimately spawned and which long outlived him--not to mention the revolutionary sanitary products that have liberated two generations of women, or the printing papers that completely transformed international publishing and communications for fifty years. I can safely predict that you have never heard of him up to this moment. Not one person in 100 million has. Yet his contribution has permanently uplifted the lives of millions and far exceeds in real compassion most of our self-congratulatory politicians and "activists" whose names are known to all.
The moral of the story is that a relatively small number of inventors and capitalists have made incalculable contributions to human welfare and human well-being and yet are not what most people think of when they think of leading a moral life. They are not factored into the moral equation. We live in a culture that teaches that morality is self-sacrifice and that compassion and service to others are the ultimate good. We don't associate morality with ambition, achievement, innovation; and we certainly don't associate it with profit making. But if the standard by which we are judging is human well-being, then whatever the enormous merits of compassion, they do not compare with the contributions to well-being that are made by the motivation of achievement.
No comments:
Post a Comment