Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty by Daniel Schulman Page A
Authors: Daniel Schulman
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believed that the next great clash would be fought between the forces of capitalism and collectivism, but to his frustration, few people seemed to recognize the peril. He saw it as his duty to raise the alarm. “I think these times are far more serious even than Civil War days,” he confided to a friend and retired military officer. “That war was merely to decide whether we were going to be one nation or two, whereas the fight that is going on now in this country is going to decide whether we are going to be free men or slaves.” (This was a bizarre comment to make, since the Civil War was fought, in large part, to eradicate slavery.)
As he became increasingly outspoken about the menace of communism, Fred returned to Moscow in 1956 (his first visit in twenty-six years), joining a delegation of ten prominent Wichita businessmen on a “friendship tour” to refute Soviet propaganda about the evils of capitalism. “We have been painted as oppressive masters of the laboring people,” one of Fred’s companions said at the time. “We are nothing of the sort. Although we are wealthy in terms of worldly goods, we are humanitarians in every respect.”The quixotic trip only reinforced the immutability of the ideological battle under way.
When Welch summoned Fred to Indianapolis, he did not tell the industrialist the reason for the meeting. He merely said that the topic was of the gravest importance.
“The meeting will be completely ‘off the record’—you will simply be in Indianapolis, or just in the Midwest, on business,” Welch wrote to the small circle of prominent men he had picked to attend the conclave. “And since there is no way I can tell you of the ideas which I hope to see thoroughly discussed there, without writing volumes, you will have to take for granted that I would not ask such busy men to give up two whole days in this way unless I thought it would be worthwhile.”
When all his guests took their seats, Welch made his entrance toting a thick stack of note cards. Tall, with thinning gray hair and pursed lips, Welch looked a bit like Mr. Magoo. He shook hands with the men and, knowing there was much ground to cover, took his place rigidly behind a podium that he had borrowed from a nearby church.
“Before tomorrow is over,” Welch said, “I hope to have all of you feeling that you are taking part, here and now, in the beginning of a movement of historical importance.” Speaking for hours on end in his customary monotone, interrupted only by small breaks for food, Welch outlined the dizzying breadth of the communist conspiracy, reaching back to the Roman and Greek empires—civilizations that “did perish of the cancer of collectivism”—to illustrate the tragic fate that could be awaiting the West.
“This octopus is so large,” Welch said, “that its tentacles now reach into all of the legislative halls, all of the union labor meetings, a majority of the religious gatherings, and most of the schools of the whole world. It has a central nervous system which can make its tentacles in the labor unions of Bolivia, in the farmers’co-operatives of Saskatchewan, in the caucuses of the Social Democrats of West Germany, and in the class rooms of Yale Law School, all retract or reach forward simultaneously. It can make all of these creeping tentacles turn either right or left, or a given percentage turn right while the others turn left, at the same time, in accordance with the intentions of a central brain in Moscow or Ust-Kamenogorsk. The human race has never before faced any such monster of power which was determined to enslave it.”
To others, this might have sounded like pure lunacy. But Fred knew better. Of the men who had assembled in Indianapolis, he perhaps had the most direct experience with communism. He had seen the beast up close.
The communists had either executed or banished to Siberia many of the Soviet engineers Fred worked with in the early 1930s. Even the loyal Bolshevik
As he became increasingly outspoken about the menace of communism, Fred returned to Moscow in 1956 (his first visit in twenty-six years), joining a delegation of ten prominent Wichita businessmen on a “friendship tour” to refute Soviet propaganda about the evils of capitalism. “We have been painted as oppressive masters of the laboring people,” one of Fred’s companions said at the time. “We are nothing of the sort. Although we are wealthy in terms of worldly goods, we are humanitarians in every respect.”The quixotic trip only reinforced the immutability of the ideological battle under way.
When Welch summoned Fred to Indianapolis, he did not tell the industrialist the reason for the meeting. He merely said that the topic was of the gravest importance.
“The meeting will be completely ‘off the record’—you will simply be in Indianapolis, or just in the Midwest, on business,” Welch wrote to the small circle of prominent men he had picked to attend the conclave. “And since there is no way I can tell you of the ideas which I hope to see thoroughly discussed there, without writing volumes, you will have to take for granted that I would not ask such busy men to give up two whole days in this way unless I thought it would be worthwhile.”
When all his guests took their seats, Welch made his entrance toting a thick stack of note cards. Tall, with thinning gray hair and pursed lips, Welch looked a bit like Mr. Magoo. He shook hands with the men and, knowing there was much ground to cover, took his place rigidly behind a podium that he had borrowed from a nearby church.
“Before tomorrow is over,” Welch said, “I hope to have all of you feeling that you are taking part, here and now, in the beginning of a movement of historical importance.” Speaking for hours on end in his customary monotone, interrupted only by small breaks for food, Welch outlined the dizzying breadth of the communist conspiracy, reaching back to the Roman and Greek empires—civilizations that “did perish of the cancer of collectivism”—to illustrate the tragic fate that could be awaiting the West.
“This octopus is so large,” Welch said, “that its tentacles now reach into all of the legislative halls, all of the union labor meetings, a majority of the religious gatherings, and most of the schools of the whole world. It has a central nervous system which can make its tentacles in the labor unions of Bolivia, in the farmers’co-operatives of Saskatchewan, in the caucuses of the Social Democrats of West Germany, and in the class rooms of Yale Law School, all retract or reach forward simultaneously. It can make all of these creeping tentacles turn either right or left, or a given percentage turn right while the others turn left, at the same time, in accordance with the intentions of a central brain in Moscow or Ust-Kamenogorsk. The human race has never before faced any such monster of power which was determined to enslave it.”
To others, this might have sounded like pure lunacy. But Fred knew better. Of the men who had assembled in Indianapolis, he perhaps had the most direct experience with communism. He had seen the beast up close.
The communists had either executed or banished to Siberia many of the Soviet engineers Fred worked with in the early 1930s. Even the loyal Bolshevik
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