Harvey Samuel Firestone 1868-1938, American industrialist, manufacturer of rubber products, b. Columbiana co., Ohio. The son of a prosperous farmer, Harvey Firestone began to manufacture rubber tires in 1896. He organized (1900) the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company and rapidly became a leader of the rubber industry, with various properties over the world. By 1926 he leased a 1,000,000-acre (404,686-hectare) rubber plantation in Liberia to control the output of raw rubber needed in his factories.

Bibliography: See biography by A. Lief (1951).

Harvey Samuel Firestone

The American industrialist Harvey Samuel Firestone (1868-1938) organized the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, a leading firm in the rubber industry.

Harvey Firestone was born at Columbiana, Ohio, on Dec. 20, 1868, the son of a prosperous farmer. During the 1890s he held various positions in the buggy industry. In 1896 Firestone established a tire company; it was sold 3 years later. In 1900 he founded the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio, which was already a center of the tire industry catering to the bicycle.

Now Firestone shifted his attention to the automobile industry and the pneumatic tire, which replaced the solid tire. He obtained a substantial order from Henry Ford in 1906, and this became the foundation of a business and personal relationship. Firestone became one of the "big five" in rubber: the others were Goodyear, Goodrich, United States Rubber, and Fisk.

Firestone responded to the 1920-1921 business decline by reducing prices and refusing to participate in a price agreement with his competitors. Wages were cut in an effort to trim costs (like most mass production industries, the rubber industry was not yet unionized). In 1923 Firestone brought out the balloon tire, a product innovation which was widely copied.

The rubber tire industry was at this time completely dependent on imported raw material. The price of rubber, like that of most raw materials, fluctuated greatly: it rose during World War I and went down during the postwar depression. Under the sponsorship of Great Britain, which owned colonies producing much of the world's rubber supply, a short-lived cartel was started in 1922 to raise the price of rubber and restrict its output. Complaints from consumer nations arose, particularly from the United States, which, in the midst of an automobile revolution, was the largest consumer of rubber. In response, in 1924 Firestone and Henry Ford began to develop their own rubber supply in Liberia, Africa. The size of Firestone's Liberian rubber plantations made him an important factor in the economic life of that country. In 1930 a League of Nations inquiry into the slave traffic exonerated Firestone's labor policy there.

Firestone died on Feb. 7, 1938, in Miami Beach, Fla. His family-controlled company concentrated on a single line of products—rubber tires.

Further Reading

Firestone's Men and Rubber, in collaboration with Samuel Crowther (1926), presents his reminiscences. Alfred Lief wrote the popular biography Harvey Firestone: Free Man of Enterprise (1951) and The Firestone Story: A History of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company (1951). The Liberian venture is examined in Wayne C. Taylor, The Firestone Operations in Liberia (1956). □

Firestone, Harvey (1868–1938), industrialist, corporate executive.Harvey Firestone was born near Columbiana, Ohio, to a well‐to‐do farm family. After graduating from high school in 1887, he held several clerical jobs, most notably with his uncle's Columbus Buggy Company. Firestone became interested in rubber carriage tires and developed a profitable tire dealership. In 1900 he moved to Akron, Ohio, the emerging center of the tire industry, to manufacture tires. Firestone quickly established his firm as an important producer of carriage, bicycle, and, increasingly, automobile tires. In 1905, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company obtained a large order from the Ford Motor Company for its new Model T. From that time it grew rapidly. By 1920 Firestone had become one of the best‐known American industrialists.

In the 1920s and 1930s Firestone transformed his company into a vertically integrated corporation that participated in all aspects of tire production and distribution. He developed rubber plantations overseas, textile plants, specialized factories, a full line of tire‐oriented products, retail stores, and a worldwide marketing organization. Firestone scorned growth through mergers with competing companies; instead, he emphasized his own brand‐name products, which he promoted relentlessly through advertising and public‐relations activities, such as camping trips with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and other notables. Despite his company's growing size, Firestone insisted on personal control and family management and opposed labor unions. His five sons all became Firestone executives and played important roles in the firm until the 1970s.
See also Automotive Industry; Foreign Relations: The Economic Dimension; Industrialization; Mass Marketing; Mass Production.

Bibliography

Alfred Lief , The Firestone Story: A History of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, 1951.
Alfred Lief , Harvey Firestone, Free Man of Enterprise, 1951.

Daniel Nelson