Fred Smith, founder of Federal Express, died recently at the age of 80. I’ve always loved the story:
Fred Smith was near the end of his junior, or third, year at Yale in 1965 when he dashed off an essay proposing a “hub-and-spoke” system for parcel delivery. His plan involved collecting parcels from local depots and transporting them to a central hub for overnight sorting before delivering them to their destination the following day. “If a hospital in Texas needs a heart valve tomorrow, it needs it tomorrow,” he said, recalling a time when American parcel deliveries routinely took days or even weeks.
The idea was not original. “It had been done in transportation before: the Indian post office, the French post office. American Airlines had tried a system like that shortly after the Second World War,” he said. However, his professors were lukewarm and supposedly awarded his paper a C grade, although the essay itself was lost and its author later claimed not to remember the details.
Smith turned his paper into Federal Express… – from The Times, a UK Company
By the way, do you see the arrow in the FEDEX logo? I didn’t until someone pointed it out.
Jason Riley wrote a beautiful piece, published by the Wall Street Journal on June 24: What Public Schools Could Learn From Fred Smith. I don’t want to focus on the lessons for public schools, which is that competition improves everybody, but on two other points about Fred Smith and other wealthy entrepreneurs.
The article opens:
FedEx founder Fred Smith, who died last week at age 80, was a committed philanthropist. He sank millions into renovating sports stadiums, funded zoo exhibits, and endowed scholarships at historically black colleges and universities.
Jason is making the point that these “evil billionaires” as some characterize them are doing a lot of good with their wealth. He mentions Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, and Bill Gates as other examples of philanthropy.
Generosity is a good thing as I wrote recently. But it’s Jason’s second point that flipped my switch:
Smith’s legacy almost certainly will be how he made his riches rather than how he spent them…
The Ford Foundation has spent billions of dollars on poverty initiatives, human-rights advocacy and other selected causes, yet Henry Ford’s most significant achievement was developing the moving assembly line in the 1910s, which transformed manufacturing. Ford made automobiles accessible to America’s burgeoning middle class, expanded job opportunities, and accelerated the expansion of related rubber and steel industries.
John D. Rockefeller likewise grew fabulously wealthy by revolutionizing an entire industry while improving the lives of others in the process. The rise of Standard Oil led to cheaper prices for oil and oil byproducts, including kerosene and gas. More goods could be transported over greater distances at lower cost and in less time. The everyday man could illuminate his home at night and no longer had to stop working when the sun went down. Rockefeller’s money gave us the University of Chicago, Colonial Williamsburg, and New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, but his ambition made immeasurable contributions to U.S. productivity.
In other words, the work of these men made a difference in the world. Fred Smith revolutionized shipping and even indirectly forced the US Post Office to improve its services. Henry Ford made cars available to everyone, and Rockefeller made the fuel the cars needed more affordable.
As I have written before, work is important. Our work is a continuation of God’s work in the world. We serve people by our work, just as Fred Smith, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford did.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. (Genesis 2.1 – 3, ESV)
Six days you shall labor, and do all your work… (Exodus 20.9, ESV. Also Exodus 23.12, 31.15, 34.21, 35.2, Leviticus 23.3, Deuteronomy 5.13)