LATE HARVEY FIRESTONE

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 36, 12 February 1938, Page 28

LATE HARVEY FIRESTONE

The death was announced during the week or Mr. Harvey S. Firestone, president' of the Firestone Tyre' and Rubber Company. Born in 1868 he received a commercial education in hi:i native State, Ohio. It was in 1900 that he organised his tyre and rubber company, opening business in an old foundry building at Akron with secondhand machinery and a staff of 17 men. By 1918 there were 8000 workers and 10,000. tyres were produced daily. Ten years later there were 12,000 workers and the daily production was 45,000 tyes.

From 1930-32 Mr. Firestone was president of the Firestone Rubber Com-pany-of U.S.A., and from 1932 was

chairman of the board. He held the same position in the Firestone Steel Products Company and the Firestone Park Trust and Savings Bank, and was an officer or director of many other subsidiary companies. He manufactured batteries, spark plugs, brake linings, and several thousand mechanical rubber automobile parts. He operated several hundred auto supply and service. stores. He was largely instrumental in the investigation of the rub-ber-growing possibilities of the Philippines and South American countries. In Liberia he obtained a lease of 1,000,000 acres of land-for rubber plantations, and by 1936 60,000 acres had been planted.

1 Mr. Firestone was a member of the Ohio Council for National Defence during the Great War, and was instrumental in organising the rubber division of the American War Industries Board. He also organised the activities for war work of the Rubber Association of America, of which he was president, 1916-18. He \vas a member of numerous societies of engineers and chemists and a director of the American Academy of Tropical Medicine. He wrote in 1922 "Rubber, Its History and Development," and in 1926, with Samuel Crowther, "Men and Rubber."

Appreciation of Mr. Firestone's view of wealth and his outstanding service to the city of Akron was expressed at his sixtieth birthday party. The guests, 1400 in number, included Firestone executives and employees and representatives of every religious denomination in the city. References were made to his gifts to the hospitals, to his gift to Princeton University of a chapel, and many other gifts to charitable organisations. He donated a year-

ly scholarship providing four years' college education to the high school student writing the best essay on good roads and highway transportation. For his employees he built a magnificent clubhouse and created Firestone Park, including a 36-hole golf course, and the Firestone Savings Bank. He was always closely associated with the work of the Episcopalian Church and in 1922 was honoured- with the presidency of the Ohio Federation of Churches. The three great interests of his, life were his family, his business organisation, and the Church. He had four sons and a daughter.