Just outside Wichita, Kan., in the 1950s, a Koch family retainer opened the door to a pickup truck. Teenage fraternal twins—David and Billy—piled out.
They had been fighting again and neither would back down. To avoid the boys’ seriously hurting each other, the retainer, an ex-Marine, gave them boxing gloves and told them to “duke it out.”
Little did anyone realize at the time that throughout most of their adult lives the four Koch brothers (Frederick, Charles, David and Bill Koch, pronounced like the soft drink) would be duking it out constantly. Instead of boxing gloves, the weapons of choice would become private detectives, lawyers and lawsuits—including one against their own mother—in their later years.
The family feuds “would make [the TV shows] Dynasty and Dallas look like playpens,” Bill Koch once said. Frederick and Bill were bought out of the family business many years ago—Bill because he was ousted—leading to many lawsuits. Frederick left because he preferred art collecting and the purchase of historic buildings to business.
The “duking it out” vignette is how Daniel Schulman begins his book Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty. Schulman is a senior editor in the Washington bureau of Mother Jones magazine and is a founding member of the magazine’s investigative journalism team. His work has appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine, Columbia Journalism Review, Psychology Today, the Village Voice and other publications.
The colorful biography took two years to research and write and has 47 pages of notes and index.
Plus, it contains something for both sides of the political spectrum:
If you are a conservative businessman, you can see how brilliantly Charles and David built their father’s Midwestern empire ($250 million in yearly sales with 650 employees in the late 1960s) into the corporate giant it is today (the second-largest privately owned company in the world, with $115 billion in annual sales and more than 100,000 employees). It is in the lives of everyone, selling products from Dixie Cups, Brawny paper towels and Quilted Northern toilet paper, to oil, cattle and building materials.
Charles and David have done so well in business they are Nos. 5 and 6, respectively, on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans, with fortunes of $40 billion each.
If you are into conservative politics, you can appreciate how Charles and David Koch patiently have shaped American politics by providing millions of dollars in seed money to start the Tea Party and other organizations.
Indeed, since they believe that politicians are not leaders but vessels to be filled with the ideas and philosophies of others, the Koch brothers’ Tea Party movement is strong in 30 states and has filled Congress to the point that little can be accomplished without Tea Party consent. This is just fine as far as Charles and David are concerned because they believe that government should serve only as “the night watchman” to protect Americans and business. It should not be regulating business or raising taxes above the bare minimum needed to provide that security.
On the other hand, this book will interest those of a liberal frame of mind, who believe Koch Industries serves as the best example why industry should be severely regulated to prevent pollution and even the killing of Americans. Liberals, perhaps, see Charles and David, with their untold millions, as attempting to subvert national politics with their own agenda and as the perfect example of why some Americans are not taxed enough.
Of course, influencing American politics is nothing new with the Koch clan. The family patriarch, Fred, was a founding member of the John Birch Society and it’s his political philosophy that has shaped Charles’ and David’s own agendas.
But it’s Charles’ philosophy of libertarianism that has shaped his politics and his “market-based management” that has in turn shaped his business philosophy, part of which includes doing nothing that doesn’t positively affect the bottom line.
In fact, employee evaluations rate how much money a particular employee has made the company. For employees in sales that is not hard to quantify. But for an employee who works in something like pipeline maintenance (at one point, Koch Industries had 40,000 miles of underground pipes), it could be a harder sell.
For example, the company didn’t spend money to fix one pipeline in particular that it reported as having 583 locations of corrosion along its 46-mile stretch in Texas. The reason: It would cost money. That particular pressurized pipeline in August 1996 began leaking volatile liquid butane. An explosion was set off when two teenagers started their truck nearby. The fireball reached hundreds of feet into the night sky and killed the two teens. Their bodies were so badly burned that it could not be determined who was who without a thorough examination by a medical examiner. Koch Industries was sued by the father of one of the teens for $100 million. The jury awarded $296 million and it was, at that point, the largest wrongful death award in U.S. history.
The Kochs’ severe business image is softened somewhat by the millions of dollars they give to charity—to support hospitals, programming on public television and other arts institutions, as well as to support the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty by Daniel Schulman. Grand Central Publishing, May 2014, 424 pages.
