A Tribute to Henry Salvatori

One of my heroes is Henry Salvatori. He is pictured above at left on our masthead and above in this post. The reason we included him above is that his contribution to Claremont conservative -- and indeed to conservatives everywhere -- are beyond substantial.

The name Salvatori ought to sound familiar to Claremont McKenna students as he founded the Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World, one of the institutes that brings some of the schools most amazing speakers. I am currently a Salvatori Junior Fellow, an honor that permits me to listen to and speak with some of the nation's finest thinkers in a smaller group. I recommend it to any conservative or free-thinking student on campus.

I am personally indebted to Mr. Salvatori's beneficence as this past summer I worked at the Kauffman Foundation (where I am currently still employed) and the New York Sun. The Salvatori Center brought representatives of both of these organizations to Claremont McKenna. (Given the leftist lurch of the Athenaeum, it is doubtful that I would have ever met these two people, let alone taken jobs at their fine establishments!) In the spirit of full disclosure, I should also point out that I am currently an applicant for employment at the Salvatori Center.

Still, I had no idea just the magnitude of how much American conservatives owe Salvatori, a debt I shall hope to make clear in a moment.

I am currently reading Alfred S. Regnery's Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism. The book is masterful in every respect and serves as an excellent Cook's Tour of American conservatism. On p. 188 - 190, Regnery writes of Mr. Salvatori's considerable contributions. I quote,

HENRY SALVATORI

Henry Salvatori arrived from Italy at the age of six, in the very first days of the twentieth century, and instantly became a loyal and patriotic American. His family settled on a firm in New Jersey, and as Salvatori remembered later, "Those early days on the farm served to shape my character, basic nature, and even my philosophical outlook." He went to the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, where he studied electrical engineering. After receiving a master's degree from Columbia, he decided to see the "Wild West" and took a job with an oil-exploration company in Oklahoma. Working fifteen-hour days, he learned to use seismology to find oil and before long, during the depths of the Depression, had started his own company. With nine thousand dollars in capital at a time when the unemployment rate was nearly 25 percent, Salvatori started off in a one-room office in Los Angeles with one truck. He used his geophysical skills to help small oil companies find oil, and within a year has ten crews working in five states across the West. Competition was fierce, but Salvatori knew the industry and proved to be an exceptional businessman; he eventually landed a contract with Standard Oil of Indiana, and by 1936 his company was second only to the one he had left several years earlier. Ever the innovator, Salvatori was one of the first to explore for oil offfshore, and by 1955 his company was the world's largest offshore seismic contractor.
As an employer, Salvatori was an innovative as anybody in California; in 1951 he started a profit-sharing plan which made his employees virtual partners with him at no cost to themselves, and in 1954 offered his nine hundred employees a leave of absence during which they could pursue other job opportunities while keeping all the benefits, a step that even Fortune magazine applauded.
By the mid-1950s Salvatori was a confirmed political conservative. "During the 1950s," Salvatori explained, "the radical left policies that had prevailed since the early 1930s had begun to prove ineffective and dangerous, resulting in the election of Eisenhower. But during his eight years in office the philosophy of the radical left still dominated academia and especially the news media, reasserting itself with the election of Kennedy."
Salvatori was one of the early financial backers of National Review. He was also an early donor to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, ultimately providing with ISI with over $2 million. In 1964 Salvatori went to work for Barry Goldwater as the chairman of his campaign in California. Goldwater's defeat did not bother Salvatori in the least; he immediately understood that Goldwater had started a conservative revival and determined to help make that revival thrive.
Wanting to devote most of his time to politics, Salvatori sold his business to Litton Industries in 1960, which made him one of the wealthiest men in California, enabling him to devote his fertile talents to the conservative cause. In October 1964 he convinced Goldwater to allow actor Ronald Reagan to make a nationally broadcast speech in support, then proceeded to raise the money to pay for it, contributing most of it himself. "A Time for Choosing" launched Reagan's political career and resulted in more contributions to Goldwater's campaign than any other political speech in the history of television. Two years later Salvatori was instrumental in recruiting Reagan to run for governor. Salvatori and his fellow California businessmen promised Reagan two things if he chose to run: They would raise the money, and they would accept no favor, no office, no appointment in return. It was a winning combination, and it was vintage Salvatori.
But Salvatori was also a political realist, and as much as he admired Ronald Reagan, Salvatori thought he was unelectable in 1976 and supported Gerald Ford. But by 1980 he was once again deep in the Reagan fold, and a charter member of Reagan's "kitchen cabinet," supporting him, raising money, and advising his campaign.
Until his death in 1997, Henry Salvatori was one of the right's most generous supporters, giving away most of his vast fortune to conservative causes and candidates. He never failed to tell anybody how indebted he was to his adopted country. He was forever promoting the American founders, the Constitution, and free markets. "He took the fruit's of a lifetime's work," wrote Bill Buckley, "and put them at the disposal of men and women of a younger generation, charging only that they pursue the ideals he so eloquently served since the day when at age six he got off the boat from Italy, and began a lifetime of productive work, leaving the signs of his personal grace everywhere he lived and worked."

Regnery also quotes John von Kannon, director of development at the Heritage Foundation, on p. 183

"There are certain wealthy people who will say to themselves, 'I am willing to be unpopular at the country club and stand up for what I believe.' Those people could be very comfortable getting on corporate boards and being feted by the liberals. But something in them tells them to be rebels -- it is people like Dick Scaife, Henry Salvatori, Roger Milliken, and others. It is the equivalent of the Virginians saying, 'I may lose my plantation, but I have to fight the king.'"

Thanks, Mr. Salvatori. We'll keep on fighting those kings.