Father, Son & Co.

by Thomas J. Watson

  Liabilities Assets

  Reactionary Ideas! Vision

  Love of money! Unselfishness

  Unwholesome companions! Love

  Lax character! Character (Good)

  Lack of love for others! Good manners

  False friends Friendship (Real)

  Pride in Record

  I had always disliked hearing such stuff, but it now seemed pretty well intentioned.

  Many of our letters dealt with our summer plans. The summer of 1937 was shaping up as a big one for the Watsons. Father had been appointed president of the International Chamber of Commerce and was going to Europe to accept the honor, taking Mother and my sisters with him. He had been invited to meet the king of England on the way there. Dick was getting his diploma from boarding school, and big things were in store for me too. I got my first unsolicited job offer, from a journalist friend of Dad’s named Herbert Houston. He was an expert on Japan and had been engaged by the directors of the 1939 World’s Fair to make a trip to the Orient selling pavilion space. He wrote to ask if I would be his secretary for the summer. I was delighted by this offer and flattered that someone had thought of me for a job that was going to involve “hard travel and hard work,” as Houston said. I gladly canceled plans for a sailing trip with my fraternity friends and agreed to join Houston in Berlin, which was where the International Chamber of Commerce was going to meet at the end of June. We would watch Dad get installed as president and set out for the Far East from there, via Moscow and the Trans-Siberian railroad.

  One consequence of all these events was that my parents missed my graduation and Dick’s because they had to leave for England. As a family we Watsons put great stock in ceremonial occasions, and all of us were upset by this, Dad more than anyone else, I think. But there was nothing to be done. So on commencement day I collected my degree alone, with only the beaming, round face of Dean Arnold looking on. I joined some friends and their families for photographs and then, afterward, drove to Hotchkiss to watch Dick’s commencement. I was glad to serve as an older brother for once, by making sure Dick did not feel entirely like an orphan.

  While I was on the boat to Europe my father proudly attended the first morning reception given by George VI, the new king of England. I have a photograph of Dad striding across the courtyard of Buckingham Palace decked out for this event. He is wearing civil court dress, with knee breeches, black stockings and patent-leather shoes, and on his chest is a row of medals that had been given to him by various countries where IBM did business. T. J. Watson, the former sewing machine salesman, had arrived.

  Meanwhile I’d met a beautiful woman on the way over, a model from Chicago who was on a tour with her mother. This girl just swept me off my feet. As we pulled into Southampton I went to tell her good-bye and ended up covered with lipstick. It was about seven in the morning and as I came walking along the deck, all ready to go on shore, everybody I passed started laughing. I’m glad there were no cameras around to witness that event.

  I caught up with my parents and Herbert Houston in Berlin, where the 1937 Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce had already begun. The ICC in those days was thought of as the business counterpart of the League of Nations. Its goal was summed up in a slogan invented by Dad: “World Peace Through World Trade.” The congress that year had fourteen hundred delegates and attracted attention all over the world. Many people were hoping that international businessmen like Dad would be able to keep war from breaking out.

  The atmosphere in Berlin was highly charged. Hitler had already remilitarized the Rhineland, and a massive arms buildup was under way. Right after I arrived Mother told us that her friends the Wertheims, who owned one of the biggest department stores in Berlin, were leaving the country. In the summer of 1935 theirs had been one of the businesses hit when Nazi gangs ran wild in Berlin’s streets, smashing the windows of Jewish-owned stores. The Germans we knew pooh-poohed the incident at the time, saying, “Oh, it’s too bad, but you know how young people are,” but Mother had been shocked. To protect the business, Mr. Wertheim had transferred ownership to his wife, who was a certified Aryan, but they feared for their future and decided to get out. The fact that this family felt forced to abandon a great business because of politics was incomprehensible to me. They ended up selling the store for next to nothing, putting all their possessions in six railroad cars, paying everybody off, and taking the train into Sweden.

  I remember walking down Unter den Linden, the city’s main avenue, with a manager from IBM’s local office. We passed the Reichschancellery building and I saw soldiers in uniforms and helmets. A little further on I spotted the office of Intourist, the Russian travel agency. I needed some information in connection with my trip East, so I walked in. The IBM man followed me absentmindedly, but when he looked around and realized where he was, he dashed back out the door. There was a lot of animosity between the Germans and the Russians and he didn’t want to risk being seen there. I also visited the Japanese embassy, where Houston took me to a reception. It was a beautiful house, and we stood in the garden sipping tea while a German diplomat told us proudly that the place had belonged to a rich Jew who had fled the country. Nobody took exception, but I wondered how the Jewish man felt about having his house taken over. The callousness of the Germans made me very uneasy.

  Dad’s optimism blinded him to what was going on in Germany. Even though the Germans welcomed the Congress, they didn’t like the idea of increased trade. They kept insisting that too much international commerce would ruin their self-sufficiency, which they needed in case of war. But Dad believed his German businessmen friends, who assured him they had Hitler in check. A lot of people made the same mistake, but not everyone had a chance to ask Adolf Hitler point-blank what he had in mind. On the third day of the congress my father had a private meeting with Hitler, and Hitler fooled him completely. When Dad talked to reporters afterward he praised Hitler’s sincerity. According to Dad, Hitler said, “There will be no war. No country wants war, and no country can afford it.”

  At the end of the Congress the Nazi government gave Dad the Merit Cross of the German Eagle. This was a medal that had just been created for “honoring foreign nationals who have made themselves deserving of the German Reich.” I was present at the ceremony at which Hjalmar Schacht, Germany’s economic minister, draped the thing around Dad’s neck. It was a white cross framed in gold and decorated with swastikas. Dad willingly accepted it at the time, but in 1940, after Hitler had taken over much of Europe, Dad sent the medal back with an angry note:

  Your Excellency:

  At the time of the Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce in Berlin in June, 1937, at which I was elected President of that body, we discussed world peace and world trade. You made the statement that there must be no more wars, and that you were interested in developing trade with other nations.

  A few days later your representative, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, in the name of the German Government, conferred upon me the decoration of Merit Cross of the German Eagle (With Star) in recognition of my efforts for world peace and world trade. I accepted this decoration on that basis and advised you that I would continue to cooperate in the interests of those causes.

  In view of the present policies of your Government, which are contrary to the causes for which I have been working and for which I received the decoration, I am returning it.

  Yours truly,

  Thomas J. Watson

  My father somehow found time in Berlin to give me advice about my trip to the Far East. We both thought of this as my first exposure to the real world, and he must have been worried that I’d fall right into the fleshpots of the Orient. He warned me not to fool around with women of other nationalities, because cultural differences made it hard to distinguish between well-bred women and those less well bred. Though Dad never talked about sex, he found an indirect way to mention that too. He said, “Tom, you’re going into very unusual territory. There are all sorts of diseases out there. If I
were you, I’d be very careful to always use a clean towel. If you cut yourself shaving or something, and you use a towel that isn’t absolutely clean, you can get a serious infection.”

  We said good-bye on July 3, and when I stepped off the train with Herbert Houston in Warsaw the following morning, it felt like my personal Independence Day. Here I was, twenty-three years old, knowing nothing about the world, absolutely on my own. Over the next ten weeks I intended to prove myself the world’s best secretary. Houston’s plan was to journey northeast to Moscow, board the Trans-Siberian railroad, and start selling pavilion space as soon as we reached Manchuria, which in those days was a puppet state controlled by Japan.

  I liked Houston at first because he’d picked me for the job, but we never grew close. He was in his sixties, like Dad, yet he already seemed to be an old man—very formal, hard of hearing, and constantly nodding off. He knew a lot of important people in the Far East and had made his name editing a journal of foreign affairs called World’s Work. It did well enough in its day but had fallen on hard times. Now Houston was nearly destitute and Father had helped him get the World’s Fair job.

  At the Russian border we had to change trains, and the guards looked through everything we had. As I soon found out, Russia was in upheaval. Under Stalin people were being executed left and right, or simply dropping out of the picture. There were news stories about a field marshal and fourteen top army officers accused of spying. They had been found guilty in eight hours of secret trial and immediately shot. Among people who knew the country, the assumption was that a great many other people were dying as well, although no one guessed the extent of Stalin’s purges.

  Unlike many Americans who made pilgrimages to Russia in the 1930s, I felt no special sympathy for Communism—I was just passing through on my way to Tokyo. But the Russian Revolution was only twenty years old, and I was curious to see for myself whether the new system was working. I thought about this on the train while Houston dozed. It bothered me that back home, even talking about Communism was becoming an act of heresy. Why wouldn’t sensible people be willing to talk about any approach to distributing the wealth? In fact, the way money was distributed in America didn’t seem entirely fair. Mother had always told us, “Your father works hard and that’s why he’s a success,” but I could think of other people who worked just as hard and got nowhere. Perhaps some other system might be better; I was prepared to believe there might be some good in Communism.

  When we pulled into Moscow, a man from Intourist met us at the station and drove us to the Metropole Hotel, Moscow’s finest. The place was badly run down, and I was fascinated to learn that many rooms were occupied by the piecework champions from local factories—I wondered what rewarding top achievers had to do with Lenin’s slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Another Metropole resident was Gene Schwerdt, a Dutchman working as IBM’s Moscow representative. We did substantial business with the Soviets, who relied on IBM machines to manage vast quantities of statistics for their Five Year Plans. Schwerdt saw that I was naive, and he invited me to his room for a crash course on Russia. “Be careful here,” he told me. “They’ll try to set you up with a woman. They also mike your room, so don’t say anything.” While that sank in, he told me that Moscow was in a state of terror, even though none of the Russians mentioned it for fear of being shot. Stalin had established his power through executions right from the beginning, and then—Schwerdt put it in sales terms—he steadily increased his quota until shooting had become as common in Russia as traffic tickets in the U.S.A. I sat for two hours hearing about propaganda, spies, the black markets, the terrible housing shortage, and the bureaucracy that paralyzed everything. By the time I left I was shocked.

  At the U.S. embassy they welcomed Houston and me when we showed them our letter of introduction from Secretary of State Cordell Hull, a friend of Dad’s. Everybody I met on the embassy staff damned the Russians to some degree. The man who made the deepest impression on me was second secretary George Kennan. He was a thin, intense, dark-haired fellow, only thirty-three. He described Russia as a dictatorship with a Communist façade, and told me that he had come to Russia thinking that Communism was the world’s ultimate solution and had slowly reached the view that it was an utter failure as it was being practiced.

  After a day or two I wrote my father a letter, saying Russia was a terrible place. When he got it I think he was frantic that I would shoot my mouth off and get into trouble. Somehow he got a reply to me within three days. It said simply,

  I am sure that you will find conditions in Russia much improved for the masses, as compared with pre-war times. Furthermore, you must keep in mind that every country is in a position to figure out what is best for its own people. It is not our duty to either criticize or advise them in these matters.

  I got the hint, and toned down my criticism of the Soviet government as long as I was there.

  The Intourist people worked hard to put a good face on things. We made a two-day trip to Leningrad, where they showed us the art treasures the czars had hoarded and the palaces they had built while ordinary Russians suffered. To give us an idea of the ideal Communist state, Intourist took us on a bus to a collective farm outside Moscow. It looked more or less like an ordinary U.S. farm, but what did impress me was the way they cared for the children in clean, bright nurseries. I annoyed my guide by paying more attention to the kids than the farm. When I offered money to one little boy, the guide said angrily, “They don’t want money. They have plenty.” Nonetheless I gave the boy some in secret and he leaped at it.

  While we were in Moscow I was surprised at how little Houston asked me to do, even though he was spending a lot of time at the Japanese embassy making plans for our trip east. After about a week he stunned me by saying that we were going to wait for another man my age to join us. This was Peter Weil, nephew of a prominent New York investment banker. When I asked why he was coming, Houston said, “To be my secretary, like you.” That riled me, because I didn’t think Houston needed two secretaries. I pressed him until finally he told me that Peter Weil’s trip was being paid for by his family, and that the same went for me: Dad had secretly arranged to reimburse the World’s Fair for my salary and expenses. This was a terrible blow to my pride. I would never have taken the job if I had known that my father had created it. I felt as though he had deceived me; I was angry with myself for not seeing through it sooner, and I resented Houston for going along with it. If Houston didn’t need me, then I would spend the trip fooling around on Dad’s money, just as I had done for four years at Brown. But my anger and embarrassment weren’t that easy to shrug off. The next eight weeks were among the most confused of my life.

  Peter Weil and I shared a compartment on the train across Siberia. He was a nice enough fellow and seemed perfectly gentlemanly. We would play backgammon late each night and sleep until midday. By the time we got to Manchuria I owed him about forty dollars, which made me mad, especially when I caught him reading a book called Winning at Backgammon he had hidden in his luggage. I always kept an eye on him after that, although we continued to get along. The train went very slowly and stopped a lot. I spent long hours looking out the window at the taiga, the endless forest of evergreen and birch trees. My fantasy was that if a good airline could get a permit to fly across that vast land, it could be the most profitable route in the world: Berlin to Tokyo in five days. I felt curious about the Siberian people, and whenever we stopped I’d explore the little towns and haggle in the shops. That was about the only fun I had in six long days, apart from singing and talking with a group of Germans and some English girls we discovered riding among the peasants in third class.

  Crossing into Japanese territory from Siberia meant reentering the modern world with a jolt. To reach Tokyo we had to cross Manchuria, travel down the length of the Korean peninsula, and take a ferry from Pusan across to Japan. I was amazed at the work the Japanese had done all along the way. In Manchuria, which had bee
n under their control for just six years, we rode on a first-rate train, called the Asia, that was air-conditioned, completely streamlined, fast, and as smooth as a boat on a calm sea. The only unsettling thing was that everywhere we saw evidence of Japan’s military buildup—troops and staff cars at the train stations, battleships in harbors. I was so impressed by Japan’s modernity that I didn’t pay too much attention to this—even when a Japanese plainclothesman on one train claimed we’d taken pictures in a forbidden zone and confiscated our film. But it was only a few days later that Japan launched the full-scale invasion of China that some historians call the beginning of World War II.

  When we reached Tokyo we set up shop in the Imperial Hotel. Houston was hopelessly disorganized and so secretive that he wouldn’t let Peter or me open the mail or even keep track of his appointments. Yet somehow, thanks to his connections, the pavilion space got sold. By tagging along with him we met many prominent Japanese, including Ginjiro Fujihara, a paper manufacturer who later became the minister of munitions. He invited us to a tea ceremony at his home and afterward talked about the invasion of China and how it might affect relations with England and the U.S. Fujihara said openly that Japan was no longer afraid of England, as she was a very old nation and Japan was a young one. When Houston asked, “What about the United States?” Fujihara smiled and said, “We like President Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy.” I took that at face value—it would have been hard for me to believe that Japan thought of the U.S. as a rival. On the contrary, what impressed me most in Tokyo was the extent to which U.S. and Japanese interests seemed entwined. I had always thought of Japan as very remote, but I kept running into familiar faces-men who knew my father, recent Ivy League graduates I either knew or had heard of, and even a Japanese count who had been Princeton’s biggest dandy during my years at the Hun School.