From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lewis Herold Brown
Born	February 13, 1894(1894-02-13) Creston, Iowa, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Chairman & CEO, Johns-Manville Corporation

Born in Creston, Iowa on February 13, 1894, Lewis Herold Brown was an industrialist. He attended the University of Iowa in 1915.

Lewis H. Brown served in France as an infantry captain during World War I. After the war, Brown worked for Montgomery Ward and was promoted to Assistant General Operating Manager in only eight years.

When T.F. Merseles, the President of Montgomery Ward, left in 1928 to become President of the Johns-Manville Corporation, an asbestos manufacturer in the United States, he took Lewis H. Brown with him. In 1930, Merseles died suddenly and Lewis H. Brown was appointed President at age 35—the youngest man ever to hold that position in the company's history.

On April 3, 1939, Lewis H. Brown was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, with the caption "Businessman Brown -- Public Relations Begins at Home."

During World War II, Lewis H. Brown served as an advisor to General Levin Campbell.

After World War II, at the request of General Lucius D. Clay, Lewis H. Brown wrote a book entitled "A Report on Germany" (Farrar, Straus and Company, New York, 1947), which served as a detailed recommendation for the reconstruction of post-war Germany, and served as a basis for the Marshall Plan. General Clay selected Lewis H. Brown to write "A Report on Germany" because of Brown's broad industrial and war experience.

Brown founded the American Enterprise Association (AEA) in New York, a think tank which later moved to Washington, D.C., and was renamed the American Enterprise Institute. He served as AEA's chairman until his death. Brown also cofounded the Tax Foundation and served as chairman.

Lewis H. Brown died in 1951 at age 57, in Delray, Florida.

In 1984, twenty-three years after Brown's death, Johns-Manville was alleged to have prioritized profits over the health and safety of employees during the time of his leadership. According to testimony given in a federal court by Charles H. Roemer, formerly an employee of Unarco, describing a meeting between Unarco officials, Lewis H. Brown and J-M attorney Vandiver Brown in the early 1940s, "I’ll never forget, I turned to Mr. Brown, one of the Browns made this crack (that Unarco managers were a bunch of fools for notifying employees who had asbestosis), and I said, ‘Mr. Brown, do you mean to tell me you would let them work until they dropped dead?’ He said, ‘Yes. We save a lot of money that way.'" ^[1]

References

External links

• American Enterprise Institute
• Time Magazine COVER April 3, 1939
• Time Magazine ARTICLE April 3, 1939