Forbes Asia — October 2017

LEFT TO RIGHT: AP; AFP/GETTY IMAGES; TODD WILLIAMSON/GETTY IMAGES; PLANET NEWS ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

During our centennial year, we’re unearthing our favorite covers.

CRYSTAL-BALL CALLS

Forecast: Cloudy

Some of Forbes’ predictions for

the 30 years following 1947 were a

little wide of the mark. Among our

botched prophecies: widespread

helicopter use, outright bans on

monopolies and the ability to

regulate the weather.

The Postwar Dream:

Nov. 15, 1947

AMAZING ADS

For the Long Haul

By encouraging truck driving as a

profession—you too could become

a “Gentleman of the Highway”—

International Harvester, a maker of

truck parts, primed the pump for

future generations of customers.

32 | FORBES ASIA OCTOBER 2017

FAST-FORWARD
Kings of Capitalism
1947: A package of stories on America’s “50 Foremost” business leaders listed
such luminaries as Henry Ford II, David Sarnoff, Samuel Goldwyn, Thomas J.
Watson and Nelson Rockefeller.
2017: Our recently published centennial issue featured a similar concept—essays
from the “100 Greatest Living Business Minds”—but centered on a much different
group of people: almost no heirs and very few hired hands, mostly investors and
entrepreneurs like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk.

AS AMERICANS RETURNED home from

war, the suburbs were born.

Published the same year the first 35 0 homes

were sold in Levittown, New York, Forbes’

3 0th anniversary issue spotlighted Lancaster,

Ohio, a “progressive American” city of 24 ,000

people 3 0 miles southeast of the state capital. It

had “all the advantages of a rural as well as an

urban life.” Small-town commerce thrived at

the intersection of Main and Broad Streets. Ex-

G.I.’s such as the “conscientious, unassuming”

Jack Fisher filled jobs at local manufacturers.

Fisher, a brawny six-foot-three, had once ex-

celled on the local high-school basketball team;

now he tended machinery at Anchor Hocking,

a glassware maker that was the biggest business

in town, with annual sales of $64 million

(some $700 million today).

Just as the Lancaster of 19 4 7 offered a snap-

shot of postwar success, the Lancaster of 2017

is a picture of the drastic change of fortune

suffered by parts of industrial America ever

since. More than 2 0% of Lancaster sits below

the poverty line today, compared with 1 4 % in

Ohio overall. Anchor Hocking has recently

been through bankruptcy and traded hands

from one private-equity owner to another. And

earlier this year, Lancaster’s local newspaper,

the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, published an

investigation titled “Seven Days of Heroin: This

Is What an Epidemic Looks Like.” It featured

two numbers uglier than any from even the

most indebted balance sheet: In just one week,

in greater Cincinnati, 1 8 0 overdoses and 1 8

deaths.

BY ABRAM BROWN

FORBES ASIA

FORBES@100