On Freedom’s Forge: How Ancient Principles Saved the Modern World

There is an hour in the life of a nation when the governing authorities alone cannot save its people. This hour calls not upon the government but rather demands men whose words take form in steel and whose tongues are hammers striking the anvil of enterprise. Such an hour struck the United States in 1939. Europe blazed under totalitarian terrors, while America licked her wounds, still recovering from a decade of depression. 

Factories dozed, men shuffled, and the spirit that had conquered a continent had grown soft and timid. Yet within half another decade that same languid republic became the mightiest industrial empire ever. From her shipyards and assembly lines flowed the armaments of freedom; her output thundered like a sermon to the world. Stalin himself raised his glass, ‘To American production, without which, this war would have been lost.”

How did America rise from her decade of depression to her decade of inspiration? Who awakened her? Not Patton and Arnold, certainly not FDR and the New Dealers, but rather two freemen, two artisans of persuasion, two modern orators — William Knudsen, the production statesman, and Henry Kaiser, the evangelist of enterprise.

Now first I will show the condition of American incompetence before their ascent to dominance. Then I will reveal the character and method of Knudsen as the rational persuader. Next, both the zeal and vision of Kaiser as the emotional awakener. Afterward, the union of their methods that produced the “arsenal of democracy” and lastly, the lesson they leave to us — that purpose divorced from production is vanity but production without purpose is blind.

Knudsen and Kaiser, guided by the classical art of persuasion — ethos, logos, pathos, and kairos — transformed America from inert potential into living will; and by converting speech into speed, they forged both American victory and American virtue.

During the pre-dawn glow of war the United States ranked a measly nineteenth among the global armed powers. Its soldiers trained with wooden rifles, its airfields hosted obsolete planes, and its people clung to the weary comfort of isolation. “Let Europe burn,” they murmured, “it is not our concern.” But indifference is never neutral; rather it is the ally of decay, a net negative. As Saint Augustine wisely warned in Confessions, “The mind becomes what it loves.”America, still struck by the horrors of WW1 and loving ease after a decade of hardship, had become frozen, paralyzed, inert. Into this torpor stepped two men whose speech was deed.

William Knudsen was no eloquence theorist, yet Aristotle would have called him a true orator. In Rhetoric, Aristotle defined rhetoric as “The faculty of discovering the available means of persuasion in any given case.” Knudsen discovered those means in organization and credibility. An immigrant machinist who had risen to preside over General Motors, he embodied the ethos of the perfect speaker, authority born of integrity and experience. Cicero said once that, “If we are not afraid to think it, we should not be afraid to say it.” Knudsen embodied this virtue as well, for despite any and all incentives to do otherwise, Knudsen spoke his mind, a rare thing in the Whitehouse. Further When Roosevelt summoned him to Washington, Knudsen left a million-dollar salary at GM to work for a single dollar a year and in that gesture alone persuaded a skeptical  and cowardly nation that sacrifice still had meaning. He also mastered the rhetorical virtue of concision. He spoke little, but his brevity was golden: “We can’t win with blueprints,” he said, “we must win with production.” His idea was to get out of the drawing room and into the factories. This he communicated effectively such that auto manufacturers like Ford began confidently pumping out bombers and fighters faster than they did Model Ts. Every syllable was logic hardened into law, simplified for his systems oriented engineers. He standardized the designs of tanks and planes and he decentralized production. He compelled, no–united rival American companies to share secrets for the sake of Allied victory. Cicero wrote that the three aims of the orator are to teach, delight, and move. Knudsen taught with clarity, delighted by competence, and moved by example. He proved that reason is itself persuasive when spoken with clarity, credibility and concision.

If Knudsen was the mind of the movement, Henry Kaiser was certainly its heart. Where Knudsen commanded the engineers, Kaiser converted the nation. A self-starter who went West to find opportunity, Kaiser quickly became the country's largest  builder of dams and highways. Although untrained in shipwright craft, he yet resolved to construct fleets faster than any shipyard had dared. “Don’t tell me it can’t be done,” he thundered. “I’ve seen it done.” This is pathos in its purest form — emotion fused with faith. He turned factories into cathedrals of freedom, where men and women labored side by side in a true liturgy of purpose. To his workers he preached not profit but participation; “Every rivet is a blow for liberty.” Augustine would have recognized the love behind the rhetoric— persuasion that stirs not merely a salute but affection for the good. And Kaiser truly won the hearts of his workers with his mind-shaking optimism. “ ‘What are we going to do?’ the worker moaned. ‘Just look at this mud.’ ‘What mud’ Kaiser said. ‘I only see that big sun shining down. It’s going to turn that mud into solid ground.’” Now Kaiser’s embodiment of  kairos, his mastery of timing, was miraculous. When others spoke of months, he spoke of days. When others built one ship, he launched ten. When others said it couldn’t be done, Kaiser did it. His Liberty Ships slid into the water, baffling every naysayer and doom spreader in Washington. Thus pathos and kairos conquer despair and enable a person, a people, a nation to accomplish the impossible. Through emotion rightly timed, he made belief in American victory contagious.

Individually, these men persuaded sectors but together they led a nation. Knudsen’s logos ordered chaos where Kaiser’s pathos animated order. The nation followed because their ethos was visible and their kairos unmistakable. By 1944, America produced more munitions than all her enemies combined: roughly three hundred thousand aircraft, eighty-eight thousand ships, and certainly a new machine of hope within every Allied heart. This was not the triumph of mechanics but of meaning. Each assembly line became an oration: Ethos — credible leadership; Logos — efficient design; Pathos — inspired workers; Kairos — perfect timing.

These bold entrepreneurs proved Aristotle’s words true:  that persuasion governs every human endeavor, for even factories must run on belief before instruction. Purpose must guide progress.

Now there are those who argue that production followed necessity, not persuasion. That fear of conquest, not eloquence, moved the people. But fear enslaves; it does not ennoble. The tyrants of Europe, Hitler and Mussolini both also commanded production, yet theirs bred despair, and ultimately failure. America’s output sang of liberty because its laborers were not driven by fear but drawn by faith. If this were mere economics, then Nazi Germany, regimented and ruthless, would have prevailed, no question. But classical rhetoric, the free alignment of reason, passion, and moral purpose, is stronger than coercion. Knudsen and Kaiser did not terrify the nation into submission; they encouraged men to fight for freedom. G. K. Chesterton once said, “That the good soldier does not fight because he hates what is in front of him but because he loves what is behind him.” Kaiser and Knudsen effectively reminded non-combatant America of what they loved most—freedom. Thus the antithesis collapses: for industry without persuasion is slavery but persuasion without industry is dust in the wind. Only its marriage sustains civilization.

When finally guns smoked and the world lay in ashes, it was America — once dead, now fully alive — who straddled the century. Her power was not born of minerals or machines but of conviction. Knudsen and Kaiser employed the oldest art known to man: to move souls with truth towards right action. They were orators of the forge.  They were Ciceronian in their prudence, Aristotelian in their logic, and Augustinian in their spirit. Their factories were pulpits, their speeches engines, and their sermons the true creed of freedom: that no tyranny can out-produce a people who believe in their own capacity for good. 

Let us then remember what they proved —that the principles of ancient  rhetoric are not  ornaments of peace but architects of power; that persuasion, rightly timed, can resurrect a civilization from industrial death; and that the truest eloquence is not just spoken but built. For when men believe together, when they share a mission together, their tongues become hammers, and their factories become the very forge of freedom.

Sources:

1. Herman, Arthur. Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II. New York: Random House, 2012.
2. Aristotle. Rhetoric. Translated by C. D. C. Reeve. Edited by C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2018.
3. Augustine. The Confessions of St. Augustine. Translated by Henry Chadwick. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009