Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

Behind the massive wall of concrete was an ad hoc coalition of relatively petty West Coast construction capital. They called themselves “the Six Companies” after the Chinese associations in San Francisco during the railroad days, but they were closer to the original Associates. Most prominent among their number were Warren A. Bechtel and Henry J. Kaiser, and Hoover’s dam turned them into famous industrialists. The new Six Companies earned their place, building the project during the Depression with modern techniques and an all-American white male labor force—no union required, but Asian workers were banned by contract. The companies kept costs comparatively low in part by efficiently managing their workers’ whole lives at the site, though it wasn’t until a few years later that Kaiser figured out a way to incorporate health-care costs into his rationalized production equations by moving employees to a company medical plan.