Chương 23: Chapter 20: Forged in the Rust Belt

Before approaching the brass with anything serious, I decided to get the entire production chain in order and bring it to full operational readiness. From the standpoint of conventional business logic, it was a fairly risky move: investing serious money without knowing how the negotiations would turn out. On the other hand, military procurement officers saw a fundamental difference between two kinds of potential partners.

One man walked into the room and stated that he was ready to deliver twenty thousand units a month. The other shifted in his chair and explained that production had not quite been established yet, but would be very soon. The first was taken seriously. The second was politely shown to the door and forgotten before he made it out of the building. Besides, I had intended to enter this field even without defense contracts.

A unique historical opportunity had opened before me, and I had no intention of letting it slip away. The region that would come to be known as the Rust Belt was already suffering a catastrophe whose full scale most people had yet to understand. The industrial North, which had served as the backbone of the American economy for nearly a century, was collapsing at an alarming rate.

Pittsburgh's steel mills, Detroit's automobile giants, the machine-building plants of Cleveland and Buffalo—all that magnificent industrial power that had once made America a global superpower was rusting and falling apart before everyone's eyes. There were more than enough reasons. The oil crisis of 1973 had struck energy-intensive industries so hard that many still had not recovered.

Japanese and West German manufacturers, rebuilt after the war with the newest equipment available, were steadily forcing American companies out of their own domestic markets. Infrastructure erected before the war had become obsolete and required colossal investment in modernization, which no one was particularly eager to provide. The main cause, however, was probably corporate greed combined with union shortsightedness.

Over decades of struggle, workers in the northern states had secured decent wages, medical insurance, pensions, and other benefits that made their labor an expensive proposition for employers. The unions believed they held all the cards and refused to make concessions, sincerely convinced that the factories had nowhere else to go. They had miscalculated badly. The capitalists found a solution that was as simple as it was devastating to entire regions.

Why pay a worker in Ohio fifteen dollars an hour when you could pay one in Alabama or Georgia eight? Unions were weak or nonexistent in the South, legislation favored employers, and people who had not spent decades enjoying industrial prosperity were willing to accept considerably worse terms. Howard Stark, oddly enough, had been one of the first to begin that southern migration.

After a complete breakdown in relations with the unions at his New Jersey plants, he told everyone involved to go to hell and transferred a substantial part of production to South Carolina, where the workforce proved much more accommodating. A capitalist to the bone, he simply refused to pay workers more than he considered reasonable, and moral concerns about the fate of several thousand families did not trouble him much.

Smaller industrial giants followed his example, and before long the process became an avalanche. By 1976, the number of people leaving northern industrial cities had reached staggering proportions. Enormous manufacturing facilities and entire industrial districts were becoming worthless almost overnight. Factories that had recently operated around the clock now stood with their windows boarded up.

Skilled workers who had spent their entire lives at a machine found themselves unemployed at forty-five, with virtually no chance of finding another position. Entire cities were slowly dying, turning into monuments to their own former greatness. And this was only the beginning. For now, production was moving south, where labor was cheaper. Later, it would move to Mexico.

A couple of decades after that, entire industries would be transferred to China, where a dollar a day could buy as many hands as a corporation required. For me, all of this meant one thing: a unique chance to skim off the best opportunities before everyone else understood what was happening. The unions were still reeling from the speed of the changes and were prepared to negotiate terms they would not even have listened to five years earlier.

People left without work seized any chance to earn a living and were grateful to anyone offering stable employment. Factories and equipment were selling for pennies because their owners wanted to dispose of loss-making assets at any cost. Supply chains built over decades had not yet fallen apart completely and could still be used. How could I possibly refuse an opportunity like that? Exactly. I couldn't.

First, however, I wanted to establish a system that would prevent us from repeating the same union mistakes that had helped reduce those factories to their current condition. The traditional American approach to labor relations was a perpetual tug-of-war between corporate greed and union appetites. Employers tried to squeeze the maximum amount of work out of employees for the minimum cost. In response, unions demanded more and more while threatening strikes.

The pendulum kept swinging until it became cheaper to move production somewhere workers had not yet learned to defend their rights. It was a vicious cycle in which everyone eventually lost, except perhaps the union bosses and senior executives who managed to fill their pockets before the music stopped. I had no intention of stepping on the same rake. Prescott, his human resources staff, and I therefore developed a fundamentally different model.

Instead of fighting the unions or trying to destroy them, I wanted to create a system in which the interests of the company and its workers were aligned as closely as possible. The first part was a profit-sharing program. Any employee who had worked at an enterprise for more than a year became entitled to a share of the quarterly profit generated by their division. Not a fixed bonus that would quickly be taken for granted and motivate no one, but an actual percentage tied to real results.

Work more efficiently, help your colleagues, suggest improvements, and the division's profit rises. When it does, your share rises with it. A simple, understandable arrangement that gave every worker a direct stake in the outcome. The second part was a council of employee representatives. Not a union in the traditional sense, organized primarily to oppose management, but an advisory body through which any employee could bring ideas and problems directly to the administration.

The representatives were elected by the workers themselves. Meetings were held monthly, and the minutes were published openly. It was not for show. I genuinely wanted to know what was happening on the factory floor, where the problems were, and what could be improved. People who worked with their hands often noticed things that engineers and managers sitting in offices never saw. The third element was training and career advancement.

Any worker could receive additional education at the company's expense and apply for a higher position. A floor supervisor could become a shop manager, and a shop manager could eventually become the plant director. I wanted people to see a future and understand that their relationship with the company extended beyond a paycheck. Their personal growth could be tied to ours. The final element was medical insurance and a pension program tied directly to employment rather than union membership.

The benefits were comparable to those unions had fought to secure for their members, but without the need to pay union dues or participate in the endless political games of men who had not stood beside a machine in decades. That did not mean unions were prohibited at my factories. Employees had every legal right to organize if they wished, and I had no intention of violating the law. I simply designed the system so that most of them would see little reason to bother.

Why pay a union treasurer and obey decisions made by people who no longer understood factory work when the company already provided everything unions normally fought for? Prescott and his team did an enormous amount of work drafting documents, resolving legal complications, and building the system in a way that allowed it to function without violating existing labor law. Several times, we brought Jennings in to make sure we were not crossing any red lines.

In the end, we produced a model that might not cure every possible problem but should at least prevent the kind of disaster that had destroyed much of the Rust Belt. Though, hand on heart, I could admit that I was being excessively cautious. Even during my first tours through the region, while I was still merely inspecting potential sites, someone started a rumor that a major manufacturer intended to enter the area with serious investment.

According to what Prescott's people were able to learn, a queue had nearly formed among those hoping to work for the mysterious benefactor. Many residents had no desire to leave the places where they, their parents, and their grandparents had grown up. Their ancestors were buried there, and every street was tied to memories of childhood. But there was no work left. Factories were closing one after another, and people had to choose between moving south and living in poverty.

The arrival of any employer prepared to offer something was perceived as a miracle. Even so, I intended to establish myself properly and build the right system from the beginning, no matter how excessive such precautions appeared under the current circumstances. The old pattern of union pressure and corporate flight would also be restrained by another factor that had barely existed before: genuine competition for the employer.

Northern manufacturers had once behaved as masters of the region because workers had few alternatives. Now any employer could pack up and move to the cheaper South. Everyone understood that perfectly well, which meant no one would provoke a conflict lightly if doing so risked leaving an already dying region without work altogether. Once the central problems had been addressed, one obvious question remained. What exactly would my new factories produce?

Nothing especially supernatural, as it happened, though it should still be enough to make the Pentagon treat me with considerable care. All we had to do was occupy a vacant niche no one else had bothered to enter. The American defense industry traditionally focused on things that fired, exploded, or flew: tanks, aircraft, warships, missiles, rifles, and machine guns. Dozens of companies fought for those contracts, ready to tear out one another's throats for every million dollars in the defense budget.

Stark, Lockheed, Boeing, General Dynamics, Colt, Remington—all the major players crowded the same field, shoving one another aside while flooding the Pentagon with increasingly attractive proposals. Almost no one, however, paid much attention to what the ordinary soldier actually wore. Helmet? The standard M1, developed in 1941. Body armor? Still based on designs from the fifties, originally intended to protect bomber crews from fragments of antiaircraft shells and barely modernized since. Load-bearing equipment?

A collection of pouches and straps that had changed little since the Second World War. Boots? Army footwear soldiers hated with a passion because it shredded their feet during the first week and fell apart after a few months of active use. Vietnam had demonstrated exactly how obsolete all of it was. Soldiers died or suffered injuries from bullets and fragments that modern protection might have stopped.

Heat exhaustion in the jungle was made worse by uncomfortable uniforms and equipment that did not allow the body to breathe. Tens of thousands suffered foot injuries because of atrocious boots. And beyond all of that, infantrymen were forced to carry equipment hung across the body without any coherent system, causing rapid fatigue and reducing combat effectiveness. The number of advantages I could gain by occupying this niche was enormous.

First, constant purchases by the Department of Defense—and eventually police departments, intelligence agencies, private security companies, and every other armed organization—would ensure that my factories never sat idle. More than that, I could gradually expand production and absorb increasing amounts of the Rust Belt's abandoned capacity. Empty plants, unemployed skilled labor, established logistics networks—all of it would work for me and expand over time.

Eventually, I would become a man upon whom the economic well-being of an entire region depended. That would create an entirely different range of opportunities, including political ones. And that was without even considering the federal connections that inevitably came with being a major defense contractor. Second, the military would receive something it had spent years searching for without finding: genuine innovation and modernization for an army that was still partially equipped with Second World War gear.

After the humiliation of Vietnam, military leadership was desperate to modernize the armed forces. Most defense contractors, however, preferred investing in expensive weapons systems where the margins were higher rather than wasting time on helmets and boots. The third advantage followed directly from the second. I had virtually no competition. Everyone wanted to become a supplier of weapons, vehicles, or electronics. That was where the real money, influence, and prestige lay.

Individual soldier equipment was considered dull, low-margin work unworthy of serious players. Their mistake would become my advantage. I would occupy the niche, beat down the few overeager competitors foolish enough to challenge me, and then, once the market matured into something genuinely profitable, cultivate several carefully chosen rivals so the antitrust authorities would not start crying and attempt to dismantle my company. So what exactly did I intend to manufacture?

A complete modern system of individual protection and equipment for the soldier. Simple and obvious. Also relatively easy, considering we were already working in the field. We had revised existing designs twice using concepts I remembered from the future, and the results exceeded every expectation. Phineas and his engineering team, reinforced by several materials specialists we had lured away from DuPont and Monsanto, were performing genuine miracles. The helmet became our main selling point.

The standard M1 helmet, which had served American soldiers faithfully since 1941, was little more than a steel shell with an internal suspension system. It provided reasonable protection against fragments and ricochets but could not stop a direct bullet. It weighed nearly three pounds and was not particularly comfortable. Its design also offered no practical way to attach additional equipment. Our Aegis Tactical Helmet represented an entirely different level.

Its shell was made from Kevlar reinforced in a way that maximized ballistic protection. It weighed roughly seven ounces less than the steel helmet while providing substantially better performance. We conducted a full series of range tests. The helmet reliably stopped fragments, ricochets, and even direct hits from handgun calibers at sensible distances. It would not stop a rifle round, of course. Nothing at a reasonable weight could.

But the number of wounds and deaths it could prevent would be measured in the thousands. The shape was redesigned using ergonomic studies that, in my original world, the military would not conduct until the eighties. Here, we conducted them ourselves. The helmet offered a better fit, a modern suspension system adjustable to any head size, and ventilation openings to reduce heat stress. Most importantly, rails and mounting points across the shell allowed almost any additional equipment to be attached.

Want to mount a night-vision device? The standard attachment was already positioned at the front. Need protective goggles? They locked onto dedicated guides, remained secure during aggressive movement, and could be lowered when needed. Require a communications headset? Integrated mounts beside the ears allowed it to sit comfortably beneath the helmet. I had to remember not to neglect the headset. Take night vision, for example.

Existing military equipment such as the AN/PVS-5 consisted of bulky binocular devices weighing nearly two pounds, held on the head by an uncomfortable harness and powered by a heavy battery unit on the belt. Second-generation image intensification provided an acceptable picture, but the device itself was so awkward that many soldiers preferred to operate without it. We could eventually create third-generation monoculars that mounted directly to the helmet and could be flipped upward with one hand.

The same applied to communications. Military radios of the seventies were heavy, temperamental, and less reliable than anyone would have liked. Personal headsets for infantrymen were rare. Yet an integrated communications system that allowed every soldier in a squad to hear the commander and speak to his comrades without shouting across a firefight could fundamentally alter small-unit tactics.

Wright already had several developments involving compact radios and protected communications channels, which we used in the security division. Adapting them for military purposes was merely a question of time and resources. All of that could wait, however. First, we needed to establish production of the basic system and secure a place in the market. Once that was done, we could expand the range with increasingly complex and expensive equipment.

Salazar had done monumental work protecting the helmet with patents while simultaneously avoiding those already held by competitors. Kevlar itself belonged to DuPont, but we found a way to license its use on acceptable terms. Every structural solution—the shape of the shell, suspension system, and mounting points for additional equipment—was our own development and protected by our patents. Our greatest advantage, however, was the manufacturing process itself.

Traditional military helmets were stamped from sheets of steel, which was simple and inexpensive. Kevlar could not be treated the same way. Our engineers developed a process for forming the shell from multiple layers of Kevlar fabric impregnated with a special thermosetting resin. The material was laid inside a mold, then exposed to carefully controlled heat and pressure. The resin polymerized, binding the fabric into a single monolithic structure that was both light and strong.

The process required exact temperatures, pressure levels, and curing times. A deviation of only a few degrees or minutes could spoil the entire piece. Either the resin would fail to polymerize fully and leave the helmet brittle, or excessive heat would degrade the material's ballistic properties. Phineas and Anna-Maria spent nearly a month identifying the optimal parameters and designing a quality-control system capable of detecting defective products during production rather than after completion.

We documented and patented the entire process, including the resin formulation, mold construction, heat-treatment cycles, and quality-control methods. Salazar filed seventeen separate patent applications covering every significant element. Anyone wishing to produce comparable helmets would either have to license our technology at considerable cost or begin from scratch and spend years and millions of dollars reinventing it. The second key component was the body armor.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Kevlar vests had begun appearing on the market, but they were bulky, poorly ventilated, and offered no dependable protection against rifle ammunition. Even the models I had purchased for my own men at obscene prices were pathetic products when examined closely. Only after our modifications did they begin to deliver respectable results. Consider the most common vest currently available, Richard Davis's Second Chance Model Y.

It consisted of multiple layers of Kevlar fabric sewn together and enclosed inside a nylon carrier worn under the shirt like an undershirt. For its time, it was revolutionary. It could stop bullets from most handguns. It also had more than enough flaws. First, it was intended for concealed wear and therefore designed to be as thin as possible, limiting the number of Kevlar layers and, consequently, its level of protection. Second, it offered almost no protection against knives or improvised blades.

A narrow point could separate the fibers and pass between them. Third, there was virtually no ventilation, making the vest a form of torture in hot weather. Fourth, it left the shoulders, sides, and lower torso exposed, covering only the center of the chest and back. Military designs were not much better.

The latest PASGT vest, which the armed forces had only begun developing and would not adopt until the eighties, suffered from many of the same problems: poor ventilation, limited coverage, and no ability to stop rifle fire. The concept of adding armor plates was not even being seriously considered. Our Aegis Tactical Vest took a completely different approach—one that, in my former world, would not become standard until the nineties.

A base of several Kevlar layers provided protection against fragments and pistol rounds. The main innovation, however, was a set of removable ceramic armor plates inserted into dedicated pockets over the chest and back. Those plates could stop even rifle ammunition. We had to deal with Kevlar patents separately. DuPont controlled the fiber and its manufacturing process with an iron grip, so there was no practical way around them.

Instead of trying to manufacture Kevlar ourselves or searching for alternative chemical formulations, we negotiated a licensing agreement and purchased finished fiber in industrial quantities. I handled the negotiations personally with Jennings's support, and we secured very favorable terms. At the time, DuPont was desperate to find new markets for Kevlar. The material had originally been developed to reinforce automobile tires, but the idea had run into technical problems.

The body armor market was still too small to occupy their manufacturing capacity. The appearance of a major customer prepared to purchase hundreds of thousands of square yards annually was a gift. We received exclusive pricing on Kevlar fiber, substantially below what competitors such as Second Chance paid. We also arranged joint research intended to improve the material's ballistic performance, giving us access to DuPont's newest developments before they reached the open market.

In return, we agreed to use the phrase "made with DuPont Kevlar" in our advertising, which benefited both sides. Everything else—the vest's construction, armor-plate retention system, pocket and load-bearing design, sewing methods, and assembly process—belonged to us and was protected by separate patents. Salazar built an entire patent fortress around the vest. Any competitor trying to create something similar would run into our intellectual property at every step.

The idea of using ceramics for ballistic protection was not new. During Vietnam, helicopter pilots had used ceramic tiles to reinforce their cockpits. In 1967, the military even developed an experimental vest with ceramic inserts. The problem was that those systems were bulky, heavy, and rarely survived more than a single impact. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I found people who were already working in a related field.

Ceradyne, a small California company founded by a group of engineers, specialized in technical ceramics for industrial applications. In my original world, they would eventually become an industry giant and supply armor plates to half the United States military. Here and now, they were a modest firm with large ambitions and very little funding. They required almost no persuasion. Ten percent in nonvoting shares and access to our resources were enough.

In addition to Ceradyne, I identified several smaller companies whose designs interested me less than their research and laboratory equipment. None had worked on ballistic protection, but their developments in ceramic composites were exactly what I needed to establish our own production. Working with Phineas, Kozlowski, and the rest of our scientific staff, Ceradyne's team created a composite we named Aegis Armor Composite. A front layer of boron carbide absorbed the impact and broke apart the projectile.

Behind it, a polymer matrix reinforced with Kevlar trapped the fragments and absorbed the remaining energy. The resulting plate could withstand several hits instead of shattering after the first, as pure ceramic often did. The process required advanced furnaces, pure materials, and extremely strict quality control, making it almost impossible to copy in the developing world. All of those companies were now involved in designing and calculating the requirements for my future plant.

I had already spent more than a million dollars during the preparatory stage without even beginning work on the factories themselves. The figures frightened me considerably. I was forced to reduce the amounts earmarked for reinvestment in several other divisions. Chen gave me a full lecture, complete with graphs, tables, and a detailed explanation of how my latest adventures threatened the company's financial stability. Nothing new there. What could I do?

I understood perfectly well that my approach was expensive and took an unacceptable amount of time. It was also the approach that would produce the greatest long-term return. A production line could be thrown together quickly, but then we would spend years patching holes and losing money to defects and downtime. Besides, knowing myself, I would never be able to calmly watch profits I could have earned flow into someone else's hands. So we endured.

The helmet and body armor were accompanied by our tactical load-bearing system, which had already proven itself in the security division. Modular pouches and equipment attachments, even distribution of weight across the torso, integration with body armor—all of it was patented and ready for mass production. We did not stop at the head and torso. With a fully equipped materials laboratory staffed by every kind of specialist I could find, our engineers were able to develop additional equipment.

Aegis Eye Protection consisted of compact polycarbonate ballistic goggles capable of withstanding high-speed fragments and small particles. The lenses received special anti-fog and scratch-resistant coatings. The design was compatible with the helmet. The goggles could remain secured above the face when not needed and be pulled down with a single motion. Aegis Combat Gloves used reinforced padding over the knuckles and palms, protecting the hands in close combat and while operating equipment.

At the same time, they preserved enough finger sensitivity to handle a trigger and manipulate small objects. The upper material resisted cuts and abrasions while remaining breathable enough to prevent the hands from becoming soaked with sweat. Aegis Joint Protection was designed to protect the knees and elbows when firing prone, kneeling, falling abruptly, or rolling. A hard plastic outer shell, shock-absorbing padding beneath it, and secure straps that did not slide during movement.

A simple but remarkably effective solution that, in my previous life, would not become widespread in the military until the Iraq War. And finally, the boots. Army footwear in the seventies was, to put it gently, less than ideal. Heavy, rigid, poorly ventilated, and requiring a long break-in period, it was the curse of every infantryman. We developed the Aegis Combat Boot, drawing inspiration from models that would not appear on the market until the nineties and early two-thousands.

A modern sole with proper traction and shock absorption. A breathable upper combining leather and nylon. A comfortable last that required no breaking in. Reinforced toe and heel sections. Water-repellent treatment. In my former life, when I researched potential businesses for the protagonist of a novel, I had considered the footwear industry as well.

I repeatedly ran through possible approaches: intercept Nike during its rise, beat them to air-cushioning technology, or enter the sneaker market before the competition. I never found a realistic path. Nike and the other giants were too firmly established, and too many variables lay outside anyone's control. Besides, it was not truly necessary.

Athletic footwear was glamorous and prestigious, but another segment existed that attracted far less public attention while producing just as much profit, perhaps more: hiking and work footwear. That market did not make business magazine headlines or create cultural phenomena like Air Jordan, but it was enormous and stable. Millions of people bought work boots, hiking footwear, and hunting boots every year.

Unlike fickle sneaker fashion, demand did not depend on which basketball player wore what during his latest game. Admittedly, I could no longer remember many details. I had ultimately chosen a different path for that old story. The key points remained, however: important technologies, major turning points in the industry, and companies that either rose to prominence or missed their opportunity. That should be enough to build something substantial.

My first approach was to Quabaug Corporation in North Brookfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1916, the company manufactured every imaginable rubber product, from flooring tiles to hockey pucks. Most importantly, since 1964 it had been Vibram's exclusive American licensee. Vibram was the Italian manufacturer of the famous lugged soles used on some of the finest hiking and military boots in the world.

Vibram soles had been worn by the Italian expedition that conquered K2 in 1954, and since then they had become an industry standard. Buying Quabaug outright would have been too expensive and largely pointless. Instead, I negotiated a strategic partnership. For three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I received a fifteen-percent stake, a seat on the board, and priority access to its manufacturing capacity. My boots would now use genuine American-made Vibram soles.

The second technological acquisition was a license from W. L. Gore & Associates for the use of its revolutionary Gore-Tex material. The Delaware company, founded by former DuPont engineer Wilbert Gore and his wife, Genevieve, had invented something extraordinary: an expanded polytetrafluoroethylene membrane that was both waterproof and breathable. Nine billion microscopic pores per square inch, each twenty thousand times smaller than a drop of water yet seven hundred times larger than a molecule of water vapor.

Liquid water could not penetrate inward, while perspiration escaped. I initially considered acquiring the entire company but quickly realized it was unrealistic. The Gore family had built not merely a business but a kind of corporate utopia, with a unique culture that lacked traditional bosses and subordinates and treated every employee as an associate. They had no intention of selling their creation at any price.

Besides, the cost of purchasing a successful industrial polymers company would have exceeded my current resources many times over. The licensing negotiations went much better. The Gores had received the Gore-Tex patent only the previous year and were still experimenting with outerwear, having produced their first membrane jackets. Footwear remained unknown territory. My proposal for a twenty-year exclusive license covering Gore-Tex use in tactical and military footwear arrived at exactly the right moment.

One hundred and fifty thousand dollars up front, plus royalties on every pair sold. My greatest catch, however, was a man named Marion Franklin Rudy, whom everyone simply called Frank. The former aerospace engineer had worked on the Saturn and Apollo rocket engines at NASA before leaving in 1969 to become an independent inventor. Among his patents was one that, in my former world, would transform the entire footwear industry: air cushioning.

Gas-filled polyurethane membranes built into the sole provided an unprecedented degree of shock absorption. In my old world, Rudy reached Nike in March of 1977, and Phil Knight decided to take the risk. The first Nike Air shoes entered the market in December of 1978. Here, my people found Rudy earlier, while he was still knocking on the doors of footwear companies and collecting one rejection after another.

For two hundred thousand dollars and a share of the royalties, the eccentric genius agreed to work exclusively with Aegis. With the technological foundation secured, I began acquiring manufacturing capacity. The first purchase was Hyer Boots of Kansas, a legendary maker of cowboy boots founded in 1875. According to company lore, it had created the first true cowboy boot in America after a cattleman asked founder Charles Hyer to make footwear suitable for long drives.

More than a century had passed, but the financial troubles of the seventies had not spared even an icon. The owners, exhausted by competition from imports and declining sales, were prepared to sell the family business for two hundred and eighty thousand dollars, an almost insulting sum for a brand with such history. For me, it was an extraordinary find. The production capacity and experienced craftsmen mattered, but the brand itself was the true prize. Americans cared about such things.

A name with a century of history and all the romance of the Old West behind it was worth far more than any collection of machinery. I intended to sell all civilian footwear under the Hyer name: hiking boots, outdoor footwear, and traditional cowboy boots, of course. Let the competition spend millions on advertising and brand recognition. I already had a name known to anyone who had ever cared about quality American footwear.

The second acquisition was Williams Shoe of Portsmouth, Ohio, which was preparing to close its doors that year. It specialized in reliable work footwear for farmers and construction crews but, once again, could not compete with cheap Asian imports. One hundred and twenty thousand dollars bought the equipment, warehouse stock, and, most valuable of all, people who knew the trade from beginning to end.

Many had worked at the factory since the postwar years and possessed knowledge that could not be found in any textbook. The third purchase involved the remaining assets of Plymouth Shoe in Massachusetts, which had closed several years earlier. The company itself could no longer be saved, but I bought its equipment from the liquidators, obtained patents for several interesting sole designs, and recruited key specialists who had survived on temporary jobs since the closure.

Another ninety thousand dollars, but it gave me people who were desperately grateful for a chance to return to the work they loved. In total, I spent more than one and a half million dollars on technology and manufacturing capacity. By that point, Chen appeared to have accepted that her employer was an incurable spendthrift incapable of accumulating a meaningful sum without immediately throwing it into another adventure. She no longer even lectured me.

She merely sighed heavily while staring at the figures in the ledgers. I was not concerned about the purchases. I could not remember the precise year, but sometime in the near future, hiking and outdoor footwear would experience a genuine boom. Americans would begin flooding national parks, mountain trails, and wilderness areas, and all of them would require proper boots. That promised stable income largely independent of fashion or external events.

More importantly, I had just deprived Nike of its greatest competitive advantage for the next thirty years. The thought warmed my vindictive soul whenever I considered how much money I had spent. By combining the acquired assets beneath a new Aegis Footwear division, I gained everything required to launch production. Military footwear would carry the Aegis name, while the civilian line would be sold under the Hyer brand. I simply did not have time to develop the division personally, though I badly wanted to.

A day still contained only twenty-four hours, and priorities had to be chosen. To keep the assets from sitting idle, I gathered the leading specialists from all three acquired companies, handed them sketches based on what I remembered from the future, and placed operational management on Wesley's shoulders. I granted him a few percent in nonvoting shares of the division as an incentive. The man had already demonstrated an ability to handle almost any assignment.

Here, he would effectively have to build a business from scratch, though upon a prepared foundation. Knowing Wesley, success was practically guaranteed. At that stage, the main thing I needed from the division was a team capable of combining all the acquired materials and technologies into one military product. They could handle civilian footwear themselves. Tactical boots required my direct participation during the design phase. The team performed admirably.

Using my sketches as a foundation, they revised the design according to real manufacturing capabilities and available materials. Based on their recommendations, Phineas designed the future plant. In the end, we combined the entire equipment package under a single name: the Aegis Warrior System. One concept, one manufacturer, and complete compatibility between every component. No other company in the world offered anything comparable.

The army purchased helmets from one supplier, body armor from another, boots from a third, and none of it was coordinated in terms of design, ergonomics, or tactical use. Soldiers adjusted everything themselves as best they could, and the results often left much to be desired. I was absolutely certain that this field would eventually earn several times more than my core business. The market was practically empty, demand was enormous, and no competitor could offer anything comparable.

Once the organizational and planning work was completed, I began purchasing the factories themselves. The footwear companies had naturally come with their existing plants, but I decided to reserve that capacity entirely for the civilian sector. Military production would be located in the Rust Belt. The first opportunity was an unfinished General Fireproofing Company complex outside Youngstown. Once a major manufacturer of steel office furniture, the company had begun constructing a new factory in 1976.

After a prolonged union strike, management finally gave up and announced that production would move to Tennessee. The unfinished complex was placed on the market, and I seized the opportunity with both hands. Roughly one hundred and forty thousand square feet of manufacturing space, completed foundations, utilities already connected, and a private rail spur—all for three hundred and twenty thousand dollars, approximately one quarter of what construction from the ground up would have cost.

The sellers were so delighted to be rid of the asset that they did not even negotiate. The second purchase was an old textile factory in Warren, twenty miles north of Youngstown. A small company there had produced work clothing and industrial uniforms for local factories. It survived every union dispute, only to drown beneath the wave of cheap Asian imports. The building had stood empty for more than a year.

Some equipment had been sold, but the sewing lines and cutting tables remained because no buyers could be found. The owners, an elderly couple dreaming of finally joining their daughter in Florida, accepted one hundred and seventy thousand dollars for the building, all remaining machinery, and even the fabric stock in the warehouse. That plant would produce Kevlar body-armor carriers, gloves, tactical load-bearing gear, pouches, and the other textile components of the system.

The third purchase was a small metalworking shop in New Castle, Pennsylvania, directly across the Ohio border. A former subcontractor for the automobile industry, it had stamped brackets and fittings for trucks until a General Motors plant transferred its orders south. The owner, a grim second-generation Pole named Kowalski, negotiated with desperate intensity, squeezing out every cent as though his life depended on it. In a sense, it did.

He finally surrendered at two hundred and ten thousand dollars, more than I had intended to spend. In return, I received operational presses, a full set of dies, a powder-coating line, and, most importantly, an industrial heat-treatment furnace that the Ceradyne team could adapt for sintering ceramic armor plates. The fourth and final purchase was a footwear factory in Canton, Ohio, roughly an hour west of Youngstown.

Mason Shoe Company had been founded by the Mason brothers in 1904 and had once been a source of pride for the entire city, producing solid work boots for miners and farmers across the Midwest. Times had changed. The founders' sons had grown old and saw no reason to continue fighting imports. Their grandchildren had long since moved to the coasts and showed no interest in returning to a dying industrial city. The factory was still operating, but barely.

It produced a few hundred pairs a month instead of the thousands it once had. I offered two hundred and forty thousand dollars for everything: the building, machinery, leather stock, and, most important, craftsmen who had worked there since the fifties. Phineas's people were sent to all four sites simultaneously to prepare detailed conversion plans. Each plant would specialize in its own area, but all four would function as a single manufacturing complex.

Components would move from one site to another until the complete equipment system was assembled at the main plant in Youngstown. The unfinished Youngstown complex would become the primary facility. It would contain the Kevlar helmet-forming section, body-armor assembly line, polycarbonate ballistic eyewear production, final integration of every component, and, most importantly, the central quality-control laboratory.

I decided to manufacture the goggles there, directly beside the laboratory, because optics were unforgiving. The smallest molding defect, uneven coating, or deviation in lens geometry could turn protective eyewear into plastic fragments driven into a soldier's eyes. We ordered the Kevlar-forming autoclaves from Germany because American manufacturers could not provide the temperature precision we required. Equipment for applying protective coatings came from a bankrupt yacht manufacturer in Cleveland.

It had used a similar process on fiberglass hulls, and its spray booths were ideal for our purposes. The Warren textile factory required minimal investment, which came as a pleasant surprise. The sewing machines were in good condition. Working with Kevlar fabric required little more than replacing ordinary needles with reinforced tungsten-carbide versions and installing additional extraction systems.

Cutting Kevlar produced fine aramid dust that no one should breathe, so the ventilation system consumed nearly a third of the entire modernization budget. We automated the cutting section with a numerically controlled machine purchased during the liquidation of a bankrupt Connecticut sail manufacturer. In addition to Kevlar body-armor carriers, tactical load-bearing equipment, and pouches, the Warren plant would produce combat gloves. Durable textile, leather reinforcement over the palms, and protected knuckles.

When Phineas calculated the load on the factory, we discovered that the sewing lines would sit idle almost a third of the time. I had no intention of throwing money away, so we expanded the program to include a complete combat uniform: jackets, trousers, and undergarments in sizes ranging from XS to XXL. The New Castle metalworking shop required far more extensive modernization. Its existing presses were suitable for attachment points, buckles, carabiners, and other hardware.

Producing ceramic armor plates required an entirely new section. The sintering furnace was rebuilt according to designs prepared by Ceradyne engineers under their direct supervision. Temperatures above two thousand degrees Celsius required special refractory lining and a controlled internal atmosphere because boron carbide reacted aggressively with oxygen at that heat. The furnace alone cost more than the entire shop, but there was no way to manufacture the armor plates without it.

A separate line was dedicated to knee and elbow protection. The rigid composite shells were stamped and formed there, while the soft padding and fastening straps arrived from Warren. Final assembly of the joint protection also took place in New Castle before the completed products were sent to Youngstown. The Canton footwear factory was modernized for an entirely different type of production. The old lasts and patterns went into storage.

In their place came molds for polyurethane soles with air chambers using Rudy's technology. We installed equipment to laminate the Gore-Tex membrane into the boot upper, ordered Vibram soles from Quabaug, and established a final assembly line. The veteran craftsmen initially complained that it was no longer real shoemaking but some kind of space technology. They adapted quickly, however, and began suggesting improvements based on decades of experience. While the factories were being rebuilt, I turned to staffing.

The recruitment announcements created genuine excitement. I had expected that, but the scale still impressed me. Each opening attracted fifty applicants, sometimes a hundred. That allowed us to select the very best. Former steelworkers, machine operators from shuttered automobile plants, seamstresses from bankrupt textile factories—all were ready to learn new trades if it meant receiving stable employment and a decent wage. Engineers and process specialists were harder to find.

Many qualified professionals had already left in search of better prospects: Texas, California, the East Coast. Still, we recruited several from Akron, where the rubber industry was cutting staff, and Cleveland, where machine-building companies were struggling. Kozlowski personally interviewed every chemist and materials specialist, selecting those capable of improving our composites and willing to experiment. The work performed by our logistics department deserved special recognition.

Four factories across two states had to become one coordinated mechanism in which components moved precisely on schedule and final products were assembled without delay. The logistics team worked a minor miracle. They designed routes so that the truck collecting finished armor plates and joint protection in New Castle stopped in Warren for Kevlar carriers, gloves, uniforms, and load-bearing gear before delivering everything to Youngstown by evening for final assembly.

Boots from Canton went directly to the finished-goods warehouse, completing the full equipment package. We even negotiated dedicated runs at fixed rates with a local freight company, reducing logistics costs by nearly one third compared to the original projections. After only five months, we were finally ready. All four plants began trial production.

The capacity remained modest: five hundred helmets per month, three hundred body-armor sets with ceramic plates, one thousand tactical load-bearing systems, eight hundred pairs of combat boots, fifteen hundred pairs of gloves, twelve hundred sets of joint protection, two thousand pairs of ballistic goggles, and roughly five hundred complete combat uniforms. The figures may have appeared mismatched, but the logic was simple.

Gloves and eyewear were lost or damaged more frequently than helmets, while uniforms wore out far faster than armor. It was enough to fully equip our own security division, prepare demonstration lots for the Pentagon, and begin initial commercial deliveries if we found buyers among police departments. Once serious military orders arrived, we would be able to scale up rapidly.