"Lincoln defined a century ago the idea that America should provide an open field and a fair chance so that all can compete in the race of life."

Warren Staley, retired CEO, Cargill Inc.

Beyond ending slavery and advocating freedom for all mankind for all of the time, Abraham Lincoln was also an economic visionary. He envisioned a nation of free people rising to improve themselves.

More than that, the elements of Lincoln's vision, for which he fought his whole life, seemed to have been tailored specifically to bring forth a company like Cargill Inc. Indeed, as a student of both Lincoln and Cargill, I struggle to identify any other company so fully in sync with Lincoln's vision, then and now.

In his earliest public life, while still in his 20s, Lincoln advocated for "improvements" -- what we now know as "infrastructure" -- that would help his neighbors bring goods to market and conduct commerce. He supported dams and canals to make rivers navigable; roads, bridges and, eventually, railroads to provide overland transport.

While president, he advocated and used the most up-to-date technologies. He conducted the Civil War on a strategy that used railroads and riverboats. He spent endless hours in the War Department telegraph office -- communicating with the generals and learning which ones acted (Grant, Sherman, Sheridan) and which would not (Buell, McClellan, Halleck).

He used advanced means of communication with the public -- newspapers and photographs -- for political persuasion.

He demanded that the backward thinkers among his generals give fair test and hearing to technological breakthroughs such as the Spencer repeating rifle, Ericsson's ironclad ship, and the Gatling gun.

In the middle of a desperate war for survival, Lincoln embarked upon visionary economic and social engineering. He began the transcontinental railroad to unite the East and West coasts. He advocated and signed the 1862 Homestead Act with the aim of filling America's vast Middle West and West with self-employed farmers and small towns.

In the same year, he signed the Land Grant College Act to provide an education for the "ordinary people" and to support the discoveries that would help farmers improve their land and their lives upon it.

Seeking full lives for all

In short, he imagined not only universal freedom, but the infrastructure, development, investment and knowledge that would lead to full lives for all. All this breathtaking vision, begun in the midst of civil war (and, no coincidence, with no opposition from the then-seceded reactionary Southern politicians) set the table for a company like Cargill.

By storing, handling and transporting grain and other foodstuffs, Cargill helped the people who filled the empty spaces of America with their farms. Located along the exploding network of railroads, Cargill also moved, cut and sold the lumber which built the towns and cities of America in the last third of the 19th century. Small towns dotted the Plains. And in those towns businesses clustered around a grain elevator, a rail station and a telegraph office -- a world imagined by Abe Lincoln.

But after the turn of another century, the Cargill of today still lives in the vision of Lincoln. The grain trader of yesterday is also the Cargill Corn Milling Division of today, 2009 winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The ancient business of corn milling has become the producer of very advanced, full-calorie and low-calorie sweeteners for a nation and a people who sit at desks rather than walk behind plows.

It is a company whose early leaders were high-school educated, whose next generations were educated in the finest private universities, and now are also drawn from the public universities that are direct descendants of Lincoln's Land Grant College Act. Indeed, the company is now on its third consecutive public university CEO: Ernie Micek, University of Wisconsin; Warren Staley, Kansas State; Greg Page, University of North Dakota.

The company still trades grain -- but does so with the most sophisticated communication and computer models. The company, which once transported foodstuffs, still does so but it also processes and produces foods with the most advanced scientific and genetic means.

The company founded on the character of its leaders ("Our word is our bond") is now one of the most advanced global leaders in quality, ethics and corporate governance. It is the only company to have won three Baldrige awards. The company, which has so clearly benefited from public universities, now supports those universities, so that Cargill and the rest of the world shall have a supply of leaders for the future, as well as safe, nutritious foods.

And the company born in the shadow of "Honest Abe" Lincoln seeks to conduct itself in a way that validates his vision of the proper relationship between the public good and private enterprise.

I believe that the world needs, and universities must produce, many more leaders like Cargill's and a lot fewer of the amoral operators that have populated our front pages for the past few years.

Abe Lincoln would be very pleased with Cargill and not so much with Wall Street right now.

The company still trades grain -- but does so with the most sophisticated communication and computer models. The company, which once transported foodstuffs, still does so but it also processes and produces foods with the most advanced scientific and genetic means.

The company founded on the character of its leaders ("Our word is our bond") is now one of the most advanced global leaders in quality, ethics and corporate governance. It is the only company to have won three Baldrige awards. The company, which has so clearly benefited from public universities, now supports those universities, so that Cargill and the rest of the world shall have a supply of leaders for the future, as well as safe, nutritious foods.

And the company born in the shadow of "Honest Abe" Lincoln seeks to conduct itself in a way that validates his vision of the proper relationship between the public good and private enterprise.

I believe that the world needs, and universities must produce, many more leaders like Cargill's and a lot fewer of the amoral operators that have populated our front pages for the past few years.

Abe Lincoln would be very pleased with Cargill and not so much with Wall Street right now.

Source:

Minneapolis Star Tribune