Business: Mighty Mice

Naked came the rodents

Building a better mousetrap was too prosaic for Boston-born Veterinarian Henry Foster. Instead, he built a better mouse—millions of them. Thirty years ago, Foster, whose degree came from a nonaccredited school in Massachusetts, paid $1,300 for some traps and pens from an abandoned Maryland rat farm, shipped them to Boston and went into business as Charles River Breeding Laboratories, Inc. Today Charles River, located on a 60-acre spread in Wilmington, Mass., is the world's largest supplier of animals for scientific research. In 1979 the firm netted $3 million on sales of $30 million and paid a dividend of...