(7 of 10)
They are purists about it, allow no room for complicating motives. As speculators, they regard profit as their goal. They not only take little personal interest in the quality of the books their firms publish or the design of the houses they build, but even hold that it would be improper for them to do so. As the Murchisons see it, an entrepreneur would be exceeding his function and misusing his power if he indulged in the enthusiast's notion of losing money on respectable authors for the glory of literature, or making less money on a building so that it would be a work of art. The quality of products, as far as they are concerned, is the proper concern of hired managements. They seem to ignore—or at least to underestimate—the risk that hired managers will not bother to put major emphasis on excellence as well as profit if the people who employ them do not.
Being men without a moralizing mission, the Murchison brothers are at least free of that Texas big-rich practice—the buying up of publishing houses, newspapers and radio programs to propagandize for favorite political precepts, usually somewhere to the right of the John Birch Society. As venture capitalists, entrepreneurs or promoters—all terms they can lay claim to—the Murchisons and men like them fill a function by taking risks that others will not, by acting as catalysts, and, in the words of Jules Bogen, professor of finance at New York University, "by channeling funds and resources to areas where demand is expanding and away from areas where it is contracting. The Murchisons anticipate what the demands for a product will be, and then seek to ensure that the facilities will be available to ensure sufficient production of it." They are optimists by instinct, and ready to take a chance on American growth.
Rival Philosophies. In the battle for control of Alleghany, two opposing business philosophies clashed. Though both Allan P. Kirby and the Murchisons hold inherited wealth, Kirby is a somewhat straitlaced Easterner who has more than quintupled his legacy through the most conservative of investments. Stubborn and secretive, he presided over the holding company that he and the late Robert Young built up with a closefisted super-caution that left no room for the plunging venture capitalism espoused by the freewheeling Texas brothers.
"The Murchisons are wheelers and dealers," says Kirby, "taking chances and looking for a quick profit. I make a careful study of a situation and then invest and stay in, hoping the situation will get even better. I can speculate with my own money and still sleep at night, but I can't speculate with shareholders' money and sleep. I don't think the Murchison boys feel that way."