Elijah McCoy and Berry Gordy; B. Folsom

On reaching manhood, Elijah McCoy went to Scotland for training in mechanical engi neering. When it came time to apply his industrial skills, the Civil War had ended and blacks were legally free. McCoy came back to the United States and settled in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where he began working for the Michigan Central Railroad. Burton Folsom is senior fellow with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan, and author of two books on entrepreneurs: The Myth of the Robber Barons and Empire Builders. 29 Determined to Achieve Despite his training, McCoy was offered the lowly job of locomotive fireman. He accepted it with a determination to show the railroad that he could accomplish more. He immediately applied his skills to a major problem: the dangerous overheating of locomotives. Trains had to stop regularly so that their engines could be oiled to reduce friction. If trains stopped infrequently, the overheating could damage parts or start fires.

If they stopped too often, freight and passen gers would be delayed. McCoy invented a lubricating cup that oiled engine parts as the train was moving. He secured a patent for it in 1872 and steadily improved it. Others tried to imitate McCoy's invention, but he kept ahead of them with his superior engineering skills. His standard of quality was so high that the cup became known as "the real McCoy," which many believe to be the origin of the famous phrase. The invention helped the Michigan Central run safer and quicker across the state. It was also put to use in stationary engines and even in steamship engines. The grateful manage ment of the Michigan Central promoted McCoy and honored him as a teacher and innovator for the railroad. McCoy showed remarkable creative energy during the next 50 years. He received 51 more patents, mostly for lubricating devices. Not even old age dimmed his creative light. When 30 THE FREEMAN/IDEASON LIBERTY • JANUARY 1999 Elijah McCoy he was 77, he patented an improved airbrake lubricator; when he was 80, he patented a vehicle wheel tire. He founded the Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company in Detroit in 1920 to make and sell his inventions.

Elijah McCoy was one of many black Americans who after the Civil War improved the American workplace and showed skeptical whites what free, enterprising blacks could accomplish. In the late 1950s, 30 years after his death, another black American from Detroit, Berry Gordy, was using the free mar ket to transform American music. The Motown Sound Forty years ago, many blacks enjoyed rhythm and blues music, but it was routinely unprofitable and often performed in shabby venues. Berry Gordy, a songwriter and assem bly-line worker, had a vision of taking black inspired music out of the slums and giving it broad, national appeal as a respectable art form. In 1959, Gordy borrowed $800 from his family and risked it to start Motown Record Corporation, named for the "motor town" of Detroit. Once in business, Gordy hustled musical talent from the streets of the city and pinched pennies to survive. He set up a used two-track recorder in his small house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard that became Motown headquarters. His father did the plastering and repairs, and his sister did the bookkeeping.

His vocal studio was in the hallway, and his echo chamber was the downstairs bathroom. "We had to post a guard outside the door," Gordy says, "to make sure no one flushed the toilet while we were recording." The fact that Gordy started Motown out of his home is more than a quaint historical foot note. Doing that today in Detroit's residential areas would violate the city's repressive ban on home-based businesses-a sad comment on how stifling Detroit's regulations and taxes have become since the 1950s. Gordy's success is sometimes ascribed to his knack for writing and producing hit songs. But there was more than that. As actor Sidney Poitier observed, "Berry Gordy ... set out to make music for all people, whatever their color or place of origin." In doing so, Gordy made black music-the Motown sound-part of the mainstream popular culture in America. What an achievement! Gordy had white teens all over America humming the catchy tunes of the Four Tops, the Miracles, and the Temptations. After that he promoted a flurry of black stars including Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and Stevie Wonder. Gordy so much wanted their music, and that of other Motown singers, to reach the larger white audience in America that the sign on his headquarters read, "Hitsville, U.S.A."

The impact of Gordy's remarkable achieve ment is worth pondering. At one level, he cre ated more opportunities for blacks every where in the music business-production, nightclubs, recording, and marketing. Beyond that, in an era of racial tensions, Gordy's music bonded blacks and whites. In 1964 and 1965, some whites attacked blacks in Oxford, Mississippi, and Selma, Alabama. But during this time, many white fans everywhere were making number-one hits for Gordy out of the first three songs by the Supremes: "Where Did Our Love Go?," "Baby Love," and "Come See About Me." The Motown sound became mainstream American music not by law or force, but by choice. It was clever entrepreneurship, not affirmative action, that persuaded whites to integrate black musicians into their record ELIJAH MCCOY AND BERRY GORDY: INGENUITY OVERCOMES 31 collections. Gordy used well-crafted songs to capture not just first place on Billboard's Top 100, but the number two and three slots as well for the whole last month of 1968.

America's system of private enterprise gave Gordy the chance to air his records on radio stations and have them compete for sales in record stores all over America. But when Gordy tried to expand the Motown sound into England, he found government standing in his way. The government stations, especially the British Broadcasting Company, refused to play Motown records and give Gordy the chance that private enterprise gave him in the United States. "Because we couldn't get our records on the government stations," Gordy said, "our earliest airplay had come from Radio Veronica and Radio Caroline, 'pirate ships' anchored a few miles off the coasts of England and Holland." The Motown music broadcast from those pirate ships captivated British listeners. Soon the demand for Gordy's records swamped record stores from Liverpool to London and forced the bureaucrats to permit the music to be heard on government stations. When Radio Free Europe and The Voice of America began playing Gordy's records, his empire penetrat ed the Iron Curtain and truly became an inter national force.

Success, Gordy explains to this day, starts with a dream. "That's what's wrong with peo ple," Gordy said when he started Motown. "They give up their dreams too soon. I'm never going to give up mine." And because he didn't give up, black Americans have more opportunities today and American music has changed forever. Throughout much of American history, black entrepreneurs and innovators have been objects of discrimination. But, as the stories of Elijah McCoy and Berry Gordy suggest, the remedy for discrimination in the past is not reverse discrimination in the present, but the freedom to invent, create, and produce in a free market. D By FREDERIC BASTIAT "Phenomenal! An amazing and timeless treatment ofthe cost of using government to solve problems." - Russell Roberts, author of The Choice New Introduction by WALTER E. WILLIAMS Foreword "Qy SHELDON RICHMAN Single copy: $2.95 -- 4 copies for $10.00 96 pages with index, paperback (quantity discounts available) Hardcover edition: $12.95 Please send check or money order to: FEE, 30 South Broadway, Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533 (Add $3.00 for postage) Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover orders ($10.00 minimum, please): 1-800-452-3518 © 0 Handsome New Paperback Edition!

THE CLASSIC BLUEPRINT FOR A JUST SOCIETY o @l Sudden Impact: The Collision of Ethics and Air Bag Mandates by Loren E. Lomasky A John Elway forward pass travels toward its receiver at over 70 miles per hour; Randy Johnson's fastball darts from his hand at over 90 miles per hour; Pete Sampras's serve booms across the net at 120 miles per hour. Unless you know how to play the game, you're advised to stay safely away. But should you find yourself in even a minor fender bender, you may be on the receiving end of an air bag deploying at up to 200 miles per hour. For most people most of the time, impact with an air bag is benign compared to what they would have hurtled against had they been traveling unprotected. Although the air bag affords less protection than the seat belt, the air bag is, on balance, a wonderful safeguard. Since 1990 over 3,500 lives have been saved and numerous injuries averted, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administra tion says.