CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
In writing these essays I have been dependent on the
enthusiastic interest of numerous people who knew the
subjects intimately. Some have rendered special assistance
by reading one or more of the manuscripts with
a critical but tolerant eye. I am deeply grateful for
information, advice and help so generously given.
In all cases, the close relatives of the men I have
written about have afforded invaluable assistance and
I am much in their debt.
The responsibility for everything that is said is, needless
to say, wholly mine.
INTRODUCTION
The subjects of these four biographical studies are businessmen with whom my grandfather had a close association.
For seven years he was a personal assistant to Sir Herbert Gepp when he was Managing Director of Australian Paper Manufacturers. His connection with Gepp continued after he left the Company in 1944 until Gepp died in 1954.
Sir Walter Massy-Greene, Sir Leslie McConnan and Mr. G.H. Grimwade all played a prominent part in the formation and early years of the Australian Institute for Public Policy. It was in this respect that he had much to do with them over a period of roughly ten years.
The essays are mainly an attempt at character analysis, but Gepp and Massy-Greene had careers of such extraordinary accomplishment and diversity that I have felt compelled, in their case, to enter fairly extensively into the realm of biography. The stature of these men can be properly assessed only if viewed against the impressively large and colourful tapestry of their achievements.
Although he had many interests, Sir Leslie McConnan's entire career was spent in the National Bank of Australasia. When Chief Manager of the bank, he became a protagonist in the most crucial drama in Australian political history of recent times -- the attempt by the Chifley Labor Government to nationalise the private trading banks. Here lies his main interest for the general reader.
Mr. Geoffrey Grimwade was not, perhaps, a prominent or well-known national figure in the sense of Gepp, Massy-Greene or McConnan. But his contribution to the organisation by which my grandfather had been employed for twenty years was so indispensable, and he was a man of such unusual quality, that I have long wanted to write something about him.
I have just suggested that Gepp and Massy-Greene were well-known public figures. This is true only of past generations. Although they have been dead fifty or so years, probably the great majority of present-day Australians have barely heard of them. Yet it is fair to claim they are among the greatest Australians because they belong among that small number of select men who laid the foundations on which the modern, industrialised, affluent, rapidly developing Australia has been built -- an Australia that every day bears less resemblance to the one in which Gepp and Massy-Greene lived.
Gepp and Massy-Greene belonged to a species of business leaders which, always rare, is now almost extinct. They were the products of an earlier, pioneering stage in industrial development. The scale of industry was generally smaller. Decision-making was complicated by the hazards of the business cycle and the periodic alternations of prosperity and depression. The risks were greater. We had not yet entered the era of Keynesian policies, of full employment and almost automatic yearly growth.
The sophisticated organisation of the "executive suite", with data processing and almost formalised decision-making, had not yet appeared. There were no specialist schools of business management and the modern "managerial tools" were only in an embryo stage. It was the "pre-computer" age. Development depended less on organisational methods and more on the dynamic drive, vision and all-round ability of gifted individuals. Without the detailed planning and analyses made possible by the computer and the such-like, and a multitude of highly-trained experts, big decisions were based more on the personal predilections and intuitions of the captains of industry.
The "character" of the business and its methods of working were coloured, even largely determined, by the nature and personality of the man at the helm. Today the individual tends to be overshadowed by the "organisation" as such, which has assumed almost a life and continuity of its own.
Men like Gepp foresaw all this and indeed laid the foundations for it. But it is doubtful whether they themselves would have fitted comfortably into the more rigid procedures and tighter rules of the modern, large-scale organisation. They would not, I think, have been entirely at their ease among the indoor plant life and silent carpets of the "executive suite". While they were seeking better methods of organisation and a more "scientific", analytical basis for arriving at decisions, when moved to do so they did not hesitate to throw the organisation manual out the window.
Massy-Greene and Gepp were men of a massive, all-round comprehension. They knew a great deal about an awful lot. They were colourful, individualistic, and, in a sense, nonconformist. They were enormously observant, full of ideas, original, creative, daring in conception and bold in execution. Without advanced university training or specialist professional qualifications, they had achieved the ultimate aim of higher education; both had, in Alfred North Whitehead's phrase, "an habitual vision of greatness".
If one surveys the first fifty years of the last century, Gepp would seem to have as strong a claim as anybody else to be regarded as the leading figure in the "development" of the still youthful Australia. For the first half of those fifty years he was associated with the small group of energetic, far-sighted men behind the Broken Hill mining and metallurgical developments. These developments were largely responsible for "triggering-off" the process which established our great heavy industries and which eventually transformed Australia into an industrial nation of consequence. Here were the birth-pangs of the Australian industrial revolution.
Gepp was right at the heart of these momentous events, a trusted and respected associate of the legendary W.L. Baillieu. Then, from the middle 1920's to the middle 1930's, he was the senior adviser to the Commonwealth and State Governments on the problems of the development of the Continent, including the vast area about which we are again hearing a great deal, Northern Australia. In the final period of his working life he returned to private industry and he made a major contribution to a project which had long been close to his heart -- the manufacture of paper from native hardwood eucalypts. His work here helped to transform the paper industry into one of the half-dozen or so basic manufacturing enterprises of Australia.
But his contributions to Australian life were manifold. He was not only a man of great practical achievement; he was a "thinker" in the true sense of the word and was impelled by a desire to inform, educate and guide the young Australian democracy. He was instrumental in bringing about a wider understanding and acceptance of the rôle of the scientist in Australian industry, both in basic research and in the chemical and technical control of production processes. And what was rather rare among the businessmen of his time, he had a strong belief in the value to business of the university-trained mind. Moreover, he knew how to make the very best of what the university man had to offer. He was in the avant-garde with those businessmen who believed in liberal industrial relations' policies and practices. He was the main public advocate of the national and social responsibilities of industrial leaders and of big enterprise. He was intimately connected with the formation of many institutions which have now become an established part of Australian life; The Royal Australian Chemical Institute, The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, The Australian Institute of Management, The Australian Institute for Public Policy, are, among them.
Massy-Greene parallels Gepp in the magnitude and ambit of his achievement. He reached the summit in two distinct spheres of life. He rose to the peak of Australian politics, holding a number of the senior Ministerial posts in the Commonwealth Government and missing the supreme honour of the Prime Ministership by a hair's breadth. Comparatively late in life he transferred his attentions to business. He became recognised as perhaps the leading company director of his day, holding about forty directorships, many of them in some of the largest and most important enterprises in Australia. I doubt whether such a dual achievement, in politics and business, has been equalled in Australian history.
Although Massy-Green was not a technical man as was Gepp -- the former was essentially a financial leader -- there is in some ways a remarkable link between the business careers of the two. Both were associated for many years, although in different capacities, with the Collins House interests. In 1946 Massy-Greene became the Chairman of the Electrolytic Zinc Company of Australasia, the enterprise of which Gepp was the prime creator. He was also either Chairman or a member of the boards of other Collins House companies, many of which relied for their original capital on the profits of the rich Broken Hill mining enterprises. One of these was the Associated Pulp and Paper Mills. In the establishment and development of this company, concerned with the large-scale manufacture of fine writing and printing papers using pulp made from indigenous hardwood timbers, Massy-Greene's achievement bears a striking similarity to Gepp's contribution in Australian Paper Manufacturers.
Of McConnan and Grimwade I have written mainly in a personal sense, and have not attempted to explore their careers in any detail.
I have called this book of essays "Big Businessmen". That is how each of these men, because of the positions they held, would no doubt be regarded by the general public. But I have used the adjective "big" rather to convey the idea that each of these men were "big" men, big in themselves.
It is fair to say that the Australian public knows comparatively little about its leading businessmen. A study of the characters and personalities of the four included here will, I hope, have some small interest, particularly for the younger generation of Australians who should be concerned not merely with what Australia is today, or with what it will become tomorrow, but with the men who, by their work in the past, helped to determine both today and tomorrow.
SIR HERBERT GEPP
Probably no one came into contact with Herbert Gepp without feeling, instinctively and almost instantly, that here was a man far removed from the ordinary run. There was something different, something even strange about him. He conformed to no familiar pattern. He was an entirely uncommon human being.
He had a rare and splendid gift -- the gift of being able to lift people out of mundane ruts, to set in motion new directions and habits of thought, and to excite them to attempt things of which they would probably have never thought themselves capable. He was able to raise the sights of able, but otherwise ordinary, people to the contemplation of the mountain peaks.
It would be idle to pretend that he was universally esteemed. He had detractors. I can understand that. His very complexity, individuality and idiosyncratic personality exposed him to criticism and made him fatally easy to misunderstand. He was a multi-faceted character. In these cases most people see only one or two features (often not to their liking) but not the whole visage of the man. But few of his critics, under questioning, do not concede his extraordinary talents. When they speak of him, it is indicative how frequently adjectives such as "Churchillian" and "Napoleonic" re-occur. He certainly had something of what these words imply.
Herbert Gepp was a man who, throughout his life, seemed to be running well in advance of the field. As he was also exceptionally long-sighted, he was able to see much further ahead than others.
His physical constitution was fully adequate to withstand the strains to which it was subjected by his high-pressure, relentless mind. On top of that he had the priceless asset of personality. When he entered a room of people, there was a perceptible change of mood, a heightening of tension.
Gepp was an uncontented character and he infected those around him with something of his own "uncontent". Never satisfied with where he was or what he had accomplished, always stretching out for the stars, he was seldom entirely at ease with himself; and this might account for the fact that only a few were entirely at ease with him. He lived at a tempo that few could reach or wanted to reach. He was the last man in the world to have anything to do with if you preferred "the quiet life".
EARLY LIFE
Considered against the standards of today's affluent society, Gepp's early life would appear unbelievably hard and exacting. Born in circumstances of adversity, indeed of almost extreme poverty, he had no intention of staying there. His struggles to lift himself out of obscurity had an inexorable quality; they could not be denied. They owed nothing to native cunning or inborn sophistication; but everything to ability, tireless energies and an iron determination.
Herbert Gepp was born in Adelaide in 1877. His grandfather was among the first settlers in South Australia; there is a portrait of him in a big-framed picture in the archives of the Adelaide Museum. He had come to his new land from Essex in England in 1836 in the "Rapid", the third immigrant ship to reach South Australia. He brought with him several Clydesdale horses, but not his wife and six children. They had to wait behind until a year or so later he arranged for them to join him in Australia. He must have transmitted something of his adventurous spirit and toughness of fibre to his grandson.
Gepp's boyhood was not especially happy. His father had a sadistic streak and he subjected his son to frequent, savage floggings. Gepp's mother did her best to protect him from the senseless punishment. The effect of these experiences went much deeper than temporary physical pain. When married and with a family of his own Gepp made a resolution, which he kept, never to inflict bodily punishment on his children. It seems unlikely that his own personality and certain of his attitudes to life were not affected in other ways by the cruelties he suffered at the hands of his father.
The eldest of a large family, Herbert, when still very young, was forced to contribute money to assist with the support of the home. But he had a passionate desire for knowledge and education and read everything on which he could lay his hands. He had a particular love for Sir Walter Scott. From a State School he won scholarships to Prince Alfred College and, later, to the University. Unfortunately he could not accept the latter because of his family's impecunious circumstances. He studied instead at the Adelaide School of Mines. In order to pay his way and assist his parents and his three brothers and two sisters, he took on odd jobs and coached pupils in his few spare waking hours.
In 1893, when 16, he obtained a position as a junior chemist in the Australian Explosives and Chemical Company at Deer Park in Victoria. He continued to pursue his education. Three nights a week he rode his bicycle to the University (a distance of roughly 10 miles) to attend chemistry lectures under Professor David Orme Masson. (1) Not so many years later Professor Masson was to play a decisive part in Gepp's career.
These early years clearly helped to shape the pattern of the youth's future. He took on the habit of unremitting work and retained it throughout his life. Henceforth he was never to be happy without it. Always, in those days, at one remove from poverty, he naturally acquired a realistic appreciation of the value of small change. (Very many years later his secretary, Miss Mary Summerhayes, (2) used to say that it was easier to get his approval to spend money on a machine running into hundreds of thousands of pounds than on a packet of pins.) But he acquired, too, something far rarer and more important -- a deep-felt solicitude for the less fortunate and the under-privileged. In his maturer years he was to be at the head of the advance guard of progressive business thinking, a persistent advocate of a humane economic and industrial philosophy. Nothing in life was to disturb him so much as the human misery and economic wastes of unemployment.
Gepp's work at the explosives plant at Deer Park as "laboratory assistant and bottle-washer" (to use his own words), although nearly ending a career barely begun, fortunately set him on the road to great achievement. An explosion of nitroglycerine in the washing house occurred during lunch-time while he and an operator were the only two people in the building. The operator was killed; Gepp escaped. Not long after, the Deer Park works were acquired by the Nobel's Explosive Company of Glasgow, and Gepp, only 18, who must have already made an impression, was sent to Ardeer (near Glasgow) in Scotland for three years' training. His salary was £2 a week. Apparently he was able to do in 18 months what his superiors expected to take 3 years, for he was then returned to Deer Park. While in Scotland, avid for experience, he borrowed £50 from a former manager at Deer Park, Mr. Tolley Jones, for a trip to Switzerland. He returned to Australia via the United States and Canada.
In 1902, when 24, he was appointed Manager at Deer Park. His exceptional talents had early begun to manifest themselves.
But he was young for such a responsible post and there was plenty to worry him. "My work is hard and responsible and the hours are long," he wrote in a letter to a close friend, "but while there's life there's hope and if one does not work in youth, then no reward will come afterwards." Apparently he worked and worried too much for in another letter he said, "In the excitement for the work I must have gone too strong, for I was suddenly pulled up by a very slight temporary attack of paralysis that lasted a couple of hours, but it was, I may say, two hours too long. I got rather a scare and pulled up at once ..." Those who knew Gepp in later years would find it difficult to imagine anything going amiss with his apparently iron constitution.
In 1905, while at Deer Park, he married Miss Jessie Hilliard. His honeymoon consisted of three days at Beaumaris in Victoria and then, so he relates, "we went to South Australia, so that I could look into the South Australian phosphate deposits while on holiday". Unlike his attack of paralysis, his way of spending a honeymoon would come as no surprise to his associates of later years.
Although married only a year he felt himself well qualified to give advice on the subject to his younger brother on the occasion of the latter's marriage. "Be a man," he wrote to him, "stay strong, considerate, self-controlled, treat your wife as a friend and chum; when the inevitable little disputes and disagreement arise, you both want to compromise and all will be well ... I feel only too confident that the happiness or otherwise of a union is decided during the very early part of the married life."
But his own marriage, like those of not a few men who achieve great prominence, proved to be somewhat less than a perfect union. His single-minded absorption in his work left him little time to give to the cultivation of his family life, and his wife, a reserved and sensitive woman with no strong intellectual interests, was, in most things, the opposite of her husband. She loved pleasant social intercourse and the graces of a quiet home life, but this was hardly possible with the turbulent, dominating and restless personality of her husband. They had five children, one son and four daughters, all with ability well above average and all, in their own spheres, successful.
Gepp was a man who always wanted to occupy the centre of the stage -- in his own home as well as in business. Such men make few deep friendships and perhaps he failed to achieve a perfectly satisfying relationship with his wife and children. They were proud of his great qualities but they looked for something that it was not in his power to give. His eldest daughter, Kathleen, writes movingly of her mother and father:
They lived, as long back as my memory and consciousness of such things go, like strangers. And yet, as I was to find, they were both lonely people, mutely looking for and much in need of understanding and companionship. I must very early have been sensitive to such things, because I cannot remember the time I did not have a sense of sadness about my parents. I think they loved one another very much, and each in their own way was considerate to the other, but their spirits and minds never seemed to touch. It was a marriage of politeness and I am sure we, their children, should count ourselves very fortunate that our parents did not quarrel and seldom raised their voices or argued with one another; the lack of understanding and incompatibility, however, made itself felt in the atmosphere of the home and affected me at least to a tremendous degree.
My father's experience of cruelty at the hands of his father made him very thoughtful in his treatment of us. I often heard him say that very early in life he decided if he ever had children he would never raise a hand to them. He kept his word, and more than that he consciously throughout our lives endeavoured not to dominate or influence us in serious decisions; one cannot, however, be other than what one is, and by sheer weight he could do no other than dominate everyone within his ken.
In my grandfather's experience of the family, it was his impression that Lady Gepp had become patiently resigned to the powerful, certainly disturbing personality of her husband. But it was quite clear to an outsider that his one great passion in life was his work and career, and that his wife and family knew this and, understandably, felt vaguely resentful.
Gepp had a worrying, intense disposition. His troubles at Deer Park multiplied. The explosives company was trying to diversify into superphosphate production -- a highly competitive field -- and he seemed to feel his limited experience in business matters. In a revealing letter in 1906, he wrote, "For the last ten years I have been fighting to be quite equal to the demands on my knowledge and I have got to be so wrapped up in my work that it has affected to a very great extent any actions outside of work. When things are not going too well, I am anxious and worried and quite unable to compose myself and do anything extraneous to my work outside of absolutely necessary things. On account, I suppose, of the way I am built, I nearly always find plenty to think and worry about. Incidentally, I may remark that I have some glorious periods -- when everything seems successful -- when there is not a cloud on my mental horizon -- and for these brilliant periods, much thanks! When they come I enjoy them to the full. I know in the sub-stratum of my mind that they will not last. I know as sure as night follows day that I will again pass through dark, troubled times, but still, while the sunshine lasts my cup of enjoyment is full and all the world seems bright".
He had no regrets about severing his connections with the explosives company when an opportunity came to take on an assignment at Broken Hill to supervise the construction of a sulphuric acid plant. Soon after moving to Broken Hill, he wrote, "I have had quite enough of manufacturing explosives and shall be pretty hard up before I go back to that line of chemistry for a living ... I am happier up here. At present, with the high price of metals, everything is booming and the place is very prosperous. I have already learnt a great deal since I came up and hope to learn a lot more."
HIS ROLE AT BROKEN HILL
A good part of Gepp's life was spent in the days when the foundations of the modern industrialised Australia were being laid. There is no doubt that he was one of the greatest figures in these tremendous events.
The industrial super-structure of Australia has grown to such dimensions since World War II that the original foundations of it all are tending to be obscured, and in obscurity to be forgotten. This is not the place to tell the absorbing, romantic story of the strange-looking hill in the far west of New South Wales which has exerted such a decisive influence on Australia's economic destiny. The "Hill of Mullock", as it was first contemptuously called, later became known by such names as the "Hill that Changed a Nation" and the "Fabulous Hill". It was fabulous because eventually it was shown to contain the richest single deposit in the world of silver, lead and zinc. It changed a nation because the wealth which enterprise, skill and back-breaking labour caused it to yield, provided much of the initial capital behind the establishment of the great basic, heavy industries at the heart of industrial Australia.
The early mining at Broken Hill began in the 1880's and was concerned with the extraction of the silver and lead. As the top surface deposits of ore -- assayed at 30 per cent pure lead -- were exhausted and the workings grew deeper, it was found that the ore changed its character and became a complex mixture of lead and zinc sulphides. The lead could easily be extracted, but what was to be done with the vast and ever-mounting residues containing the zinc?
By 1904, 6 million tons of zinc and other metals -- with a value running into many millions of £'s -- lay in unsightly hillocks (known as "tailings") around Broken Hill. The problem was how to separate the zinc from the other remnants of the lead concentration process.
The crucial significance of achieving a solution to this problem was underlined by a report of the New South Wales Department of Mines in 1901. The report stated: "... the future of Broken Hill is dependent on two things: the price of lead and the discovery of some successful method of treating zinc". In this vital work, Herbert Gepp, still little more than a youth, was destined to play a leading role.
In the years when he was Manager at Deer Park, the mining entrepreneurs at Broken Hill, among whom was W.L. Baillieu, were becoming acutely concerned with the intriguing problem of the zinc tailings. They became interested in a differential flotation process for separating the zinc oxides evolved by a Melbourne brewer, De Bavay, who had migrated from Belgium. The De Bavay process, which was only in its teething stages, had not been proved in practical application.
At that time the problems of zinc separation were engaging the minds of metallurgical research workers all over the world. Several possible processes, all based on the flotation principle, began to appear -- all in little more than experimental stage and none completely satisfactory. One had been evolved by an Australian chemist named Potter. Another, known as the Cattermole process, had been developed in England. The De Bavay method was giving a richer zinc concentrate than the other two -- 48 per cent. as against the Cattermole separation process, 42 per cent., and Potter's process, 40 per cent. When Gepp went to Broken Hill a process almost identical with Potter's was being employed by the original Broken Hill mining company, the Broken Hill Pty. Co., later to become the steel mammoth of Australia. Two other companies, the Zinc Corporation Ltd. and the De Bavay Treatment Company (later Amalgamated Zinc -- De Bavay Ltd.) had been formed to treat the mountains of tailings. Zinc Corporation at first experimented with the Potter process, but eventually decided to adopt a fourth process which had been patented by two brothers, Elmore, of London. The process required sulphuric acid. Gepp accepted an offer from Zinc Corporation to erect a plant at Broken Hill to manufacture the required acid. First results of the Elmore process were not very satisfactory, yielding only 40 per cent. zinc concentrate.
Everything did not go smoothly at Zinc Corporation. The troubles were not so much technical as personal and the company's staff at Broken Hill was torn apart by intrigues and jealousies. An American chemist from a zinc company in the United States was sent to Broken Hill to report on progress at the acid plant. He strongly criticised Gepp on the grounds that the construction costs of the plant were excessive. When Gepp pointed out the unavoidably high prices of materials, he partially withdrew his strictures, but then turned his guns on the question of when the plant would start producing acid. In a letter to a friend Gepp wrote, "It was clear he had me marked for 'retirement', partly because he thought I was not up to my work and partly because I had stood up to him and given him a Roland for his Oliver every time. However, something happened which he and apparently those with him did not anticipate -- the plant started on time and has not stopped since, and with my agreement behind me, they were helpless to touch me in any way". The personal troubles at Zinc Corporation did, however, result in the "resignation" of other members of the senior staff at Broken Hill.
The incident left a nasty taste in Gepp's mouth. It is clear that he was far from happy. "I have had my eyes opened very much during the past few months and sooner or later I will have had enough of it all. I hope that things will go along better now but I am inclined to think that when the whole plant is working and I am clear in my conscience re. my undertaking, I shall begin to think I have learnt all I can up here and that it is time to go elsewhere. Of course the excitement is only just over and later on I may feel better, but at present 'them's my sentiments'. I don't even know whether the little devil (the American chemist) guesses how I feel towards him. He is a pure product of Yankee commercialism, without heart, soul or sympathy and would sacrifice anyone to suit his own ends. I have no use for a man of that sort. Some day retribution will come on him and may he realise what it means to have to drink the cup to the bitterest dregs".
Unable to shoot down Gepp, the ambitious trouble-maker turned his fire on the Chief Engineer, Mr. C. Faul. This decided Gepp to force the issue. He tendered his resignation, but withdrew it on the assurance of Mr. Huntly, the new Resident Manager, that Faul would have a "straight run". In one of his letters Gepp wrote: "I want to get out of this damned place for a few days to recuperate. Everything is stale and I am ready for a few days spell."
Early in 1907 he decided to leave Zinc Corporation and Broken Hill. He had already commenced arrangements to dispose of his furniture when he was approached by De Bavay. De Bavay persuaded him to let matters stand over for a few days. W.L. Baillieu, he informed Gepp, was coming to Broken Hill and might have a good offer in his pocket. The offer was a job with Amalgamated Zinc -- De Bavay's. Gepp's assignment was a challenging one -- to prove the workability, from a commercial standpoint, of the De Bavay process for the recovery of the riches lying in the Broken Hill "tailings".
The De Bavay process had not been giving satisfaction and W.L. Baillieu had decided to discuss the matter with Professor David Orme Masson. Professor Masson suggested that the youthful Herbert Gepp might help to secure better results.
Gepp set up a pilot plant adjacent to the famous North mine and introduced modifications to the process in operation. Within a month he had doubled the daily tonnage of tailings treated and had also improved the recovery ratio. On the basis of the improved methods he became responsible for the erection of large-scale treatment plants, at that time comprising the largest flotation unit in the world. The full plant commenced operation in 1910. Over 7 or 8 years the plant treated 12,000 tons of tailings a week and the company produced and sold 150,000 tons of zinc concentrates annually, containing 60,000 tons of zinc and 1,000,000 ounces of silver. The capitalisation of the enterprise was £250,000 and the profit rate 100 per cent. In his fine book, "The Rush that Never Ended" (a history of Australian mining) the author, Geoffrey Blainey, comments:
That plant not only amply rewarded the shareholders, but (eventually) financed the two greatest Tasmanian companies launched between the world wars.
These companies were the Electrolytic Zinc Company of Australasia and the Associated Pulp and Paper Mills.
Gepp's association with the Broken Hill zinc companies was to continue for many years yet. The main buyers of the concentrates produced at Broken Hill were large zinc smelting works in Belgium and Germany. These shipments were cut off by the outbreak of World War I. Gepp had enlisted in the first A.I.F. and was in camp at Fort Largs near Adelaide. At the instigation of the Minister for Defence, W.M. ("Billy") Hughes, in collaboration with W.L. Baillieu, he was released by the Army and early in 1915 was sent to the United States to try to sell zinc concentrates. Progress was disappointingly slow. After 6 months he had disposed of only 7,000 tons of concentrates. Then in a matter of minutes he sold 50,000 tons to the United States Steel Corporation. Eventually the Corporation took delivery of £1,000,000 worth of Australian zinc concentrates.
While engaged on these activities Gepp received cables from Australia instructing him to place orders for munitions for the A.I.F. The first A.I.F. had been equipped largely by the British Government as there was no factory in Australia capable of making important weapons such as field guns. But the United States was at that time unable to supply such equipment in the volume required. Canada offered better prospects and the Prime Minister of Australia, Andrew Fisher, cabled the Prime Minister of Canada accrediting Herbert Gepp in all matters concerning the purchase of munitions and munition-making equipment for the Commonwealth. Gepp received information that Canada had a small, complete arsenal at Quebec. In a cable running to several thousand words he sent a comprehensive description of the arsenal back to Australia so that a prototype could be proceeded with. He also shipped to Australia large quantities of machinery and machine tools for the manufacture of munitions.
But these activities were not enough to satisfy his restless mind and seemingly limitless energies.
He was appalled by the mounting British casualties being sustained in the battles in France. The British armies were woefully ill-equipped and under-supplied with essential war materièl. British experience had been limited to the Boer War and other sporadic wars, but when the battle in France developed into a war of attrition, with hundreds of miles of trenches, consumption of ammunition reached undreamt-of proportions. Among other things sulphuric acid was wanted in enormous quantities. The banking firm of J.P. Morgan and Company, which was apparently acting as purchasing agent for the British and French Governments in the United States, suggested Gepp should go to England and help to erect plants for the manufacture of sulphuric acid. In the meantime Gepp sent to Britain blueprints and specifications covering the construction and operation of the acid plants and offered his services. Two precious months went by before a reply was received. But the British Ordnance Committee decided to reject the offer because it was rumoured that "Gepp would want too much of his own way". Eventually Britain erected sulphuric acid plants of an inferior design. (In some notes he has left Gepp refers to the great lack of vision by British war leaders at this time. Shells were being rationed to the troops and the shortage of munitions was responsible for the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.)
But Gepp was not to be shoved aside so easily. Dismayed by the catastrophic shipping losses in the Atlantic, he cabled Australia for permission to drop his job in North America and go to Britain where he felt he could do more useful work. Impatient, he did not wait for a reply; he booked his passage. The Commonwealth Government instructed him to stay where he was. In the end it was probably just as well.
While Gepp was in North America the first commercial plants for the manufacture of refined zinc (which was, urgently required for munitions) from zinc concentrates by a new electrolytic process were being established. These developments naturally excited his interest. The two companies concerned were the Consolidated Mining and Metal Company in Canada and the Anaconda Copper Company in the United States. The electrolytic process required cheap hydro-electric power. In 1915 Gepp received information that the Tasmanian Government was contemplating the development of hydro-electric power stations. He put two and two together. He inspected the plants of the two zinc companies and then cabled W.L. Baillieu that there were definite prospects of making refined zinc from Broken Hill concentrates by the new electrolytic process. On authority from W.L. Baillieu he took an option on the process and hired from the Anaconda Copper Company a small experimental plant at Bully Hill in the Rocky Mountains area of California. He arranged to have 10 tons of the 100,000 tons of Broken Hill concentrates he had sold to the United States Steel Corporation shipped to the Bully Hill site. It was during this period he became friendly with an American mining engineer who was later to become President of the United States --Herbert Hoover.
Gepp engaged some highly qualified metallurgists and arranged for his wife and four children to join him in New York. At San Francisco the children were lined up for immigration inspection as the "four little Japs (Gepp's)".
By mid-1916, all being ready at Bully Hill, he moved his young wife and family out to the wild Californian Rocky Mountains' mining camp among the poison ivy and venomous rattle-snakes. But there was another "poison" of an entirely different character that worried him more -- something in the Broken Hill ore which was causing it to be intractable to the electrolytic treatment. After 48 of the normal 72 hours of electrolysis, the precious zinc being deposited on the aluminium cathode sheet was dissolved again in the liquid solution. The zinc then began to be deposited afresh, but after another 48 hours was again dissolved. It took six months of intensive work to find that the re-solution of the zinc was caused by a trace of cobalt in the Broken Hill ore.
The story had an ironic sequel. When returning to Australia in 1917 Gepp was reading a new chemistry text book by Perkins & Kipping on the deck of the R.M.S. "Niagara". He came upon the following passage: "If there is difficulty in dissolving very pure metallic zinc in sulphuric acid, start the process by using a drop of cobalt sulphate as a catalyst". This was the precise reverse of the reaction which had taken him and his team of highly qualified metallurgists six months to solve.
Back in Australia in 1917 Gepp was appointed General Manager of the newly-formed Electrolytic Zinc Company of Australasia. He took up residence in Hobart. His first job was to inspect various sites which had been provisionally selected for the locale of the new industry. These were all on the Derwent River, some north and some south of Hobart. A decision was finally made to build the plant at Risdon, six miles north of Hobart.
Gepp's experience with the flotation process at Broken Hill had given him a nose for difficulties. He proceeded systematically and in stages. First, he erected a glass cell pilot plant to produce 6 lbs. of refined zinc a day. Later this was expanded to produce 250 lbs. a day, then 600 lbs., and then 10 tons a day.
By 1918 sufficient was known to erect a larger mill with a daily output of 100 tons. Later a 240-ton plant was built to produce zinc of a purity of 99.95 per cent. from Broken Hill and Port Pirie zinc tailings with the use of power from the Tasmanian hydro-electric developments.
But everything did not proceed smoothly and many difficulties, both operational and constructional, were encountered along the route which eventually led to the establishment of one of Australia's greatest industrial enterprises. Orders for the first plant and machinery were placed in England during the war. Despite the urgency of war needs, the persuasive powers of W.S. Robinson, the renowned financier and right-hand man of W.L. Baillieu, succeeded in achieving a high priority for the manufacture of the required machinery. But Gepp, with the over-anxious concern of a mother for her child, was fearful that the plant would never reach Australia and he urged W.S. Robinson to ensure that it was shipped by a safe boat. Robinson's reply was that there was no such thing as a safe boat.
Early construction work at Risdon proceeded much too slowly for the impatient Gepp. Labour and materials were in short supply because of the war, and prices were high. With the war over, a boom developed and they were to become very much higher. Galvanised iron, which had been about £17 a ton in 1914; soared to over £70 a ton, and cement rose from £5 to £15 a ton and even then was difficult to obtain and of poor quality. So seriously were costs of construction affected by the post-war inflation that John Butters (3) (General Manager and Chief Engineer of the Tasmanian Hydro-electric Commission) discussed the possibility of recommending that work on the project should cease until prices fell. But more investigation showed that such a proposal was impracticable; already over £1 million had been spent and irreducible overheads, including salaries of essential personnel, were of the order of £200,000 a year. It was decided to carry on.
Increasing amounts of capital were necessary. An issue of £1,100,000 of preference shares virtually failed and a debenture issue nearly failed. Fortunately the courage of W.L. Baillieu never failed and he and his financial friends continued to back the enterprise.
In the end all was well. The Electrolytic Zinc Company became the third largest zinc works in the world. Today it uses one-third of all the electricity generated in Tasmania.
While at Risdon, Gepp made a decision that illustrated his unusual foresight and proved to be of vital importance years later in World War II. The zinc concentrate treated as Risdon contains three tons of sulphur for every five tons of zinc. In the construction of a plant to convert the sulphur into sulphuric acid Gepp had to decide whether the plant should be capable of making "60 per cent. strength" acid or "98 per cent. strength" acid. The latter would have no normal commercial use that could not be met by the weaker acid, but in the event of war would have great advantages. Gepp, who believed in the early 1920's that another war was eventually likely, thought it would be wise to provide Australia with the capacity to make 20,000 tons of the specially strong sulphuric acid. Fifteen years later, in 1939, this decision made a great contribution to the rapid development of munitions manufacture in Australia.
Relations between Gepp and W.L. Baillieu were, for two such strong individualists, on the whole amicable. Each appreciated the other's qualities. As might have been expected, differences arose from time to time and W.L. could be cutting about the idiosyncrasies of his General Manager.
While at Risdon, Gepp came to Melbourne only infrequently, begrudging the time spent away from his beloved plant. Nevertheless, the board were kept supplied with an unending stream of long and usually provocative letters. No doubt to impress the board, the letters were often headed "Late on Sunday night". At one of his appearances at the board table in Melbourne, W.L. said to him, "All your letters seem to be written late on Sunday night. Don't you do any work during the week?"
Without Herbert Gepp, and W.L. Baillieu's faith in him, it is highly improbable that Australia, barely out of her, industrial swaddling clothes, would have had an electrolytic zinc plant so soon after the process was operating in North America.
But then came a climactic turning point in Gepp's life, and one that provides a key to his essential character. Far from ready to rest content with what he had accomplished, he saw the successful establishment of the electrolytic zinc enterprise merely as a stepping stone on the way to bigger industrial developments for Australia. He wanted new fields of interest to occupy his mind and to satisfy his insatiable appetite for great constructive works. He wished the zinc company to greatly expand its scientific and technical work, even into the remoter reaches of fundamental chemical and physical research. He could see attractive and, to him, seductive prospects in the field of light metals and particularly aluminium, and he wished E.Z. to embrace them. There is little doubt that if Gepp had had his way, Australia would have had an aluminium industry long before Bell Bay in Tasmania. One of Australia's top scientists today, who was employed by Electrolytic Zinc in its early years, is convinced that had Gepp continued with the zinc enterprise it would have developed into Australia's greatest industrial complex.
But in his ideas on industrial research and the use of the trained chemist and physicist in industry, Gepp was ahead of his time. His associates were not ready to proceed so rapidly in the directions to which he was pointing. W.L. Baillieu himself was ageing and unwell; the W.L. of earlier days may well have been prepared to back the visions and ambitions of his restless subordinate. Gepp felt frustrated; disagreements between himself and the board of Electrolytic Zinc became more frequent. The association he had had for so many years with Baillieu and his financial colleagues was terminated when a great new opportunity presented itself on the highest national plane.
He bore no ill-will over his separation from Collins House. Later in life he was accustomed to look back frequently and with pride to the days at Electrolytic Zinc. In his reminiscences he always spoke of W.L. Baillieu in terms of unqualified admiration -- as a big Australian in every way, physically and mentally, a man of unusual vision with the courage to back his intuitions.
SENIOR ADVISER TO GOVERNMENTS
There now began an entirely new phase in Gepp's life. After thirty years in private industry he was to spend the next ten as a senior adviser to Australian governments, mainly the Commonwealth, on the developmental problems.
In 1924, Mr. S.M. Bruce (now Lord Bruce) who had recently become Prime Minister, invited him to go to England as Commissioner of the Australian Section of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. This suited Gepp. For his work at Risdon, he had been honoured (jointly with Mr. Gilbert Rigg) by the highest award for the year in the field of mining and metallurgy -- the Gold Medal of The Institution of Mining and Metallurgy. The medal was to be presented formally at a dinner in the Guildhall in London. Gepp also wanted to show his wife and five children something of the world. He went abroad. It is impossible to believe that he really relaxed -- that would have been simply foreign to his make-up. Apart from his work at Wembley, he accepted an invitation by the Norwegian Government to visit Norway, in company with two or three other Australian industrialists, to report on certain metallurgical problems.
Early in 1925 he returned to Australia. He was going through one of the anxious, restless periods which were to repeat themselves throughout his life. He was bored and unhappy unless he had a job to do which he regarded as worthy of his energies and attention. An opportunity was soon to occur.
In the years after the 1914-18 war a feeling had grown that Australia, on grounds of national security alone, should make much more strenuous efforts to speed its development and fill up "the vast empty spaces". But efforts to settle British migrants on the land were not proving outstandingly successful. A scheme in Western Australia had virtually broken down because of the unexpectedly high costs of clearing land and lack of knowledge of the importance of trace elements and fertilisers and the role of subterranean clover. (Superphosphate was not extensively used on pastures until about 1927.) About half of the settlers had eventually abandoned their blocks. Plans in Victoria and New South Wales to settle 8,000 British families struck the same difficulties and only 730 families in all were established on the land.
These failures led to a new and more scientific approach to land settlement and the creation by the Bruce-Page Government of a body with extensive powers of inquiry and recommendation called the Development and Migration Commission. The D. & M. Commission was requested by Prime Minister Bruce to make a stocktaking of the nation's resources to determine the industries that should be promoted having regard to Australia's natural advantages. The British Government was to make available a sum of £34 million to the governments of the States for developmental projects to facilitate settlement of migrants on the land. But the projects were to be "vetted" by the new authority -- the D. & M. Commission. It was hoped that over a period of 10 years 450,000 immigrants would be absorbed. The Commission was to have powers, too, to recommend "on all matters relating to the development of the resources of the Commonwealth".
Writing in 1928 about the climate of opinion in which the D. & M. Commission was born, Gepp said:
A period of flux set in as a natural reaction to the violent dislocations of war-time control. It appeared that the nation must learn how to take a conscious control of its economic destinies or become the helpless prey of tendencies that were becoming more menacing and incalculable every year. As the hard and fast divisions between Government and Industry seemed no longer possible, the Prime Minister conceived the idea of separating from the purely political field certain major and fundamental problems that were rapidly becoming a "no man's land" under the proper control of neither side, but claimed by both. It was under circumstances of this nature that in 1926 an Act relating to development and migration was passed by both Houses of Parliament.
Bruce offered Gepp the chairmanship of the new, important body. It is clear that his outstanding achievement at Electrolytic Zinc had made a deep impression. But Gepp hesitated. His life had been spent in industry associated with mining and metallurgy. The D. & M. Commission represented an entirely novel field of work in which questions of national economics would be paramount. Moreover, the job was advisory: he had been used to taking action and seeing the tangible results of his own endeavours. Finally, it would bring him into direct touch with politics and government administration -- a terrain with which he was unfamiliar.
After discussing the matter with his associate of many years, W.L. Baillieu, he decided to accept the appointment. He was paid a salary of £5,000 a year, which far exceeded that of any other public servant in Australia at the time, and even stands comparison with the salaries paid to top government servants today -- nearly 80 years later. Gepp's salary was to occasion much public comment, but it was, in a sense, a measure of the reputation he had made for himself in his work for the Broken Hill companies and, in fact, was less than he was earning at Risdon.
After less than four years of intense work the life of the D. & M. Commission was terminated by the Scullin Labor Government in 1930. Australia had been hit by the tidal wave of the Great World Depression. Sources of overseas borrowing had been cut off and, within Australia, large-scale unemployment made the continuance of immigration impracticable. With the fall in their revenues, governments were forced to retrench and the D. & M. Commission which had attracted political unpopularity (partly because of its refusal to countenance wild-cat schemes of government spending on development) got the axe.
But for some years yet Gepp was to continue in his role as senior adviser on development problems to Commonwealth and State Governments. Scullin offered him the post -- a part-time one -- of Consultant on Development to the Commonwealth Government at a quarter of his previous salary. Two or three years later he was appointed Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Wheat, Flour and Bread Industries. He was made Director of the North Australia Geological and Geophysical Survey. In the meantime he sat on various other government commissions and committees, including the Royal Commission on the Coal Industry in 1930.
It is only to be expected that this decade of experience as a top adviser to governments would have a decisive influence on Gepp's cast of mind and attitude to life. Hitherto, his work had been in private industry and, in character, had been largely scientific and technical. Now he was transported into the complex realm of national economics. His horizons became immensely broader. He was to acquire a knowledge of Australia and Australian industry probably second to none. He was to gain an insight, on the one side, into politics and the motivations of the political mind and, on the other, into the workings of government departments and the special viewpoint of permanent government officials. He was to gain, too, a unique knowledge of practical economic and social problems.
His work which entailed, among other things, the continuous drafting and re-drafting of lengthy reports, awakened his interest in the English language as a means of expression. He began to give numerous public addresses and papers to learned gatherings. He travelled the length and breadth of Australia interviewing and talking to people of every description.
Gepp began to know his country as only a tiny minority could ever hope to know it. The problems with which he was trying to cope were never out of his mind. He rested only when he was sleeping. He drove himself and those around him unmercifully. Fascinated, as always, by new ideas, he was prepared to listen to all and sundry who had views on the development of the Continent. Some of those who worked with him felt that he spent much energy and time in chasing down blind alleys. But Gepp no doubt would have replied that you had to go a certain way down a track before you could be sure that it led nowhere. The most unlikely looking path might, for all you knew, lead to a gold mine.
The faith in painstaking research which he had displayed in the scientific and technical fields as an industrial administrator was now carried over into the economic investigations he directed on behalf of the governments that employed him.
The D. & M. Commission did not achieve the miracles for which many apparently hoped. The rate of immigration failed to improve markedly during its lifetime. Whereas, under the arrangements that preceded it, immigrants came in at a rate averaging 20,700 a year, under the "£34 Million Agreement" the rate rose to a mere 24,200 a year. The Commission became a target for criticism and political abuse. Out of the £34 million made available for schemes of land settlement, it felt able to recommend only the expenditure of £8 million. Many schemes put forward by hopeful State Governments were rejected by the Commission on the grounds that they were technically or financially unsound. This did not suit the book of the States. All this and the fact that its life was cut short by the Scullin administration led many people to conclude that it was a failure. After reviewing the work that it accomplished, I can only express astonishment at the magnitude of its achievement in the short space of three and a half years.
The Commission showed courage and integrity in rejecting ambitious, but unsound, projects conjured up by State Governments often woefully ignorant of the facts. Typical of these schemes was a proposal to build a railway from Nowingi (on the Ouyen-Mildura line in Victoria) to the South Australian border and to develop the land on either side of the line for wheat farms for settlers from the United Kingdom. This was one of the first schemes on which Gepp and his colleagues had to pass judgment. It was put up by the Victorian Government on the initiative of the Closer Settlement Commission. The Chairman of the Commission was also the Director of Lands; he had strong views about land settlement but no understanding whatever of the economics of primary production. He would not even consult the State Department of Agriculture. But Gepp was not so foolish. After consultations with the Department, a number of officers were asked to investigate the scheme. They reported that settlers in the area could not expect to bear interest on the cost of developing their blocks and many would probably fail altogether. The scheme was dropped and Victoria saved many millions of pounds.
Another large-scale and apparently promising proposition was put forward by the West Australian Government. The plan was to develop 8 million acres in the south-west, 12" to 14" rainfall belt in Western Australia and to establish some 8,000 farms to grow wheat and wool. Gepp would dearly have liked to have given the "go ahead" sign to this ambitious project. He wrote later: "I spent much anxious time in the study of this proposal, hoping that justification would be shown". Unfortunately the scheme had to be rejected, after investigation had revealed a high degree of salinity in the soil due to the rains from the south-west carrying the salt spray of the southern ocean. As there were no streams, all the salty rainfall was absorbed by the soil.
But the work of the D. & M. Commission was not all of a "negative" character. The number and range of the inquiries it initiated or conducted in so short a time was staggering and it has many positive achievements to its credit. One of the most productive was a comprehensive survey of the Tasmanian economy, which was being held together by large annual grants from the Commonwealth Government. The Commission submitted many economic and technical reports on the difficulties confronting Tasmania and assisted in putting its economy on a sounder basis. A subsequent Premier, Mr. Cosgrove, said the work of the D. & M. Commission had earned the gratitude of the State.
The Commission investigated the dried fruits industry and it made recommendations designed to produce annual savings of over £200,000 a year. It reviewed in detail the canned fruits industry. Its inquiries into the Western Australian gold-mining industry were instrumental in reducing costs at Kalgoorlie from 35s. to 25s. a ton and keeping open the Leonora mines. The Commission's work led to the initiation and establishment of the extensive pinus radiata forests in South Australia. It helped also to finance tests on the production of paper-pulp from Australian-grown softwoods. The economics of irrigation in the Murray River Valley was extensively studied. It investigated a proposal for building dams on the Dawson River in Queensland -- which it deferred because of doubts about the suitability of the soil for irrigation. The Queensland Irrigation Commission continued the project in a small way only to incur dismal failure. Reviewing the Dawson Valley project years later, in the light of modern soil-testing techniques, Gepp felt that the scheme might have succeeded had these been available at the time. However the D. & M. Commission approved the proposal for the Wyangala Dam on the Lachlan River in New South Wales. This project was designed to channel water through the fertile river valley to settle over 600 farmers on nearly 1 million acres of mixed farming and wheat land.
The Commission conducted investigations into the expansion of the fisheries industries -- particularly fish trawling and canning -- and into tobacco-growing. It reported on such divergent subjects as banana diseases and transport costs. On its recommendation, the Australian National Travel Association was established to help in encouraging people to come to Australia and establish new industries. Its recommendations, in conjunction with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, led also to the initiation of geophysical prospecting.
In conjunction with the British Government the Commission issued a report on the important subject of finance for the man on the land.
Realising that unemployment was the great obstacle in the way of large-scale immigration, Gepp and his colleagues made a thorough study of the employment problem. Their recommendations have a strangely modern ring and their proposals for increased spending on public works in times of business recession are now accepted doctrine. Among other recommendations were the collection of statistics on unemployment and the establishment of labour bureaux and vocational guidance centres. All these activities are now carried out by the Commonwealth Department of Labour and National Service. The immigration figures of the 1920's look small besides those that have been achieved in the years since World War II, but it is as well to remember that the latter have been made possible only in the sunny setting of the full employment economy.
The list, though far from complete, serves to indicate the extensive volume and scope of the Commission's inquiries. The British Economic Mission which visited Australia in 1928 wrote of its work: "The Development and Migration Commission is, in short, the nucleus of combined and co-ordinated effort for prudent development and for the work which it has done upon the subjects especially referred to it by the Commonwealth Government, as well as for what has been done in consequence, we have nothing but praise to offer".
In the year the D. & M. Commission was formed, 1926, another body that was to have a profoundly beneficial influence on Australian development in the years ahead was established. This was the renowned Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (now the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation).
Gepp's reputation in the scientific and technical field, his proved abilities as an organiser, and his drive and imagination, made it almost inevitable that his name should be considered in connection with the leadership of the new body. Moreover, he had been a member of the advisory Committee whose recommendations and views led to the decision to set up this new scientific organisation. Some of his friends apparently approached the Prime Minister with the suggestion that he was the man to head the C.S.I.R. Bruce replied that the suggestion was an interesting one, but he had something even more difficult in view for Gepp -- the D. & M. Commission. It is illustrative of the exceptional virtuosity of the man that he could have been considered simultaneously for the top posts in two national organisations of widely divergent character. Not that Gepp would have seen it quite that way. He always regarded the two bodies as complementary. Years later he was to urge many times that an organisation, cognate to the C.S.I.R., in the field of economic and social research, should be set up by the Commonwealth Government. From the time my grandfather knew him until his death he was an untiring advocate of the concept of a permanent Economic General Staff. This was to be an advisory body and, in Gepp's notion, it should publish its own views of economic problems independently of the government of the day. He was so impressed with the need for such a body that he was disposed to introduce the idea into practically every public address that he gave, even when its connection with the subject of the address was not easy to perceive.
In later years a number of countries were to introduce bodies similar to that which Gepp urged for Australia. After World War II, in 1946, the President's Council of Economic Advisers was set up in the United States. The more recently established National Economic Development Council (NEDDY) in Britain possesses features which bear a close affinity with the type of organisation Gepp had in mind for Australia. Now the Commonwealth Government has appointed a 5-man Committee of Inquiry into the economy, which, although not a permanent body, is certainly a blood relation of Gepp's concept.
Gepp believed that the D. & M. Commission could have been developed into an Economic General Staff for the Commonwealth. For this reason he later expressed regret that it had been cut off in the prime of life, while, what he regarded as a parallel body, the C.S.I.R., with no comparable political implications, had grown in strength with the years.
Nevertheless, the D. & M. Commission taught us much. The most significant lesson, in Gepp's view, was that it had shown the need for an orderly, scientific, carefully weighed approach to the problems of national development and had exposed the futility of "hit and miss" methods.
With the winding up of the D. & M. Commission, he accepted the position of Consultant on Development to the Commonwealth Government. This was an appointment of a general kind and certainly not sufficient to satisfy a man of Gepp's temperament. But there were additional things for him to do. In 1930 he accepted an appointment to the Royal Commission on the Coal Industry. His fellow-members on the Commission were Mr. Justice Davidson and Dr. L. Keith Ward. The black coal fields of New South Wales were in a chronically sick, indeed critica1, state, riven apart by industrial unrest. After an inquiry lasting eight months, the Commission produced a 522-page report. The report was praised in the highest terms by perhaps the leading economic authority on the coal industry at the time, an academician, F.R.E. Mauldon of the University of Melbourne. "The Report of the Royal Commission on the Coal Industry," wrote Mauldon, "is a remarkably comprehensive document" ... "The Commissioners are to be congratulated on the ability shown, not only in organising the lines of their complex enquiry, but in so pertinaciously exploring each avenue for its essential data, in arranging the revealed facts into a comprehensive whole, and in exhibiting a fine sense of balance in interpretation". The Commission recommended measures to rationalise the industry and to transfer the surplus labour to other occupations. The most significant step urged by the Commission was the constitution of a new expert body to supervise the industry in all its phases -- production, marketing, wage policy and labour relations -- and to keep productive capacity reasonably related to market demand. Here was the genesis of the present Joint Coal Board. But at the time the recommendation was assailed from all sides. To the mine-owners it was a form of socialism, and to the workers the suggestion that the supervisory body should have power to license miners savoured of "the dog-collar" act.
In 1931 Gepp visited China and Japan, the former to investigate the supply of sandalwood at the request of the Governments of West Australia and South Australia. He took the opportunity of attending a Conference on Pacific Relations at Shanghai. At Peking he met Donald, famed Australian adviser to Chiang Kai-Shek; also Madam Sun Yat Sen and Dr. Soong. He came back with a profound admiration for the Chinese -- their courage, sense of humour, and cheerful attitude to life despite the terrible conditions under which the majority existed. But he was disturbed by what he saw in Japan. He wrote, "One could only feel they were gathering strength for some action not associated with the peace of the world". He reported that the Pacific Relations Conference was overshadowed by the obvious tension between China and Japan.
As Consultant on Development, Gepp investigated various projects on behalf of the Commonwealth and State Governments. His work led to the re-opening of gold mines at Bendigo -- Deborah Central and North Deborah. He had first visited Bendigo in 1895 when there were 400 mines in operation; but around 1932/3 only four or five were still working. In association with Mr. W. Baragwanath he issued a report that payable gold in substantial quanties could be obtained by going deeper. The response was discouraging. A prospectus was issued but no interest was forthcoming. With government support, Gepp decided to float a company, Deborah Mines, which eventually paid £1 million in dividends.
Oil shale was another prospect that occupied his attention. Fields in Latrobe, Tasmania and in the Capertee and Wolgan Valleys in the north-east corner of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales had ceased to operate. (The latter had been worked spasmodically to the end of last century.) Gepp rejected the Tasmanian project because of the low return of oil per ton of shale, but recommended the re-opening of the shale deposits in New South Wales. These deposits were worked until the end of World War II and proved to be a valuable source of petrol and oil during the war.
With the revival of copper prices after the Depression, Gepp investigated the renewal of copper mining at Moonta in South Australia and Mount Morgan in Queensland. New concentrating mills were established to recover copper from disused mines and dumps. The Mount Morgan mine, which had been closed down after a spectacular success, was re-opened with financial assistance from the Queensland Government and the payment of dividends resumed. Gepp also surveyed the sugar industry and reported comprehensively.
But a new, big task was in the offing -- far bigger than he realised when he undertook it. In the years of the Great Depression the wheat industry had run into serious problems. Low prices had necessitated substantial grants-in-aid (amounting to some £8 million) from the Commonwealth Treasury but, in the absence of adequate information about the industry, the grants were being made in a haphazard, rule-of-thumb manner. The debt position of the industry was terrifying and the position of many wheat farmers desperate.
In February, 1934, the Commonwealth Government decided to appoint a Royal Commission of Inquiry which should embrace not only wheat growing but the associated industries of flour and bread. Gepp was invited to be Chairman. His fellow commissioners were Professor Wadham (now Sir Samuel Wadham), Mr. E.M.P. Sheedy, a Sydney accountant; Mr. T. Cheadle, a member of a large pastoral organisation in South Australia; and Mr. Walter Harper, a leading figure in the Westralian Farmers' Co-operative Society.
The Commission took two years to complete its work, which was of mammoth proportions. Gepp was to write later that when he and his fellow Commissioners set out on their task they had no idea that it would occupy two years of their lives. "As we slowly accumulated our facts with the aid of our scant but expert staff, gathered information with difficulty from various departments of the Commonwealth Government, there dawned upon us the immensity of the problem. For weeks we struggled with masses of figures. We sorted out the infinite variety of results from conditions in various States."
The Commissioners between them went through a large part of the wheat-growing areas of the Commonwealth, collecting data, experience and information. Gepp and Sheedy handled New South Wales and South Australia; Wadham and Harper covered Western Australia, Victoria, the Riverina, and the small wheat-growing area in Queensland; Sheedy went to Tasmania. Five Reports were issued.
Wadham (for whom Gepp conceived a profound admiration) relates that when he accepted the job, various businessmen warned him that "Gepp would lead us up the garden path". He was prepared for anything. Sir Samuel had kindly provided my grandfather with some notes on his experiences with the Commission, from which I quote liberally.
The task was onerous. Nobody really wanted the Commission. The farmers wanted a higher price for wheat; the millers hated the idea of having their accounts investigated; the larger bakers were frightened; the smaller ones didn't understand anything about the economics of making bread and, finally, the well-to-do farmers who had men working wheat areas on shares thought there was no need for an enquiry. As one said, "I grew wheat at 2/4 a bushel last year and it was profitable". What the share farmers thought was not recorded. It had not occurred to him. The bankers were co-operative, nothing more.
Gepp had a positive genius for overcoming opposition. He would get hold of a key man and "play him" until he was on our side; but the big millers could be difficult. Flour milling was a highly competitive game and some of them dealt in wheat as well as milling it; and the price of offals was a continuous bone of contention. Someone suggested we had no power to force the production of data, so Gepp got a special Act passed to give us that power. Eventually everybody co-operated but the tactics were good. If Sydney millers were being difficult, the Commission would go on to bakers or wheat men, and then if the press was being warmed up against us Gepp would switch the enquiry to Melbourne for a month or so. Another achievement was the collection of an effective staff. Apart from two excellent legal men the rest of those supplied by the Commonwealth Public Service Board were not remarkable for their ability. Gepp persuaded Sir Harry Brown, then Director of Posts and Telegraphs, to lend us two splendid accountants; then one or two other good men came, I think from the Taxation Department. The legal men could, of course, write up their sections of reports and some of the others could put figures together and do sums, but when it came to writing the main bulk of the paragraphs the Commissioners had to do the work.
Gepp's idea of writing a section of the reports was interesting. He had a complete grasp of the subject in his mind; the difficulty was to get it on paper. He arranged that three typists should be in readiness. They came in succession for twenty minutes at a time, during which he paced the room and dictated. The result was about 24 pages of MSS, but the trouble was that by the time he had got beyond the half-way mark he had begun to forget what was in the earlier section, so there was a lot of repetition.
Harper and I found the problem of weaving these 24 pages into a single narrative somewhat difficult. We had in the room a number of sheets of three-ply used for putting up maps and diagrams. We turned these round and put Gepp's 24 pages on them in a series. It was then fairly simple to find the repetitions and point them out in coloured pencil. He took it very well and seemed happy at the final result.
Cheadle objected to the section on marketing and said he couldn't sign the report. There was some argument, but as he agreed to everything else it seemed possible to save the situation by a demurrer. But Cheadle wasn't very good at writing things down. So Gepp got hold of a typist, dictated the demurrer, and said, "Look, Tom, I understand your point of view and I think this is what you want to say." Cheadle agreed and we went on to the next business. Surely a unique method for preparing a demurrer.
The unsolved problem was the total debts of the Wheat Industry. We could work it out from our sample, but cross-checking with statements from banks and other institutions gave very different results. The difference was probably due to the difficulty of defining a "wheat grower" precisely; we could fix him as a man who normally grew, say, 50 or more acres of wheat, but in the records of lenders there was no clear definition. It did not matter very much but it annoyed Gepp's tidy mind. He liked to cross-check any set of statistics -- a habit which many agricultural economists would do well to develop.
The Second Report -- on the Wheat Industry -- was the really difficult one. We finished its final draft about 3.30 a.m. one morning and Gepp and one of our senior assistants took it to Canberra on "The Spirit" the following evening. About 10.30 p.m. I got a ring on the 'phone from Gepp at Albury. He had read it through on the train and had come to the conclusion that one particular paragraph was not quite clear; he had an amendment which he read. Did I agree that he should make the change in the document? This was typical of him in a matter for which he alone was not responsible.
He had arranged that I should meet a group of Cabinet Ministers and explain the Report to them. I took all the papers and diagrams and went to the Cabinet Room in the old Commonwealth offices in Parliament Place in Melbourne. About five Ministers -- all now departed from this life -- attended. I did my best to explain how we had "sampled" the wheat farmers and the range of costs which they had -- also how these costs were made up -- and our suggestions as to how they could be assisted to meet the crisis in their industry. I suddenly realized that not one of them knew what I was talking about. Their attitude was -- "the wheat men aren't getting enough for their wheat, whose fault is it?" Any idea of an accurate economic basis on which to measure the assistance to be given to the industry was quite a foreign affair.
I found Gepp easy to work under and very receptive to ideas, if they had any substance. He was "tough" on incompetents. He was generous in his hospitality and often arranged parties for the discussion of problems. I suppose some people would criticise these as attempts at using other people and stealing their ideas, but it never seemed to me that this was his method. He was quite frank in explaining the problems which we were meeting and where we were having difficulties.
I appreciated working with him. I learnt much from him and never felt I was being "led up the garden path".
The work of the Commission was conducted with incredible thoroughness. In the survey of the costs of growing wheat throughout Australia and of the debt position of the farmers, no less than 520 farms were covered. Every wheat-growing district in every State had to be examined in the search for a representative sample of farmers. Masses of evidence were taken. The pressure of work was tremendous and the Commissioners drove themselves to breaking point. Herbert Gepp no doubt enjoyed it all. He was used to working under pressure throughout his life and he couldn't have worked in any other way. But, then, as one of his fellow Commissioners said later, he had a constitution like rubber -- nothing seemed to hurt it. Gepp got to know a lot about the psychology of the farmer and the dry humour which enabled them to persist in times of adversity. He loved to tell the following story of a farmer giving evidence before the Commission:
"Nineteen years ago," the farmer said, "I took up 1,000 acres of green mallee. I have cleared 900 acres with my own hands, and for a number of years I made a profit which enabled me to reduce my debts. The last six years have been disastrous, and I am now practically bankrupt." Gepp expressed the hope that something would turn up to help. He asked the farmer how many children he had. The following dialogue ensued:
"Five, one son and four daughters, aged 21, 19, 17, 15 and then a gap of 8 years to the youngest, who is 7."
"You took a good long rest."
"Yes, sir. Those 8 years were very hard years, cutting mallee shoots."
"Well, I also have one son and four daughters. The son is 28 and the daughters 26, 24 and 22 and then there is a gap of 9 years to the youngest, who is 13".
"That is an interesting parallel, sir. You took a good long rest too."
"Yes."
"With great respect, sir, may I suggest you must have been on a Royal Commission."
What was the achievement of the Commission? It made an immense number of recommendations on the three industries which it covered. For political or other reasons many were disregarded -- particularly those concerned with the flour and bread industries.
Perhaps the best assessment of the work of the Commission on the wheat industry was made by Professor L.F. Giblin. He wrote, "... the achievement of the Commission has been remarkable. We have for the first time a competent and judicious investigation of the whole wheat industry, the presentation of the data necessary for an understanding of its economic position, illuminating expositions of many of the secondary problems relating to the industry and a carefully thought out long-term plan for putting the industry on a sound, permanent basis. In these days of temporary expedients and short-term palliatives that can lead only to long-term disasters, this presentation by a considered and realistic policy for the future deserves the gratitude and demands the close attention of Governments and people alike. It is unfortunate that it does not appear to be getting either".
Gepp's experience with Royal Commissions led him to form his theory of "the period of gestation of an idea". The minimum period he used to say was ten years. In September, 1945, he received a visit from the President of the Melbourne and Suburban Master Bakers' Association. This gentleman said that as a result of the experience of the bread industry during the war he had come to the conclusion that the recommendations made by the Royal Commission should be implemented, and he asked Gepp's support for an approach to the Victorian Government for the introduction of appropriate legislation. Gepp could not refrain from remarking that it had taken a world war to make the bakers realise the importance of the highest standards of quality and cleanliness.
Soon Gepp was to return to private industry. For some years he had had associations with a long-established but comparatively small paper manufacturing company, Australian Paper Manufacturers. Several people connected with the company, particularly the Chairman of the Board, Sir Hugh Denison, a prominent Sydney newspaper proprietor and businessman, had visions of developing A.P.M. into a large national enterprise. Australia was emerging from the depression and business prospects were improving. Gepp was invited to accept a seat on the board as Technical Director. But Sir Hugh wanted him to go further and become Managing Director of the company, devoting his full time to the company's interests. Here was the fascination of a new field full of challenging problems. Some years before, when Chairman of the D. & M. Commission, Gepp had advocated the use of native hardwood eucalypts in the manufacture of paper pulp and had issued a report in conjunction with a leading scientist in this field, I.H. Boas. Now he had the opportunity to turn his dreams into reality.
But he did not entirely sever his connection with the Commonwealth Government. During his work with the D. & M. Commission he had become interested in the use of the new methods of geophysical prospecting for the discovery of mineral resources. In 1928, at his persuasion, the British Government, in conjunction with the Commonwealth Government, agreed to finance the Imperial Geophysical Experimental Survey. This Survey did some excellent work on the brown coal fields of Victoria, the copper-nickel fields of Tasmania and the graphite deposits of South Australia. In 1932, the Queensland Government had approached the Commonwealth Government for Gepp's services in connection with the reopening of the Mount Morgan mine and also for the carrying out of a survey of the Cloncurry copper field. These investigations apparently caused Gepp to conceive of the idea of a broad survey of the whole vast region of North Australia to assess the possibilities of mineral development. The survey would use the latest scientific geological and geophysical methods and co-opt the R.A.A.F. for aerial mapping and transport of survey officers.
In 1934, Gepp's persistence led to the formation of an organisation called The North Australia Aerial Geological and Geophysical Survey, financed jointly by the Governments of the Commonwealth, Queensland and Western Australia. Gepp was appointed Director of the Survey and Chairman of the Technical Committee, comprised of the heads of State Mines' Departments and chief government geologists.
Over a period of some years the Survey was able to cover a large area and report the existence of mineral bodies of considerable extent -- iron, gold, copper, tin, silver, lead and zinc, tungsten, tantalite, chromite and cobalt. The Peko copper field is an interesting indirect result of the work of the Survey. At the request of the South Australian Government, Gepp agreed that the resources of the Survey should be used to investigate the brown coal deposits of that State.
An offshoot of the magnetic readings made by the Survey was the production during World War II of army maps showing the difference between true North and magnetic North. The extensive and systematic aerial photography carried out by the Survey, leading to the compilation of geological maps, was the first of its kind in Australia.
At that time oil search was under the supervision of an oil advisory committee responsible to the Minister for Development, Senator McLachlan. But the committee was short of funds. Although the search for oil did not fall within the province of the Survey, Gepp intervened and on his recommendation half a million pounds was made available for oil drilling.
The North Australia Aerial Geological and Geophysical Survey did not achieve spectacular discoveries of fabulous mineral wealth of the kind which have been made in the years since World War II. The rich copper deposits at Mt. Isa, the immense reserves of bauxite in the Cape York Peninsula, the staggeringly vast deposits of iron ore in Western Australia have transformed the long-term economic prospect of the Commonwealth and have in turn given a tremendous impetus to the search for mineral riches in the remote areas of the Continent. But the work of the organisation, of which Gepp was the father, might fairly be regarded as the beginning of a systematic approach, using the methods and instruments of science, to the exploration of the mineral possibilities of the Australian outback.
In earlier years, mineral discoveries had been the result of fortuitous accident rather than planned design -- the outstanding example being the rich mineral lodes at Broken Hill, to the commercial exploitation of which Gepp himself had contributed notably. Gepp fully realised that the Survey (whose resources were severely limited) would need a miraculous stroke of good luck to uncover readily usable mineral deposits of major extent. He rightly regarded it as, in a sense, introductory and as the first stirrings of a development which in years to come would grow into a great national enterprise; large-scale private organisations, with ample financial and scientific resources at their disposal, would participate in a sustained and systematic search for the riches lying on or beneath the surface of the little-known interior of the Australian land-mass.
Of the Survey, Gepp wrote, "Northern Australia must be kept under continual review if the most is to be made of its natural wealth. We must keep a card index that the world may refer to ... If Australia does not put into practice this policy of continual review she will be undoubtedly challenged at the bar of world opinion ... Courage, even audacity, in vision and action is essential to give these considerable possibilities every chance of being converted into economic realities. Whatever may be the craven fears of some, there is every justification for a long-distance programme of great-hearted development of these distant and difficult provinces of the Commonwealth".
Not the sort of Director to sit in an office and leave all the field work to his geologists and geophysicists, Gepp had to see for himself and he made a number of flights through the remote northern regions of the Continent.
On one of these flights in 1937, his plane, because of a navigational error, caused partly by poor visibility due to heavy smoke from grass fires on the ground, was forced to land in Central Australia about 400 miles from Tennant's Creek and 300 from Alice Springs. He and his party were discovered two days later, but it took another eight days before a land rescue party could reach the stranded plane. The forced landing was effected close to a small brackish lake in the proximity of Lake Mackay, a huge dry white expanse. Fortunately Gepp and his colleagues were able to sustain themselves in reasonable comfort by improvising a small distillation plant, using a two-gallon petrol tin for a boiler, two lengths of half-inch flexible metal tube which had been used as a means of communication in the plane between the pilot and the photographer, and the rubber mouthpiece of the speaking tube. The plant produced one gallon of pure water every two hours. The party were also able to add to their meagre provisions by shooting eight ducks out of the 13 estimated to occupy the waterhole -- which they called "Lake Rapide" after the aeroplane.
HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE PAPER INDUSTRY
Gepp's association with Australian Paper Manufacturers was to mark his last major contribution to Australian industrial development. He became Managing Director of the company in 1936 when he was just on 60 years of age. He resigned from the Board in the late 1940's. In that time the company was to grow from comparatively modest proportions with a payroll of 1,000 employees to a major national enterprise with over 5,000 employees and the foundations for the tremendous expansion of the industry in recent years were to be laid.
Among many important developments during Gepp's administration, the most significant was the large-scale commercial manufacture of the basic raw material of the industry, wood pulp, from Australian eucalypts. His work here was to parallel his earlier contributions to the zinc industry.
When he joined the company, he was by no means devoid of knowledge of the technicalities of paper manufacture. A year or two previously (in his capacity as Consultant on Development to the Commonwealth Government) he had prepared a report, in conjunction with the noted chemist, I.H. Boas, on the possibilities of establishing a paper industry in Tasmania based on the use of hardwood pulps. Some members of the A.P.M. board felt also that Gepp's rather unique experience in the application of scientific research to industry and his wide knowledge of industrial processes (in explosives, fertilizers, acids and metallurgy) were what the paper industry required.
For many years it was believed that Australian native hardwoods were unsuitable for the manufacture of paper. The process of paper manufacture consists essentially of separating the fibre content from the other components of the wood and then "matting" the fibres together so as to form a smooth sheet. The fibres of the eucalypt had one major drawback for this purpose; they were roughly only one-third the length of the softwood fibres which were used for making paper pulp in the main paper manufacturing countries abroad. Many years of scientific experimental work of trial and error and commercial testing preceded the successful establishment of the eucalypt pulping processes which are now used by the three large divisions of the industry in Australia -- the newsprint plant of Australian Newsprint Mills at Boyer in Tasmania, the manufacture of fine writing and printing papers by Associated Pulp and Paper Mills at Burnie in Tasmania, and the production of wrapping paper and paper-board by Australian Paper Manufacturers at their various plants spread throughout Australia. Before the manufacture of wood pulp from native timbers, the Australian paper industry was almost wholly dependent on imported raw materials. Success in making suitable pulps from short-fibred eucalypts was therefore a "break-through" which transformed the industry into one of Australia's greatest manufacturing developments.
Preliminary scientific research was begun as far back as 1915. In the early 1920's, further investigations were sponsored by the Commonwealth Bureau of Science and Industry -- later to be succeeded by the C.S.I.R. A number of scientists made outstanding contributions to these research developments, among whom are the names of Boas, Benjamin, Somerville, Jeffreys and Cohen.
In 1932, Australian Paper Manufacturers, at the suggestion of one of its top technical men, Mr. H. Helin, began to give attention to the commercial possibilities. The project was one after Gepp's own .heart.
Not long after he assumed the managing directorship of Australian Paper Manufacturers, he established a pilot mill (following his experience in the metal industries) at Maryvale near Morwell in Gippsland. This small mill produced about 10 tons a day of eucalypt pulps which were extensively tested over a period on the various paper and board machines of the company. The results were promising and a decision was made to embark upon the erection of a full-scale pulp mill to produce 90 tons a day. (The capacity of the Maryvale mill has since been progressively enlarged. Today it is producing over 300 tons a day.) Fortunately for Australia, the mill was completed a few weeks before the outbreak of World War II, and the possibility of a dangerous shortage of essential paper products was averted.
A year later, at Gepp's instigation, a modern paper machine was installed at a cost of £1 million on the site of the pulp mill.
These important developments did not always proceed smoothly. It was war-time and Gepp was to experience again the frustrating shortages of materials that had delayed construction of the electrolytic zinc project a quarter of a century earlier. When the paper machine was ready to start production, the power plant was still far from complete. This meant that there was no steam available for the machine's dryers. What was to be done? Gepp could not countenance the costly machine lying idle and any way its products were needed for the war effort. He bought half a dozen old disused railway engines, installed them alongside the paper mill, fired them with briquettes and piped the steam to the machine's drying cylinders. His ingenuity paid off; the strange improvisation functioned satisfactorily for some months until the main boiler plant came into operation.
Technical difficulties inevitably arose from time to time and there was one particular incident which gave great amusement to the senior members of the company, and not least to the Managing Director himself.
A machine at the pulp mill was giving trouble. The best efforts of the management and engineers on the spot were not sufficient to persuade it back to the path of virtue. Gepp, at Head Office in Melbourne, was not in good humour. He called for his car and said he would go to Gippsland himself and do what others apparently couldn't do. On arrival, he donned overalls and crawled into the bowels of the machine. My grandfather cannot recall whether it responded to his blandishments. But he emerged from the machine, so the story goes, with his face and hands smeared liberally with oil and grease. As he left the building he came upon a man digging a ditch for a drain. He stopped and asked him what the hole was for. The man raised his head slowly, looked at Sir Herbert, somewhat the worse for wear, and said, "You'd better get about your own b----- business, mate, that fellow Gepp's up here today and they tell me he can be a regular b------".
Notwithstanding the commercial development by A.P.M. of the manufacture of wood pulp from local timbers, during the war the Australian paper companies still needed large quantities of overseas pulps. At the request of the Commonwealth Government, Gepp undertook to explore the possibilities of procuring pulp in North America under the Lend Lease provisions. Gepp's visit to the United States was successful; the arrangements he made were as beneficial to the other paper companies as they were to his own.
Gepp made another important contribution to the production of paper pulp in Australia. He initiated the planting of "Pinus radiata" trees close to the Maryvale mill to provide softwood pulps. A subsidiary company of A.P.M., A.P.M. Forests, now administers large plantations of pines throughout Gippsland.
During his administration, the company multiplied its capacity for the production of paper and cardboard at its main mills in Victoria and New South Wales. A notable addition was a huge cardboard machine -- the largest in the Southern Hemisphere -- at the Botany plant.
Another asset he brought to A.P.M. was the Maddingley brown coal mine at Bacchus Marsh. The initial output of the mine was no more than 300 tons a week, but it now supplies thousands of tons of coal a week to the A.P.M. mills and to other industries. Although the A.P.M. mill at Petrie (near Brisbane) was not started until long after Gepp had left the board, it was his recommendation that the company should build a mill in Queensland.
Every phase of the company's activities was overhauled during his period as Managing Director. A large research department was introduced, methods of financial control of operations were reorganised from top to bottom, and industrial relations were put on a new basis. Perhaps the man closest to Gepp during his work with A.P.M. was the General Manager of the company, Mr. W.G. Purdie. He accompanied the Managing Director on one of his frequent trips to America and his following observation on the trip is of interest.
Sir Herbert was very popular with the Americans as he was a past master as a story teller. Most of the hotels at which he stayed had central heating and Sir Herbert believed in having plenty of fresh air. It was not unusual to see Sir Herbert pacing the room with a window wide open, dictating to Miss Carey (an American acting as Sir Herbert's secretary) who would be sitting wrapped up in a fur coat! The liking between Sir Herbert and the Americans was mutual. While we were there he addressed Paper Trade Technical Societies, Rotary Clubs, and in Washington he addressed a meeting of United States Senators.
Although to most of us associated with him in these years, which covered the period of World War II, it appeared that Gepp had more than a full-time job in the development of a major industrial enterprise, at times he seemed restless and dissatisfied. A.P.M. was, it is true, a highly essential industry, but he felt that his knowledge and experience could be put to greater direct use in the organisation of the nation's war effort. Eventually he accepted an appointment as Chairman of the Commonwealth Cargo Control Committee, a special war-time body set up to achieve a more rapid turn-round of ships through more efficient organisation of work on the wharves.
This was not, for him, a happy assignment. The task, although important, was peculiarly frustrating and not entirely suited to a man of his individualistic temperament. Many authorities were involved and he was subject to interference from Commonwealth Ministers, the Customs Department and port officials. The unions had to be wooed and placated and the shipping companies persuaded into novel courses of action. Also he gave the impression of regarding the task as still too remote from the centre of activities of the national war effort and the appointment as one carrying insufficient prestige. The frustrations caused him to become obstinate and he frequently rejected advice from people who were life-long friends and associates and often experts in their line.
An instance was the building of special lighters -- known as Ammco lighters -- with green wood and large steel cylinders. Their buoyancy made them unstable and consequently unsuited for the task for which they were designed. Gepp was advised not to proceed with this project, but a considerable number were constructed under the authority of the Cargo Control Committee at heavy expense. They were sent to ports in the north of Australia and were apparently of little value. Years later, a senior staff member of the Cargo Committee, Mr. C.J. Campbell, saw several of the cylinders used in the construction of the lighters rusting off Magnetic Island. They had been given the name of "Gepp's Folly".
The Cargo Control Committee, in certain directions, did useful work, but there was little doubt that Gepp was disappointed with the role he was compelled to play in World War II. It seemed strange that a nation in the throes of a life-and-death struggle could not have found ways for using his rare capabilities to its own considerable advantage.
EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
Herbert Gepp was not the type of man to confine himself exclusively to the main job he was engaged on at the time. It was not only that one task, big though it might be in itself, was not enough; he was driven by a deep conception of national service and he was anxious to contribute to the progress of his country in as many directions as he could. No matter how great the pressure of work, he seldom refused an invitation to give a paper or an address. In the years that my grandfather was with him at Australian Paper Manufacturers this work consumed a great deal of his time, sometimes to the dismay of senior executives of the company who could not always gain immediate entrance to his office to obtain decisions on what they regarded as urgent matters. A selection of his speeches and papers, most of them delivered over a period of about ten years, was published in two books. (4)
He was always keenly interested in any national movement or enterprise that he thought would be for the ultimate good of Australia and it is astonishing how many institutions which are now an established part of Australian life owe their existence partly to his efforts.
He was member of the Executive Advisory Council which led to the formation of the Bureau of Science and Industry founded by the Hughes Government in 1915. This was the forerunner of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research -- now the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. He was a foundation member of the Australian Chemical Institute.
Along with several other business leaders he took a prominent part in the formation of the Institute of Industrial Management in Victoria, later to become the Australian Institute of Management.
When this project began to be considered in the early nineteen forties, he arranged meetings of leading businessmen and other interested people at his flat at Cliveden Mansions in East Melbourne.
These initial meetings were attended by businessmen such as Sir John Storey, Malcolm Moore, Marshall Eady and Ray G. Baxter. Walter Rose, of the Commonwealth Tariff Board, also participated. E.P. Eltham, Chief Inspector of Technical Schools; and Frank Ellis, Principal of the then Melbourne Technical College, were also present as the students of the newly formed foremanship classes at this college played an important role in the founding of the Institute.
Out of these meetings grew the decision to proceed with the establishment of an organisation designed to raise the standards of management of Australian business. It was decided to approach prominent industrial companies to provide the finance for the Institute of Management. When this matter came before the Board of Directors of Australian Paper Manufacturers, the Chairman of the Board pointed out that the letter requesting support was an approach to Sir Herbert himself in a personal sense. Gepp replied, "That is correct, but I have already given £100 out of my own pocket and as this new society will ultimately be to the benefit of all the leading industrial companies I propose that our own company should make a subscription". The Board agreed that Mr. C.S. Booth, who was at that time an executive director of A.P.M. and who later succeeded Gepp as Managing Director, should look into the matter and report back to the Board. Mr. Booth recommended a donation of £500 from the company and this recommendation was accepted.
Gepp played a very significant part in the train of events that led to the formation of the Australian Institute for Public Policy. In the years around the end of World War II the "public image" (to use the current jargon) of business, and particularly big business, was not flattering. This was partly caused by a mounting tide of criticism from quarters politically hostile to business and from some academic circles. Big business enterprises were becoming increasingly interested in the new vogue of "public relations". A main purpose was to give the public a better knowledge of the activities of large companies and of the contributions they made to the national interest in conditions both of war and peace.
Always to the fore in novel developments, Gepp decided to look closely into the matter so far as his own company, A.P.M., was concerned. He delegated the task to my grandfather. After reflection he came to the conclusion that public hostility to big business had its roots mainly in politics, and that this antagonism was directed not so much at individual organisations as against the system of private enterprise in general. While he believed that individual companies could do valuable work in informing the public of their own particular contributions to the national welfare, he urged that the main attack on the problem should be on a broader basis designed to make clear the contributions of private enterprise as a whole to economic progress and to better living standards for all.
Gepp became interested in this conception. A number of other businessmen were beginning to think along the same lines and various discussions were being held on the possibility of doing something to meet the problem.
At a meeting of the Council of the Victorian Chamber of Manufactures it was decided that the prospects of forming a new organisation should be explored. Gepp recommended that as a preliminary step someone should be engaged to prepare a report outlining the elements of the problem and setting out a constitution for the proposed organisation. On his suggestion the Chamber of Manufactures invited me to undertake this task. Although much water was yet to flow under the bridge, it was from these initial currents that the Australian Institute for Public Policy, with Sir George Coles as its first President, eventually evolved.
GEPP'S CHARACTER
Perhaps the most interesting thing about a man is not what he does but what he is. After allowance is made for the inescapable element of luck in human affairs, accomplishment is largely determined by attributes of character, mind and personality.
Considered in terms of sheer volume, Gepp's achievement was remarkable. But more remarkable was its wide-ranging diversity. He was both industrial organiser and industrial statesman -- the two are not always coupled together; he not only built industries, but helped notably in the establishment of institutions which have become an important part of present-day Australia; he was both thinker and doer, dreamer and man of action; he had a deep love for research for its own sake and also a genius for translating the results of research into concrete terms; he was the rare example of the man initially trained in the physical sciences who came to see the ultimate supremacy of humane studies, a scientist not only of matter but also of man.
What kind of man was he? What were the qualities that enabled him to do so much in so many different directions?
It is of significance that Gepp and Massy-Greene, although unlike in so many ways, had two things in common. The first was the vast expanse of their knowledge and interests. They were much more than just businessmen in the narrow sense. I doubt whether any two Australians have known more about their own country. This was partly because both had had an experience which in nature and breadth would have been difficult to rival.
The second similarity was that their one interest in life was work. They were never bored by work; they were bored only by its absence. Although constantly occupied with big responsibilities, they were never too busy to do everything they were asked. I can't imagine either Gepp or Massy-Greene ever pleading "pressure of work" as an excuse for putting something off, or refusing an invitation to assist with some cause or other. They both seemed to have time for everything.
It was this attitude to life -- not necessarily entirely commendable -- that helped them to achieve so much. In Gepp's case at any rate, achievement was aided by the fact that he had amazing reserves of vitality. He could keep going hour after hour, every night and most week-ends. He apparently believed in the admonition of the old hymn: "Give to each flying minute, something to keep in store". Early in life he had acquired the habit of making the utmost use of his energies: My grandfather felt he constantly pushed himself close to the frontiers of physical and mental exhaustion without ever going over them.
He was greatly helped by the fact that he could fall asleep, at almost any time of the day, within a matter of minutes. During one hectic period he and one of his senior assistants worked night after night well into the small hours. One night they stopped at 12:30. First thing the following morning Gepp rang for his assistant. But this gentleman was "browned off". He boldly ventured to suggest that they would both work much better if they could get six or seven hours of real sleep a night. Gepp was surprised: "What do you mean?" he said. "I had a good six hours last night; I was in bed just before 1, asleep by 1, and woke at 7."
His secretary for many years, Mrs. Garrett, relates that at lunchtime he would frequently go to sleep for ten or fifteen minutes and would awake refreshed and ready to tackle the remainder of the day. But she used to wonder whether he really relaxed even when asleep. Often after a brief nap he would immediately start dictating on some complex matter, without error or alteration, even to the point of stipulating punctuation marks. Perhaps his subconscious mind had been active while his body was resting. He seemed rarely to sit down in his office. When one entered his room, he would invariably be pacing up and down like a lion in a cage. Mrs. Garrett believes he must have covered miles in this way every day, considering and discussing his problems and dictating reports and memoranda.
His vitality was of the kind that could encompass a great number of complex and unrelated matters at the same time. Many of us are harassed if we have too many problems to cope with simultaneously. But Gepp had the facility for shutting one difficult matter out of his mind and turning, without strain, to embrace another. His intellect was not only penetrating, but robust.
He never enjoyed the normal relaxations common to 999 men out of a 1000. Occasionally he played a few holes of golf -- not very well (he was a left-hander with a magnificent slice) -- but he seemed to have only half his mind on the game. The other half was flitting over his business and other problems. Those who played with him sensed his impatience to get back to matters he considered more worthy of his attention.
His preoccupation with work throughout his life made him extraordinarly forgetful about ordinary matters. There was an amusing incident at Broken Hill. He and his wife were invited to an evening at the home of one of the senior Broken Hill executives. Gepp drove to the party, a distance of some miles -- transport in those days was by horse and buggy. During the evening he became bored and decided to slip away. He drove off in his horse and buggy, but did not realise until arriving home that he had left his wife behind. Later in life, when attending meetings at night in Melbourne, he would not infrequently forget about the car he had parked and return home by train or tram.
The smaller recreations and pastimes that interest most of us had little appeal for Gepp. When in Sydney on business, he frequently stayed at the Royal Sydney Golf Club. The attraction was not golf but the prospect of a quiet night's rest in pleasant surroundings away from the noises of the city. Apparently it was an unwritten law at the club that business or "shop" should not be discussed over dinner. You could see him visibly chafing under this "restriction". He would try to play his part in the banter and light conversation of the dinner table but his efforts were not infrequently heavy-handed and unconvincing. This kind of thing was simply foreign to his nature.
On one occasion during the spring racing season in Sydney, the form of the horses, the prospects, the betting possibilities happened to be the main topics of discussion over dinner. Of these things he knew nothing and cared less. But he could not bear to be out of the conversation and he made several unsuccessful attempts to divert it into channels with which he had some familiarity. Finally he could contain himself no longer; he voiced his inability to comprehend how people could find so much interest in such a trivial pastime. This naturally produced a stony, uncomfortable silence at the dinner table.
Gepp was not the "Homburg-hatted" type of big businessman. My grandfather hardly ever saw him wearing a hat at all and he must have been a pioneer of the modern "no hat" brigade. This was curiously indicative of his personality; he bore little resemblance to the conventional conception of a rich business tycoon.
He was criticised -- quite fairly -- by many as being over-addicted to "showmanship". This tendency often arises from some feeling of inner insecurity, of being disregarded, passed over. The small boy likes to "show-off" because he wants to attract attention to himself. It is a way of self-expression, satisfying to the "ego". In this one respect Gepp perhaps never completely grew up. The characteristic is not unusual in prominent men; the greatest of all, Sir Winston Churchill, had his fair share of it.
Gepp undoubtedly liked to draw attention to himself. He would walk up and down a railway station in the last few minutes of waiting for the departure of an interstate express dictating at high speed to his secretary. I remember once he kept an interstate liner waiting for ten or so minutes after its scheduled time of sailing. The gangway was kept down for the great man's arrival, which he managed to make as dramatic as possible.
He affected at times strange modes of dress, and often refused to conform to prevailing conventions. One hot day in Sydney he arrived for breakfast in the dining room of a prominent club with an open-necked shirt, emphasised by the collar being flattened against the lapels of his coat exhibiting a fair expanse of neck. This was no doubt flagrantly against the rules of the club, but he was undismayed by, indeed he enjoyed, the horrified glances of other members. Not satisfied, he launched into a long dissertation at the table about the unsuitability of much of our clothing customs and the absurdity of wearing tight collars and ties in the height of summer. As far as he was concerned, he said, he intended to put commonsense and comfort first. But having asserted his independence and individuality, it was as likely as not that the following day would see him back in the arms of convention. In spite of his seriousness, there was an impish trait lurking somewhere in the recesses of his personality.
A man of Gepp's quality had no need of mannerisms and affectations of this kind. They added nothing to his stature; indeed they subtracted something from it in the eyes of others and frequently led him to be misunderstood.
He was egotistical, not in the sense that he thought too much of himself, but because he was inclined to self-centredness. His "ego" had to be constantly fed and he basked happily in the sunlight of praise and attention. Again, this was indicative of self-doubt rather than of personal arrogance. Indeed, in some ways he greatly undervalued himself and my grandfather was convinced -- although perhaps not many would be -- that he had a strong strain of humility in his make-up.
Herbert Gepp was restless by nature, never satisfied, always seeking improvement. Policies were hardly laid down and put into effect when he would want them reviewed. He thought there must be a better way of doing things somewhere round the corner and he kept up an unending search for it. He was always looking for "the new idea" and he was usually prepared to give an idea a "run for its money". The people he liked most to be with were those with imagination who could be expected to feed him with novel thoughts. He built up something of a reputation for "stealing other people's brains". Seldom can a reputation have been so undeserved. It seemed to imply that his own supply of grey matter was limited. In fact his native mental resources were immense and my grandfather doubted whether he had met anyone whom he would regard as Gepp's superior in this respect. Certainly, in working for him, I never felt that he was robbing me of ideas for his own personal prestige and advantage. He used ideas, certainly, that were not his own, and no doubt if they were good ones he got credit for them: but my grandfather and many others must have felt that they were getting from him far more than they were giving.
In any case, Gepp himself probably gave birth to more ideas than the rest of his staff put together. One of his associates once said that he had three unique ideas every day of which one was a winner and the other two would have wrecked the company.
He loved to play with amusing but apparently fantastic conceptions. For instance, he liked to visualise the cow as a machine for turning grass into milk. "But," he would say, "why put the grass through the cow?" My grandfather had visions of suburban families on their lawns munching away at the grass. But no doubt Gepp was thinking -- not entirely facetiously -- of the possibility of some other means than the cow for treating the grass to put it in a form suitable for human consumption. (Quote from "The Economist" of London, April 25, 1964 -- "In England at last a real factory farm seems to be under way, in the form of an experimental device that turns any sort of green-stuff into milk. Although in its initial stages the product is not exactly delicious and costs about twice as much as cow's milk, a fascinating prospect is opened up by the news that the machine is four times as efficient in converting cheap fodder into milk as a cow.")
His intellect had not perhaps been cultivated to its highest potential pitch. He suffered, particularly in certain directions, from the fact that he had never had the advantage of an advanced formal education. His mind lacked something of the precision and tidiness and logical grasp that are often imparted by higher education. But perhaps it was as well. People whose intellects have been drilled and trained, cultivated to the nth degree, not infrequently lose something in the process. There often occurs an over-refinement, a loss of natural mental robustness and flexibility. Gepp retained throughout his life an immense native intellectual vigour; the soil of his mind remained rich and fertile, refreshed and re-activated on occasions by the humus of other people's thoughts.
Although he played the leading part in the establishment and development of several of the great basic industries of Australia, in the modern sense of the term he would not be regarded as a good "organisation man". He had methods of working which were peculiarly his own. These disobeyed most of the accepted rules of industrial organisation. This did not mean that he was not fully aware of the text-book principles. In fact he probably knew at least as much about them as anyone else and certainly more than most. He was fascinated by organisation charts. He delighted to talk about them in speeches and lectures, and had them drawn up and pinned to the walls in prominent places in the enterprises with which he was concerned. He knew all about delegation of responsibility and never hesitated to stress its importance.
But his practices departed a long way from his precepts. He found it difficult to delegate and he frequently cut across the chain of responsibility defined in the charts which he had inspired. My grandfather remembered him once laying down as a rule that the top man of an industrial enterprise should have no more than five people reporting directly to him. Gepp, when my grandfather knew him, seemed to have nearer fifty.
Many senior executives who worked close to him lived in a world of uncertainty. They were never quite sure whether they were exceeding the authority he would wish them to exercise or, at other times, were leaving undone things he would expect them to do. As a consequence they were often on tenterhooks and in a state of some indecision. Not surprisingly, some of them didn't find this kind of life to their taste and were frequently critical of him.
I doubt whether anyone else could have used his methods and succeeded. They were strictly not for export. The fuel which provided the motive power for driving the enterprises which he led was a blend of his high-octane mind and his powerful personality. The machinery of his organisation was usually far from perfect, cluttered up with bits and pieces, over-complicated, but he seemed to be blind to its manifest deficiencies. An ordinary man could not have made it work at all. But then Gepp was no ordinary man, and his "Heath-Robinson" type of organisation responded, not without dangerous frictions, to the energies, the uncanny abilities, and the will and determination of the man at the wheel. Even so, there is no doubt that he could have achieved even much more than he did if he had followed more orthodox methods of organisation.
The point was that he was not content to be merely managing director; he also wanted to be his own departmental head and personally direct the numerous sections that comprise a great industrial company -- production, finance, sales, engineering, research and development, industrial relations and all the rest. Of course, this was not humanly possible, even for him, and often made for confused working. Projects were delayed and sometimes even routine work was held up until he could find time to turn his mind to it. On the other hand, his close day-by-day interest in his various departments and his knowledge of their detail problems certainly served to keep his senior executive staff on their toes and often to inspire them to do better than they might normally have done.
There was an incident connected with the Botany mill of Australian Paper Manufacturers which illustrates Gepp's highly individual methods of working. On the day before an Easter break, word was received in Melbourne that the mill could not start up after Easter because its water supplies, which were drawn from underground sources, would not be sufficient.
In Melbourne, Gepp, with his large head thrust belligerently forward, strode up and down his office (which was then the board room) in typical fashion, contemplating the problem. He called for the Chief Engineer of the company and asked him if he had a solution which would serve temporarily until more water could be obtained from the underground resources in that area. The Chief Engineer, who had had little time to consider the matter, not unexpectedly said "No!" Gepp then called for another senior technical man and put the same question to him. His answer was "No!" Gepp rang for the head of the Research Department. The reply was the same. One by one the senior officials of the company were called to the presence, but no constructive proposal emerged.
Eventually some twenty people were sitting in the Managing Director's room with Gepp himself striding round and round the large table in the middle. Prolonged discussions then started; ideas were tossed back and forward. The morning wore on. He called for sandwiches to be sent to the office. Discussions continued into the afternoon. Afternoon tea was served, but a solution to the problem had still to be found. An evening meal was ordered; the search persisted without respite. Throughout the long hours Gepp continued his peregrinations, minus his shoes to ease the strain on his feet. Good Friday arrived. At 12:30 in the morning, seeming as vigorous and fresh as ever, he surveyed his exhausted advisers and said solicitously, "Gentlemen, I think you look a little tired. You'd better go home". Those who had made arrangements to go away for Easter were asked to leave their addresses.
Easter Monday dawned and Gepp had still to find the answer to the problem. He rounded up as many of his twenty or so advisers as he could locate and discussions recommenced.
Finally it was decided to approach the Davis Gelatine Company, which had a plant at Botany, for permission to tap its water supplies. Approval was given, a temporary pipeline was set up and the A.P.M. mill recommenced operations on schedule. It is not clear whether the idea came from Gepp or from one of his staff.
The problem which formed the "raison d'etre" of the conference served, in part, as an "excuse" for getting his senior men together and Gepp would seize the opportunity to ventilate a whole host of matters, most of which bore no relation to the subject before the meeting.
This was Gepp's idea of living -- there is no doubt he would enjoy it thoroughly. But his staff, with their Easter holidays disorganised, may have had a rather different view.
One administrative failing was his over-fondness for paper work. An enormous mass of memoranda and reports always seemed to be circulating around his office. He somehow found the energy to read most of them, but valuable time was consumed by those who were encouraged to prepare them. He wanted to keep in touch with everything that was going on -- often unnecessarily -- and this was one way of doing it.
He insisted on lengthy, detailed reports every month from the heads of the various departments and he studied them with care, probing for weaknesses. Not long after he had appointed my grandfather as a personal assistant (at Australian Paper Manufacturers) he can remember reading to Gepp the monthly sectional reports. This was on a Saturday morning on board a ship travelling from Melbourne to Sydney. He sat back in his chair with his eyes closed, concentrating on every word, while my grandfather read on and on over a period of three to four hours. This was his idea of an ideal week-end -- two or three days on a ship, an occasional game of deck tennis in the bracing sea air, and hours and hours of work often extending well into the night. It was a fascinating and instructive experience for a young man if he had the constitution to stay the course. He was not easy to work with. He made tremendous and often inconsiderate demands on his staff and his moods were unpredictable. One would be on top of the world one day, only to find that next morning he had been relegated to the bottom of the ladder because of some minor indiscretion. All this was very trying. But few of them, and particularly the younger ones, would have changed it for anything. Life, although uncertain, was full of excitement, and the more astute knew that they were getting an experience that was priceless.
Gepp's methods of administration, which entailed a considerable centralisation of responsibility, compelled him to build up an unusually large staff of personal assistants to help him with the veritable flood of work that passed through his office. These assistants were often youngish men with distinguished university careers behind them in science, engineering, law and economics. This was Gepp's personal "brains trust". It helped to relieve, but did not solve, the inevitable congestion of work which kept banking up in his office. Needless to say, it was not a popular set-up with senior departmental heads, who often felt, not without reason, that young, inexperienced men with the ear of the Managing Director were exercising an oversight on their work.
Gepp had a genuine interest in younger men. He was far-sighted. He knew that the future rested with them and he went to unusual pains to give them the widest possible experience. His assistants were often brought in on problems that were far removed from their own particular specialism. The point was that he valued their opinions as the products of intelligent, trained minds. He did not necessarily accept them. He hoped, no doubt, that their ideas would throw some new light on a problem, open up unusual paths of thought. He loved to mix up diverse intellectual backgrounds and different casts of mind in attacking complex issues. And he had the capacity -- common I think to most leaders of men -- for making his subordinates feel that they were engaged upon the most important thing in the world at that particular moment.
It was all highly stimulating and novel. Life was the opposite of the dull and the routine. To work with him was a privilege and an education worth all the stress and worry. Somehow one brought out the best in oneself and, in the process, fitted one's mind to cope with bigger and more complex problems and responsibilities.
He brought nearer to completion an education that the university had only begun. One of the greatest of good fortunes that can be given to any young man is to work in close, personal association with an older man of unusual gifts and powers of thought and of wide-ranging interests and experience. This was the fortunate lot of those who worked under Herbert Gepp. Some no doubt benefited more than others, but none could fail to derive great personal advantage.
The volume of work which banked up and finally passed through his office was by no means all concerned with company administration. His youthful assistants found themselves engaged on all kinds of strange tasks. My grandfather remembered once conducting some intensive research into the reasons for the absence of dental caries among certain native tribes. By some oversight, the subject had not been included in his university economics course.
He had an insatiable curiosity about all aspects of Australian and world affairs. He read as much as limited time permitted and got others to read for him. He seldom refused an invitation to speak or to give a lecture to some learned society. He devoted immense pains to the preparation of these papers. Indeed, in the six or seven years when my grandfather was with him there was hardly a time when some speech or article, or lengthy, more or less erudite paper was not in course of preparation. It was the task of his young assistants to write the first drafts after he had given them a general outline of his own ideas. They laboured days and sometimes weeks in the preparatory work which he then subjected to the closest personal scrutiny. He was never satisfied and more and more drafts came off the typewriters. The final product always suffered from the defect of being too diffuse, over-loaded with thoughts and facts not always strictly relevant to the central subject. One thought led to another and he could not resist the temptation to try to cram them all in. His listeners must have often been bewildered. They could not hope to digest the vast mass of material he had prepared for their consumption.
Moreover, he was not a good or an easy speaker. He seldom departed from his written draft and, surprisingly, he lacked confidence on the public platform. Though he spoke frequently, public speaking was always an ordeal to him and those around him suffered from his irritability in the hours preceding the delivery of an address or paper. His delivery tended to be heavy, without light and shade, and his jokes rather ponderous and forced. Moreover, he drove himself so hard that he was perpetually over-tired and sometimes close to mental exhaustion. Accordingly his efforts on the platform frequently lacked buoyancy and spontaneity. This was the inevitable penalty of trying to do too much. He liked to think of himself as an authority on all subjects and in a sense he almost was. If he knew next to nothing he could consult the relevant experts; but no human being, not even one with the mental resources and energies of a Herbert Gepp, can expect to master everything and to compete with the specialist on his own ground.
While he lacked much as a platform speaker, he was superb in small gatherings and in committees. Here his powerful, sometimes overpowering, personality, allied to his great knowledge, enabled him to assume a natural dominance. His appearance was striking. His large-featured, rather lowering visage with its penetrating dark eyes and overhanging, shaggy eyebrows, topped by wonderfully luxuriant, strong dark hair (only faintly tinged with grey even when he approached the allotted span) could hardly have been more impressive or more suited to an industrial leader. It conveyed an impression of authority and strength and inspired respect and sometimes fear. Although his passport records that he was only 5 feet 8½ inches in height, somehow one always thought of him as a big man. In committee his mind worked lucidly and smoothly, the precise opposite of its performance on the public platform. Here he was relaxed and confident. He had an immense grasp of all the items on the agenda coming forward for discussion. He could always ask the most penetrating questions. Those to whom they were directed were frequently discomfited; it was difficult to cover up weaknesses or to conceal things from him.
Yet in some ways I would hesitate to say that he was a good committee man -- at any rate in the precise, narrow sense. Business took unnecessarily long to dispose of and meetings were unduly prolonged while he revelled in the opportunities afforded to indulge his own virtuosity.
Herbert Gepp was essentially a kind man. He was too big a person to be other than charitable to others and my grandfather seldom heard him indulge in the kind of small, uncalled-for criticisms of people that one frequently hears in business, social and other circles. Admittedly, he could at times be ruthless with those whom he felt had failed him. He demanded complete loyalty and those who gave it needed have no fears. Their day-to-day popularity varied but in the long run he looked after them. On the other hand he was not a good judge of character. He was too frequently attracted and misled by superficial qualities and was often over-kind to those who took pains to flatter him. He made appointments that turned out to be unmerited. Then he would go to the other extreme and deal harshly with those who had fallen below the high standards he had set for them. He lived in rarefied heights, on a plane of activity, thought and purpose far beyond what most people could hope to reach. This did not help him to reach accurate judgments on ordinary everyday people -- which most of us are.
At times he could be overbearing and dictatorial. There were many occasions when it was dangerous to disagree with him. Some never did. In the end, however, they did not benefit. He had little respect for "yes men". Although he would not overtly admit to error, Gepp's concern was to get to the truth of the matter, and he could change his views with great rapidity when he was convinced that they were wrong. Those prepared to take their courage in both hands in putting an unpopular, though correct, view to the "chief" invariably rose in his estimation.
I find it hard to think of Sir Herbert Gepp as "a great businessman" in the narrow, popular meaning of that phrase. He was not interested in money as such and did not accumulate a large personal fortune. Profits for their own sake did not enter overmuch into his calculations, and my grandfather suspected that his boards of directors sensed this and did not find it altogether to their liking. But he knew that the world regarded profits as a measure of the success of the enterprise and that in any case a business could not function for long without them. Moreover, they provided a valuable source of funds on which to draw for expansion and development and for all the things he wanted to do. He had, in fact, a reputation among boards of directors for being a lavish spender. During World War II, when Managing Director of Australian Paper Manufacturers, he spent quite a large sum of money on the construction of a new paper store at the Fairfield mill of the company. One day he was showing a visitor over the mill and pointed out the paper store which was nearing completion. The visitor told Gepp he thought the store was rather an unnecessary extravagance at a time of grave national crisis. "Not at all," replied Gepp, "we need the store and, if the Japs win, they'll need it".
Finance was not his strong point, largely because he was not sufficiently interested; on occasions he would commit extraordinary accounting solecisms. He had no love for accountants as such; they seemed too ready to place irritating restraints on the carrying out of all the fascinating projects running through his mind.
Here lay the key to Gepp as an industrialist. He would have had no interest in running a well-established business with limited opportunities of further expansion. In fact, his methods of working were clearly ill-suited for this purpose; many could do it better. His great love was development. Here he was on his own ground and he had a particular genius for it. But in the 1930's, the period when my grandfather was associated with him, opportunities for development were limited. The economy was nearly stagnant; population increase was barely perceptible; the modern word "growth" had not yet entered into the jargon of economics. Nevertheless, in this restrictive economic environment he achieved miracles of expansion in the paper industry. Under him Australian Paper Manufacturers assumed the dimensions of a great basic national enterprise.
Gepp would have revelled in the climate of growth and expansion of the 1950's and 1960's. This would have been his natural habitat, and I don't doubt that he would have performed wonders on many fronts. With what eagerness and delight he would have embraced the new fields of electronics and automation and the fantastic developments in space research! How much thought he (and those who worked for him) would have devoted to the assessment of their meaning for the welfare and future of the human species!
His real passion in life was the development and progress of the country of his birth. He foresaw its great potentialities, but he knew that their realisation would be anything but easy and that the road would be long and hard and the pitfalls many. Like Massy-Greene he had little patience for those who ignored the obstacles and over-simplified the problems of development. He insisted that painstaking study, the amassing of facts and meticulous planning should precede every major advance. "The task of building the Commonwealth," he wrote, "is one for the patient examination of every avenue of industry that may lead to progress, for the application of sound knowledge and experience and for sustained, hard and well-directed labour. It involves the equipment of our country with the efficiency, both human and mechanical, that will enable it to hold its own with honour and material advantage in the markets of the world".
He deplored the tragic errors of the past and insisted that careful planning was necessary to avoid mistakes in the future. "Only recently I have motored through an area in the southern portion of Victoria, a country of high rainfall, where man's inhumanity to trees will make countless future millions mourn. These dead trees remain like gaunt sentinels guarding the monuments to man's mistakes. I have seen the efforts which have made one blade of grass and much bracken grow where wonderful trees grew before; I have seen the unpaid human labour of the pioneer commemorated only by dead trees, much bracken, little grass, and deserted homesteads; and I have seen the land which, over many past centuries, has been guided by nature to grow some of the finest timber in the world, begin to slip into the valleys on its way to the sea."
The deficiencies of the soil, the lack of water, the immensity of the desert wasteland, the vast distances, the harsh climate of the North, the difficulties of mineral discoveries and exploitation, the geographical remoteness of the Continent from the centres of learning and science and industry were matters which were constantly in his mind.
"The efforts to develop this continent of Australia have pointed several economic morals. A continent which had lain almost entirely dormant for centuries whilst areas, almost adjacent, such as Java, were teeming hives of human activity, should surely have said silently, but eloquently, to the people who came from the Northern Hemisphere to occupy and develop this rather forbidding land: 'Had you not better carefully think why I am underveloped?' Such a large land-mass as Australia would have been developed and populated hundreds of years ago if circumstances had been propitious and knowledge sufficient. The fact that it had remained unpopulated, relatively speaking, promised great difficulties to the pioneers who tackled the job."
But the problems though immense were not insuperable. He was convinced that in the end they would yield to industry, persistence and applied intelligence.
Gepp never tired of deploring the physical wastes which he believed could have been avoided by more knowledge and forethought. But he was even more disturbed by the human wastes and human tragedy represented by unemployment. He saw the continuance of large-scale unemployment as a threat to our whole democratic way of life. "How is it," he asked in 1930, "in a country where we are accustomed to think of our natural resources as almost untapped and our population as quite inadequate to exploit them fully, that we are faced with the anomalous situation of being unable to provide employment for the whole of our man-power?" And in 1937 he wrote: "It is unthinkable that Australia can permit an indefinite continuation of conditions under which a material proportion of its growing population is seeking employment and finding none". He was an apostle of the modern "full employment" economy.
The failure to solve the problem of unemployment, combined with widespread industrial conflict, led him constantly to wonder where democracy was headed. He visited the United States in 1938 and was alarmed at the violent rift between the Roosevelt administration and financial and industrial leaders. He was invited to contribute an article to the famous American periodical, "The Atlantic Monthly", on this theme and he decided to speak out boldly. "The social responsibility to the great mass of the nation is in danger of being more and more overlooked as the song of hate rises in intensity, as the chasm widens and deepens, and as the social structure shakes and trembles on the edge." He addressed a plea to business leaders:
We, the leaders of industry, commerce and finance, have never yet realized our duty to society. We have thought too much and too long of financial results, of scientific and material improvement. We have forgotten that democracy predicates and demands individual contribution toward social adjustment and security and that the greater our job and our position, the greater our responsibility for social duty and performance.
The great internal problem facing all of us is to find out how all sections of a democracy can live together in reasonable comfort -- ever disputing, ever striving for improvement, but with inherent mutual consideration and respect. If we fail, dictatorship comes. Then individualism lies only with the dictator ... To me the great tragedy of the present position is that the greatest and richest democracy in the world, which should be leading us in our struggle to avoid the danger of dictatorship, is today so torn with internal strife as to be impotent, internationally, in this respect.
As in so many other things, Herbert Gepp was a pioneer in the field of industrial relations. He regarded a contented, enthusiastic work-force as an asset of greater value than many of those that appeared in the balance sheet.
But his great interest in industrial relations had its roots in a warm humanity and a sympathetic concern for the problems of others. There are many examples in his life of personal acts of kindness that illustrate this side of his nature. One of the most interesting has to do with a former Prime Minister of Australia, John Curtin.
Gepp had a high regard for Curtin. When Curtin became Prime Minister during World War II, there were many who had grave doubts whether he had the qualities to lead the country at a time of supreme national crisis. But Gepp never had any doubts. He knew Curtin well from earlier years and had apparently discerned in him great talents and unusual attributes of mind and character. It is well known now that Curtin, soured and cast down by the loss of his seat in the landslide Labor defeat of 1931, turned to drink to assuage his disappointment. He became indeed almost a chronic alcoholic. On one occasion Gepp, then a successful Australian industrialist, went out of his way to befriend the broken, disillusioned politician. Curtin was living in poor circumstances in one of the inner suburbs of Melbourne. Gepp, getting to know of this, visited Curtin and invited him to stay at his farm at Kangaroo Grounds during the weekend.
Some people have accused Gepp of cultivating leading politicians for his own personal advantage. At least in this case, the accusation would have no foundation. At that time the prospect of John Curtin ever becoming Prime Minister must have been as far from his own mind as it was from Gepp's. Gepp used to maintain that Curtin's complete success in overcoming his infirmity was indication of remarkable powers of will and character.
He would never accept the view that people were naturally indolent or incurably irresponsible. He had had much experience of men under a wide variety of conditions and he believed that the vast run of workers would always respond to proper leadership -- based on patience and understanding -- and to fair treatment. There were always reasons why people acted in the way they did and the task of leadership was to seek out these reasons and, where possible, rectify them.
On one occasion he was standing on the deck of a ship, in company with a British Cabinet Minister, as it was being docked at a wharf in Melbourne. The Minister strongly criticised the slow pace of work of the wharf labourers. Gepp snapped back, "Would you race through that work as rapidly as you could if you knew that when it was finished you would be idle for two or three days?"
He urged businessmen to give much more study to their relations with their employees. In 1933 he wrote: " 'Industrial relations' calls urgently for more recognition as a profession of vital importance. Patronage is abhorrent to the Australian temperament. But if Australian workmen are taken into the confidence of the management they are amongst the best workmen in the world. Failing this, they can be amongst the worst. Leadership must be based on confidence and respect."
As early as 1918 he drew attention to what he regarded as "the deplorable state of relations between Labour, Capital and Management". In a paper given to the Society of Chemical Industry of Victoria, a few weeks before the end of World War I, he said that employers and employees were totally ignorant of one another's minds. In the context of those times, this paper was, for a number of reasons, a remarkable one and it is worth some attention. The title of the paper was "New Industries" and its theme was that Australia should pursue as rapidly as possible the goal of becoming a great industrial nation. "It is imperative," he said, "for our country to be self-contained in regard to production of essential commodities, on grounds of defence, development and population." The war was not quite over, but he did not, as some people did, imagine for a moment that it was "the war to end all wars". "It would be absolutely suicidal for this country not to take all steps necessary to raise itself to a complete state of preparedness in spite of the League of Nations." He then reviewed the main factors bearing on the successful development of new industries in a young country and he placed great stress on the improvement of relations between Labour and Capital. "To my mind, one idea is basic -- we need to abandon the theory that a minimum wage is essential, and adopt instead the conviction that there should be, or must be, a minimum amount of happiness right throughout the community, and as much above that as the united brains of the community can, by proper co-operation, evolve and develop. It is not what a man earns in wages that counts, but what he gets out of life, and the solution of the problem seems to be in co-operation -- co-operation to promote health, co-operation to reduce the cost of living, and co-operation to see that everyone is properly housed, properly protected from the financial effects of sickness, and, if a man does the fair thing, he should be further protected by co-operation in all that goes to make life worth living."
These were extraordinary notions for those days. It took another two or three decades and another World War before the concept of the Welfare State -- which Gepp had foreseen and defined as early as 1918 -- achieved general acceptance. What amazing foresight the man had! The war had affected him profoundly and he spoke from the deepest well-springs of the heart. "What better ideal can there be than to at once determine to erect as a living and ever-present memorial to the Australian soldiers -- to the 58,000 men who have died, and to those 200,000 who have been wounded and gassed, and wounded and gassed again and yet again -- to erect, instead of a stone and marble monument, a token of our gratitude and appreciation in the form of an industrial system based upon, and guided by, the laws of humanity and mutual esteem and understanding." It was a noble ideal, but there were few, very few, thinking in those terms in those far-off times. Most would have regarded it as impracticable and visionary. But it is from the visions of the élite that the stuff of progress in human affairs is born.
As the Managing Director of Australian Paper Manufacturers, Gepp had the opportunity to put many of his advanced ideas into practice. Among many things, he initiated a large scheme for the housing of employees at the Maryvale pulp mill. Because of the war, building materials were desperately scarce and were licensed. He obtained permission to build temporary houses at a cost of only £400 each. Since then A.P.M. has built 1,000 homes for the employees of the Maryvale mill.
He instructed his young men to read all the literature they could lay their hands on about development in thought on industrial relations in countries overseas. His public papers and addresses during these years were directed very largely at what he regarded as among the most pressing of all national problems. The path-finding work of Elton Mayo came to his attention. In a lecture to the Institute of Industrial Management in 1942 he said, "... like all human beings, the worker desires to have something or somebody to which or to whom he can devote his allegiance and loyalty. It must be a primary aim of business management to create an organisation to which the worker can feel proud to belong. The business which has obtained the loyalty and respect of its workers has few troubles over discipline. On the whole I think management will get the degree of loyalty and co-operation it deserves".
In the years when I worked with him (1937 to 1944) I felt that Herbert Gepp was perhaps more interested in matters of human relationships, and in economic and social problems, than in scientific and technical problems. It is true that he retained a tremendous zest for scientific research throughout his life. But in those years he spoke constantly of the "dangerous lag" in the development of the human "sciences" behind that of the physical sciences.
In 1937 he concluded an address on the place of the scientist in industrial administration with these words:
For many years, as general manager of a large industrial enterprise, my whole objective was the increase of output, the reduction of costs, and the maintenance of the highest human and plant efficiency. It was only after I was transferred for a period to governmental activities that I began to ask myself whither the industrial machine was headed. I began to realise the imminence as well as the inevitability of change and how little the engineer, the scientist and most of the other people associated with enterprise of all types were thinking of the basic facts underlying national and economic life.
Sir Walter Massy-Greene came to the board rooms of big business through politics; Sir Herbert Gepp through the plant. Massy-Greene was never a full-time administrator of a single large industrial enterprise -- although he came close to it when Chairman of Directors of Associated Pulp and Paper Mills. Gepp held the chief executive post in a number of nationally important industries.
To some extent this difference accounts for the divergent outlooks of the two men on industry and economics. Gepp's outlook was conditioned, but not limited, by his experience as a technical man -- an engineer and chemist; Massy-Greene's by his political experience which led directly to the board rooms where finance necessarily becomes an all-important consideration.
Gepp believed that industries supported by protection should accept an obligation of "limited profits" and he propounded this doctrine to the Tariff Board in 1937 during the tariff inquiry into the paper industry.
In public speeches, he was accustomed to emphasise that the boards of large public companies should strive to achieve a just balance between the interests of the three groups concerned in their activities -- the shareholders, the employees and the customers. He stressed also the broad national and social responsibilities of large-scale enterprise -- an emphasis which was to receive increasing recognition in countries such as Britain and the United States during the critical years around the end of World War II.
As an engineer Gepp was, in one sense, acutely cost conscious, because costs were, to some extent, a measure of efficiency. During the war he never ceased to stress the need for economies in the industry with which he was primarily connected. He insisted that even the smallest scrap of paper used should not be wasted, but should be saved and find its way back into the plant "beaters" for re-manufacture into cardboard. In fact he played the leading part in organising the collection of waste paper on a national basis for this purpose. Once he was heard reproving the chauffeur of his official company car for failing to switch off the engine so that the car could "coast" down a small slope to save an extra drop of petrol during the years of rationing. On the national arena, he was a leading champion of conservation. He gave numerous addresses on soil erosion and the prevention of bush fires. He could not understand why the autumn leaves in the public parks were raked into heaps and burnt instead of being kept for the production of "humus".
Gepp was not a whole-souled private enterpriser. Here there was a conflict in his thinking which he probably never entirely resolved. His engineering training and his experience in the initial organisation of large projects gave him a disposition toward planning. He could not see why planning, which was so necessary in the construction and operation of large industrial plants, was not equally necessary and desirable in the broader national economic and social spheres. He deplored the apparent wastes, inefficiencies and injustices of the "laissez-faire" scheme of things. On the other hand, through his governmental work on Royal Commissions and elsewhere, he had had much experience of the "red tape", frustrating delays and inertia of civil service administration. He hated bureaucracy. He loved experimentation. But this kind of mind does not fit comfortably into the bureaucratic machine.
He was concerned about social injustices and was in sympathy with some of the socialist objectives. But, despite this, and his belief in more national planning, he was no socialist. He moved rather uneasily between the private enterprise philosophy and the socialist philosophy, sometimes veering to one side and then to the other. He would often argue that competition was wasteful and led to inefficiency; at others, contradictorily, he would praise the virtues of competition.
Toward the end of the war he wrote:
In no sphere of life can we go back to things as they were before September, 1939; nor would it be desirable. The structure had many cracks, much shoddy material, and its final collapse into a terrible global conflict is its own condemnation. 'Standfast', unprogressive reactionism has as little to commend it as the rigid extremes of a socialism founded upon a conception of human nature and human understanding quite out of accord with the realities of today. Between the two lies a vast field for compromise and bold experimentation offering prospects of improved standards of life and of social justice.
On the vexed question of government control and private enterprise, he said:
... what particular combination of the two will best ensure that our economic life moves forward rapidly, but steadily, along well-chosen paths? For I think it must and will be a combination. Neither one nor the other is sufficient in itself. Initiative, inventiveness, drive, spontaneity, and buoyancy -- these are the hallmarks of private enterprise and these we must have. On the other hand, without planned direction, stability, equality of opportunity to achieve health and education we will be incomplete, and these can best be provided through communal controls and state planning. As in our political system, so in our economic, we should endeavour to blend freedom and order.
He was never closely tied to, let alone a slave of, any political dogma. In a national sense he was interested solely in advancing the material welfare of his fellow countrymen, and he was prepared to consider any proposals concerned with this objective, regardless of whether or not they conflicted with some party political philosophy.
I have said that it is hard to think of Sir Herbert Gepp as a great businessman in the popular sense. What, then, is his right and proper designation? He was, without question, a great industrial leader and statesman -- the greatest, I believe, of his time. He did not have the brilliant organising flair of an Essington Lewis. (In fact my grandfather heard him say that Essington Lewis had no peer as an industrial organiser.) Gepp had too many other things on his mind, too many diverse interests, to be a great organiser in the narrow sense; he was constitutionally incapable of giving to the details of organisation his single-minded devotion. Yet on the whole I suspect that he was a human being of far greater stature than Essington Lewis. Both had unusual vision, but Gepp's was not confined to the world of physical resources, industrial technology and development of large national industries. It took in a far larger and more important slice of life even than that. Essington Lewis was much more the specialist. He was content with the world that he knew and in it he was unexcelled. But Gepp's mind ranged far and wide. He was curious about all things; he wanted to know about all things. He had the inquiring mind of the scientist and the creative mind of the inventor. He could turn to economics (of which he had much practical experience in his chairmanship of various Government Royal Commissions) and he did not find it difficult to discomfit the theorists. He foresaw, and was a pioneer in, the modern developments in industrial relations and management training. He was a student of nutrition and dabbled in psychology. He experimented in farming. There was no field of learning that did not excite his attention. He was never bored, because there was not nearly enough time to do all the things he wanted to do and to indulge his multifarious interests. His mind was never still and it seemed to have inexhaustible reserves of energy.
But, above all, he was a man with a far vision. He was one of those rare people always way out in front of their fellows. As far back as 1923 he wanted Australia to embark on the production of alumina and he foresaw that the all-metal aeroplane would eventually come into its own. He was an industrial pioneer of things as far apart as scientific research and modern industrial relations. He was talking of the importance of trace elements in soil fertility long before this became a matter of serious study.
I am sure that he saw much more clearly than any other big industrialist of his time that World War II marked the end of an era and that we were at a great turning point in human affairs. He knew that the post-war world would be vastly different, that among other things people would never again accept the under-employed society, the alternating economic crises, the insecurity and instability of the pre-war world. He knew that the whole system of private business enterprise was facing its greatest trial. He urged business leaders, in countless statements, to think and plan for the world that was coming. He called for a great change in attitudes. He foresaw the need for government planning, for "Beveridge", for a new deal in industrial relations. Many did not agree with him. My grandfather heard him on one occasion call a prominent lawyer-industrialist a Bourbon and tell him that if he were not careful he would meet the same fate. Another leading Australian of conservative disposition told him he had what the Japanese called "dangerous thoughts". His ideas made him popular in some circles, but suspect in more conservative quarters. He was undeterred. He knew he was right. And how right he proved to be! It is easy to be wise after the event; it takes a big man to be wise before the event, particularly if the "event" is of a magnitude where a failure of foresight could have disastrous consequences.
He accumulated his band of followers among businessmen and others.
Sir Herbert Gepp was a man of large dimensions, brilliant, unpredictable, restive, moody, magnetic, a seeker after perfection, always dissatisfied and not least, I think, with himself.
He was largely unaware of his own exceptional powers and it was perhaps a minor tragedy that he did not know how to dispose of them to the greatest advantage. There are some men whose achievements seem, to the observer, to far exceed the limits imposed by apparently modest capacities. There are others who fail, for one reason or another, to make the most of manifest talents. It seems almost absurd to say so -- yet it is true -- that Herbert Gepp's achievements were less than his almost unique qualities should have made possible.
In 1954, about 150 of Australia's business leaders attended a private dinner at the Athenaeum Club in Melbourne to do honour to the Prime Minister, Robert Menzies. It was a glittering occasion and the guests were rewarded by a speech of rare distinction. Among those present moving slowly about the throng, was the aged, rugged-looking industrial statesman who had lived so intensely and who had done so much. He said little throughout the evening; he was very tired. Yet, one still felt the strange force of his personality and the aura of achievement that surrounded him. When men looked at him they did so with noticeable respect, the kind of respect that seems the natural due of an old, majestic lion nearing the end of his journey.
A week or so later he was dead. Being what he was, I doubt if he died contented. He was too restless to know serenity, but then serenity was something he would not have equated with bliss.
ENDNOTES
1. Later Sir David Orme Masson.
2. Now Mrs. Garrett.
3. Later Sir John Butters.
4. "Democracy's Danger", "When Peace Comes".
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