Amon Hamer is the chairman of Occidental Petroleum Company and a legendary figure. In the West, he is an almighty rich man who has the Midas touch to gold, but in the Soviet Union and China, he is a well-known "red capitalist" because he was the first Western entrepreneur to cooperate with the Soviet Union after the October Revolution and was affectionately called Lenin. Known as "Comrade Hammer"; he was also the first Western entrepreneur to visit China by private plane. He was hailed as a "brave man" by Deng Xiaoping. "The Autobiography of Hammer" has become a very popular book in China. Bestseller.
Hamer is a descendant of Russian immigrants and was born in New York City, USA on May 21, 1898. His great-grandfather, Vladimir, was a Russian Jew who became extremely wealthy by building ships during the reign of Tsar Nicholas I. By the time Hamer's grandfather Jacob was married and had children, a tsunami caused by a typhoon wiped away all the family wealth. In 1875, Jacob immigrated to the United States with his wife and son Julius. When Julius was 15 years old, he gave up his studies and worked as a foundry in a steel factory to support his family. He was young and strong and became a very important figure among the workers. He joined the Socialist Labor Party, organized a trade union, and became an active socialist. When Julius was 19 years old, he applied for a job as a pharmacist. A few years later, he used his saved wages to buy his boss's pharmacy, and later opened two more branches and a pharmaceutical factory. In this way, the young socialist became a young capitalist. However, Julius did not give up his beliefs and remained a loyal follower of the American socialist movement. During a socialist outing in 1897, Julius fell in love at first sight with a young widow, Rose, and soon married. A year later, they had their first child, whom Julius named Armon Hammer, allegedly after the Arm and Hammer, the flag emblem of the Socialist Labor Party of the United States. .
Only 4 months after Hamer was born, his father Julius was admitted to Columbia Medical College. In the next four years, Julius had to run a pharmacy and a pharmaceutical factory as well as study for his medical courses. However, he was indeed a tough man and managed to balance his studies and career, and finally graduated in 1902. The achievement of this achievement had a great influence on Hamer's subsequent growth.
Julius believed that treating diseases and saving people was more noble than making money from business, so he resolutely sold the pharmacy and pharmaceutical factory, opened a clinic in the Bronx area of ??New York City, and became a doctor. During his lifetime of practicing medicine, he saved the lives of more than 5,000 babies.
Under the guidance of their father's words and deeds, the children grew up. Hammer is the least obedient of the three brothers, but also the most creative. He skipped school, but after his father's education, he changed. He rose to the top of his class without slipping away. After school, he also learned to play with radios, build airplane models, and won a gold medal in the high school graduation speech contest. In addition, he was fascinated by the biographies of famous American entrepreneurs such as Rockefeller and Carnegie who started from scratch, and began to look for ways to make money. At the age of 16, when he was in high school, he successfully made his first "big deal." One day, he saw an old two-seater convertible being auctioned on Broadway and decided to buy it. He borrowed money from his half-brother Harry, who sold goods in a drugstore, and confidently promised to repay him soon. It turned out that he had found a job from a newspaper advertisement, that is, using a car to deliver goods to a confectioner, and he could get a reward of US$20 a day. Sure enough, two weeks later, not only did he repay his brother's money in full and get the car, but he also had coins jingling in his pocket.
Three years later, in 1917, after completing two years of pre-medical courses, Hamer came to the prestigious Columbia Medical College with great ambition and submitted an application for admission. The staff member in charge of registration looked him up and down and said, "Are you Dr. Julius's son? I processed your father's application for admission in 1898, the year you were born, and I'm here to welcome you again today." That's it, ha. Mo is proud to be a student at Columbia Medical School, and the boat of destiny seems to be carrying him in the direction of inheriting his father's legacy.
However, one day, his father came to the campus to find Hammer and told his son bad news: the pharmaceutical company he invested his savings in was on the verge of bankruptcy. Moreover, due to his poor health, especially because he wanted to continue practicing medicine, he had no energy to take care of the management of the company. Therefore, he asked his son to become the general manager of the company, but he was not allowed to drop out of school.
He emphasized: "Son, this is what I did in the past, and you can do this too."
In fact, his father's worries are completely unnecessary. Hammer has long been eager to try. He took on the challenge with great excitement. In order not to miss his studies, Hamer invited a classmate from a poor family but who excelled in studies to live with him and provided him with free food and accommodation. The condition was that the classmate would go to class every day, take a lot of notes, and bring them back to him in the evening for him to prepare for the exam. and writing papers. With this learning "stand-in", Hammer can concentrate on the management of the company. He reformed the company's business policies and sales methods, organized a strong team of salesmen, and changed the company's name to the resounding "United Chemical and Pharmaceutical Company." Hammer finally rescued the endangered company from the brink of bankruptcy. The number of employees grew from a dozen to 1,500. The products were sold well all over the country. The company began to join the ranks of large companies in the pharmaceutical industry.
Soon after, Hamer became the only millionaire currently studying in college among Columbia Medical College and even among institutions across the country. In 1919, the average income in the United States was $625, and that year Hammer's personal net income exceeded $100 million. Academically, he received "A"s on most exams and was named the "most promising student" in his graduating class. In June 1921, he obtained the doctorate in medicine that he had dreamed of since childhood. From then on, people always called him doctor, although he never officially practiced medicine.
At this time, Hammer decided to use the short half-year interval between the end of his studies and the beginning of his internship to do something shocking, that is, to visit the Soviet Union. After the October Revolution, Hamer's father, as one of the founders of the American Communist Party, was very concerned about the Soviet Union and provided necessities to the blockaded Bolshevik regime. However, due to a medical accident, in June 1920, Hammer's father was tried and imprisoned. This sudden change made the young and energetic Hammer determined to fulfill his father's failed wish and go to the country where his father was born to help the Soviet Union defeat the famine and typhoid fever that was spreading there.
So, Hammer sold the pharmaceutical company for US$2 million, and spent hundreds of thousands of US dollars to buy a field hospital and its supporting medical supplies and medical equipment. He bought an ambulance for $15,000 and had the words "American Medical Mission to Moscow" painted on the side. He wanted to give these to the Soviets as a meeting gift. The Soviet Union was isolated from most Western countries at the time, so to many people Hammer's trip was tantamount to an expedition to the moon. In this way, 23-year-old Hammer embarked on a path that would fundamentally change his life.
The young millionaire went through many hardships along the way and finally arrived in the Soviet Union in the early summer of 1921. Exhausted from the journey, he fell ill. But he had no complaints, refused special treatment, and lived a miserable wartime life with the Soviet people. He insists on memorizing and learning to use 100 Russian words every day so that he can start working quickly.
In early August 1921, Hammer accompanied a delegation to inspect the Ural region. The situation here puzzled him: on the one hand, there were huge treasures and rich products, including platinum, gems, furs and other valuables; on the other hand, there was a severe famine, with people dying of hunger everywhere, and the most basic necessities of life were scarce. So, he asked the Soviets who led the team: "Why don't you export these things in exchange for food?" "That's impossible," they replied, "Europe has just lifted its blockade on us and wants to sell these things and import food. It will take too long. And to save the people in the Urals from hunger, at least 1 million bushels of food are needed." At this time, a bold plan was formed in Hamer's mind. He thought of the bumper grain harvest in the United States at that time and the grain price had dropped to US$1 per bushel, so he made a suggestion: "I have 1 million US dollars in funds. I can urgently purchase 1 million bushels of wheat in the United States, ship it to Petrograd by sea, and unload it." After loading the grain, furs and other goods worth $1 million will be shipped back to the United States." Hammer's suggestion quickly reached Moscow, and Lenin personally called back to express his approval of the deal and asked Hammer to return to Moscow as soon as possible.
The day after arriving in Moscow, Hammer was summoned to Lenin's office. In order to allow the young Soviets to recuperate, Lenin was implementing the New Economic Policy at the time, so he paid special attention to Hamer's proposal. Lenin stood up from his desk to welcome Hammer and conversed cordially with him in English.
When Lenin expressed his sincere gratitude to Hamer on behalf of the Soviet government, the great revolutionary actually shed tears with excitement. From then on, a sincere and deep friendship was formed between them. Lenin encouraged Hamer to invest in a factory and allowed him to mine asbestos mines in Siberia, making him the first foreigner to obtain mining rights in the Bolshevik Soviet Union.