Henry Heinz, born in 1844, to German immigrants in Pittsburgh, PA, helped support his family as a teenager by growing & selling vegetables in the family garden. After graduating from college & getting married, he started a business selling horse radish.
In 1875, a national financial collapse drove the young
company into bankruptcy. Despite the legal freedom bankruptcy gave him, Heinz
regarded each of the company’s outstanding debts as a moral obligation &
personally paid back every penny.
Heinz went on to found the H.J. Heinz Company with its 57
varieties & became a leading American businessman. A devout Christian, he
was known for the generous treatment of his employees & his generosity to
Christian causes.
Throughout his life Heinz conducted his business &
personal dealings with the same integrity that led him to pay back hundreds of
thousands of thousands of dollars he technically did not owe.
He began his will with these words: “I desire to set forth
at the very beginning of this will as the most important item in it a
confession of my faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior.”
Pro 22:1 (TLB): “If you must choose, take a good name rather
than great riches; for to be held in loving esteem is better than silver and
gold.”
Source: It Was Never About the Ketchup! - Steve Lentz
(ministry127.com)
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