PREFACE fk HIS MANUSCRIPT HAS ITS ROOTS in a talk I was asked to give in January 1976 before the Weber County (Utah) Historical Society on a prominent company that had been founded locally. Since I had recently joined the faculty at Weber State University (then Weber State College) as business school dean, I accepted the invitation and considered it an opportunity to become more familiar with the business community. I selected Utah Construction Company, now Utah International, Inc., as my subject. Although this company had been founded in Ogden in early 1900, I found little about it except for a few articles in Fortune magazine, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal along with a chapter in the book The Earth Changers by Neil C. Wilson and Frank J. Taylor. Coincidentally, a friend in San Francisco, Joseph K. Allen, was a vice president at Utah International. I called and asked for his help. Not long after, I visited him and returned with pages of notes, copies of reports, and other materials that gave me a glimpse into the international scope of this originally local company. This modest research effort ended in a twenty-nine-page speech to the members of the historical society. Some time afterwards, I received a letter from Edmund Wattis Littlefield, president, CEO, and chairman of the board of Utah International, Inc., in San Francisco. He had received a copy of the talk and found it informative, particularly in revealing hitherto unpublished facts about the company; but the text contained some errors. As a result of our correspondence, I visited him in San Francisco in March 1976. Rather optimistically, I suggested that I write the company history (a type of project I had never undertaken before). He agreed and gave me access to every document in the company files, in Vil