ABSTRACT
California is regarded as the source from which many of the new political, social, and economic trends in the nation derive. At the beginning of the 1970s Kaiser was a foundation with a highly concentrated portfolio of shares in Kaiser Companies, a board made up essentially of family members and company executives, and without professional program staff or defined program. The Hewlett Foundation of California, with assets now of $600 million and rising, is the first major new foundation created on the basis of wealth acquired in the booming business of high technology. The son established the James Irvine Foundation in 1937 for motives that, in the opinion of the late Congressman Wright Patman who studied the case in great detail, were purely to escape federal and state income and inheritance taxes. Weingart established his foundation in 1951 after the success of his huge Lakewood project had boosted his fortune to a wholly new level.
