General Robert Wood Johnson II
Businessman, philanthropist
Born: April 4, 1893, in New Brunswick, New Jersey
Died: Jan. 30, 1968, in New York City
New Jersey Hall of Fame, Class of 2008: Enterprise
Robert Wood Johnson II was just 17 when he joined his family’s New Jersey-based business. Through hard work and innovation, he would go on to build Johnson & Johnson into one of the largest health-care enterprises in the world.
Johnson was the son and nephew of the cofounders of Johnson & Johnson (J&J). His father, Robert Wood Johnson I, died when the younger Johnson was attending Rutgers Preparatory School. Instead of going on to college, Johnson took an entry-level job at J&J’s New Brunswick power plant. His plan was to learn the company’s business from the ground up.
A quick study, Johnson became a department head by age 22 and was named general superintendent of manufacturing after America’s entry into World War I. The war was a boon to the company, which produced surgical dressings and other first-aid products. By 1918, Johnson was named a vice president. Finally, in 1932, he was elected company president, a position he held for more than 30 years until his retirement. He also served as board chairman from 1938-63.
Under Johnson’s leadership, J&J expanded beyond its early core businesses (baby powder and first-aid kits) and became a diversified, global health-care giant. A major step was J&J’s entry into pharmaceuticals and increased scientific research. By the 1940s, J&J had more than 30 operating companies in 18 countries worldwide. By the time of Johnson’s New Jersey Hall of Fame induction in 2008, there were some 250 J&J affiliates around the world. Amid all the expansion, J&J remained headquartered in New Brunswick, the city where it was founded.
In addition to his business acumen, Johnson is revered for his corporate philosophy, embodied in the J&J Credo, which defined Johnson’s vision of corporate social responsibility. He believed a company was responsible first to its customers (medical professionals, patients, and consumers); followed by its workers, management, and community; and lastly its stockholders. Through the Credo and his writings, Johnson advocated for workers’ rights, pushing for higher wages, better working conditions, and job training for working-class Americans. In 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, he gave J&J workers a 5% raise, in hopes it would inspire other business leaders to do the same.
Johnson also was deeply involved in public service. He served a term as mayor of Highland Park from 1920-22, and held a reserve commission in the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps during the 1930s. At the outset of World War II, he helped identify products that were needed for the war effort, such as duct tape, which J&J invented for sealing ammunition boxes. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Johnson chairman of the Smaller War Plants Commission, which regulated military contracts for America’s small businesses. During the war, he held the title of brigadier general; for the rest of his life he was known as “the General.”
Throughout his life, Johnson sought ways to improve health care and to improve the lot of those less fortunate. He pushed for improved nursing education as a means of enhancing the quality of hospital care, and advocated for special training for hospital administrators. In 1936, he established what would become the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. By the time of his death in 1968, the RWJF was the second largest foundation in the country. It would become the nation’s largest foundation devoted solely to the public’s health.
The Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and numerous Robert Wood Johnson and RWJ-branded medical institutions testify to the General’s lasting impact on health care in the Garden State.