Entrepreneur. He served as the Chairman of the Kohler Company, which is a plumbing fixture company founded by his father, John Michael Kohler, in 1873. A company that began selling farm equipment bloomed after successfully turning a cattle trough into an enamel bathtub. From the bathtub, the company has successfully branched into various other interests. He became the head of the company in 1937, while the company was amidst a strike that started in 1934 and lasted until 1941. In the labor annals of the United States, this labor strike is credited as the longest strike, and maybe the most hostile with two strikers' deaths. Following his refusal to meet the Union's demands, he faced a second strike from April 5, 1954 to September 1, 1960, and after going to the United States Supreme Court in 1965, he had to pay $4.5‐million in back pay and benefits and to reinstate most of the fired 1,400 strikers. His older half-brother, Walter J. Kohler Jr. was Governor of Wisconsin from 1951 to 1957 and sold his shares in his family's company in 1953, because, according to the "New York Times," he "didn't want to be in the position of calling out the National Guard to protect my own investment." The governor maintained his shares in Vollrath Company, a family-owned manufacturer of stainless-steel equipment. Surviving these strikes and others, the Kohler Company grew to a multi-million-dollar business by the 21st century. He was born the only child of the company's founder and Austrian immigrant, Johann Michael Kohler, and his second wife Minnie Vollrath. His six older half-siblings were also first cousins as his mother and their mother were sisters. He was described as a physically and mentally powerful man, known for his iron-will and self-confidence. In June of 1933, the United States Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act, giving employees the right to form trade unions, yet the law was declared unconstitutional in 1935, causing an unstable relationship between employers and employees. He was a staunch opponent of organized labor and blamed the strikes on an organized Communist fraction. In 1937, he married the daughter of a Supreme Court Justice, Ruth De Young, who was a women's rights advocate, a historian, and former women's editor of the "Chicago Tribune." The couple had two sons and a daughter. His wife died of a heart ailment in 1953 at the age of 46. He suddenly died of a heart attack in 1968 and his 29-year-old son, Herbert Kohler Jr., who started with the company after graduating from Yale University in 1965, stepped-up to the job, becoming Vice President of Operations, then Executive Vice President in 1971, was elected Chairman of the Board and CEO in 1972, and President of the Company in 1974. His legacy lives with his grandchildren entering the business. In 1977, Kohler surpassed their top competitor, American Standard, as the nation's number one plumbing company. In 2010, Kohler ranks 64th on "FORBES" magazine's list of America's largest private companies.