David George Ball

How Martin Luther King inspired the 401(k) program

 E-Mail the Author

About the Book

Photo below shows David helping Martin Luther King cut a cake at Yale on January 15th, 1959, to celebrate King's 30th Birthday.

How Martin Luther King inspireD the 401(k) program?

As an immigrant and scholarship student at Yale, David George Ball invited the relatively unknown minister to speak at a lecture series he organized. His three day encounter included a birthday party to celebrate Dr. King’s thirtieth birthday. It led David to vow to help make the world a better place.

He became a Wall Street lawyer and served on New York Mayor John Lindsay’s task force for tax policy. He thought his calling might be to run for political office. However his life was devastated by the death of his darling wife leaving him with three young children. He feared he would never realize the dream kindled by Dr. King.

After finding a new loving partner and stepmother for his children David became an officer of AMAX, a metals and mining concern. Discovering the limitation of traditional pension plans he championed the first 401(k) plan sponsored by a large industrial company. But other companies hesitated to follow.

When President George H. W. Bush nominated him as Assistant Secretary of Labor, David hung a photograph of Dr. King in his office. He determined at last to answer the call to make a positive difference in the world. His mission became the publication of a regulation or road map to encourage the growth of 401(k) plans. Once a company makes a contribution to these plans, the money belongs to the workers. They know exactly how much they have in their accounts. They control their own investments and the benefits are portable if they move from job to job.

Today fifty million workers have these revolutionary plans. It’s thanks, in part, to Martin Luther King.
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David George Ball was born in Gloucester, England in 1936.  His father was a nonconformist minister and his mother had been a missionary in India.  At age seventeen he came to America to attend Moody Bible Institute in Chicago to train for the ministry.  But after receiving his bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1960 and a law degree from Columbia in 1964 he became an attorney with White & Case, a Wall Street law firm.  From 1970 to 1974 he served as assistant secretary of The Babcock and Wilcox Company.  From 1974 to 1989 he served as a senior executive of AMAX, a metals and mining firm, where he championed the first 401(k) plan adopted by a large industrial company.

In 1989 President George H. W. Bush nominated him as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Pension and Welfare Benefits.  Ball believed that 401(k) pension plans reflected the realities of the modern workplace and best of all the benefits were portable when workers moved from job to job.

At this time many companies still hesitated to adopt 401(k) plans because of concern about liability for losses.  Ball published a regulation that gave workers the opportunity to exercise independent control over their investments and relieved employers of liability for losses arising from workers’ instructions.  It was described in the New York Times as "The most significant thing to happen to the pension industry in years."

Ball has testified before Congress, appeared on television and spoken on pension issues at conferences throughout the United States.  From 1993 to 1998 he was managing partner of the Washington office of Williams, Mullen, Christian & Dobbins.  He studied creative nonfiction at the College of William and Mary and has written essays based on his life story for the Virginia Gazette.

Book Endorsements

To learn more about the book -->  David's Interview with Radio Talk-Show host Neal Steele