OCR Text |
Show i . International Harvester Company THE HEART OF A "SOULLESS CORPORATION." (A'n excerpt from an article in Har- v pcr's Weekly, by John Kimberly 4$ Mumford). h I have been observing the human side of the business problem, the difficult diffi-cult process of injecting sentiment into in-to business without bringing both to I grief. I Practical, tangible altruism, which I is felt in the daily life of the work man and can be seen with the naked eye, is the "new face at the door." Not so far back manufacturers had no notion of conserving by good treatment the subtle enormous energy - that is bor in a workingman from good housaig, good working conditions, condi-tions, mental uplift, and) a- consciousness conscious-ness that he is looked on by his employer em-ployer as oi man and a brother and not as a pack animal. Today the employer em-ployer who makes his workmen and workwomen toil in the midst of filth, physical and moral, bad air, and hopeless hope-less depression, is a man branded and a man doomed, as surely as the Mississippi Mis-sissippi flows to the Gulf. And sentiment senti-ment has -done that. They say it is just pure business, but it isn't. The manufacturer may do it for dollar, but behind him and inside him there is at work something bigger and deeper, deep-er, although he may not know it to-wit, to-wit, a. subconsciousness of the brotherhood broth-erhood of man. Chicago is keen on the welfare problem, prob-lem, because, from the nature of its population, perhaps, the problem presses on it persistently, and its Moseses both the hired and the volunteer, volun-teer, never rest from their labors. In the general solution of the welfare wel-fare problem the small shop, the individual indi-vidual manufacturer, docs not at the moment cut so much of a figure. In the final aggregate he will be an enormous enor-mous factor, but in making the custom cus-tom he is not the most effective agent. It is the huge corporation, carrying the burden of anathema and responsibility, respon-sibility, and) the invested money of a hundred thousand persons whom it never saw nor heard of, which is foreordained, willing or unwilling, to be promoter of the great purpose, to make decency and fair play universal institutions that shall endure while the world stands. To the mien on the watch'owcr this truth is as plain as the morning light. Perhaps it may be thus, and not by bloodshed, thatt we shall not at last come to peace on earth. I elected, therefore, to see what the biggest corporation in Chicago had to say by word of mouth or through the medium of its actions touching this problem of the hour. The International Harvester Company Com-pany has $120,000,000 oe capital, it dispensed $21,763,307.95 in pay-roll wages alone last year, and $16,783,000 in sales commissions; it makes eighty-five eighty-five per cent, of the harvesting machinery, ma-chinery, and a good part of everything every-thing else the farmer uses in planting, tilling, and gardening his crops. It takes ore from its own irot mines and wood from its own forests, makes its own pigiron and steel, qwns its own coal lands, and at every dttrp 61 the multifarious processes of mam -facture up to the moment; when the grain pours, like the stream goj it is, into the farmers' binf clears something by ,way of profits That is H what it is in business for; M h m A little before noon, after an hour M in the twine mill at the McCormick plant of the Harvester Company, I H started to leave the building. It is a H vast place, with its floor upon floor H of whirling machinery, its bales and H skeins and ever-lengthening lines of H cucatan sisal, the maguey hemp, shin- ingjikc yellow gold in the gloom $s H I skirted the long rows of carding- wk H machines, where men were at work w M skeining the bales and coiling 5hc skeins into metal barrels for jthc I spinning, the hoarse mill whistfa ibrayed out noon, the power giantlin I the basement left off his turning, and I with a. moribund spasm all the maze I of machinery came to a standstill. I Every man grabbed his hat and' coat and fled for daylight. Froni the cor- I ridors where they had vanished;" d moment later iboundcd a girl in work clothes, laughing, hurrying, talking Polish, and behind her another. TJicn they poured in an cvcr-mcrcasing, volubly happy, and, above all, swift- footed throng. I looked for the sad color of humanity in masses, but) t wasn't there. It was much more like ' the outpouring of children fromi a ;H schoolroom. One thing seemed ccr- 'B tain that Jhc place for mere man was -V in the safe lee of sonic motionless ma- JH chincry that was bolted to the floor, m until this headlong, current of work- B ing-girl had gone by. rjH The long, low-ccilingcd basempnt of the twine mill is divided through its middle by a gangway enclosed be- tween two quarter partitions. In these arc gateways upon cither hand. fl Those on the left lead into the res- taurant, and at each of them sits a checker, in a snowy white apron that " envelops her from neck to heel, hand- ing lunch checks to the girls as they pass in. Beside the checker's dfesk i I a long counter, where other white- aproned attendants have set out a fine array of coffee and cakes and pic and H pudding and dinners of soup, roast, ,'H and vegetables. Each girl takes her H own wnd finds a place at one of he H numberless tables. Some bring their lunches from home in paper bags and . buy coffee or tea at the counter aj a H cent or so the cup. v.i ; In two minutes the midday nifcal H was undter way. There was allhe ,H jollity ageedjm and goodngpre V (Continued on page 6.) ' - 'H I International Harvester Company i i . THE HEART OF A "SOULLESS I CORPORATION." H (Continued from page 5 a.) H, that you would find anywhere. The H first girl that finished crossed the H gangway to the 'space opposite, raised H1 the cover of the upright piano that H stood against a pillar in the .centre of H. the room, and started in on the "Mcr- m ry Widow" waltz. Tliat was the sig- P nal for a general pushing back of cof- li) fee cups, and in no time a dozen H' couples were whirling around the H floor. More were chatting in the easy - , chairs 'about (he wall. In the "rest room''joining there vcrc girls louningwon sofas, girls reading maga-H maga-H 1 1 7incs anil funny papers, and half u H dozen 1girls waiting for their turn to H take counsel of ai uniformed nurse, H who at every noon-time; -with her H j little hag of ointments and bandages H , and simple medicaments, holds "of-' Hh ficc hours" licrc for the consideration H of minor ills. H I This may all seem nonsensical. From H j! the hard-headed mill-owner of a quar- H J tcr of a century ago it would probab- H ' ly have provoked something stronger H than exclamations of surprise. A H piano jingling out waltzes in a factory I!' on a week day, a warm mool served in civilized fashion on clean dishes, H jL and a nurse bandaging shapely wrists H on which machine oil had set up a Hjii rash, would have been a strange sight H i in the factories of our boyhood. But H thcs.c arc not much only one or tw'o H Jj oi the visible signs of a new order, .1 H t change of the world's heart. The vt- H it tal and significant part of it was what I ( underlay it, the spirit of the place. OiMccuirsc'it was a workshop, but .n p the "carriage of these girls there was Ino 'dependency, no depression. They . were contented in their occupation, if H face's arc sign-boards, or if bearing is H cxprcss'ive ofl inward feeling. There Hi was' little, if any, trace of the old-time H cowd mill-girl air that prevailed, H when girls in manufacturing cstablish- Hj ments sat around at noon time like HI feeding animals, perched on a box, or Hlj on a-lumber ipilc in the yarjl, H They 'were- nofalbbcautics. Many H I were more than pretty, and. it dldn' Hr require a I-tollcu totdisccrn. that.' 'But H all of tliCiii had dignity and modesty Hk Hj and 'good manners' If thcre wastfa H btun rowdy among them, she re- pressed hergcyhnt day. mr Watching these spinners of binder ' twine at their little noonday diversions, diver-sions, I realized Oic force of one other oth-er thing Mr. McCormick had said. It was this: "Wherever women and girls arc employed, this work is an absolute necessity. In fact, it was because of the effort to (better their conditions of w,ork everywhere that the whole wet- fare system arose, and the results arc greater even than they appear on the surface. The improvement in the mora.1 of all the surroundings, as well as the physical environment, makes the task of women and girls happier, but the benefit by no means cnJs there. You will find that the moral improvement extends to those cm ployed in every department of the business." ' , .- lie was right. Here lies one of the fundamentals; for, as we in America recognize perhaps more clearly than any other pcoplcin thc world, woman is the starting-point of all isocial improvement. im-provement. These mill-girls do not stay mill-girls. They marry, and they marry mill-men, if not from their own mill, then from some other. They become the mothers of other girls, and of hard-sinewed, clear-headed men, many of whom in another thirty years will be running our factories, our railroads, and our politics. They . arc to be home-makers and teachers and models to theaiext generation of the working class. These are not' matters for mincing. They reach down to the moral foun-datou foun-datou of the new "1 ace. Who that has ever dwelt in an old-fashioned manufacturing manu-facturing town docs not know the cstiriiatc placed by the local libertine on the "mill-girls"? There were mills enough where a decent girl could bring herself to work only when hunger hun-ger left her no other recourse. More insistent than the timekeeper's clock, I find less rcduccable than the wage scale, is the company's demand that every girl who earns her living in any of this corporation's dozen or more scattered plants shall receive from every man in the employ, whether he be high or low, the respect to which womanhood 'entitles her. There have been some luminous illustrations, fortunately for-tunately few, of the fact that for a man to fail of obedience to this rule is a mjichquijkeraysofrelinqmsh-, ing his job with the Harvester Com- pany than to submit a written resignation. resig-nation. And whether he is a good man in that job or a commonplace one is a secondary consideration. Greed certainly never prompted this. This, indeed, is the ibasis of wclfaie work, and all the rest in the way of improved conditions comes after, and is made triply effective thereby. Thrc arc dressing-rooms and private lockers and lavatory structures apart from the mill buildings and connected by (bridges from every floor. In this, as in every place where there "arc girls, there is a matron. The walls and the machinery in the shops arc cleansed of dust every night by pneumatic pneu-matic process, ventilation is perfect, the conditions arc inspected at every hour of the day, and the air of the shops kept as clear of dust and ill od-irs as may be. But the moral atmosphere at-mosphere is cleaner still. When you sift, the whole matter down, the most tlvat betterment work can do is to create in workpeople self-respect and! a desire to better themselves, to reveal re-veal the possibilities, in the coin of happiness and -contentment, that abide, in higher living. " ' The twine mill-girls have a relief association conducted cnMrcly by themselves. Every member is assessed as-sessed a small percentage of her wages. When one of them is ill, flowers flow-ers and books arc sent to her, a comrade com-rade is assigned to sit up nights with her, if necessary, or to lend a hand to her comfort in whatever way it may be required. The core girls of the foundry have a similar .society, a restaurant res-taurant to themselves, and, incidentally incidental-ly a forewoman in the department instead in-stead of a foreman. Thus welfare work gradually rcp'roduccs itself. But the system goes further back than the girl in the mill. It aims at something more basic even than her improvement. Bythc side of the club house you will see a little peak-roofed building. It was formerly a working-mans working-mans cottage. There are thousands and tl Ousands like it all through the working districts of Chicago. This cottage was bought and turned into a schoolan unusual school, a sort ,of domestic kindergarten for working-men's working-men's little girls. Now, children can't go into the mills in Illinois until they arc fourteen years old. So at nine they are t. en into this school and taught to cook and sew; not to coojc tcrnapinijpr to make lace shirt-waists, but tocqpk the things am? sewthe, things that & workingmanls wages, whether he be a father or a husband, will buy." They arc tauglft to buy things and get their money's worth. The place is furnished, not-.likc a decorative de-corative school, but like a working-man's working-man's home. This course of instruc tion extends over five years. When a girl is old enough to go to work and make money, she knows how to sew her own clothes or run a home. In the evening this school is open to the mill-girls. When these (coordinate (coordi-nate systems are established in all the works of the Harvester Company a pretty straight way will have been j found for the host of girls from child- ; hood to motherhood, and that's about as good and as human a work as any money power couW busy itself with (Continued next week.) n |