George F. Johnson and His Industrial Democracy

Key Takeaways

Under Consideration — to be added.

Interconnections

Under Consideration — to be added.

Highlights

• While leaders of government and of industry have been trying, almost in despair, to find a way to reconcile labor and capital, George F. Johnson has not only found it but followed it for forty years. His inborn spirit of friendship and fair play has inspired in his people a coöperation which has produced comfort and happiness for them and prosperity for all concerned. There is no patent on the plan. Anyone who will may use it. And it has a virtue that commends it to all good business men—it pays.
• Naturally, they ask who started it and how he has kept it going; for the world today is pretty well inclined to believe, with Emerson, that an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
• He worked as hard as anyone else, but he never stopped studying how to do things better and with less labor-hasn’t stopped that study yet, by the way.
• At supper one Friday Captain Johnson told George to whitewash the back fence, and he’d pay him ten cents for the job. George went out to see four boys who played ball on his team. There were only two brushes; so when the four boys came round next morning George worked each boy fast for a spell, then let the next boy take the brush and try to work faster. He mixed the whitewash in two buckets, and watched to make sure none was splashed and that all the fence was evenly covered. In less than two hours the job was done and paid for. George gave each boy one cent, according to contract, and with the remaining half dime bought a bag of candy, which he shared with the four, a bonus they didn’t expect. It was his first experience as a leader of industry. When I asked Mr. Johnson about the incident the other day, he said, “It’s true, but it sounds too much like Tom Sawyer.” It happened in 1867, long before Mark Twain wrote Tom Sawyer.
• George always shared his apples or candy with his gang, had as keen an instinct for giving as he had for trading.
• That instinct for helping and giving, the boys inherited from their mother-and they often saw her act on it. She did not talk about the duty of helping people: she did it.
• He wanted to throw down the hatchet and break out-run anywhere to get a breath of good fresh air. But there was in his make-up a strong streak of the iron of New England, the persistence that had tamed the forest and dared the seas, and besides there was the Yankee shrewdness which taught him that he must work if he would eat. And if he must work, he might as well go ahead at this tough task in the hope of making something worth while out of it.
• “Hey!” he called to the boy at the next block. “Look! I’ve found a two-dollar bill!” “Here-what’s this?” cried a harsh voice over his shoulder, and the strong hand of boss Gardiner reached down and grabbed the money. “Boy,” he said, “don’t you know everything that comes in here belongs to me?” The boss jammed the bill in his pocket-and George Johnson got a job in another shop just as soon as he could. He did not waste breath in complaining to the Seavers, but he thought of Gardiner’s meanness for years. At the moment it was only one more of the hardships that a poor boy of the shoe towns had to suffer in silence; yet perhaps his resentment of this injustice inspired in George F. that devotion to the Square Deal which has always been the rule in his factories.
• “The trouble with most employers is that they don’t see far enough ahead. If they did, if they had real vision, they’d see that they would be better off paying good wages and helping their workers to lead normal, happy lives, owning their homes and being a real part of the community. But the short-sighted employers want to make quick money, and think they can get it by paying as little as possible, exploiting their workers and the people who buy their product.”
• “Out in the West now there is a concern operating on a plan exactly the opposite to ours. They have their factories far apart; they cut wages down as far as they can, and they figure that when they have labor trouble in one plant they can close it down and do the work elsewhere. Foolish. They can’t last and win through on that program. The Square Deal the only one that pays in the long run.”
• “Every improvement we have made in the business since I’ve had charge of it has been my idea. That is not boasting: it is the simple truth, and I am telling you so that you can get the record right. It took me five years to persuade Endicott that we ought to tan our own leather. He asked, ‘What do you know about tanning leather?’ and I said, ‘Money will hire men who will tan it.’ I wanted to get away from paying the profits that are taken out at every step from hides to shoes, to cut out all unnecessary costs and pass the savings along to our workers, to our customers and our stockholders.”
• The workers were well pleased with the new policy of the shop, which offered them a premium for industry. They turned to with such energy that all the leather on hand was quickly made up and sold as boots and shoes. Mr. Endicott sent down more orders and more leather, and the business rallied, began to flourish while the new superintendent still drew only a foreman’s pay, and studied every element of costs as if the business belonged to him.
  • Owner mentality in a manager
• Mr. Endicott was so delighted with the saving of the money and the greater business his new superintendent brought in that he came to Lestershire and asked George F. how much more he thought he ought to be paid. “Nothing more just yet,” said the ambitious young man. “We’re experimenting now. Let’s wait till we see how the business grows.”
• “I believed,” George F. replied, “that we could build up a great enterprise by making our workers comfortable, free of worry, whether in the factory or in their homes; by thinking of them and treating them as human beings, not machines to be run till they broke down and had to be scrapped; to make them as contented as we could within reason. Men everywhere respond to that kind of treatment. It is decent; it is common sense-and it pays, too; pays everybody in the enterprise and the whole community.
• “We had all suffered from idle periods in the factory. Steady work at decent wages is better than a high wage scale with long lay-offs in dull times. I tried to arrange our business to run all through the year. Also we cut out every item of excessive cost by wiping out the middle men wherever we could. We never stopped looking for better methods. Any man with a new invention to make shoes better and cheaper didn’t have to look for us-I was looking for him.
• “I believed then, and I believe now, that a man is entitled to all he can make with his skill and his industry. He ought not to be held back by getting no more pay than shirkers or incompetents. Time wages slow a man down: he thinks of the end of his day’s work, not of the beginning and doing the best he can.
• You see Mr. Johnson didn’t wait till he was rich before he began to help working folks.”
• Work in the Pioneer factory moved with a speed and precision never known before. From the oldest experts at the bench to the youngest apprentices, all hands were keen to do their best, took a new interest in turning out a better product and more of it. Not for money alone-at least, not for mere piling up of more pay coupons immediately. They were a crew keyed up to racing pitch. What they were all aiming at was to improve their methods so much that they would excel any other outfit in the trade. This did not happen by chance: their leader had set fire to their imagination.
• “We’ve got to make all we can of this concern, not try to take all we can out of it,” George F. told his companions, as he watched them at their work day by day. This was exactly opposite to the policy that commonly prevailed in industry-to wring all that was possible out of a shop, whether in profits or in wages, with capital and labor fighting for the lion’s share. From the time that young Johnson, at the age of fifteen, grew ambitious to run a shop, his ruling idea had been to develop it for all it was worth, and now that he had complete charge of the Lester factory he put it in operation. And, thanks to his friendship with the workers and their belief in him, he was able to secure their enthusiastic support.
• A faithful outline of Mr. Johnson’s understanding of his relation with his employees appears in an interview published long afterward. His own words tell better than anyone else can describe the principles that governed him from the beginning. The interviewer quoted one of the greatest industrialistsHenry Ford-as writing: “It is not necessary for the employer to love the employee, or for the em ployee to love the employer. What is necessary is for each to try to do justice to the other.”
• Mr. Johnson flatly contradicted this.
• “I don’t want to get into a controversy with Mr.
• Ford,” he said, “but if what he wrote is part of his philosophy, then he will die one of the greatest failures the world has ever known.
• “I am a shoemaker, without the advantages of education. The conclusions I have reached are purely practical. My theories have grown from my experience in the ranks of workers and executives. My father was a seafaring man, and it was a favorite axiom of his that the best place to learn navigation was at sea.
• “I have learned navigation of a different kindindustrial navigation. I was twenty-five when I arrived in Binghamton and went to work for the largest boot manufacturing firm in the city. That was at a time when people say there was the ‘fine man-to-man relationship between employer and employee.’ I never found that spirit. The owner of the company was a ‘big man.’ His business was an incident to him.
• I felt then that something was wrong.
• “I don’t believe that any man can own a business.
• It belongs to the customers, to the workers, to the community, to the public. A business cannot be left to incompetent heirs with extravagant ideas of living.
• You owe to everybody, and to the workers most, to give yourself to it and to arrange as far as possible that the future shall hold the same sort of construc tive relationship.
• you “More cooperation, less friction, more harmony, less discord that is no mean goal. It is as effective in a working contact between a man and his chauffeur as it is with the head of a large trust and one of his fifty thousand workers. Your chauffeur knows and your problems, and understands and respects your judgment. Your worker should know you the same way. He can be educated to the difficulties you have in running a vast organization. He can get an understanding of the great problems of capital.
• “That doesn’t mean coddling, That doesn’t mean pampering. That means only that you grant your worker a mind and a heart. You recognize in him the same human qualities that you possess. And-this is most important to be truly successful, truly constructive, truly great, you must know what is in the mind and in the heart of the worker. Wages alone, no matter how fair, how liberal, won’t do it.
• “I have no panacea, no formula, for industrial peace. But this I do believe: Those who control labor must live with labor. The children of the workers should grow up with the children of the employers.
• They should play together. The wives should have a pleasant neighborhood relationship. Executives should be familiar with the lives of their workersnot in a prying sense, but in a social sense. They should be concerned with the happiness and the pros perity of the men and their families. It isn’t all-important that the owners shall prosper much, but that people dependent on industry shall prosper in reason.
• “A real love for work and workers cannot be manifested at long range. A man can’t operate a factory in Binghamton and live in New York. This business of ours is built on the ruins of the one in which I began on my first job. Long-distance supervision shows a short-distance mind. Nothing makes me more impatient, more restless and irritable, than to be controlled by something or someone I can’t see and don’t know. Why should I hire a manager of a plant who is a stranger to the workers-a man who comes from outside to take a job at the top and talk down to them from a height? I couldn’t swallow that; neither can any upstanding individual. It is not hard to make labor happy if you recognize yourself in your men.
• “Such a thing as democracy in industry, love in industry, is possible—and it is good business. It’s got to be made possible. It’s the only answer for human beings. Yet I do not idealize human nature. I know it. I know there is as much aristocracy in labor as there is division between capital and labor. The wife of a chauffeur won’t always associate with the wife of a janitor: they’re not in the same social class.
• “Aristocracy-aristocracy of labor, of wealthI hate it. Because others are shortsighted is no reason why I should be so. This industry is built on the ideal of democracy, of humanity-and therein lies its strength.”
• “It is a matter of the heart as much as it is of the head. You won’t do it unless you have it in your heart, and if you have, you will easily find the way. It is as simple as the Golden Rule. It is putting yourself in the worker’s place, and doing by him as you would have him do by you. There is a good deal of talk about the machinery of industrial democracy, but it is the spirit that counts. It is the human factor that makes the machinery worth while.
• “We should be glad of our success thus far,” he often told his workers, “and reasonably contented with the progress we are making-but never satisfied. When a man is satisfied, he’s through. We’ve got to keep trying to do better every day, and we will do better if we keep our minds on it.”
• As an ambitious young man, conscious of his ability as a business planner and leader, he had looked forward to the time when he would live in a fine house with handsome grounds, drive blooded horses and sail a beautiful yacht. Possibly, if success had come to him early, he would have spent his money on these things. But he was well advanced in middle age before he had money to spend, and by that time he had lost his taste for luxuries. The simple life appealed to him.
• At this time he began to contribute generously to welfare work, churches and hospitals in Binghamton and throughout the valley. His gifts since then have amounted to millions of dollars, always inspired by the idea of helping his neighbors. The striking thing about this giving was-and is-that he felt as much enthusiasm for this object as other men feel for building ornate homes and entertaining on a rich scale. While they went in for collecting costly paintings, rare porcelains, cellars of fine wines, he went in for collecting happy friends.
• Although he was George F.’s eldest son, he went to work as a common laborer. His father made it clear to him as if he were a stranger that it was entirely up to him whether he should rise in the business or be dropped out for not making good. “No business can carry incompetent workers, George,” his father told him. “We can’t afford to play favorites. I think you have good stuff in you and you’ll do well. Good luck to you.’”
• “Too many businesses today, George,” he said, “are run by second or third generation men, pleasant fellows who have been through college, think they know a lot, and come into the business from the top. How can they really understand it unless they have begun at the bottom and worked all the way up?” The young man saw the point. “I saved George from college and put him to work,” is the way his father tells it.
• When the company began to tan upperand other light leathers, young Johnson learned all about them, too. He could step up and run any of the machines today-and, incidentally, when any tanner feels dissatisfied with conditions and tells the president about it, he doesn’t need an interpreter. Each of them knows all about the situation, for they have had the same experience and speak the same language. This practical, first hand knowledge gives the president a big advantage in everything the company undertakes in converting hides into finished leather.
• “That has been of great value to me,” he says; “for in this organization we have no soft places. No one here has a good thing that carries him along. He must prove his worth. If he doesn’t measure up to his job, he’s through, no matter who he is. That’s a big help in keeping our business healthy and growing year by year,
• “This is a real industrial democracywith leadership, of course: no democracy can function without leadership—and we hope to see it last a long time. It will last as long as the leaders have in their hearts that genuine love of their work and the workers “Men reason with their minds-but they act from the heart.”
• Not far down the river was the ancient little village of Union, which took its name from the union of the forces of General Sullivan and General Clinton, whom President Washington sent to drive the hostile Indians out of the valley. South of the village is a high hill, almost half a sphere in shape, which has long been known as Round Top. Driving his small roadster to the summit of this lookout, George F. used to sit there and dream. Stretching to the far western horizon lay the broad valley of the Susquehanna for many a mile, bordered on either hand by ridges of thickly wooded hills. Below the village of Union there were farms that extended from the river to the steep northern slopes Here, as the dreamer visioned it, would be plenty of room for whatever new factories he might need, and boundless room for his workers to have their homes and gardens and little farms. No land sharks could rob them of their earnings here; for the land would be reserved for the use of the company and its people. “They’ll all be safe here,” he mused. “Lots of room for all of us-yes, and down on that hundred acres by the river I’ll build a golf course. If golf’s good for the tired business man, it’s good for the tired worker, too.”
  • 20 year hill
• With so many newcomers in the factories, Mr. Johnson found it impossible to keep in touch with them through the E. J. Workers’ Review, which he had founded in April, 1919. Once a month was not often enough to discuss the problems of the fast growing business; so he gave up the Review in the fall of 1925, and bought a full page every day in the Binghamton Sun, for which he paid advertising rates. This supplemented the letters and bulletins he put up occasionally on the time clock which every employee punches. He still uses it.
• The E. J. Workers’ Page has been read ever since the first issue with keen interest. Here are recorded George F.’s letters to his people, besides the daily happenings in the E. J. communities and the news of the E. J. shops, markets, schools, churches, sports and recreations. This open forum is not so intimate as the frequent talks with his men in the old days, but it serves to keep everybody well informed. When any worker has a complaint, George F. urges him to write to the Page and ask satisfaction. Even anonymous complaints are investigated. Every grievance is thoroughly looked into, and the results are published on the Page. This brings out the facts and keeps the air clear of smouldering dissatisfaction. As more workers have been needed from time to time, E. J. employees have sent specimen pages to their friends in other cities.
• I had worked a long time in factories in Missouri and the West, and had to lay off every now and then; so at last I came here, in 1933. Say! it’s like moving into a different country. It ain’t only that we earn more and the shops are better to work in but we money have a chance to live in real homes, not jammed into rows of sloppy old houses. “And all the good things thrown in on the side! I never saw anything like this layout. I don’t see how these Johnsons do it—but they’ve been keeping it up a long time, and they don’t seem to lose by it. Look over there now: all four of them scattered among the bunch, having as much fun as any of us. No high hats, no stuffed shirts; just regular fellows. The best of it is, they give everyone an even break. I wish I’d come here twenty years ago. I’m fifty now, but it ain’t too late at that. I’ve made a good start at buying a home, and in a few years more it’ll be all mine. And I’ll tell you one thing-in this place you feel that you are somebody, not a dumb factory hand, to be hired and fired and kicked around. It’s living; that’s what it is.”
• “And wherever I worked they had a forewoman for every ten or a dozen workers, to see that they kept steadily at it; no time for talking or anything else. It was drive, drive, drive, every minute. Here in Endicott, everybody seemed to take things easyand yet kept busy all the time. We were all on piece work, you see, and if we took a few moments now and then we made up for it. “Nobody drives you here, and yet, if you fall behind in production, a director-they don’t call them forewomen or foremen-gives you a friendly call. What’s holding you back? Do you find your job unpleasant? Would you rather try something else? No? Well, then don’t you think you can do betterfor your own sake and everybody’s? No nagging; just a bit of friendly advice. These people don’t drive you to do better: they treat you so you want to do your best. And so you try to improve-and you do. Believe me, I’ve tried, and I know. It isn’t hard to pay a little closer attention when you know it will get you a bigger pay envelope at the end of the week. No forewomen anywhere to jump at you. In my stitching room we have only one director and her two assistants for two hundred sixty-four girls at the machines.”
• “Not that there’s anything sloppy about these E. J. people. They trust everybody, but they keep their eyes open. As long as you do your work right, you’d almost have to do murder to get fired. I know of cases where fellows have been caught stealing leather. What happened? The boss sent for them, told them he knew what they’d done, and said: ‘Go on back to work, and quit making a fool of yourself.’ And the funny thing is, the fellows kept straight after that; so I guess it was better than firing them after all.
• “These homes,” he said, “are comfortable and beautiful. They are fine enough for any family in the land. Don’t waste your money on fancy stuff and frills. The great trouble with all of us-I am the chief offender is that we want too much. Whether we can afford it or not, we feel bound to have it. It’s pretty bad to have too much, even when we can afford it, but it’s a great deal worse to have too much when we can’t afford it, because the pleasure is lost in the anxiety and worry of being in debt. When you have a surplus, invest it wisely, and you’ll be glad of it some day when you need it.
• Though this British housing program recognizes that decent living for workers is a prime social need, which private capital must satisfy, it is far different from the George F. Johnson plan. The essence of his idea is that employers and employed shall live close to one another, friends and neighbors, a community of families with mutual interests. The British plan keeps employers and employed in separate districts. That is in accord with the ancient English class system, derived from the feudal principle, which divides mankind into lords and vassals, masters and servants.
• It is difficult to write the last word about West Endicott. If you happen to stroll through the streets of the village any morning at half-past eight or so, you will see Mr. Johnson driving along the avenues or some of the cross streets. As soon as he has finished answering the letters in his home office, where he begins work at seven, he gets behind the wheel of his dark green roadster, and drives down Main Street to the west. Sometimes he swings up the winding road to the high circle on Round Top and pauses long enough to look over the valley that he has filled with industry and happy homes; but always before he starts for the main office in the Tannery building he drifts throught West Endicott. As his car moves slowly along, George F. is looking right and left, enjoying the vistas of green lawns, the neat, well painted homes. Groups of children on their way to school see the car coming, and halt at the nearest curb. They all know the driver. “Hello, George F.!” they sing out to him, smiling and waving their hands. “Hello, youngsters!” he replies, with a flourish of his old gray cap, and slowly goes on his way to work.
• In the narrow streets near Pioneer you will see many workers’ homes on small plots of ground. They are neat but crowded too close for comfort. They well illustrate the old order of things in the industrial world; for, as we know, when Mr. Lester built his new factory he bought acreage all around it, and sold lots to his workers at fancy prices. He made so much out of this that he branched out as a real estate dealer, and so began the speculations that ruined his business. Mr. Lester’s workers eagerly bought his land and built these houses in the 1890’s, to avoid the tedious trip from Binghamton by horse-car and the muddy walk from the city line-and Endicott Johnson workers still live in them. But they are no more like the houses George F. Johnson and his brothers have built for their workers than a little old Model T car is like a modern sedan. Among these relics of a less enlightened age there is an old cottage that is always freshly painted white. It is the one George F. Johnson used to live in, and he never lets it suffer neglect.
• Three blocks up the hill from the Pioneer tract is a big, one-story structure in the square, on which is displayed a sign, “E. J. Workers’ Public Market.” Here farmers from miles around bring their produce three times a week and sell it to the workers and their neighbors. All are welcome, on the E. J. principle of the greatest good for the greatest number, and on the outer wall is carved a motto borrowed from George F. Johnson, “Live and Help Live.”
• There is no back-slapping or handshaking; there is just friendship and understanding. The idea that governs is: “See what you can make of the business, not make out of the business.” George F. expresses it in his acts as in his words: “Live and Help Live.” It satisfies everybody, from the oldest customer to the newest apprenticeand it pays dividends in money as well as in happiness.
• This army, which increases at the rate of one thousand a year in good times, is recruited with the utmost care; for there is more at stake than merely hiring people who may stay a little while and then drift away. The company has steady work for steady people. Therefore most of those who come to look for jobs feel that they will get work which will last as long as they do it right, with help to buy good homes at low cost, with care for their health and the health of their families, besides provision for old age if they need it. In a word, an E. J. job is a career.
• Through the dull periods of 1933 and 1934, when many shoe factories in New England and the West were shut down half the time, the E. J. people continued steadily at work throughout the year, with four full days every week in the worst times-and then not for long. This was due to the planning carefully thought out in advance, planning that covered every step from buying hides and rubber at the lowest cost to making shoes that look attractive and wear long, and pricing them at figures that help to sell them quickly.
• From George F. Johnson to the newest beginner, everybody is searching constantly for some way to save a few seconds of time in the operations. In 1934 each one of the nineteen thousand workers averaged one and a half pairs of shoes more a day than each one of the seventeen thousand workers in 1928.
• Perhaps the greatest element in the success of the the content of the workers, their freedom concern your own from worry, and their sense of responsibility. “Be supervisor,” George F. often urges them. “Don’t leave any flaws or loose knots in a shoe. Make sure that when it leaves your hands it is perfect.” By these appeals to pride in good work and the satisfaction in the pay it brings, the workers are stimulated to their best efforts. One superintendent, with his directors and assistants, fifteen in all, manages the work of eleven hundred people. Inspiring all the activity is the spirit of friendly coöperation, the spirit which George F. expresses with the phrase, “Make your people comfortable.”
• There has never been any trouble in the valley over Old World jealousies, none of the shedding of bad blood that has happened at times in other industrial centres. I have heard an occasional E. J. worker complain that “the company does too much for the foreigners.” Evidently George F. has heard such talk, too; for, in a letter to the workers, in December, 1926, he wrote: “Let’s have done with this hypocrisy and cant about ‘superior birth and breeding.’ Let’s understand first what an American is. He is what America is, a man who respects himself and othersnot because he happened to be born in one particular place in the world, but because he has the American spirit.
• The philosopher who said that no salary would be big enough for the president of a company who could inspire his employees to want to do their best, would enjoy watching the E. J. people at work. To begin with, they all know that the Johnsons have all learned the business from the bench upward, and could hold down jobs today. They know the trade and speak the language. The Johnsons live with their people, work, play, worship, rejoice and sorrow with them in a community of interest that is rare in the world of industry. They never preach about the dignity of labor. Instead, they act so as to make labor attractive, and they inspire a pride in workmanship that keeps the army of nineteen thousand eager to do their best at all times.
• Every man or woman in the Endicott Johnson factories is his or her own committee, and anyone with a grievance is invited-invited, not permitted to go to the head of the concern and state that grievance. The door is always open. That has been the rule from the beginning. The humanity of it, the satisfaction it gives, is a big contribution to the success of the Endicott Johnson Corporation.
• “Too much boss idea in a foreman,” George F. says. “We have directors, who guide the workers, help them when they need help, and see that they do their work right. The director does not try to drive them. Anyone who works with us needs no driving. He knows we are all trying for the same thingto do a good job because it’s worth doing well-and he does his share. If he doesn’t catch the idea, doesn’t do his best, he’ll probably be happier somewhere else, and we’ll not try to hinder him from going. And anyhow men are much better employed making shoes than trying to make lazy fellows work.”
• “Under the piece system, in one of our factories,” he said, “we have cutters earning seventy dollars a week-no overtime, either. We have other cutters, under the same system, same wages, same conditions, same leather, earning forty dollars a week, and we have cutters earning not even forty dollars. “The man who earns seventy dollars represents an investment in machinery and factory space of little more than half what the other fellow, who can earn only forty dollars, represents. He doesn’t take up any more room; it doesn’t take any more power to produce light, heat and power for him-takes a smaller investment in capital. If every man in the business was like the seventy dollar a week man, it would take only about two-thirds as much room, two-thirds as much machinery, light, heat and power, to produce the same number of shoes. The difference is in the men. “The man who earns good wages is alive. It is just as natural for him to move that way as it is for the other fellow to move slowly. His mind is quicker. His muscles are more attuned to the activities. He is worth more to himself, to the company, and to the world. Such a difference as that doesn’t exist among day workers, does it?
• “I don’t see,” an efficiency expert said to George F. Johnson, “how you can let your people take time out for eating in work hours. Bad for discipline, and sets an example of slackness. We keep our people on the mark all the time.” “Oh, I don’t know,” Mr. Johnson replied. “If a man works better on a full stomach, it’s better for him and better for us to have him get something to eat. We don’t have to prod our people to work. They like it. And the few minutes a man takes to satisfy his appetite he more than makes up with his comfort and contentment when he comes back to the job.”
• Endicott Johnson is neither an open shop nor a closed shop, as those terms are used technically. There is no labor union in any of them, though George F. Johnson has often said that he has no objection to anyone’s joining a union if he likes. “Most of the improvement in workers’ hours, wages and working conditions have come from the efforts of workers’ unions,” he said to me, “and they have been the result of hard struggles. We don’t believe that men should have to fight for decent treatment, and we have always tried to give them that, with maybe something more. “When the unions of Binghamton held a big labor parade, in 1916, they invited us to parade with them, and they put us at the head of the linethousands of our workers, with George and Charley marching with me at the front. Sam Gompers told me years ago, that we had already given our workers more than any union could ask, and that the Federation of Labor had more important work to do than to try to organize our people. John Mitchell told me the same thing. Jerry Ryan, union organizer of Binghamton, said the same thing. Our workers know that we are the best labor leaders for them-their interest is our interest always.”
  • Unions
• “Better shoes for less money,” was George F.’s principle, and he advertised it to the world. Other manufacturers called Endicott Johnson and Company the Fords of the shoe business because they spread throughout the United States cheap shoes that looked good, felt good and lasted long. There is more profit in selling millions of shoes to the multitude than in selling mere thousands to the lovers of luxury.
• The aim of the company, as it has been from the beginning, is to save every penny possible in shoemaking, from the raw hide and crude rubber to the finished article and divide the savings with those who make and those who wear the shoes. Those who stick to that principle are bound to prosper.
• “Every improvement we make,” George F. Johnson has said again and again; “Every improvement and every saving we effect, is divided into three parts ―the workers’, the consumers’ and the company’s. That is one of the best ways to make a business successful and keep it so. People who sell our shoes and people who wear them know from experience that we give them at a low price the best leather and the most skillful workmanship. So long as we play fair with all three parties in the business, we can be reasonably hopeful of prosperity.’”
• IN EARLIER chapters mention has been made of the E. J. Review and its successor, the Workers’ Page in the Binghamton Sun, through which George F. keeps in daily touch with his people. When the business was small, he knew them all, and they freely talked over their problems with him. But by 1919 the army of workers had grown to thirteen thousand, and such intimate contact was no longer possible. To keep the channel clear for open discussion George F. began, on March 20, 1919, to publish the E. J. Workers’ Review, a monthly magazine, as the place for questions and answers. It was really the outgrowth of his instinct for neighborliness. “If it is to be of any use in the world to either you or the company,” he wrote, “it must be a medium for frank, candid and free discussion of our mutual problems and mutual relations. Don’t waste time and energy in complimenting the company or any of its executives. Tell us what is wrong with this business. Tell us what we can do to improve it. Show us how to improve it. Help us to do better. “There can be no permanent dislike or trouble among honest people who will get acquainted, who will compare notes with one another, who will talk over their troubles and their pleasures and their daily lives; who will take one another into their confidence, in order that they may make righteous decisions and righteous judgments with respect to one another.”
• “Someone suggested that we were ‘encouraging big families and furnishing them comfortable homes in order to secure future workers.’ Right absolutely. No camouflaging this question. But not right that we are doing this selfishly; not right that we are exploiting men and women for selfish purposes; not right that we expect later to have these boys and girls in our factories to do them any harm or to make their lives less profitable and useful. That was the thought intended to be conveyed by the one who suggested this as the reason why we encourage and try to help large families. “We hope to make this a splendid place for large families. We expect, here in this valley, to make Labor more noble-to dignifiy Labor with credit, profit and honor. These ‘born tanners and shoemakers’ and those yet to be born, are born to a heritage a heritage of happy, prosperous, comfortable existence, a chance in life to enjoy the blessings God intended that all should enjoy. “If we build houses for big families, it is because we see clearly a future generation of happy, well paid workers, living under conditions as nearly ideal as the state of civilization will permit at this age of the world.”