Morality in Business: John Henry Patterson of Dayton, Ohio
by Edwin Wildman
(Note: Wildman, a journalist, visited Dayton and interviewed Patterson for this article, which appeared in Forum Magazine, August 1919, pages 158-168.)
This is not the story of a big business-it is the story of a big man who dared to carry his ideals into his work, and hitch his dollars to his theories, that men and women are not commodities but humans to whom he is responsible in his position as master of their labor. It is the story of a pioneer of industrial welfare and its reaction on business and community life. It is from such men's work and achievements that nations are made and public policies and sentiments are crystallized into a new order looking to a better world to live in-if we do not wait until it is too late.
A High Regard for His Employees
We were standing on the lawn that sloped down from the front of a charming southern Ohio home. Be-yond, through the vista of great trees, were the lights of the city. A glorious moonlight flooded the open. For the moment the moving-picture that had been dancing across the great white sheet, ghost-like against the screen, stopped. Between us and the bank of green were two hundred men and women, when suddenly from the throng there glided up to the man beside me a girlish figure, gowned in a neat and simple frock. Her face was yet pale from evident illness-paler perhaps in the blanching silver of the moon. Timidly but eagerly, her eyes shining with the joy of one come back from the Valley of the Shadow, she spoke to the great man at my side. "I want to thank you for being here to-night. I cannot tell you how good it is to be well again-and but for you-""Have you enjoyed being here? I am glad you are better," he interrupted. "You know M-C-- (mentioning a great health resort) cured me. Oh, I thank you," and she glided away with the shadows. "One of the girls from the factory who was ill," and the great capitalist turned to greet others on the lawn as they pressed his hand.
It was a meeting of the Advance Club-those who had come up from the ranks into the executive department-on the lawn of Far Hills, the rambling chalet-like home of John Henry Patterson of Dayton, Ohio. The little dramatic incident was the last note in the symphony of emotions that registered the picture of humanitarianism in industry during a two days' visit in Mr. Patterson's realized dreamland of endeavor to live a life of helpfulness to others.
An Industrial Valley of Content
Upon a trip to the Middle West to study and investigate unrest, I had stopped off in the valley of content. Down in the city, in the midst of man's industrial mechanism, I faced miles of efficiency, thousands of complicated machines, an endless array of operators, of turning wheels and vibrating power, thousands of the most complicated and delicate processes that go to evolve one of the most highly developed mechanisms of modern ingenuity that comes from the brain of man.
In the great factory's acres of ground and towering up a half dozen stories, I saw thousands of human beings at their daily task. The buildings were palaces of light and the interiors, burnished daily by a corps of two hundred "white wings," lent to the home of industry the air of the most mod-ern hotel. These things, though impressive, I had seen in other industrial centres, in the East, in the South, in the elsewhere Central West. My eyes sought something else, some-thing beyond and within that gave to the towering structure of steel and glass some quality different from that of others of most others. I did not find it upon the first day of my visit - the open sesame was withheld. But I persisted in my quest. Not until the afternoon of the second day did I find the secret, the magic touch, the hidden spring, that took from the factory's toil its grind, and gave to the mart of labor its heart. It was up on the slopes of Far Hills, reclining beneath one of the great trees with the master mind of the great industry below in the city, that I finally touched the pulse of the moralist of business.
Seeking the Worker's Best Interest
"Help people, educate them, give them opportunity," is Mr. Patterson's creed. "Don't calculate on its coming back to you, though it usually will, given the chance," is his way of expressing it. "If the wife or child of a man who is working for you is sick, help him by sending a nurse to take care of them. If they are not properly nourished, send them food from the store. The man will be more efficient. Help everybody to the limit of your strength and ability. It's good business, it's good morality. We've got to get down to the fundamentals in the lives of people, and better their condi-tions, set them an example, show them that what's ours is theirs; stimulate them."
Parks and Recreation
This place and Hills and Dales [Mr. Patterson's estate of nearly 1000 acres] is as free to anyone to come up here and enjoy, to play golf on, to picnic under the trees, to ride through and live upon in the camps, as it is to me. They come here and bring their families and rest and enjoy themselves. "Last week, I had several hundred of my factory foremen to dinner. I have my men and their wives here whenever they want to come, and they learn something - they enjoy it, for it's open to them and that eliminates envy." Children with their mothers were romping on the lawn beneath the trees, as he spoke. Their little car was backed upon the grass, off the roadway. There were no signs, "Private Property," "Keep off the Grass," on Far Hills, or Hills and Dales. "Open to all," was the only sign I saw.
Houses and Gardens
Then we went over to Hills and Dales, the great park estate of John Henry Patterson, just on the edge of Dayton. I saw the rustic cottages and tent houses that he had built, filled with families of his factory workers. I went with him through the forest roads, down into the cool ravines where camping parties had set their stakes. I went through bower-like by-ways, and up on high outlooks that commanded the stretches of valley and river. I saw children of factory families everywhere as we passed on. I saw strangers to him playing over his golf course, and down on the east slope of his villa, by the roadside, I wandered with him through a model garden acre, where were grown almost everything, from blackberries to vegetables of every variety, corn, potatoes, grapes and various flowers, all in the charge of an instruction gardener whose advice and help was free to any from the factory or the city who sought guidance in gardening. Then down by the great factory, on reclaimed land, I saw hundreds of gardens, ground free to his people of the industrial work-a-day. I even saw "strangers" drive up to the side of his house on the hill and jump from their little Fords in bathing attire, to enjoy his great swimming pool, not far from his house. I saw his lawns occupied by 500 people giving a War Community pageant. In the two days of my visit, we did not once dine at the table in his home, but once under the trees with his employees, once upon the lawn with the war benefit workers, when 300 were his guests at dinner after the pageant, "The Progress of Woman," was enacted.
Help Others and You Help Yourself
"What I can do, others can do," came to me and I wondered. Had Mr. Patterson found a solution of industrial unrest - this plain man whose factory has a hundred cars and who rides to work each morning punctually at 8:30 in a Ford? "You've got to help people," he reiterates. "You've got to help them get more out of life and give them more profit-sharing. You've got to reach out and concern yourself with the conditions of the city in which they live. You've got to keep them healthy and happy, and not leave them alone to brood and grow disgruntled and Bolshevistic."
So I looked further around Dayton and around the great factory, and I talked with men working over machinery and girls at the lathes and work tables. They told me of their work and what they were paid and what the company did for them. At the noon hour I saw 1300 men at lunch in a great white hail at 30 cents for each meal-one they could not buy for twice that sum at a cheap restaurant. I saw another great dining-room where hundreds of girls were given luncheon for 15 cents. Then I entered the School House, as big as a theatre and I saw 1500 more, some eating their own lunches, others coming in after luncheon, and all being enter-tained by the music of a well-trained factory band, while a full-fledged moving-picture program was run on the screen.
Provisions for Health and Welfare
Afterwards I visited the welfare rooms and the hospital, in charge of a physician and trained nurses and having an electric bath, massage, showers, and rest beds for any who were injured or became ill during the day. I visited a large airy library and reading room and club halls, at once a college and a work shop-an educational course in modern industry, it all seemed to me.
A Man Who Makes Things Pay
A PHILANTHROPIST! The word came to my mind. And yet I knew better. I had looked into the keen eyes and watched the firm lips of the master of this great institu-tion; I had read of his great business success-the growth of an industry from the humblest beginnings to 7000 manpower, with a daily average pay list of $25,000 and I knew better. I was talking with a Captain of Industry; a man who had made things pay, had made man give a dollar's worth of labor for a dollar's pay; a man who had built up a vast system, a big business of world-wide reach, and had never had but one strike; a man who played no favorites but earnest, honest labor, and entertained no indulgence for an idler, or a slacker; who believed the best in us is the least we should give; a man who did not wink at the man who loafed over his bench, or surreptitiously read a newspaper at his work, or who used up his energy in drink or tobacco, or late hours-withal a taskmaster who demanded the best for the man's sake, and for the work's sake; but who rewarded quickly, who responded and promoted eagerly and whose own share was always at the beck and call of need and better-ment for the good of the individual and the community. An anomaly in the industrial world? No, a pioneer.
A Capitalist's Guiding Philosophy
"What has been your guiding light-your underlying reason for your life of self-imposed usefulness to others?" I asked him.The veteran capitalist in his seventy-seventh year, but seemingly as young at heart and strong of body as men of half his age, fell into a soliloquy. "There is a universal law, God's law, that controls the world and all there is on it and all life. It saw fit to enter my life and take away those dear to me. Why was I punished, I reasoned, if not to see the light? What I would have done for them I resolved to do for others." John H. Patterson, inspired by an emotion, an ideal, a sense of morality, brought to a focus in his own life by the tragedy in his domestic circle, has lived for others. Thirty years ago he first saw into the hearts and sensed the ambitions and despair of the lowly; of those whose lives were a daily grind, whose colossal handicaps were ignorance and poverty and whose very existence in their sordid environment was a menace to the community of the present and a danger to the nation of the future.
Improving Dayton
So he began to build, not only in steel and stone, but human character, and business morality. He turned Slidertown, the worst suburb of Dayton, into a garden of beauty. A lover of nature, he beautified everything he touched. "Slidertown," the one time slum, where stands his factory, is today a beauty spot, but he did not stop there. As rapidly as he could educate and extend his activities, he reached out to the city, then to Hills and Dales.Today Dayton and its environs is as beautiful a city as lies along the bank of the Ohio. It is a city of beautiful residences and parks, and drives of endless charm, for others soon followed the example of his work and the Patterson idea gripped and stuck and prevails in Dayton. This is not merely the study, nor the studied eulogy of a man. It was Mr. Patterson's request to eliminate his name in anything I might write of my visit. This is the study of morality in industry and a consideration of its effects.
A Rising Tide of Ignorance to Combat
With the sinister forces of ignorance rising like a tide in America, every thinking and forceful man and woman must take heed of his fellow man. With our millions of un-Americanized peoples yet to fuse into one commonwealth of industry, there is need to study the force of mass that, under organization, strikes blindly at all that goes to make labor and government secure and civilization stable and progressive. The spirit of "we want more" is rampant and when it is supplemented, as by a Chicago strike-leader the other day, with "We don't care who pays the bills, we're going to have it," there danger and Bolshevism threaten. How shall the leaders of industry meet the clamor at their doors? How shall the laws of moral economics be met, as against the massed force of organized demand contrary to economic laws? How far can industry go to meet those demands and preserve itself and maintain law, order and government? The issue must be met and neither the industrial master nor the political parties wants to resort to armed peace in in-dustry, "compulsory" arbitration, which never endures, indeterminate "lock-outs," and other rejected forms of industrial battle. Those are the last resorts, the last trench, and they are destructive fields of conflict.
I went to Dayton, to Detroit, to Dearborn, to Chicago, to other cities where the smokestack is the emblem of marvelous industrial growth. I talked with many men, great leaders, executives in government and military men of high calibre - active, thinking men of great and acknowledged achievements, heart and soul for the future of American greatness, and the just and equitable settlement of our problems of labor and capital. One and all they voiced the same thought. We must take care of our workers, meet them as men, see that their jobs are protected, get them jobs if they are idle, give them good working conditions, divide with them the profits, but we must not surrender control of big business, transportation-government itself-to those who are incompetent-who seek by mass action to demand what is unfair to the industry and to the people who pay.
Of other views, opinions, plans, and conditions, there is much to say. Let us return to Mr. Patterson, for in his advanced ideas there is fruitful study. There are those industries, now in the control of groups of industrial men or bankers, or lawyers, or second generation holders, who have gone more extensively into investment in systems and methods for the welfare of their workers, but their activities have been reduced to a plan and a professional system - sans heart. His is the experiment of an individual working out a practical ideal, plus heart.
Mix Morality with Business
Shall heart interest, personal human sense of justice that goes beyond economics, continue to play the major role, or shall the worker be given what he is demanding- more pay-and be left to the tender mercies of the particular municipality where he happens to live, or drift to, in his present shifting and scurrying from factory to factory, for more pay to meet the high cost of living, or take advantage of the opportunity of the hour? Mr. Patterson thinks the hope of the future, and the look toward the solution of the present unrest is to give morality to business, plus heart interest. By heart interest he means that consideration that one extends to one whose concern is one's own.
Listening to His Workers
Passing by a gravel pit one day, where some of his employees were working upon a part of his estate now given to the city as a public golf course, Mr. Patterson overheard some workmen berating him. So he stopped to listen and learn. After hearing himself called various epithets, one of the workmen suddenly broke in, "I don't care a d- what you fellows say or what you think. Mr. Patterson sent a nurse to my house when my wife and child had diphtheria and saved their lives-he's all right with me." Down in the factory I saw old men at the doors, old men running the elevators, helping about the grounds; through-out the great buildings I saw a majority of middle-aged men. I've been with Mr. Patterson 30 years," said one. " "I've been with Mr. Patterson over 30 years," said another. " "I've been here six years," said a bright faced efficient woman, at a bench. "I earn from 40 to 47cents an hour, a seven-and-one-half-hour day, a six-and-one-half-day week. "Most of the Patterson employees are on piece work. There have never been any troubles with unions-the factory is an open shop."
A Great Educational Institution
The Patterson university of industry is a community in itself. The fundamental theme, as I sensed it, is education; the aim is to make money happily; the result is the bet-terment of the individual and the improvement of the life of the community. The slogan might be summed up as co-operation. Outside the factory the boy is gathered up and taught to work at box-making and gardening; inside the factory he is taught a trade, taught to work, to think, to know how to develop his efficiency and his observation. In between hours, he is taught how and what to play for fun and health. Noth-ing is done haphazard. The master of his Dayton industrial institution was, I was told, once a school teacher. He is now, at any rate. " "Learn by the eye," he said to a " class " of young ladies in his photographic department. "Teach through the eye. It is your duty to color these photographs into beauty. Make them attractive. See these cartoons? Here is a head of a young man with an arrow pointing into one ear and out the other. He learns nothing. It is "in one, out the other" with him. Here are a dozen men chewing tobacco-see what power is lost by such senseless and health-injuring activity of their jaws. Oh, if we could only harness those jaws, what a lot of power we could get," and so he went on over some of the thousands of glass slides designed for lecture purposes, for anyone who wants to use them in the factory or out.
Then I understood the great School House, where entertainments, lectures and music follow in continuous sequence daily. On the bill board were posted prizes for suggestions; for back-yard beautification; for efficiency winners; for boy box-furniture makers-what not. It made me feel as if I wanted to jump in and win one. I observed all sorts of clubs, within the industrial university, like societies at school and college. Efficiency clubs, advance clubs, selling point clubs, health clubs for boys and girls, study clubs, picnic clubs, outing clubs, women's clubs, gardening clubs-the activities are myriad. Education, self-help! The thought was insistent.
And of John H. Patterson's extension course outside the industrial university, let Dayton speak. Of the experts in city beautifying, the scientific men, the great lecturers, edu-cators, ministers, who have been brought to Dayton to con-tribute their work, and of those scores of men in all pro-fessions who have been sent out to other cities to study, to learn, to rest and recover their health, let them tell their story.
Does Heart in Industry Pay?
Is there a heart in Industry - is a heart good for industry? - go to Dayton with the 30,000 others who make the annual pilgrimage to tour the factory, and see. I think there is, and, what John Henry Patterson has done, others can do and it will pay. Mr. Patterson's is not the only industry that has put the mark of humanitarianism upon Dayton. It is called the city of a thousand factories. There are other captains of educational industry there, some of them graduates of his school of work, others emulators of his ideas and they too have built parks, schools of industry, housed their employees, opened their homes and their purses-for, as Mr. Patterson s slogan runs, "What I have done, others can do," but the important thought in these days when great industries are suffering from persecution at the hands of politicians, and troubles from the demands of labor, the industrial university of John H. Patterson stands and grows with increasing power and output, and the sage of Far Hills, three-quarters of a century young, has set up a plan that works. It was born in the agony of grief, and the heart that gave it being throbs today in its emotions, as gently and sincerely as it did when he sold his expensive horses, thirty years ago, and gave the money to a needy sick and crushed family, whose toiler was bent to the point of breaking beneath the burden.
