President Dillon

In Brooklyn last week a woman was elected President of a $5,000,000 corporation. Two other women were made her prime assistants. This seemed surprising. In a sense it was surprising, for even current civilization conceives women in business as mere factotums. Yet this woman--she is Mary E. Dillon, in her middle thirties--spent 23 years of apprenticeship with the Brooklyn Borough Gas Co., which she now heads. A girl just out of school, she went to work as office girl, errand girl, handy girl. Alert, energetic, intelligent she kept herself on the go. It was "Mary!" here and "Mary!" there, and Mary went everywhere. She saw other girls get dowdy at their stagnating office work. She saw men grow seedy and baldheaded, take to spectacles and paper cuffs to keep their semiweekly shirt sleeves clean. She herself kept trim and cheerful. In 1919 the gas company workers decided they wanted to strike. Mary talked to them like a mother and also like a "dutch uncle." They kept on working. Her ways with the public, with the company's 40,000 consumers, were always winning. She humanized the business. She is known as Mary E. Dillon. But she is married--to Henry Farber, wholesale coal dealer. The maiden name she keeps not to confuse her friends, her customers.