Five-Day Week

Pleased last week were hot-dog men, peanut men, pop men, billboard men. Pleased also were auto men and tire men. Source of their pleasure was a prediction made by Builder Fred T. Ley ("No job too large, no job too small") head of Fred T. Ley & Co., Inc., holding company for Ley construction and real estate operations.

Said Builder Ley: "The five-day week is inevitable." True, he referred to the building trades in New York City. But five-day-week advocates everywhere cheered his statement, cheered even more loudly when he added that "The five-day movement has gained a real foothold and its adoption may reach throughout the country." A national five-day week would make Saturday leisure equal to Sunday; would give to millions of U. S. car-owning workers an additional day of relaxation, refreshment. Thus merchants of food, drink and transportation beamed and smiled.

Nor could Builder Ley's prophecy be considered a thought fathered by a wish. The already granted (effective May 1) five-day week for Manhattan bricklayers adds no speed to the erection of Mr. Ley's Chrysler Building, 42nd and Lexington, world's tallest (870 ft.) tower. Other famed Ley Manhattan skyscrapers are Fisk Building, 57th & Broadway; Liggett Building, 42nd & Madison; Westinghouse Building, 150 Broadway. Mr. Ley has constructed office buildings, apartment buildings, factories, sewers, trolley lines, bridges, waterworks, dams, highways and war camps (Camp Devens, Ayer, Mass., built in ten weeks), but neither in his early days in Springfield, Mass., nor in his more recent Manhattan period did the five-day week enter into calculations on how long a job would take.

Not from a five-day, but from a seven-night job came one early experience from which Mr. Ley learned a lesson which later was to stay well by him. He was earning $1 weekly as lamplighter for Worcester, Mass., gas lamps. Twice, on cold January nights, he skipped one light on his beat For the first omission he was rebuked; for the second, discharged. Said Mr. Ley, many years after: "The greatest of all virtues is thoroughness. Nothing is ever really done until it is done right. This lesson I learned early in life."