"Our Friend George F."

Into a yellowed, two-story frame house at Endicott, N. Y. one day last week a delegation bore 18,000 cards and stacked them on a table before the old man who lives there. "From a loyal E. J. worker to our friend George F.," read each of the cards. "On this Thanksgiving we are thankful. We want you to be thankful with us." Thankful with them was George F. (for Francis) Johnson, cofounder and board chairman of Endicott Johnson Corp., second largest shoe manufacturing company in the U. S.

Host and honoree at this affair was a remarkable man of 81. His Thanksgiving Day visitors saw a big, ruddy gentleman who expects people to believe that he and his workers really love each other. George F. went to work in a shoe shop when he was 13, borrowed $150,000 when he was 25 to buy into the embryo of his present business. He still talks of himself as a worker. Every morning when he is at home (he winters in Florida) he crams a golf cap on his balding grey head, drives himself to an E. J. factory, paces briskly down the aisles with a sharp eye out for wasters. He works from 8 a. m. to 4:30 p. m. (his employes work from 7 a. m. to 4 p. m.) and he is invariably abed by 10 p. m. Unschooled, save in how to make and sell $3 & $4 shoes, he put his son, George W., to work instead of sending him to college, now leaves him in active charge as president of Endicott Johnson.

Inasmuch as the labor law of the land postulates that a boss loves his workers for what he can get out of them, and that they need protection from his exploitation, George F. was distinctly on the spot last week. The Endicott Board of Trade (chamber of commerce) recently announced that since the Wagner Act forbids beloved George F. to speak up against brewing unionism, the businessmen who depend on E. J. pay rolls were going to speak up in his stead. The Board of Trade advised 18,500 E. J. workers to stay out of an A. F. of L. union which was trying to start in their midst. A. F. of L. Organizer Ben Berk promptly complained to the National Labor Relations Board that Endicott Johnson inspired the letter, thereby violating the Wagner Act. When George F.'s visiting friends presumably spoke for themselves last week, NLRB was still investigating Berk's complaint. In the circumstances, wise old George F. confined himself to the business at hand. Said he: "I haven't in my heart ill will toward a single soul this morning. How could I have, with this expression in front of me?''

George F. has profited greatly from good deeds, good will, low costs. He has also given most of his profits away. His plan for distributing excess profits equally between workers and 8,000 E. J. stockholders undoubtedly will be studied by the U. S. Senate sub-committee which began to investigate profit-sharing last week (see p. 57). His dance pavilions, golf courses, baseball and softball courts, free hospitals, low-cost homes for workers, swimming pools, etc., etc., have made upstate New York's Susquehanna Valley an industrial show place. His knack for maintaining a close personal relationship with employes in the 29 E. J. plants has survived the company's growth beyond the one-man stage. He can no longer call all his workers by their first names. But he regularly inspects their work, corrects their faults, picnics with them, visits their sick, receives the aggrieved in his clingy frame office, greets every E. J. baby with $10 and a pair of shoes.

E. J. survived NRA and Depression I without a trace of labor trouble or a whiff of unionism. Depression II hit harder, gave A. F. of L.'s Mr. Berk an opening wedge. Last spring they got a 10% pay cut, then another of 5% so that the com-pany could continue previously free medical services.

Organizer Berk now feels confident enough to risk an NLRB election among factory workers. George F. used to say that he neither opposed unions nor believed E. J. workers would ever want one. Last week he said he would oppose an NLRB election as "an unfair referendum, favorable to one side only," and added: "We want every employe of E. J. to have the right to vote, from president to office boy."

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