Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-10-01
AS ONE WOMAN SEES 1T
Members and Methods Of Great
Manufacturing Family Discussed Z.
and Analysed
BY SARAH ID. LOWRIE

trial plant for manufacturing silk, from
their grandfathers' days to their own.
The papers treated of the relationship
between employers and employees for three
generations. During the more than half
century that the silk mills of South Man
chester, Conn, have made Cheney silks a
staple article of trade throughout the
country, one family, and one family only,
has kept the administration Of the huge
business in its own hands, as well as under
its own name.
But then it is huge family The two
sons of the founder of the business had
nearly a full dozen children each, with
preponderance of sons. Those children,
most Of them, married early and have had
in their turn large families, with pre-
ponderance of sons. Something like forty
two cousins at family festival is not un-
common. And apparently these sons and
sons sons and now the grandsons follow
the family tradition and enter the family
business. -
ITO BE sure the family business has now
L come to include many businesses as well
as many professions, not to speak OF some
of the arts, just as the family property in
clndes whole town, with churches, schools:
Fairgrounds. movies, stores, houses and
parks, besides factory buildings. dyehouses,
electric plants, warehouses, railways. Of
fees and what not One can be a civil en-
gineer, banker, an artist, a globe trotter,
retail merchant, a manufacturer, an i'm
porter. an exporter, a scientist a lawyer,
teacher an administrator or n laboratory
techncinn and still be about the Cheney
business as one Of the Cheney family.
There are limits. think, however, as to
character and morale and point of view
which each Cheney must possess before he
is involved in the great family enterprise.
The type is very strong. even in this
fourth gcneration-and have known three
generations--in spite of the fact that the
collaterals do not intermarry. which ought
by now to have made for salient differences
rather than recognizable resemblanccs.
TNIlEi are shy, serious, slow speaking
4 family. Their mental processes go on
behind rather unresponsive exteriors. In
companionship they appear to get more
than they give in the matter of the common
change of conversation, but one realizes they
possess large funds of generosity, which they
administer with sort of ceremonious reti
cenee that must in some cases slightly
battle the recipients in any effusion of re-
sponse.
The large, calm intake of impressions of
which they one and all seem so phenomenally
capable is Offset by the oldest freak of
contrarlncss-they are all of them born
mimics
They will emerge from some social con
tact, where they have displayed only the
most conventional of receptive virtues, with
'ht iuiolHS, gestures, lulOSNncruSleS OF cHar
acter-the very facial contortions-of their
late Wis "a Wis done to the life.
Ihey who never gossip, who Judge even
with so slow caution as to rob their
spoken opinions Of anything quotable, either
for good or evil, by this Quick flash of
memory for observed traits render the most
lively and telling Judgment possible on their
1ell0ws-that of shrewd, amused caricature,
TNlllS combination of imagination for char
l. acteristic details and their caution in
displaying their own wares in conversation
or in opinions is what has made them good
masters toward the thousands of workmen,
artisans, laborcrs, craftsmen and Office ex-
pcrts that have lived for three generations
in their employ.
1t Is also what has made possible their
slow but continuous change of methods
from the patriarchal system through the
forenen system to the present gradually un-
folding committee system which is slowly
demOcratiZing labor.
They have retained throughout the tradi-
tion of the founder of the works. viz. the
operative ideal. Under the stress of
modern unrest and modern temporizing for
the success of the present, they have held
as tcnaciousy to the belief that there is a
point OF contact between employer and en-
poyes where the interests of both are iden
tical; that success for the master spells sue
cess for the man.
They give one the impression of having
| always sought that point of contact, and to
! have found il, each generation for itself.
| by n diftcrent nut always conscientious, al
| ways palnstGking, patient consideration Of
| all the facts, and sober Scrapping of all
| the noneSscntiuls.
| TNliE analysis of those reports | read all
l. ycrgcd toward one conclusion viz. That
| only by direct contact of employer with the
individual employc could either get the best
| out of each.
AS processes multiplied. and the whole
| relationship of labor to capital amplifes
! and becomes more intricate, the means by
| which this point of contact is maintained
| bccom" more OF II science, less dependent on
| mere good feeling.
Some of the scientific processes for this
contact of employer with the employees as
individuals. recent as has been their emer
| to be scrappcd as Intellectual Much of the
so called welfare work. much of the profit
sharing, some of the insurance and bonus
! arrangements for Ornamenting the payrollS,
have proved burdensome without bringing
commensurate satisfaction.
The whole intricate process is in n stint,
Of evolving, at huge cost of observation
tabulation, weighing and adjusting. Tbt
making and the selling of silk from the grmI
to the retail counter is simple comma red
to it.
| WHAT strikes one is the persistence Of
w these Cheney brothers and uncles an,
ncphews and cousins, sons and sons in law
Is their ycneratiOn for the past ideals an,
their faith that those ideals will hold gooc
for the future.
For mere ideas-as such-they have yer,
little even simulated interest. Their mctbo,
Is to pin them down with one obieCtion-
and so far as their interest goes, leave then
to ilutter out. The objection of one of then
to collective bargaining as urged by th
American Federation of Labor and M,
Gompers is characteristic y
collective bargaining is permissible yes
In theory 1t is probably the best way L
bargain at present. If by collective hsr
gaining is meant the bargaining of loho
by trade groups. But if it means WIN
Mr.. Gompers means, bargaining by trad
groups only through the union, il is hs
another word for the closed shop. An
the closed shop is undemocratic." r"
The Seat Of War
| From the Kansas city Star.