Employer and Companion

1895

One of the most important secrets of a hunting expedition is this: "Never allow yourselves any luxuries in a 'tight place' which your men have no share in." The English sportsman whose advice we have quoted tells how he was rewarded in the Caucasus for treating his men as comrades and sharing camp comforts with them. He says:

One chilly night among the mountains I awoke at 3 o'clock to find myself warm and snug under two extra native blankets. The owners of the blankets were squatting on their hams, almost in the fire, and talking to pass the long, cold hours until dawn.

Having rated them for their folly and made them take back their blankets and turn in, I rolled over and slept again. When I next woke, it was 7 o'clock, and the men were still crouching over the embers, helping to cook breakfast, their blankets having been replaced upon my shoulders.

I had paid those men off the day before this happened, and they left me the next morning with a hearty "God be with you," unconscious that they had done anything more than the proper thing toward their employer and companion. — Youth's Companion.

Street Car Discipline

1895

The street car companies, like other concerns employing large numbers of men, have a system of rewards and punishment corresponding to those of the schoolroom.

If a conductor keeps his record clear, he is moved forward in the list toward a job with better pay as fast as men ahead of him either resign or are discharged. If, however, after having been set forward 20 times, he comes to the barn a half minute behind the time fixed for taking out his car, he goes back to the foot of the list. If he is sick, he must send a man to sign him off, and if this man is a half minute late the consequences are equally severe. — Chicago Tribune.


Injured In the Accident

Sufferer — I suppose we shall sue the railway company for about $3,000 damages.
Lawyer — Three thousand dollars damages! Nonsense! Thirteen thousand at the very lowest, man!
Sufferer (surprised) — Why, I think I should be quite content if I got $3,000 damages.
Lawyer — Yes, probably you would, but I want at least $10,000 for myself. — Somerville Journal.


The Boy's Explanation

It was a Buffalo small boy who came home from one of our model schools and was asked by his father how he was coming on. "Well," said the candid child, "Jimmy — has got ahead of me in the class." "Dear, dear," said the father, "and how does that happen?" "Oh, you know his parents are very bright!" — Buffalo Commercial.


Brooklyn

Brooklyn was named by the Dutch from a small village near Amsterdam named Breucklen. The name is found in the city archives spelled Bereuckelen, Breucklen, Breucklyn, Broucklyn, Breuklyn, Brockland, Brucklynd and finally Brooklyn.

Value of a Familiar Face

1901

An employee of the Chicago Tribune once found the fact that his face was familiar to the late Joseph Medill decidedly to his advantage. In the last years of his life Mr. Medill did not spend much time in Chicago and took no active part in the management of his paper, but when he was in the city he went to his office pretty regularly.

He knew all the old faces, but few of the new ones, and it was too late in life for him to accustom himself to them. He never knew to whom to give "copy" that he wished printed if the managing editor happened to be absent. On one occasion he handed some to a representative of another paper who chanced to be in the building. The man had been employed on The Tribune some years previously, so his face was familiar to Mr. Medill, while the faces of the men then actually in his employ were not.

One day he suddenly inquired what had become of the old night editor.

"He's in Boston," was the reply.

"Well, I want him," said Mr. Medill.

It was explained that the man had an excellent place in Boston and probably would not care to come back, but Mr. Medill persisted that he wanted him.

"I know him," he said, "and I want a familiar face in that room. I want some one who isn't a stranger to me. Telegraph him that Medill wants him."

So the man with "the old familiar face," although he was not an old man by any means, went back to The Tribune on his own terms. — Youth's Companion.

To Rise in Business Life

1910

Some Few Essentials Must Be Kept In Mind, and One of These Is Advertising.

A man may have several carloads of ability. He may have brains and ideas and other desirable things. But all the ideas ever "ideated" will not avail to raise a man who neglects that all important item of advertising. You simply must get attention. Of course, you can get attention by firing off a revolver during office hours, or you can do it by wearing loud clothes and proclaiming your kinship in the sporting fraternity. But most men who have risen from the ranks have carefully neglected to use methods of this kind.

Every office man must act as his own salesman. He must first prepare himself by increasing his efficiency. He must be able to do the work for which he is hired. Not only should he do that for which he is hired, but he must do that work better than it ever was done before. When that item has been attended to it is then time to look about for more work.

The wise employee will keep his eye on the job ahead, or, better still, will look at a job which does not exist, but which should exist for the good of the business. The next step is to think out a selling talk that will get the attention, arouse the interest, create a desire, and bring about in the mind of the employer a desire to do what the live employee desires him to do. — The Bookkeeper.

Growth of the Telephone in Thirty Years

1906

By John Vaughn

"Hello, Central," was first heard in 1878. Today the exchanges are numbered by the thousand, the telephones by the million. Various industries, unknown thirty years ago, but now sources of employment to many thousands of workers, depend entirely on the telephone for support. Numerous factories making lead sheathing, dynamos, motors, generators, batteries, office equipment, cables, and many other appliances, would have to close down and thus throw their operatives into idleness and misery if the telephone bell should cease to ring. The Bell Companies employ over 87,000 persons and, it may be added, pay them well. Many of these employes have families to maintain; others support their parents, or aid younger brothers and sisters. It is safe to say that 200,000 people look to the telephone for their daily bread. These figures may be supplemented by the number of telephones in use, (5,698,000), by the number of miles of wire (6,043,000), in the Bell lines, and by the number of conversations (4,479,500,000), electrically conveyed in 1905. The network of wire connects more than 33,000 cities, towns, villages and hamlets.

Such tremendous growth as these statistics show would imply not only steadily increasing appreciation of the telephone, but would also suggest improved instruments, more skillful operators, and better service. There would be no flattery in such suggestion. Electrical science has undergone radical reformation since 1876. Telephony has raised the utilization of electricity to the height of a profession. Of course such advances have not been won without cost. Fortunes were spent in experiment and investigation before a dollar came back. Communication by the first telephone was limited to a few thousand feet. Now, conversation can be carried on by persons 1,600 miles apart. Tomorrow long-distance lines will span the continent; and the day after oceanic telephony will be a commonplace of mercantile routine. But science and money had to collaborate for years before they could work the trade of enabling Boston and Omaha to talk together. — From the "Thirtieth Anniversary of a Great Invention," in Scribner.

Overworked Brewery Employees

1886

To the ordinary tramp, who has to obtain his supply of beer by pouring stale stuff from beer kegs in front of saloons into empty tomato cans, from which he quaffs, and runs chances of having the ragged tin cut a hair lip for him, it would seem that the brewery employees, who are allowed unlimited beer free of cost, have a soft thing.

And yet those men, who can drink beer all day without being compelled to put up the regulation nickel, struck for less hours of work and higher wages. To read the accounts in the papers of the amount of beer the workmen about a brewery drink during the day, the reader does not wonder that the men are overworked and asked a reduction of hours.

It is said that some of the men drink forty glasses of beer per day. Considering that they have to walk nearly a block to the extreme end of the brewery yard, where a gentlemanly agent of the brewing company waits upon them without price, it will be seen that considerable valuable time is lost, besides the wear and tear on the men. Of course the brewery employees are able-bodied men, or they could not stand the strain.

Forty glasses of beer put into a stomach in ten hours would seem to be hard enough work for any one man, if he did nothing else. Then the necessity of walking forty blocks and returning to work, makes eighty blocks per day of pedestrian exercise. This of itself is enough to make an ordinary man tired, if he did not have to carry in his overworked stomach forty glasses of beer.

From the statistics it is plain that the brewery laborers are the most overworked of any class of citizens, and something should be done for them. It may be outside the province of the humane society to step in and protect those men, but certainly there should be some organization that can stand between those men and overwork. What is the matter with the temperance societies, in taking hold of this grievance? If the temperance societies are true to their motto, of "Faith, Hope and Charity," they will see a chance to do a great work.

Let each society detail enough of its members to man a brewery, and do all the work. This would leave the regular employees with nothing to do but walk back and forth between the places where the temperance apostles are at work, and the place where the beer is given away. The temperance people could work for nothing, for Charity; they could have Faith that the regular brewery men would draw their salary all right; and Hope they would have a good time.

If the temperance people kick on this idea, it is possible the brewers might employ temperance men to make the beer and do the work, discharge the old employees who strike, and thus save oceans of beer. But if it is impracticable to employ temperance people, and the brewers feel that things must go right along as before, they can save at least the time that the men lose in marching on the beer keg forty times a day, and save the wear and tear on the men, by a simple device which The Sun will suggest.

Each man could be provided with a coil of hose, the small rubber hose such as is used on infants' nursing bottles. A reel could be fixed on the back of each laborer, containing enough of the small rubber pipe to reach from a central tank of beer to any part of the brewery, with a spring, so that when the pipe is uncoiled, and the laborer returns toward the tank, the slack will be taken up on the reel. A nozzle could be arranged near the mouth of the overworked laborer, so that he could take his sustenance at any moment, wherever he happened to be.

Of course a hundred men with hose reels on their backs would look odd at first, but the oddity would soon wear off. Some may think that the employees of a brewery should pay for their beer, the same as bakers pay for the bread in a bakery where they work, shoemakers pay for their shoes, and journeymen tailors pay for their clothes, but this would be plainly a violation of the constitution of the United States. The strike of the brewery laborers has shown that they are the beat treated of any class of laborers in the country. The only thing the public wonders at is that the brewing companies have not been compelled by their employees to give them a house and lot and horse and buggy each. — Peck's Sun.

Post Office Workers Listen to Music for Morale, No Jazz

1921

Music for P.O. Night Workers Improves Morals[*]

Minneapolis Postmaster Informs Postmaster General Hays that Psychological Test Proved a Success but No "Jazz" was Allowed

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17. — Music to improve the morale of workers whose duties take them well into the wee small hours has been tried out in the Minneapolis postoffice and proved a success, E. A. Purdy, postmaster, today informed Postmaster General Hays. The idea was tried, Mr. Purdy said, after he had made a psychological study of conditions under which his night force worked. He found men working away from the general noises of the day as a rule showed a low morale, inclined to be morose and generally worried at being away from their families, which resulted in an absence of enthusiasm in their work.

As an experiment a phonograph was installed and records, which it was thought would rest the nerves and enliven the spirits of the employes were tried nightly with gratifying results, Mr. Purdy said, although he was careful to explain that no "jazz" was played, until the fag end of the night as he "did not want the men juggling and tossing about letters and parcels." Everybody was more alert, he said, and at quitting time went home less tired, less worried and with more efficient night's work done. The postmaster general approved the idea and said he would watch further experiments with interest. Mr. Purdy who was characterized by Mr. Hays as a "bird of a postmaster with a batting average of 1,000, although a Democrat," is in Washington to give the department some of the ideas which has made the Minneapolis office one of the most successful in the country, Mr. Hays said.

—Bridgeport Telegram, Bridgeport, CT, Aug. 18, 1921, p. 1

[*] "Improves Morals" is the original erroneous headline, kind of funny. And, hey, it's not that jazz was entirely disallowed, but allowed at the "fag end of the night." That's kind of funny, too.

Note: Back then "post office" was one word, which looks weird, and "employes" generally ended with one "e" like that, also odd.