© 2004 Larry Mullins
© 2004 The Urantia Book Fellowship
In 1923 Arthur Nash published a book, The Golden Rule in Business. During World War I Nash bought and took over management of a small Cincinnati clothing “sweat shop.” Bear in mind that such small shops were composed of inefficient workers who could not get jobs in better garment manufacturing shops. Wages were very low, and working conditions extremely bad. The highest paid woman in the shop received seven dollars a week—extremely low even for those days.
Two workers especially attracted the attention of Nash. One was a woman of nearly eighty years of age who sewed on buttons. Another was an unfortunate woman with a humpback who ran a machine. Both were being paid $4 a week. Understand that Nash had taken over the firm with the intention of applying the Golden Rule. He could quickly see that he had made a mistake. Even paying starvation wages, the company was losing money. How could he improve the Pay? He decided the enterprise was hopeless, and elected to simply liquidate the business and buy a farm. He said to his son: “There’s the only place a man can be a Christian. He certainly can’t be one in the clothing business.”
After making this decision he called his little band of impoverished workers together to give them the bad news. Now, understand these workers were aware that Nash gave talks on the Golden Rule. Because of their working conditions, they had reason to suspect his sincerity. On that day, however, they were astonished when Nash referred to them as his brothers and sisters. He then apologized for not knowing their names and asked them to raise their hands as he called them out. He called the first name, but no one seemed to respond. Then he spied the little old lady who sewed on buttons for $4 a week. She was raising her trembling hand with great reluctance. Nash was overcome for a moment because he saw a vision of the face of his own mother suddenly come between him and the woman.
Suddenly Nash’s plans were drastically altered. He blurted out: “I don’t know what it’s worth to sew buttons on, I have never done it. But your wages are now raised to $12 a week.” It was a 300% raise! The next person on the list happened to be the humpback woman who was making the same wage as the other woman. Having set a precedent, he raised her wages to $12 a week as well. And right through the entire list of workers he went on—to the highest paid workers in the plant, the pressers, who were making $18 a week. He raised them to $27 a week.
Nash was not a compulsive man. He knew very well that he would eventually have to liquidate the company, and these raises would only speed up the process. Moreover, they would drain away the money he hoped to salvage to buy a farm He cautioned his associates that the company would not survive long, but as long as it did they would be paid fair wages. Nash then began to pay less and less attention to his clothing business, knowing it was doomed but not wanting to watch the day by day disintegration. The war ended, and with that, business increased. About the same time Nash learned that a friend had gotten into serious trouble and was facing bankruptcy. Nash felt he had to help. So he went to his bookkeeper to find out how much money was left in the company.
He was astounded to learn that there was a great deal of profit being accumulated. Nash asked his bookkeeper how this was being done. She replied that they were doing three times the business as the year before.
“But how?” he asked. “How are the garments being made?” She replied they were being made in the shop as usual. “But the shop was running at full capacity when I bought it,” he replied. “Have you bought extra machines?”
“No,” she said, “the money is coming in and I am depositing it in the bank.”
After the help had gone, Nash went to the forelady. He asked her how the increases in production were being made. “I don’t know the numbers,” she replied, “but I do know we are producing merchandise at less cost than before you raised the wages. Take, for instance, the old lady who sews on buttons. You should come and take a peep at her. Somehow, her poor, old, crippled fingers have gotten limbered up, a look of youth has come into her eyes, and she is doing twice the work she was doing before. But the biggest thing of all is the case of the skilled workers. At one time, they were all loafing on the job. Now they are leading the way and showing us how to get work done. Garments are coming through in a steady stream.”
Nash was stunned. He asked, “Can you tell me how this came about?”
Reluctantly, the forelady told him he might not want to hear the story. He urged her to go on and tell it. It seems the day he left the shop after raising the wages they all stood around looking at each other in shock.
Finally, Tony, one of the Italian pressers said: “I’ll be damned!”
“We all looked at him,” the forelady said, “and after a minute of silence he went on.”
“Whatever this Golden Rule thing is,” Tony told the group, “I don’t know. But what Mr. Nash told us was he wanted us to work just as we would want him to work if we were up in the office paying wages, and he was down here doing the work. Now, if I was the boss, and would come in and raise wages like he has, I would want everyone to work like hell!”
The forelady told Nash that was about all there was to it. She said, “Our people just caught Tony’s idea and went ahead in the spirit of it. That’s why we tripled our output. If I talked for a week, I could not tell you more.”
Nash said he would never have continued in the business world were it not for this incident. He wrote “…the foregleams of a coming day had shown upon me and I determined to utilize every means compatible with an adaptation and operation of the Golden Rule to demonstrate the fact that in the 20th century, enlightened, caring principles could be made to work—work successfully and not merely as a sacrificial ideal—for the mutual well-being of humankind.”
Larry Mullins lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife Joan and daughter Michelle. Joan and Larry are long—time readers, and Michelle has nearly finished Part III on her first read.