Read Online Washed Away: How the Great Flood of 1913, America's Most Widespread Natural Disaster, Terrorized a Nation and Changed It Forever by Geoff Williams - Free Book Online
Authors: Geoff Williams
the headquarters was on the highest ground of those 140 acres.
Patterson was a tough competitor, but he was a good boss and became better as the years progressedâespecially if you compare him to other employers of the age like George Pullman, inventor of the Pullman Sleeper Car, which allowed people to sleep in trains. Pullmanâs claim to evil-boss fame stems from the company town that he had built just south of Chicago for the employees of his railroad car business. The town really was a town. There were churches, a library, and places to shop; but as landlords go, Pullman was the worst. In 1894, when he cut employeesâ wages by twenty-five percent, he didnât lower his employeesâ rent; there was a strike and violence that endedafter President Grover Cleveland sent in federal troops to restore order. After Pullman died on October 19, 1897, he was interred in a pit eight feet deep with floors and walls of steel-reinforced concrete. Why? People were afraid his former employees would try to desecrate his corpse. Patterson also acquits himself quite well if you compare him to Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the owners and operators of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City, where the men employed immigrant women, paying them next to nothing and keeping them in a building that was locked from the outside; on March 25, 1911, two years to the day before the start of the Great Flood of 1913, there was a fire in the building that killed 146 people, 17 men and 129 women, ranging from forty-eight down to eleven years old.
Around the time Pullman was dealing with his strike, Patterson had a major epiphany after a $50,000 shipment of cash registers was returned from England because the mechanics were faulty; acid had been poured into them, apparently by a disgruntled employee or perhaps several workers.
Patterson went to the floor of the factory to see how it had happened that his employees would turn in such shoddy machinery; and in looking at their work environment, he had to admit that if he were his own employee, he wouldnât care about what he was producing. Patterson raised wages, cleaned the factory, added ventilation, and made dangerous manufacturing equipment safer. He soon went further: dressing rooms and showers, available for employees to use on company time, were introduced, and he opened a factory cafeteria that served subsidized hot lunches. Eventually he went even further: long before corporate retreats became part of the lexicon, NCR employees occasionally went on morale-boosting field trips, like to the 1904 St. Louis Worldâs Fair. The National Cash Register Company started a lending library and started offering free medical care. If those âBest Boss Everâ mugs had been around, Patterson would have had a few hundred in his cabinets.
He was a visionary in other ways as well. It was once estimated that from 1910 until 1930, one-sixth of the business executives in the United States had once worked for Pattersonâs company. Patterson was a pioneer in sales, giving salespeople scripts and urging his staff to look at the sales cycle as a four-stage process: the initial approach, the proposition, the product demonstration, and closing the deal.
But Patterson wasnât perfect. He could be petty and vindictive, and just plain odd, taking the eccentric-millionaire-boss stereotype to new heights, or depths. When some of his executives werenât around, and Patterson found their desks to be too messy, heâd dump the contents of the drawers into the trash, so they could start work fresh. When he got the idea that everyone should learn to ride a horse properly, which he believed would help his executives master other facets of life, Patterson started making them come to the factory before 6 A . M ., for an early morning ride. Company lore has it that Patterson even fired an employee for not being able to ride a horse properly; another employee, he is said to have
Patterson was a tough competitor, but he was a good boss and became better as the years progressedâespecially if you compare him to other employers of the age like George Pullman, inventor of the Pullman Sleeper Car, which allowed people to sleep in trains. Pullmanâs claim to evil-boss fame stems from the company town that he had built just south of Chicago for the employees of his railroad car business. The town really was a town. There were churches, a library, and places to shop; but as landlords go, Pullman was the worst. In 1894, when he cut employeesâ wages by twenty-five percent, he didnât lower his employeesâ rent; there was a strike and violence that endedafter President Grover Cleveland sent in federal troops to restore order. After Pullman died on October 19, 1897, he was interred in a pit eight feet deep with floors and walls of steel-reinforced concrete. Why? People were afraid his former employees would try to desecrate his corpse. Patterson also acquits himself quite well if you compare him to Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the owners and operators of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City, where the men employed immigrant women, paying them next to nothing and keeping them in a building that was locked from the outside; on March 25, 1911, two years to the day before the start of the Great Flood of 1913, there was a fire in the building that killed 146 people, 17 men and 129 women, ranging from forty-eight down to eleven years old.
Around the time Pullman was dealing with his strike, Patterson had a major epiphany after a $50,000 shipment of cash registers was returned from England because the mechanics were faulty; acid had been poured into them, apparently by a disgruntled employee or perhaps several workers.
Patterson went to the floor of the factory to see how it had happened that his employees would turn in such shoddy machinery; and in looking at their work environment, he had to admit that if he were his own employee, he wouldnât care about what he was producing. Patterson raised wages, cleaned the factory, added ventilation, and made dangerous manufacturing equipment safer. He soon went further: dressing rooms and showers, available for employees to use on company time, were introduced, and he opened a factory cafeteria that served subsidized hot lunches. Eventually he went even further: long before corporate retreats became part of the lexicon, NCR employees occasionally went on morale-boosting field trips, like to the 1904 St. Louis Worldâs Fair. The National Cash Register Company started a lending library and started offering free medical care. If those âBest Boss Everâ mugs had been around, Patterson would have had a few hundred in his cabinets.
He was a visionary in other ways as well. It was once estimated that from 1910 until 1930, one-sixth of the business executives in the United States had once worked for Pattersonâs company. Patterson was a pioneer in sales, giving salespeople scripts and urging his staff to look at the sales cycle as a four-stage process: the initial approach, the proposition, the product demonstration, and closing the deal.
But Patterson wasnât perfect. He could be petty and vindictive, and just plain odd, taking the eccentric-millionaire-boss stereotype to new heights, or depths. When some of his executives werenât around, and Patterson found their desks to be too messy, heâd dump the contents of the drawers into the trash, so they could start work fresh. When he got the idea that everyone should learn to ride a horse properly, which he believed would help his executives master other facets of life, Patterson started making them come to the factory before 6 A . M ., for an early morning ride. Company lore has it that Patterson even fired an employee for not being able to ride a horse properly; another employee, he is said to have
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