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“A Newly Appreciated Art:” The Development of Personnel Work at Leeds & Northrup, 1915–1923

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Daniel Nelson
Daniel Nelson
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History, University of Akron
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Abstract

Pressures for expansion of production brought by World War I caused labor problems which led many American manufacturers to begin organized personnel work. Morris E. Leeds, despite setbacks caused by the 1920–1921 recession, succeeded in creating one of the most comprehensive employee programs in the United States.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , Winter 1970 , pp. 520 - 535
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1970

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References

1 Henry S. Dennison wrote of the wartime effort: “they [the personnel managers] left behind them new practices and old ones modified …. What is of more importance is that they left a habit in the business mind of considering personnel management as a difficult, distinct, and major function of business management. Previously, such little selection, training, health and safety work, insurance and social contacts, and relationships as had been attempted, had often been administered with no coordination, with disproportionate emphases and accidental and fluctuating interests … seldom as serious projects of human engineering.” Recent Economic Changes in the United States (New York, 1929), II, 518.Google Scholar

2 Standard accounts of the origins of personnel management and “labor administration” are Eilbert, Henry, “The Development of Personnel Management in the United States,” Business History Review, XXXIII (Autumn, 1959), 345–364CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Douglas, Paul H., “Plant Administration of Labor,” Journal of Political Economy, XXVIII (July, 1919), 544–560CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lescohier, Don D., History of Labor in the United States, 1896–1932 (New York, 1935), III, 293–396.Google Scholar The role of the federal government is discussed in Ling, Cyril Curtis, The Management of Personnel Relations (Homewood, Ill., 1965), 322–337.Google Scholar

3 Tead, Ordway and Metcalf, Henry C., Personnel Administration: Its Principles and Practice (New York, 1920), 1.Google Scholar

4 Stein, I. Melville, Measuring Instruments, A Measure of Progress (New York, 1958).Google Scholar

5 The early history of the Leeds & Northrup Company is told in Vogel, William P., Precision, People, and Progress (Philadelphia, 1949), ch. 3.Google Scholar

6 Child, John, “Quaker Employers and Industrial Relations,” Sociological Review, XII (November, 1964), 294.Google Scholar

7 Morris E. Leeds, “Some Aspects of Industry's Obligation to Society,” Address to the 13th Annual Industrial Conference, YMCA, August 27–31, 1930, 32–34, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, Wilmington, Delaware, Microfilm Reel 14. Fragmentary evidence indicates that this statement accurately reflected Leeds's feelings during the prewar period. In 1915, for example, C. S. Redding praised him for not treating the employees “as machines.” C. S. Redding, “Address to Annual Meeting of the Science Club,” Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 14. In 1920, Leeds wrote that “Equality of opportunity is … [an] expression of democratic idealism … applicable to industry.” Leeds, Morris E., “Democratic Organization in the Leeds and Northrup Company, Inc.,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, XC (July, 1920), 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Leed's concern for his employees is also shown in a book co-authored with Balderston, C. Canby, Wages; A Means of Testing the Adequacy (Philadelphia, 1931).Google Scholar

8 See Harbison, Frederick and Myers, Charles A., Management in the Industrial World (New York, 1959), 61–63.Google Scholar

9 Leeds & Northrup sales figures are from the Executive Committee Minutes, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 3.

10 Morris E. Leeds, “The Leeds & Northrup Plan for Stock Ownership and Transfer,” Address to Annual Meeting, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 14.

11 Ibid., p. 14.

12 Ibid., pp. 4–7.

13 Daniel Nelson, Unemployment Insurance: The American Experience, 1915–35 (Madison, 1969), ch. 2.

14 Morris E. Leeds, “Address,” Annual Meeting of the Cooperative Association, June, 1931, p. 3, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 14.

15 Ibid., p. 4.

16 Ibid., p. 3.

17 Undated discussion with Fitch and Lasker (ca. 1918), Cooperative Association Papers, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

18 Undated memo on the Filene Company, Cooperative Association Papers, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

19 Morris E. Leeds, “Plan for a Conference on Cooperation,” May 27, 1918, Cooperative Association Papers, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

20 Leeds, Address,” 1931, p. 8. This type of restriction, usually spelled out even more clearly, was common among company unions, a fact that trade unions carefully pointed out. See Bernstein, Irving, The Lean Years (Boston, 1960), 172–73.Google Scholar

21 Cooperative Association Minutes, June 25, 1918, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

22 Cooperative Association Minutes, July 1, 1918, July 27, 1918, August 2, 1918, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

23 Morris E. Leeds, The Employee Plan of the Leeds & Northrup Company” reprinted from Forbes, November 12, 1932, 9–10.

24 Membership lists, Council members, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 13. Leeds noted in 1920 that “service on the Council and its committees is an admirable means of discovering and training people of executive capacity.” Leeds, “Democratic Organization in the Leeds and Northrup Company, Inc.,” 16.

25 Executive Committee Minutes, September 23, 1918, October 1, 10, 1918, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 1.

26 “Proposed Additions to the Factory Organization,” December 16, 1918, Executive Committee Minutes, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 1.

27 Executive Committee Minutes, September 13, 1919, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 1.

28 Report 17, Executive Committee Minutes, September 13, 1919, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 1.

29 Ibid.

30 Executive Committee Minutes, November 21, 1919, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 1.

31 Executive Committee Minutes, December 12, 1919, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 1. Bruere and Tead's reports have not survived, but their views can be discerned from the Executive Committee Minutes and from Tead and Metcalf, Personnel Administration.

32 Executive Committee Minutes, December 16, 1919, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 1; Cooperative Association Minutes, December 16, 1919, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

33 Cooperative Association Minutes, December 23, 1919, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

34 Cooperative Association Minutes, August 31, 1920; November 15, 1920, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12; Executive Committee Minutes, September 8, 1920, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 1.

35 Leeds, “Address,” 1931, 18–19.

36 Executive Committee to Council, October 7, 1920, Cooperative Association Minutes, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

37 Executive Committee Minutes, July 21, 1921, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 1.

38 Cooperative Association Minutes, August 23, 1931, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12; see also Executive Committee Minutes, May 27, 1931, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 1.

39 Cooperative Association Minutes, November 18, 1918, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

40 Executive Committee to Council, October 12, 1920, Cooperative Association Minutes, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

41 National Industrial Conference Board, Experience with Works Councils in the United States, Research Report No. 50 (May, 1922), 164.

42 Cooperative Association Minutes, October 8, 1920, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

43 Cooperative Association Minutes, October 13, 1920, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

44 Cooperative Association Minutes, February 25, 1921, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

45 Cooperative Association Minutes, November 22, 1920, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 12.

46 Executive Committee to Council, February 25, 1921, Executive Committee Minutes, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 1.

47 NICB, Experience tvith Works Council, 164.

48 Leeds, “Address,” 1931, 21. “It seemed,” wrote Edward S. Cowdrick, “that modem methods of personnel administration had received a blow from which there would be no recovery” (quoted in Lescohier, History of Labor, 327).

49 C. S. Redding to the Executive Committee, November 21, 1935, Executive Committee Report 77, Executive Committee Minutes, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 3.

50 C. A. Redding to the Executive Committee, July 29, 1921, August 3, 1921, Executive Committee Minutes, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 1.

51 Cooperative Association Minutes, October 17, 1922, Leeds & Northrup Company-Papers, Reel 12.

52 Executive Committee Minutes, September 4, 1924, Leeds & Northrup Company Papers, Reel 1. Provisions of the Unemployment Plan appear in Stewart, Bryce M., Unemployment Benefits in the United States (New York, 1930), 529–531.Google Scholar

53 Nelson, Unemployment Insurance, ch. 3.

54 Leeds, “The Employee Plan,” 10–18.

55 An “Employment Department” hired, fired, and kept records. The employment manager worked closely with the Cooperative Association which bore the major responsibility for training, health and safety, the cafeteria, the dispensary, and the administration of benefit plans.

56 Leeds's activities were publicized by Robert Bruere in a series of articles that appeared in The Survey in 1927–1928. Also see Nelson, Unemployment Insurance, ch. 2, 3; Bernstein, Lean Years, ch. 3.

57 Interview with Joseph H. Willits, April 29, 1968.

58 Stewart, Unemployment Benefits, 556–568.

59 Karl de Schweinitz, a prominent social worker, called Leeds one of Philadelphia's greatest “assets” during the Depression years. de Schweinitz, Karl, “Philadelphia Takes Heart,” The Survey, LXVI (May 15, 1931), 217.Google Scholar See also Nelson, Unemployment Insurance, ch. 2 and 9, and Witte, Edwin E., The Development of the Social Security Act (Madison, 1962).Google Scholar