University of Virginia Library

How One Considerate Employer was protected by his Men

As taxpayers, voters, and members of an organization potentially effective in politics,

they approached the mayor and the department heads concerned. They pointed out—what was true—that the city's negligence in prospecting and charting the course of the tunnel was partly responsible for the contractor's failure. They pleaded that the city should make allowances rather than interrupt their employment, and that the delay in the work would counterbalance any advantage contingent on forfeiture. They promised also that if three additional months were given the contractor, they would do all in their power to push construction.

The mayor yielded; the extension was granted. And the men made their promise good literally, waiving jealously guarded rights and sparing no effort to forward the undertaking. The miners, masons, carpenters, and specialists in other lines in which additional skilled men could not be secured labored frequently in twelve-hour shifts and accepted only the regular hourly rate for the overtime. With such zeal animating them, only one conclusion was possible. The tunnel was entirely

completed before the ninety days of grace had expired.

Here was loyalty as stanch and effective as that which wins battlefields and creates nations. It increased the efficiency of the individual workers; it greatly augmented the effectiveness of the organization as a whole. It was developed, without appeal to sentiment, under conditions which make for division rather than coöperation between employer and employee. The men were unionists; wages, hours, and so on, were contract matters with the boss. Yet in an emergency, the tie between the tunnel builder and his men was strong enough to stand the strain of the fatiguing and long-continued effort necessary to complete the job and save the former from ruin. Like incidents, on perhaps a smaller and less dramatic scale, are not uncommon; but the historian of business has not yet risen to make them known.