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“Business Without a Boss”: The Columbia Conserve Company and Workers' Control, 1917–1943

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Robert Bussel
Robert Bussel
Affiliation:
ROBERT BUSSEL is assistant professor of industrial relations and labor studies at Pennsylvania State University.
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Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century, the role of workers in the management of business enterprise has been the subject of ongoing debate. Opponents of centralized, bureaucratic management have proposed a series of participatory alternatives—workers' control, industrial democracy, employee stock ownership, and more recently, employee involvement—that have sought to democratize workplace governance. Much of the literature on such initiatives, be it historical or contemporary, has implied that workers favor exercising greater responsibility over shop-floor matters but have been deterred by employer resistance and cautious labor leadership. This literature often fails to capture the complexity of workers' attitudes towards greater participation and the tensions felt by reform-minded business leaders seeking to share power and authority with their employees. It is in this context that the story of the Columbia Conserve Company, an Indianapolis-based producer of canned soups, assumes particular relevance as a pioneering attempt to implement workplace democracy. Between 1917 and 1943, Columbia Conserve's owner, William P. Hapgood, established a system of workers' ownership and management. However, workers at Columbia Conserve, while sympathetic to Hapgood's experiment, were reluctant to accept full managerial responsibility. Instead, they embraced a more familial concept that met their psychological needs for fellowship and security. William Hapgood's faith in worker self-management subsequently waned, revealing an authoritarian streak that undercut his democratic pretensions. The experience at Columbia Conserve illustrates the enduring problems involved in sustaining workplace democracy and illuminates the status of current efforts aimed at empowering workers on the job.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 71 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1997 , pp. 417 - 443
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1997

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References

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9 Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 34, 52, 69, 170—171, 367.

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11 Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 54; Lloyd G. Reynolds, “Industrial Experimenters, Unlimited,” Columbia Cauldron, Nov. 1931, 6; “Workers Ownership: Industrial Democracy in the Columbia Conserve Company,” Indianapolis, 19 May 1933, box 1, Correspondence, 1933, CCC Papers.

12 Hapgood, Columbia Conserve Company, 19–20, 46; Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 52–58, 87, 95–99; William P. Hapgood, “The High Adventures of a Cannery,” Survey (1 Sept. 1922): 65; Allen, Devere, Adventurous Americans (New York, 1932), 224–226Google Scholar; Minutes, Annual Meeting, 19 Jan. 1923, CCC Papers.

13 H. Dorothea NordHolt to Frieda S. Miller, 18 Sept. 1931; H. Dorothea NordHolt to Albert Miller, 22 April 1932, box 1, Correspondence, 1932, CCC Papers; Minutes, CCC Annual Meeting, 14 Jan. 1927, CCC Papers; Brody, “The American Worker in the Progressive Age,” in Workers in Industrial America, 9–14.

14 Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 63–64.

15 Council Minutes, 29 Jan. 1926; 5 Oct. 1928; 10 Sept. 1928; Powers Hapgood to Mother and Father, 25 Oct. 1927; Jack to Powers Hapgood, 24 Sept. 1928; Powers Hapgood to Jack Evans, 27 Sept. 1928, Powers Hapgood Papers (hereafter PH Papers), Lilly Library, Indiana University; Columbia Cauldron, 11 April 1932, CCC Papers.

16 John Brophy to Powers Hapgood, 29 Oct. 1929, PH Papers; Hapgood, Columbia Conserve Company, 9–11.

17 See survey figures in Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy, 173, 199.

18 Labor Clarion, 31 Oct. 1930, Columbia Conserve Scrapbook; Cornell Hewson to William P. Hapgood, 20 Sept. 1922, Box 1, Correspondence, 1922, CCC Papers; Meyer, Donald, The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 1919–1941 (original pub. date 1960; second edition, Middletown, 1988), 66–70Google Scholar; Allen, Adventurous Americans, 227–229; Boyd Gurley, “Business Without a Boss,” Indianapolis Times, 13 Feb. 1930. For a British counterpart to Columbia Conserve, see Dellheim, Charles, “The Creation of a Company Culture: Cadburys, 1861–1931,” The American Historical Review 92 (Feb. 1987)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. See Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 212–215, for a discussion of Arthur “Golden Rule” Nash, a business reformer whose efforts were far less successful than Hapgoods.

19 CCC Annual Meetings, 22 Dec. 1917, and 1924; Council Minutes, 16 June 1920, CCC Papers; Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 80–81; Dellheim, “The Creation of a Company Culture,” 41; John Brophy, Unpublished reflection on Columbia Conserve dispute, John Brophy Papers, Catholic University of America. The Council also retained the right to reduce time off in instances where workers failed to display a sufficiently cooperative attitude.

20 Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 132.

21 Minutes of Special Council Meeting, 17 Nov. 1930; Council Minutes, 31 July 1931; Columbia Cauldron editorials, July 1927, June 1929, CCC Papers; Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy, 101–105; Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor, 246–256; and Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 268–269. Not all former unionists “regulated their productivity.” In an article in the company's magazine, George Gregory, the militant former coal miner, explained how it was possible for one worker to run three machines and repeatedly exhorted his fellow workers to labor more efficiently. See Columbia Cauldron, Jan. 1928.

22 Council Minutes, June 1927, June 1929, 8 Dec. 1930, 4 Dec. 1932; Special Council Meeting Minutes, 17 Nov. 1930, CCC Papers. On “soldiering,” see Taylor, Frederick Winslow, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York, 1967), 20–26Google Scholar; and Drucker, Peter F., The New Society: The Anatomy of Industrial Order (New York, 1949), 82–87Google Scholar. For a different approach to stimulating worker efficiency, see Meyer, Stephen III, The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908–1921 (Albany, N.Y., 1981), 85–89Google Scholar, 100–121.

23 William P. Hapgood Letter, 8 May 1933; “Workers' Ownership and the Columbia Conserve Company,” Indianapolis, 19 May 1933, Box 1, Correspondence, 1933, CCC Papers.

24 H. Dorothea NordHolt to Frank Walser, 19 May 1933, box 1, Correspondence, 1933, CCC Papers; Minutes, 1927 Annual Meeting; Reynolds, “Industrial Experimenters, Unlimited,” 5; Hapgood, Columbia Conserve Company, 39. On tensions contained within the Progressive emphasis on education, see Lasch, The New Radicalism in America, 159–168.

25 Council Minutes, 30 Jan. 1933, CCC Papers; William P. Hapgood to Powers Hapgood, 14 Aug. 1927, PH Papers.

26 Reynolds, “Industrial Experimenters, Unlimited,” 6. On workers' defensive attitudes towards education, see Halle, David, America's Working Man: Work, Home, and Politics Among Blue-Collar Property Owners (Chicago, Ill., 1984), 48–50Google Scholar. In their classic study, Middletown, Robert and Helen Lynd found workers in Muncie, Indiana to be demoralized about their own prospects but enthusiastic supporters of education for their children. Their findings underscored the priority that workers assigned to job security. See Middletown, 53–68.

27 Hapgood, Columbia Conserve Company, 27–32; Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 100–103, 120–121, 137; Dellheim, “The Creation of a Company Culture,” 25; NordHolt to Frieda S. Miller, 18 Sept. 1931; Council Minutes, 18 March 1932, CCC Papers.

28 Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 129; Council Minutes, 10 May 1929, 13 March 1935, CCC Papers; Hapgood, Columbia Conserve Company, 48. Powers Hapgood was even more fiercely egalitarian than his father. He justified a needs-based system of compensation on the grounds that one person should not “enjoy more comfort than another.” Council Minutes, 26 Sept. 1932, CCC Papers.

29 Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 129; Council Minutes, 10 May 1929, CCC Papers; Hapgood, Columbia Conserve Company, 29–32.

30 Hapgood, Columbia Conserve Company, 29; Human Relations Council Meeting Minutes, 10 May 1929; Council Minutes, 13 Jan. 1933, CCC Papers.

31 On Ford's Sociological Department, see Meyer, The Five Dollar Day, 123–147; and Bluestone and Bluestone, Negotiating the Future, 119–120.

32 Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 367; and Brophy, unpublished reflection on Columbia Conserve dispute.

33 Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 170–210; Hapgood, Columbia Conserve Company, 58–59; Council Minutes, 8 and 22 April 1932; 13 and 17 May 1932; 4, 11, and 18 Nov. 1932; 22 Dec. 1932; Salesmen's letter to Council, 27 Nov. 1932, CCC Papers.

34 Council Minutes, 8 and 22 Dec. 1932, CCC Papers.

35 Hapgood, Columbia Conserve Company, 71; William P. Hapgood to Frank Walser, 28 April 1933, 1933 Correspondence, box 1; Council Minutes, 8 and 22 Dec. 1932, CCC Papers.

36 For accounts of the crisis at Columbia Conserve, see Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 212–247; Hapgood, Columbia Conserve Company, 49–97, which includes various reports from the “Committee of Four” convened to investigate the dispute; Kim McQuaid, “Industry and the Cooperative Commonwealth: William P. Hapgood and the Columbia Conserve Company, 1917–1943,” Labor History (Fall 1976): 523; Marcaccio, The Hapgoods, 175–180; and Council Minutes from Jan-May 1933, CCC Papers.

37 Council Minutes, 26 Feb. 1923, 17 March 1933, 14 April 1933, CCC Papers.

38 Council Minutes, 17 March, 14 April, 8 May, 1933, CCC Papers. On the tensions associated with casting the workplace as a family, see Levering, Robert, A Great Place to Work: What Makes Some Employers So Good (And Most So Bad) (New York, 1988), 15–17Google Scholar.

39 Hapgood, Columbia Conserve Company, 10; Minutes, Columbia Conserve Company Annual Meetings, 21 July 1939, 19 July 1940; William P. Hapgood to Stockholders, 9 Sept. 1943, box 1, Correspondence, 1943, CCC Papers; Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 279–283. William Hapgood attributed declining support for his reelection to Columbia's Board of Directors to his advocacy of unionization. In 1939, his son, Powers, then an official with the CIO, attended the company's annual meeting in order to plead his father's case.

40 National War Labor Board, In the Matter of Columbia Conserve Company and Federal Labor Union No. 2317, A. F. of L., Case No. AR-65, 7 Nov. 1942; Statement of Columbia Conserve Company Subsequent to Hearing, 24 Oct. 1942, CCC Papers. William Hapgood speculated that the strike may have been fomented by the A. F. of L. in order to embarrass his son, who had returned to Indiana as a CIO regional director. See Minutes of Annual Meeting, 24 July 1942, CCC Papers.

41 National War Labor Board Report, 15 Feb. 1943; William P. Hapgood to the Shareholders of the Columbia Conserve Company, 30 Sept. 1943, CCC Papers; Louis Filler, Introduction to Hapgood, Columbia Conserve Company; Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 343–350. A decade earlier, Columbia had tangled with the National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA) guidelines regarding hours and minimum pay, unsuccessfully seeking relief from regulations that failed to recognize what an NRA assistant legal counsel acknowledged were the company's “advanced sociological steps.” See John M. Keating to Norman Hapgood, 19 Oct. 1933; NRA Compliance Board to William P. Hapgood, 1 Nov. 1933; Norman Hapgood to Robert Kenneth Straus, 11 Aug. 1933, box 1, Correspondence, 1933; and William P. Hapgood to Albert Armstrong, 7 March 1935, box 1, Correspondence, 1935, CCC Papers.

42 Hapgood to Stockholders, 30 Sept. 1943; William P. Hapgood, Supplementary Chapter to The Columbia Conserve Company: An Experiment in Workers' Management and Ownership, 1 March 1941, Correspondence, 1941, box 1, CCC Papers; Lasch, Christopher, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York, 1991), 304–306Google Scholar.

43 Leo Simmons, quoted in Vance, “An Unsuccessful Experiment in Industrial Democracy,” 113.

44 Brandeis is quoted in Council Minutes, 8 April 1932, CCC Papers.

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47 Marcaccio, The Hapgoods, 206; Bluestone and Bluestone, Negotiating the Future, 195, 225–227, 235; and Levering, A Great Place to Work, 15.

48 Kelley, Maryellen R. and Harrison, Bennett, “Unions, Technology, and Labor-Management Cooperation,” in Unions and Economic Competitiveness, ed. Mishel, Lawrence and Voos, Paula B. (Armonk, N.Y., 1992), 247–277Google Scholar. For a useful overview of labor's approach to joint initiatives, see Schurman, Susan J. and Easton, Adrienne E., “Labor and Workplace Democracy: Past, Present, and Future. Introduction to the Special Issue,” Labor Studies Journal 21 (Summer 1996): 3–23Google Scholar.

49 Council Minutes, 3 Feb. 1933, CCC Papers.