In 1911 Perkins retired from the Morgan firm, at the same time retiring from all active business except his directorship in various companies, chief among which were the Steel Corporation and the International Harvester Co., of which latter he was chairman of the Finance Committee. After that time he devoted his energies until his death to semi-public work.
Especially did he devote himself to the solution of the problems growing out of the relationship between capital and labor. He was prominent in the profit-sharing plan which is now in vogue in the Steel Corporation and which has been so largely followed by many other industrial concerns in the past seventeen years. He also gave much of his time to spreading the gospel of coöperation in the business world. As long ago as February, 1908, he began making public addresses on the necessity for such coöperation, claiming that the many modern improvements in inter-communication and the enlightenment of the people through our broad system of education had brought us to a point where the old destructive, competitive methods in business had to be abandoned and a more humane and enlightened order of things take their place. He delivered many addresses throughout the country on these two favorite themes, profit-sharing and coöperation.
As already suggested Perkins’ course in breaking off his business career apparently at its zenith and devoting the prime of his life to the betterment of the lot of the worker with his hands and the general welfare of the community was regarded with suspicion by many, and his motives were questioned. Of the influence that guided his course let him speak for himself.
“My father,” he said, “was deeply interested in social service and settlement work, and, as a boy, my Sundays were spent not in merely going to Sunday-school but in rounding up the poor boys of the neighborhood for classes, etc. Later, my experience selling life insurance brought me closely in touch with the needs of the people, and even when I became affiliated with the Morgan firm my work as an organizer was the human end of the job. My inheritance from my father and my own life work both kept me in touch with “all things human.” Isn’t it only natural that I should take a deep interest in what you might call human work?
“I don’t claim credit for this. In fact, I don’t see how, with my experience, it could have been otherwise. It became, if you will, my hobby which I gratified as soon as I was able to.
“When a man approaches fifty years of age and finds he has enough money to meet his wants for the rest of his life and to take care of those for whom he should naturally provide, the question that presents itself is: what am I going to do with the remainder of my life? Whatever I do in the way of work will have to be left behind me in the world. Shall I work to accumulate more money and leave that, or shall I work for certain definite objects that I believe are worth while, and leave the results of that work behind me? I simply chose the latter course.”
Other “Men of the Corporation”
Many other men, of course, have done their share in making the Corporation what it is to-day. In the success of the great company men like Richard Trimble, its secretary, and William J. Filbert, its comptroller, who have been with it since incorporation and seem almost as integral parts of its structure as Judge Gary himself, have done their part, as have the presidents of the various subsidiary companies. All these are men of unusually high ability, nearly all of whom have worked their way to their present positions from the bottom of the ladder. They have for years devoted all their energies to building up, each in his own sphere, the business and resources of the big company and may justly and proudly claim the right to be reckoned with Gary, Morgan, and the others, as “Men who made United States Steel.”