Handling the "Help"
There used to be a good old golden rule of thumb that was plenty good enough for the good old rule-of-thumb days. It was: If you would be fair, treat all your men alike.
As a matter of fact it wasn't a bad rule in those halcyon days for man wanted then but little here below.
And he got it.
Those were the days when a certain plant of a certain electrical concern was known affectionately among the employees as "Siberia."
With good reason, too, for it was the dreariest, bleakest place in winter you can imagine. And a transfer to it was like nothing so much as a sentence to Siberia.
Well, well, their plant today is as comfortable a place to work in as you'll find anywhere in the country; that concern today sets a high standard of employer-employee relationships; those same workers who, thirty years ago, shivered at the bare thought of pulling on their pants and trekking over the barren wastes to "Siberia," are today comfortably retired on modest pensions which don't do a thing but help keep the wolf from the door.
Yet the management, in those days beyond recall, would have shown you that all men were treated alike.
Perhaps that was the trouble. Anyway, if you asked the management today how to handle "help," dollars to doughnuts the answer would come closer to being: To be fair, TREAT EVERY MAN DIFFERENTLY.
A suggestive statement—significant because it is indicative of tremendous change in the relationships of capital and labor, of employer and employee.