Search

In early 1933 Jay Catherwood Hormel proudly described his rule over the George A. Hormel & Company packinghouse in Austin, Minnesota, as a "benevolent dictatorship." Laborers for the Hormel Company agreed that Hormel's rule was dictatorial, but they disagreed with his use of the adjective "benevolent." In fact, the term "sheer tyranny" was more often used by workers to describe Hormel's labor relations policy within the giant meat packing plant. But in the eyes of local businessmen Hormel's benevolent dictatorship was both economically wise and just. Meat packing was the industry of Austin. In 1933 Hormel employed 2700 of the town's 17,000 residents. Four years later Fortune magazine observed that should Austin ever lose the Hormel payroll "the town would wither away to a few roadside stands and retail stores for farmers." The thought of Hormel moving even a part of his family enterprise from Austin haunted local businessmen. As a result, the town's business establishment provided a worshipful captive audience for Jay Hormel's pronouncements on labor relations. George Hormel attributed his success to a passion for perfection which inclined him toward the use of instructional maxims for his employees whenever he observed them wasting time or materials. Labor relations difficulties were not among George Hormel's management problems. A principal reason for this was Hormel's friendship and openness with many workers, who in turn did not hesitate to discuss their grievances and difficulties personally with him. He shared the humble origins of many of his laborers.

The plight of New York City's poor has been an ever-present problem. Their rapid increase accompanied New York's accelerated growth during the post-Revolutionary years. This condition, in turn, imposed new responsibilities for public welfare upon the municipal government. Public provisions for the relief of poverty in New York began with a provincial poor law of 1665-one year after the British assumed control of the colony. This measure and succeeding legislation of the colonial period, based upon the principles of the Elizabethan poor laws, made local communities responsible for their own poor and stipulated that taxation would be the source of relief funds. The economic and social dislocations produced by the American Revolution imposed obvious strains upon New York's local welfare system. Each year thousands of others came to depend on public outdoor relief and the city's charitable societies. As the number of publicly supported paupers rose, so did municipal expenditures for poor relief, which soon became the most costly item in the city's annual budget.