AMAZING CAREER

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3395, 19 July 1932, Page 7

AMAZING CAREER

BOOT AIMD SHOE KING. A MAGNATE TO EE FEARED. A man who was a village cobbler’s son, and who in his time peddled boots and shoes from door to door, Thomas Bata, whose death was reported by cable recently, became an industrial peril to England and America. He belonged to Zlin, Moravia, a province of Czechoslovakia, the boot and shoe king of the world, and whatever he did or thought affected Northampton and Leicester and the shoe towns of the United States. There was so much concern about him that his plans were made the subject of Consular reports to a dozen different nations. Bata’s fortune was valued at £10,000,00.0. fie owned the world’s greatest boot and shoe factory, with a pay roll of 17,000 hands, and his retail shops numbered 2000. His output was more than 135,000 pairs a day, and all his success was gained within ten years.

More than half of the cheap shoes for women on sale in Great Britain to-day came from the factories of Thomas Bata, who recently signed a contract for the supply of two million pairs to an English house with multiple shops. Quite lately he flew to Berlin and dealt with an order for five million pairs for the United States, said a writer in an English paper last year. Whenever he removed about the country or travelled about Europe be flew in his own aeroplanes, with his own pilots, because “time was money.” He could not afford to travel by trains or steamboats. The man himself was a stoutlybuilt, energetic peasant, but with brains and unmeasurable imagination. He sat in his office in Zlin with a revolving globe before him, and on that globe he marked what he thought should be the sale of Bata shoes in any particular area. What he marked in figures must be reached by his sales organisation or Thomas Bata must know the reason why. A system of signal lights near his plain deal table-desk indicated whenever Thomas Bata was wanted personally in any one of the 40 factory buildings of his town. When the lights called him he went and he had such technical skill that he could put any intricate machine to rights, or show any craftsman what should be done. Efficiency in Zlin had been carried to the nth degree. There was no such calculated and studied efficiency in any factory, no matter what it might make-in England. A Wonder Town. Zlirt itself is a wonder town. It seems to have no reason for being where it is— no coal nearby, no water communication, no railways except a branch line. Set in a lap of the hills, it is the last place one would imagine would ever have become industrialised. It is reached on a rambling railway, through a countryside where the land workers still plough by oxen power, and is the model factory township, having wide streets, and fine buildings—all light and air and electricity. : Forty factory buildings stand in ruled lines behind grass plots and tree avenues, and around them on the hills are the apartments and homes of the workers. The whole reason of Zlin as a factory centre from the point of view of Thomas Bata is cheap labour, of which there is an infinite supply from the Moravian countryside, and he draws it in, trains it, and uses it. Neither English nor American people would stand the Bata system of mass production and wages, but the simple Moravian village folk flock to the factories. Every girl and every man in the mammoth factory works to a production standard. They must each do “so much” each day, and if they do not do it or cannot do it, then their wages suffer.

Shoes -are made in the factory in the same way as motor-cars are made in the mass—on the conveyor system, all working to a point of output. The girls and the men by the conveyor belt must finish their individual task on the shoes as they pass in the carriers, otherwise there are penalties. The work in the factory shops is at such intense speed that mentality becomes dulled, the whole business being production without soul. Wages ai’e low by English standards, but they are much better than elsewhere in a country of cheap labour. An average girl will receive 15s for a 45-hour week, and she will live in a dormitory home provided by Thomas Bata, feed in a restaurant provided by Thomas Bata, go to a cinema provided by Thomas Bata, dance in a hall provided by Thomas Bata, and buy all her goods and chattels in a store provided by Thomas Bata, and finally hand in her savings to receive interest from Thomas Bata. Secret of Success. That was a secret of the success of Thomas Bata; he provided town amenities for country people, and they

paid him from their wages for that provision. It was calculated that by Wednesday in each week 65 per cent, of the workers’ wages earned in the previous week had been returned to Thomas Bata through his houses, his lodgings, and his stores. He built everything in the town with his own workmen. He controlled every process of shoe-making, from the tanning of the leather onwards. He made his own cardboard boxes and packing paper, and printed his own catalogues in twenty different languages. The houses he had built around the factory—good houses, too-—he let at a rent of about 3s a week. A single man or girl could stay in one of his dtonnitories at a cost of one shilling a week. The best of meals in his restaurants cost sd. Entrance to the film was only a penny. So a girl who made only 15s a week could live well for 10s a week, and be much better off than if she had stayed in her mountain village and worked on the land for Bs. Everything the worker could need, from a hat to a motor-bicycle, was sold in Thomas Bata’s universal store in the town. One of the finest buildings in the town is a club for the workers. There are playgrounds, swimming baths, and a most efficient hospital. Thomas Bata himself lived in a modest villa much less pretentious than the workers’ club. Every single unit in the Bata system has to make its profit. Even the hospital must pay its way. If there is a loss in any department there is a deduction from the workpeople’s wages in that department. There is collective responsibility, collective gain, and collective loss.