Harvester Holidays

In all its 30-odd plants throughout the Middle West and South, in Canada and Cuba, in France and Germany and Sweden, foremen and factory-managers of the International Harvester Co. (McCormick) beamed with paternal smiles, clapped their boys and girls on the back. Alexander Legge, their stern, potent President, permitted them to announce last week a million-dollar-a-year vacation plan adopted by the company for its 40.000 employes. Two weeks of holiday every year will be given workers in all manufacturing departments, as well as office help. And this vacation will be with pay, an unusual arrangement in the industrial world. Meanwhile Henry Ford, announcing jobs for 30,000 more men in his Detroit plants,* declared himself in favor of a different method of assuring leisure to workingmen. His employes, drawing a minimum wage of $5 a day, will work only five days a week, be laid off two. Said Ford: "A six-day week is all right for machines but a five-day week is enough for men." Crowds of 25,000 and more swarmed last week at the gates of the Ford plants, clamoring for the new jobs. They were being taken on at the rate of some 500 a day. Although many came from far East and West in quest of work, preference was given to men already living in Detroit. ^

*Still more jobs would be open if Ford plans for a two-mile tunnel, to bring 1,000,000,000 gallons of water a day from the Detroit River, were approved by city authorities. The tunnel would be the property of the city, although built by Ford money. The project was laid before the Detroit aldermen last week.