Through the Color Barrier

A whirring, horse-drawn reaper lurched through a field of grain on a Virginia farm one day in 1831. Beside it marched two men, one white, one black. The white man was Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the first practical reaper. The Negro was his slave Jo Anderson, whose devoted work had helped perfect the machine. In the 123 years since, Inventor McCormick's International Harvester Co. has not forgotten the way its founder and Jo Anderson worked together. This week, in Manhattan, the National Urban League honored International Harvester with its "Industrial Statesmanship" Award for the company's steady, uncompromising policy of nondiscrimination in industry.

What pleased the Urban League was not so much that Harvester gives equal opportunity to Negroes in its 19 Northern and Western plants--other companies also do that--but that Harvester has carried a clear-cut policy of nondiscrimination into the South itself. Partly because of Jo Anderson and partly because Harvester has found that Negro workers in general are just as good as white, it declined to conform to the local policy of discrimination when it opened plants after World War II in Memphis and Louisville, and the results, said the Urban League, are an object lesson for U.S. industry.

Shoulder to Shoulder. Harvester was careful not to ram nondiscrimination down Southern throats without warning. Scouts were sent to each city well in advance to place newspaper ads explaining company policy, to talk to civic groups and city officials. When the time came to hire, interviewers were on hand to explain exactly what the company meant. "Every white applicant," says a Harvester official, "was very clearly told that we did not discriminate and that he might find himself working beside a Negro. If he didn't like it, then it was no place for him to come to work." A few whites turned on their heels.

On the job, Negroes worked shoulder to shoulder with whites. When local laws allowed, they used the same dining rooms, the same drinking fountains and locker rooms. Harvester expected some trouble and was ready when it came. When a lone Negro showed up among a group of white welders in Memphis, the whites stalked off the job. Backed by the U.A.W.C.I.O., Harvester simply told them to get back to work or be fired. They went back. Gradually, white workers began to accept the idea of Negroes on the production line. Said one white foundry worker: "They've got to make a living, same as us. Why should we stand in their way? Outside the plant, it's a different matter. I don't have to ask them into my home, you know."

Cranes & Softball. At Harvester's two Southern plants, 915 Negroes now work with 4,468 whites. (Of Harvester's total payroll of 55,000 employees, 11% are Negroes.) As Negroes advance in skill, they get better pay, better jobs, sometimes even beat out white workers for positions. There are Negro lab technicians, crane operators, drop-forge men, welders, draftsmen and assembly men, all skilled or semiskilled jobs. Friction has not disappeared completely. But incidents are fewer since everybody knows that the company means business. A few cracks are even appearing in the social barricades. Negroes now play on plant softball teams, go to the same company picnics with whites. When wives toured the plants in 1951, they did it in mixed groups and ate at the same tables.

Accepting the Urban League's award this week, Harvester Personnel Chief Ivan Willis explained Harvester's policy in the kind of hard, sensible terms businessmen understand. Harvester is not running a crusade, he said; a fair-employment policy is nothing more than good business. Said Willis: "Our basic approach is that the Negro shall be given the opportunity to earn a living that is in keeping with his native intelligence, his education and skill and his ambition. It is our belief that if this policy is not followed, our company and the nation are the losers."

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