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APOSTLE OF SOCIAL JUSTICE
Edward Filene, The Millionaire Who
Turned Reformer In Big Business
By Bertram Jonas
/■fir men retain the social
ideals of /heir i/onth irhen
they Income mud thy. Hut
Edward ./. Ei/ene not <aili/
held fast to his hut went
Jar hei/ond them to Income
in a certain sense one of the
spiritual fathers of the .Yen'
heal, .Mr. donas tells the
story of how this multi
millionaire Jewish mer
chant fought f,>r social and
eeonom ie justice for two
generations.
r i;.\u> before Franklin I). IJuim 1 -
I veil coined the happy phrase
"New 1 )e;d” and made it I he
slogan ii|' his successful elforts to
translate into reality two genera-
t ions of >t niggle for economic just ice
in the l nited States, an Austrian
Jewish immigrant’s son who had
heconie a multi-millionaire was
preaching and putting to the lest
of practicality on a modest scale
his progressive ideas on child labor
legislation, unemployment insur
ance. higher wages and shorter
hours, labor unionism, credit unions,
social security, cooperative stores
and social justice in General. That
man was Kdwa.rd Albert Fihuie of
boston, whoso deat h at thence ol 77
robbed the nation of one of its few big
business men who was wise enough
to understand that modern com
petitive economy will and must fail
unless it can achieve a socially and
scientifically managed production
and distribution of wealth in the
public interest.
It was this phase of his career
rather than his success as a mer
chant that made Kdward Filcne
great. He was born in Salem,
Massachusetts, once the scene of
witch-hunting and burning. And
he devoted half a century to a de
termined effort to destroy some of
the witches, human and economic,
w ho were pushing the nation toward
the brink of disaster. Son of poor
parents, he started life in his
father’s store. Once he had hopes
of going to Harvard but family
reverses forced him to end his
formal schooling at high school.
Later in life he said “I found out
that although one may not become %
as learned by shopkeeping as by
going to Harvard, one may become
wiser than some of the men who go
through Harvard, if wisdom means
having the things you know per
meated with life and sympathy and
understanding for your fellow man.”
And so it was. Filene did become
wise, wise in introducing the (iolden
Hide into business, wist* in advo
cating a new capitalism and insist
ing that we can get solvency in
human society without scrapping
t he w < irks.
Responsible for much of the
growth of lib father’s business,
Filcnc’s talent was first evidenced
in the establishment of the auto
matic bargain basement, a plan
under which basement goods were
automatically marked down until
the end of a certain period when,
if still unsold, they were given away
to the city’s charitable institutions.
This system was the first of its
kind in the country. Toward the
end of the last century, Filene, then
president of William Filene & Sons,
boston’s largest department store,
startled the business world by
establishing the Filene Coopera
tive Association which gave the
linn’s .‘{,000 employes greater powers
m many respects than those of the
management. The idea was called
revolutionary by his competitors,
but Filene regarded it simply as
giving el fee I to his conception of
social just ice.
Early in this century, when
reformers like Lincoln Steffens,
(ieorge ( reel and others began ex
posing the corrupt, alliance between
municipal political machines and
the trusts, Filene joined in the
jousts against the dragon of corrup
tion in boston. It was he who
engaged Louis 1). Brandeis, then a
brilliant attorney, to direct the
fight against a scheme by the trac
tion and utility trust to gain control
of Boston’s street railway and
lighting systems. Out of this suc
cessful battle grew the Public Fran
chise League of Boston and the
Municipal Planning Commission,
of both of which hi* served as presi
dent. Although he hated war as
bitterly as he fought social in
equality, Filene was among the
first of the dollar-a-year-men during
the World War, serving on the
executive committee of the War
Shipping Board. At the close of
the war he turned his efforts toward
the creation of agencies for pre
serving world peace. He helped
organize the League to Enforce
Peace and sponsored a series of
peace prizes in Germany, France,
England and Italy in 1924.
National attention was first
focused on Filene in 1921 when he
founded the Credit Union National
Extension Bureau to introduce to
this country an adaptation of the
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TROGDON
FURNITURE
COMPANY
Manufacturers oj
Dining Room
F urniture
\
j "The
| Trogdon
! Line"
R. L. Trogdon, President
C. F. Jones, Vice-President
Corbin Smith, Secretary and Treasurer
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