Well, in learning me how to study people and how to treat them. I
remember it even helped me up until the last days. I still remember
things I learned in there in getting along with people and how to treat
people, to be fair and square, firm. I know it done me more good in
South America than anything I ever taken when I went over there they a
system that the supervisor—in fact
[Laughter] the supervisor, he was just in there. The
administrator of the plant was what you called
‘boss.’ And he was a Puerto
Rican. He had what you call a vigilante system, in the plant. You see,
he couldn't be there all the time. In the vigilante system,
somebody he'd pick—which was a secret to the rest
of them, they didn't know that they was doing
this—and every little thing that they'd see the
employees doing, why they'd go and report it to the
administrator of the plant. They could treat them like dogs over there
and get by with it.
Then he'd get them in and give them a working over. I had a
contract when I went over there that nobody else was to have anything to
do with the weaving. You see, they never had done nothing over there.
Efficiency had been in the fifties and sixties. They had two kind of
looms over there: the Draper and the Crompton-Knowles. They had never
done never done anything. Efficiency had never been over fifty on the
[UNCLEAR] and in the sixties on the drapers.
Well, when I went there I had a contract that nobody was to have anything
to do with that weaving except me. I had full charge of it. Well, I
didn't do anything. I just checked for about two or three
weeks to find out which was the best way to handle those people. After
about three weeks, I told the administrator of the plant, I asked him if
he'd ever read my contract. He said, "Yes."
I says Monday, I'm taking charge and I don't want
you to have a thing in the world to do with anything, anybody in that
weave room. If one of those employees in the weave room come to you for
anything, I want you to send them to me." And he said,
"Mr. Pharis, how are you going to run this place?" I
said, "Well the first thing, I'm going to try to
teach these people everything I know and I'm going to be as
good to them as I possibly can to get them to do the work." And
I says, "I'm doing away with
the vigilante system." I says, "What I
don't see myself, I don't want to know anything
about without somebody's trying to destroy something or
property." He said, "Why Mr. Pharis, you'll
never run this job over here like that. You might run one in the United
States like that but not here. You've got to treat these
people like dogs over here. You've got to keep them under
feet, under foot." He says, "You've got to
keep them under foot all the time because if they ever one time get the
upper hand, you've lost control. You've got to
keep them down there and keep grinding on them to keep them down
there." I says, "I won't run it that way.
If I don't run it my way, if that ain't
satisfactory, you give me a thirty days notice and I'll be
ready to go. But, I'm running it my way." He says,
"Well, I'll tell you you'll never get by
with it."
That was long about August, about the first of August. Things were coming
together better. I explained it. I had an interpreter who stayed with me
all the time and I explained it. I'd get the groups together
and talk with them with my interpreter and tell them what all I was
doing by doing away with the vigilante system. That just tickled them to
death. The people got to working with me over there and I've
never seen anybody work with anybody better than they worked with me.
They'd do anything in the world I asked them to do without
any fuss at all. I remember one time we started a third shift over
there. You know there was a little trouble in them days getting people
to go from another shift to first shift. We weren't planning
on hiring anybody. We were just planning on taking employees. (We had
too many anyway.) And start a third shift.
Well, I was coming to worry about what was going to happen—if
I was going to get into trouble—when I tried to get somebody
to go to the third shift. Well I got them all
together and had a talk with them, explained it to them. I asked for
volunteers and one of the leaders of groups over there said,
"Mr. Pharis, you don't have to ask for volunteers.
You say who you want to go on the third shift and they'll go
on the third shift." So I started the third shift without any
trouble at all. That's just the way they worked with me the
whole time. The efficiency went from the fifties and sixties and I
worked with them people like that and get them to work with you and the
efficiency advanced from fifties and sixties into the nineties. It was
ninety-eight when I left over there on the Draper and the
Crompton-Knowles looms was ninety-two. Now that was the difference in
working somebody and having somebody work with you.