Cat.No: 291166 The Columbia Conserve and the Committee of Four. Norman Hapgood.

The Columbia Conserve and the Committee of Four

[Indianapolis?]: n.pub. 1934. Pamphlet. 111p., staplebound pamphlet, covers mildly worn and smudged with small corner chip.

William P. Hapgood established the Columbia Conserve Company and instituted an employee ownership program in 1917. After years of success, the impact of the Great Depression was severe, and the company undertook reforms that some of the workers, represented by the Committee of Four, criticized as infringements on democratic control. Norman Hapgood, a brother of the founder, here argues that those steps were necessary to keep the firm in business, and points to rising profits as evidence of their success. For details of the company's unprecedented experiments in industrial democracy, its years of success, and its eventual schism and sale to a larger company, see Kim McQuaid’s 1976 article in Labor History, “Industry and the co-operative commonwealth: William P. Hapgood and the Columbia Conserve Company, 1917–1943.”.

Cat.No: 291166

Price: $45.00