GIFT TO WORKERS

Hokitika Guardian, 10 January 1929, Page 6

GIFT TO WORKERS

BIG CLOTHING BUSINESS SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 12. When New Year’s Day dawns, a 42. year-okl man in New York will toss away a million dollars and change the whole course of his life just because he wants to do something new. Fourteen of his employees will take the million dollars and continue the policies which have made the firm of 0. F. Grab and Company one of the outstanding concerns in the women’s garment industry in the United States. Twenty-nine years ago a 13-year-old boy stood on the deck of a liner as it pushed up New York harbour. That was Oscar F. Grab, an Austrian youth who decided to come to America to make his fortune. For several years that fortune consisted of the twelve shillings he earned each week for mixing ice cream sodas in a chemist shop on the Lower Fast side of New York. Bettor times came, Grab saved • his money and before long he found himself in the garment business. His rise was rapid, the business prospered until to-dav lie finds himself in the position of being able to give away a mil.ion dollars. On January Ist. Grab will become executive vice-president of the Lef-eourt-Normande National Bank in New York. “I want to try something new,” Grab explained. “I think I have been a success in one business and I can be a success in another. Basically all businesses are alike.”

Grab was not boasting, for a moment later lie said: “I am giving my business to these fourteen workers, because I could not have made a success of it without their help.” Many manufacturers would say Grab had been working against himself all these years, for lie refused to take the customary stand of some employers on labour matters, and was a militant champion of collective bargaining for workers. He upheld the right of employees to establish impartial machinery for the adjustment of labour disputes, and he opposed vigorously a proposal to lock out the workers in the clothing industry some years ago. Besides making money and lighting for the right of labour, Grab found time to make a definite contribution to the garment industry When lie returned from his hundredth trip to Europe recently, lie announced he had arranged for the-exchange of style information between leading American ami French concerns. That programme, experts say, is likely torevolutionise toe technique of garment making. j