1. "Andrew J. Borden, Enlightened Employer"
Posted by Edisto on Sep-29th-02 at 6:04 PM

I've been doing one of my periodic run-throughs of Rebello, and I came across an item (page 55) about a man named James Johnston, who was employed by the Borden and Almy firm as an upholsterer and mattress maker.  The interesting thing is that James Johnston was blind and had been trained at the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston.  Apparently he was a good employee, because he continued his work with the successor companies, Wood & Raymond and Wood & Hall.  I think it's intriguing that mean ol' Andrew Borden had a blind guy in his employ.  (It's also interesting that a blind guy could do this kind of work. I can see - somewhat - and I still hit my thumb with the hammer periodically!)

Thanks, Edisto!  Interesting, Borden and Almy had a sight-impaired employee.  It must have been a difficult task when working with a patterned upholstery material.  What a wonderful little tidbit to find which gives us just a fraction more insight on the personality of Andrew Borden. 

That's an interesting bit of information.  Maybe he was employed by Borden because he didn't ask for a high wage.  Maybe he left to work for the other firms because he needed a higher wage and did good work.  He probably wasn't blind to Andrews desire to get richer while others remained poor.  Lots of unanswered questions.

My thoughts too Carol, (I'm ashamed to say-I immediatly presumed AJB would offer him slave wages-or pay him in nickles and tell him they were silver dollars)

Even a blind man (extra-sensitive touch and hearing) can tell the difference between a nickel and a silver dime or dollar! Its the paper currency ($US) that is difficult. European currency (?) has tangible differences, I read.

Well, the thing of it is that he didn't leave Borden & Almy to work for these other companies.  When Borden & Almy went out of business, he stayed with the company that succeeded them and then with the company that succeeded the original successor company.  (I'm assuming the first successor bought out Borden & Almy, but I don't think that point is entirely clear.)  I daresay any handicapped or challenged person worked for less-than-market wages in those days, so that part may be correct.  The same thing was probably true for women like Alice Russell, who worked as a bookkeeper.  I'll bet she didn't earn the same wages a man would have.  That's the way it was in those "good old days."

And still is, in part, in the good new days. 

Joke n. Something said or done to evoke laughter esp. an amusing story with a punch line.

I haven't read that portion of Rebello but it would seem to me that this blind man, once Andrew's firm went out of business, was an independent worker.  He would have negotiated wages with the firm that either the old business was sold to or that he was hired on by a new entity that took over the funeral business in town. I am not clear what you mean by he "he stayed with the company that succeeded them" but you don't seem clear on it either. In any case it seems that he did leave Borden and Almy because they went out-of-business.  He was then rehired by the new company. If he was a good worker and in demand he might have looked into working for another company in perhaps a nearby town or even Fall River and when nothing else appealed to him he decided to stay and take the job, hopefully at a higher wage, that the new entity offered. 

Well, you are most certainly free to read into this anything you want.  My major point is that Andrew Borden and his partner had in their employ a man who was sight-impaired.  The man also worked for the companies that succeeded Borden & Almy.  Since that's about all the info Rebello gives us, I suppose we're free to make all sorts of suppositions. I decided to suppose that he was a good enough employee that the successors decided to retain his services.

As no reflection on anyone posting to this thread, I would only like to point out something I'm noticing, in general:
We seem to have some members For Andrew, and some Against Andrew.
(Sorry, don't know any simpler way to put it...)

This is not to imply that anyone who I term *Against* may think Andrew deserved what happened to him.

But we have an actual scism as to what posters believe was the true character of the man.

This is interesting to me to note.

We do now have 100 members, according to the latest NEWZLETTER...
It would be enlightening to experience those other 85 voices on the subject of Andrew.  kk

Yes, I concur!  Lets hear from the silent portion of our group, now is your chance, jump right in, the mutton's fine! 

I hope my statements about Andy are not being interpreted as "against" him. He was a "loathsome" exploiter; this is a fact, not an opinion. We know that as an undertaker he got customers to sign notes, then foreclosed on their property. In effect, he was swindling widows and orphans. Only YOU can say if this offends you.

From this I projected another scheme as a mill owner and banker. Fire those who had a mortgage with his bank, and then foreclose. He would keep this secret, of course.

Does anyone object to this deduction? (I base this on more than one book.)

(Message last edited Oct-2nd-02  12:08 PM.)

I don't object to anyone's believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, if they want to.  In fact, some of the nicest people I know believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny -- but of course they're all under ten years old.  In case anyone's misled about this, I don't really believe Andrew Borden was any kind of saint.  I suspect he was like the rest of us; had his good points and his bad points.  As I often say, I see a lot of my own father in him, and I found ways of coping with my father, short of chopping him into pieces.  (He would have been hopping mad if I'd done that.)

Can people ever become really successful if they
are overly nice? You have to be willing to be tough & walk
all over others or they will walk over you & take everything you have. You have to be able to terrorize & keep people from schlepping around all day. Has anyone ever had a boss they truly thought was a 'nice' person? (I don't mean nice in that they don't kick their dog or beat their kids or cheat on their spouse) I've never met one & I've never heard anyone say they thought highly of theirs. (Even if they had high morals or were upstanding citizens other ways) It takes so much drive to work your way up & not just be content with your little paycheck, it is like saying the rich are different, bosses just seem to have a different mind set. I'm sure Andrew J. was
indeed as tough as nails, but he didn't seem like a mean husband
or father.  

My last boss was no angel, but, she was so wonderful in so many different ways, including making sure that women got a fair shake when hiring into upper management, especially within the company.  She always gave little gifts and awards to people who went that extra mile, I miss her at times! 

I sent a card to my friend at work (he is a manager) and
his boss was there the day it arrived & he opened it & threw
it away & then told him he threw it away & that he was to never
get any personal mail there anymore. I don't think I've ever known
of a boss that wasn't genuinely hateful.

I guess in your experience, that is true.
That is also a shame.

But a *boss* isn't necessarily the Owner of the company or the Rich person.
A boss can be just a boss, and ..well..bossy.

I, too, think Andrew  was probably a combination of a lot of human traits.  He's multi-dimensional to me--not just words on a piece of paper, determined by someone else.

I don't know a lot of really rich people but I can think of one on his way, and he never stepped on anyone.

I still think there are more of you Out There who probably have an opinion on this man Andrew.

I certainly think none the worse of Andrew Borden (silver dollar joke notwithstanding) He had the drive and determination, not to mention hard working ethic, to make a millionaire of himself out of very little. How he chose to distribute that wealth or not was entirely up to him. And if he was a hard business man, as unpalatable as that may be, its still common practice throughout the world. I think that Andrew Borden loved Sarah Morse dearly and was probably devastated when she died. Who knows what that does to a persons soul? And as he got older and saw that neither of his daughters was going to provide heirs for his hard won fortune, combined with the back-biting that clearly went on in his house over money matters and the Whitehead house-God knows how he must have felt. Its for Andrews sake that I  hope Lizzie was innocent.

That was indeed the owner/boss who threw the card away.
My friend is a regular boss/manager & can be very tough
also. Since I live in a small town most of the business owners
show up everyday to do the 'bossing' themselves. But even the
hired bosses seem to be the same type. Andrew J. seems so 
controlling, I wonder if it was a nervous reaction to the
hostility at home or if everyone at home was reacting to his
tempermant? I think it took some doing not to just move out &
leave them all sitting.

(Message last edited Oct-3rd-02  1:22 PM.)

I know nothing about your wonderful boss. From my experience at some corporations, any boss who was nice to his workers could be downgraded by the other peers, and moved or removed.
Is it just an accident she was gone?

Oh, my old boss removed herself from the company a few years after she was made vice president, she felt that the CEO was screwing her out of money that was promised to her if her sales met a certain goal, which they did.  She quit and they closed our branch of the company here in SD and I had to get a new job! 

My response to your message was an attempt to clarify what it was you originally meant about the blind man's employment.  You later indicated that to think he didn't leave Borden's to work for anyone else was in error because he then worked for, or stayed with, Borden's successor.  I was considering the options about whether that was so and what really happened after the Borden company went out of business. In your last post you said, "The man also worked for the companies that succeeded Borden & Almy," which is a great way to state the facts without putting a lid on the subject. It still doesn't answer whether this man worked for other companies after Borden and before he worked for the successor, but it does give leeway for the possibility of that option.  And I wanted to bring that out, not read anything in.

In many businesses (?) there are a few older employees who have been found useful by a succession of managers. Blind people are said to compensate with better hearing, which may make him useful as a source of information on what the others were saying. For example?

I'm sure he did good work for his wages, which is why he was kept on. It is also good advertising or public relations for a "loathsome miser".

Just to make things as clear as I can, here's the direct quote from Rebello (page 55):

     "Mr. James Johnston was employed as an upholsterer and
      mattress maker for Borden & Almy and continued in that
      position with Wood & Raymond and Wood & Hall."

A brief biography of Mr. Johnston is then provided.  In it, Rebello states:

     "Upon completion of his studies, he entered the employ of
      Borden & Almy until the firm dissolved.  He continued in
      that position with the newly formed Wood & Raymond and
      Wood & Hall until his retirement in 1895."

On page 53, Rebello has provided the information that Borden, Almy & Co. was sold when the partners retired from that business at the same time in 1878.  Andrew Borden sold his interest to  Theodore D. W. Wood, and William Almy sold his to Edward S. Raymond, who was Almy's son-in-law.  They formed the Wood & Raymond partnership, which was dissolved in 1883, at which time Wood formed a partnership with Henry A. Hall.  That company was called Wood & Hall.

Rebello uses the word "continue," and one of the dictionary definitions for that word is "to remain in the same place or condition."  Thus I read Rebello to mean that Johnston's employment with Borden & Almy and with its successors continued without a gap. How much unsuccessful job hunting (if any) he might have done during his employment apparently didn't concern Rebello, and frankly, it doesn't concern me either.  I doubt if there are any records from which we could ascertain that.

Thanks for posting all that information Edisto.  I found what you said interesting and valuable. Sorry knowledge of whether the man worked for anyone else isn't your cup of tea. You don't have to be interested. It is interesting to me because for one thing I would like to know if there was some sort of exclusivity involved in an employee working for Andrew or his "successors," perhaps they required their employees to not work for anyone else, (although it might not have been in writing),even in their spare time to supplement their income. Did Andrew keep close tabs on his employees and wouldn't that say something about his personality? Perhaps it wasn't just because the blind man liked the "successors" that the man "continued" on, maybe he had no choice.  Perhaps if he worked at all for others he could have spread rumors about the so called practices such as the unbelievable "shortening of caskets." I also wonder how the successor was thought of by the locals. Also I would suspect a person of Rebello's scholarship would want to be informed about any new information that came up about something he wrote, so he could add to, adjust or eliminate what he wrote before.

Maybe the blind man did the evil deed....it would explain why so many ill placed blows...the conjectures are endless.  Ha!