SERVICES: Pilgrims’ Progress

A fine thing it is to have a patient wife, four bright-eyed children and $26,000 worth of stock in the bank. But rare is the man who has attained that state on a salary of only $43 a week. One such is kindly-faced, near-sighted Gus Anderson, who charges batteries for the electric trucks of Pilgrim Laundry, Inc. of Brooklyn, N. Y. Gus began his work 25 years ago for $25 a week and today, in his overalls and heavy shoes, he looks as though he didn’t have a spare dime. But he is typical of Pilgrim’s 550 employes, 535 of whom own 75% of the stock of their $1,344,700 company.

Last week, when Pilgrim held its 45th annual stockholders meeting, Gus Anderson and all the other employes crowded into its cheery cafeteria (green walls, cretonne curtains) to hear how their management was running their business. Gus and his fellows learned that the company had run up a $10,000 deficit on a 1938 gross of $82,600. But Pilgrim had laid off no regular worker, paid its regular dividends, maintained a 7% wage increase granted in 1937 (average wage: $25.53 a week).

Mainly responsible for this unique corporation is Pilgrim’s 65-year-old President James Edwin Dann. In the 1890s, when he was a young laundry foreman, James Dann had an idea that decent labor standards would promote efficiency, even in the laundry business. When he met Edward Huff Bancker, an idealistic college graduate with some money, his idea became the Pilgrim Laundry, opened in 1894.

Specializing in quality work, Pilgrim prospered. By 1913 Partners Dann and Bancker could afford a new $1,000,000 plant, as light and airy as any in the country. They set up recreation facilities, a vacation clubhouse, took to calling employes Pilgrims, put a name plate at every worker’s post. In 1921 they began letting all employes buy stock. By 1937 employes owned over 50%. Mr. Bancker having died the year before, they were also offered his 25%, leaving Mr. Dann only 25%. The price of the company’s shares once hit $37.50, is now $26. Gus Anderson has accumulated 1,000 shares.