CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Bat’a

Book suppressed, author fined! Such was the verdict of the courts, last week, in the case of a Laborite scrivener who had dared to attack the omnipotent Shoe Tycoon of Czechoslovakia, THOMAS BAT’A.*

The scrivener, one Herr Rudolph Philipp, had called his savage book, Der Unbekannte Diktator.†

With bitter pen he wrote: “Thomas Bat’a is the Henry Ford of Shoes. . . . But Ford, in comparison with Bat’a, is a model of uprightness and humanity. . . . Zlin, the Bat’a Shoe City, is a second Detroit, but a Detroit with low wages. . . . Bat’a speeds up his workers to greater and yet greater output . . . shameless exploitation . . . lower wages than in other Czechoslovakian shoe factories . . . wanton exploitation of the workers, mostly young men and women. . . .”

Even were all these charges true, it might still be argued that Der Unbekannte Diktator deserves well of Czechs and Slovaks. His is the kinetic genius which has so prodigiously expanded young Czechoslovakia’s shoe industry that today she exports more footgear than old, easy-going Britain or revamped, laborious Germany.

Since all Empires have been bought with blood, and since all Emperors have been deemed glorious, Shoe Tycoon Bat’a need not necessarily mind that the International Federation of Trade Unions has officially denounced him thus:

“In the Bat’a factories inhumanity and the exploitation of the workers are brought to a fine art. . . . The ‘Ford of Zlin’ prospers . . . but [his] success is built upon the living flesh and blood of . . . workers.”

In Jerusalem, Amsterdam, Calcutta, Berlin and hundreds of other cities the sign Bat’a is displayed above a store which is the acme of modernity. Indeed a pilgrim to the Holy City will find that Bat’a’s shoe shop in Jerusalem has “done” its windows in smart “modernistic” squares and angles.

Salespersons in the Bat’a shops, from Singapore to Prague, are well primed with “House organ” facts about The Founder. They know that at the age of six he teased and teased until his shoemaker father whittled him out a tiny last on which with boyish zeal he pegged toy shoes. At 18 the Founder had saved 400 kronen ($80), the fruit of hard pegging and self denial. Also his sister Anna and his brother Anthony (now dead) had each saved 400 kronen, so runs the legend. Thereupon, in 1894, with a total capital of $240, the three Bat’as founded their own small shoe factory.

Oft told is the story-with-a-moral that during the first year of business Thomas Bat’a became swelled-headed and assumed the airs of a “Gentleman Manager.” Upon discovering that the firm was losing money, however, he renounced gentility “and ever since hard work has been his hobby.” Employes of the Founder also know that he, like Henry Ford, is a prohibitionist in theory and an abstainer in practice.

Legends aside, the hard facts of Bat’a’s career are starkly inspiring. War contracts for army boots gave him his first dip into fabulous profits. Instead of squandering or speculating with the money, he spent it on newest super-efficient shoe machinery, some of which he invented. Such intensive study of shoemaking problems led Herr Bat’a to believe that he could apply American-Ford straight line production methods to shoes—an idea then deemed mad in Europe.

Presently Bat’a shoes began to move on endless belts past workmen, each of whom performed a single operation. If the belt hurried a little, why so did the workmen—and were paid according to the number of shoes they produced.

Amid the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the emergence of Czechoslovakia, the Bat’a firm weathered strenuous post-War depression and came at last into deadly cutthroat competition with the old hand-shoemaker class. One day Shoeman Bat’a cut his prices 50%. Soon hunger-haunted shoemakers paraded through Prague, displaying placards: Bat’a Shoes are Paper Shoes! Shoemaker mobs became ugly.

Shoe Tycoon Bat’a’s next two moves were characteristic, shrewd. He offered charitable relief to out-of-work hand shoemakers, on certain conditions; and the offer was indignantly refused. Then, with his fighting decks cleared, Thomas Bat’a forced an investigation of his shoes by a Committee of the out-of-works, forced them to admit and sign a statement that his shoes were leather, not paper, and finally placarded all Czechoslovakia with enlarged photostat copies of the statement.

Since that crisis the Founder has not been troubled by cries of “Paper Shoes!” Today his wares are sold in Chicago by Marshall Field & Co., in Cleveland by the May Co., in New York by Macy’s—for $3.94, $3.95 or $3.96, except that de luxe Bat’a shoes sell at $4.94, $4.95 or $4.96.

To the charge that he overworks and underpays his workers Der Unbekannte Diktator replies with crushing vigor, photographs, statistics and the voice of his several newspapers.

The photographs show row upon row upon row of white cement workers-homes. The statistics prove that each has a bathroom. More photographs show dozens and scores and hundreds of the 12,000 Bat’a workers, all apparently clean, robust and inclined to athletic sports on Bat’a play-fields. Further statistics prove that Bat’a workpeople can buy as much for their wages at Bat’a Company stores as Ford workpeople can buy at Ford Company stores—although of course Bat’a wages are lower than Ford wages in gold.

There are Bat’a schools, Bat’a banks, Bat’a better baby clinics, Bat’a airplanes for the delivery of rush orders, and today, two Bat’a skyscrapers (the first in Czechoslovakia) are about to be built in Prague.

Soon U. S. citizens will behold Tycoon Bat’a in their midst, for he is bringing his 14-year-old son across the Atlantic, to place the lad in a U. S. school this fall.

“Self-made” and no University man, Thomas Bat’a took the next best course by marrying the daughter of a university professor.

Not long ago Tycoon Bat’a said of his competitors in general: “Most of them are using wheelbarrow methods to compete with my airplanes.” So fast and far has Herr Bat’a soared that imports of Czechoslovak shoes into the U. S. are jumping astoundingly as follows:

Year Pairs

1926 361,370

1927 879,392

1928* 1,165,618

Significantly enough, U. S. Advice Tycoon Roger Babson is circulating the whisper that U. S. purveyors of merchandise should thoroughly inform themselves of the profit possibilities of Czechoslovak shoes.

Experts employed by American Shoemaking, a U. S. shoe trade magazine established in 1901, recently sawed open and ripped apart several pairs of Bat’a shoes, snooped, detected only sound material and workmanship, reported favorably, “Sock lining a plump piece of sheep . . . insole . . . tough of fibre and tight, too . . . neither lasting tacks nor sewing thread can be traced in the mock-inner-sole . . . heel is of wood, lacquer finished on breast as well as sides and back. . . .

“. . . Bat’a’s ideas, would appear sound and commendable, a twig of American origin implanted upon the old European tree, growing strongly and seeming to revive the old tree.”

*Pronounced Batya.

†The Unknown Dictator.

*January to May inclusive, later official figures being not yet available.