Welfare Capitalism and Documentary Photography - Toronto ...

Ekpeth H. Brownin time and space. In the early twentieth-century US, both reformers andcapitalists relied on the interpretive slippage Ihal can occur when connotativerneanings are taken for denotative meanings - when historically contingentinterpretive frameworks, such as scientific 'objectivity', are taken for materialreality. Early twentieth-century business owners and managers found photographyto be an ideal graphic technology in offering their version of workplaceconditions, in what was essentially a battle of visual rhetoric waged on twinfronts against Progressive-era reformers (who sought increased state regulationof private business excesses) and against their more conselwative businesscolleagues (who argued for an older interpretation of nineteenth-centuryIaissez-faire political economy).This essay takes as a case study the production and global circulation ofphotographic documentation by one early twentieth-century US multinationalbusiness: the National Cash Register Company of Dal'ton, Ohio (N.C.R)'2 Theimages I examine here, drawn from the NCR archives as well as from HarvardUniversity's Social Museum Collection, document the company's extensivewelfare capitalist initiatives in the first years of the twentieth century. Theimages were made and circulated primarily as a means of publicizing N.C.R.'sstatus as a global model factory and functioned, historically, on a number oflevels. I will outline here a few of the registers in which their meanings wereconstructed and circulated. As an overall framework for understanding thecultural functioning of these photographs, I want to suggest that the images, asmaterial objects, are fetishes of Progressive-era utopianism. What I mean hereis simply that, in these images, the myriad conflicts that gave rise to bothN.C.R.'s welfare capitalist initiatives and the photographic documentation ofthese initiatives, in particular both the workplace surveillance and the pervasiveindustrial sabotage that accompanied the introduction of the cash register intoUS economic life, are rendered both invisible and - implicitly - resolved due toreformers' intervention. As Marx argued concerning the commodity fetish, inadvanced capitalism the 'fetish' of the commodity works to obscure thematerial conditions of its production in favour of the symbolic and economicvalue it accrues when in circulation; in his terms, the commodity's exchangevalue, on the market, renders the good's use value invisible. To fo1low throughwith the metaphor of the commodity fetish, the images I shall be discussingin this essay obscure the violent details of early twentieth-century factory life.Like the cash register itseli which became an international commodity in the1880s, the photographs documenting the triumphs of N.C.R.'s industrialbetterment programme gain their value in relations of exchange, as theycirculate in a global network of Progressive-era conferences, exhibitions, andeducational endeavours desiqned to ameliorate the human costs of industrialcapitalism.2 Although the company was known formuch of its life as 'N.C.R.', in the 1970s thename was changed to 'NCR'.N.C.R. and Early Twentieth-Century Welfare CapitalismNational Cash Register, of Dalton, Ohio was an extremely early innovator in anumber of areas of progressive business practices, inciuding 'scientificsalesmanship', visual pedagogy, and welfare capitalism. N.C.R. is still aroundtoday in the form of ATM machines, among other products. In the earlytwentieth century, the company's founder, John H. Patterson, began producinga newly invented machine - the cash register - in a one-room factory withthirteen employees in 1884; by 1905 he had built a complex of innovativebuildings covering twenty-three acres of floor space, with landscaping byBoston's Olmstead brothers, and about five thousand employees, both maleand female.s While N.C.R.'s work in salesmanship is fascinating - the companyinvented the guaranteed sales territory, the sales convention' the flip chart' and3 Iudith Sealander, Grand Plans: BusinessProgressivism and Social Change in Ohio'sMiami Valley, 1890-1929, Lexington, KY:University Press of Kentucky XXXX, 21;Stanley Allyn, My Half'Century with N.C.R.'New York: McGraw Hill 1988, 28-29.138

W elfar e C ap it ali sm an d D o cum ent ary Ph o t o gr aphy4 For further information about N.C.R.'simportance in the history of sales, seeWalter A. Friedman, Birth of a Salesman:The Transformation of Selling in America,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press2004 and his'John H. Patterson and theSales Strategy of the National Cash RegisterCompany, 1884 to 1922', The BusinessHistory Reriew 72:4 (Winter 1998), 552-584.5- This paragraph is drawn from mydiscussion of welfare capit.rlism inrelationship to Lewis Hine's photography inThe Corporate Eye, I),9 148. The keydiscussions of welfare capitalism are NickiMandell, The Corporation as Family: theGendering of Corporate Welfare, 1890-19j0,Chapel Hill, NC: University of NorthCarolina Press 2002; Andrea Tone, Businessand the Work of Benevolence: IndustrialPaternalism in Progressive America, Ithaca,NY: Cornell University Press 1997; DavidBrody, 'The Rise and Decline of WelfareCapitalism', rn Change and Continuity inTwentieth Century America: The 1920s, ed.|ohn Braeman et al., Columbus: Ohio StateUniversity Press 1968, 147-78 and Stuart D.Brandes, American Welfare Capitalism,1880-1940, Chicago: University of ChicagoPress 1976. For a discussion ofwelfarecapitali.m in relationship to corpordrepublic relations, see Roland Marchand,Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise ofPublic Relations and Corporate Imagery inAmerican Big Business, Berkeley, CA:University of California Press 1998 andRichard Tedlow, Keeping the CorporateImage: Public Relstions and Business, 1900-1950, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press 1979.6 Sealander, Grand Plans,2l; Carroll T.Fugitt, 'The Truce between Labour andCapital', Cassier's Magazine (September1905) vol.28 no.5,340.7- Image reprinted in Lena Harvey Tracy,How My Heart Sang: The Story of PioneerIndustrial Welfare Work, New York: RichardR. Smith 1950, 112, bottom, with caption'Mrs. Charles Henrotin Addresses theCentury Club'.8 - Industrial Problems, Welfare Work,NCR: 'Features Educational to Employees',ca 1903 SMC 3.2002.3519: Elspeth H.Brown, TLe CorPorate Eye: Photography andthe Rationalization of American CommercialCukure, 1884-1929, Baltimore, MD: fohnsHopkins University Press, 2005.mandatory sales training schools, for example - this essay focuses on welfarecapitalism, since it is the photographic documentation of this work that gaverise to N.C.R.'s global reputation in the early twentieth century.4Welfare capitalism is a term used by historians to describe the tremendoussurge of programmes and benefits that progressive employers offered Europeanand American industrial workers in the years before the rise of the welfare state.With the major expansion of many mass and specialty production industries inthe late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the size of factory workforcesgrew exponentially, as did the number of often violent confrontations betweenlabour and capital. In response to high labour turnover rates, industrialsabotage, unionization efforts, and the growing anonymity of the increasinglybureaucratized workplace, progressive companies began to offer workplacereforms in a successful effort to reduce labour turnover, increase productivity,and build employee loyalty. These programmes varied widely in scope, butincluded company efforts to enable employees to acquire property and beginsavings accounts; factory and workplace beautification programmes rangingfrom landscaping to interior painting; the establishment of employee athleticand social clubs; workplace safety programmes; employee lunch programmesand health care, usually through visiting nurses; pension plans; and employeerepresentation schemes, known within the labour movement as 'companyuntons .-N.C.R. was at the forefront of this movement towards what was oftencalled, at the time, 'industrial betterment' or 'welfare work'. By 1900, aroundthe time these photographs documenting welfare initiatives were in circulation,N.C.R. offered its male and female employees the most comprehensive set ofemployee benefits in the country. The company's founder and director throughthe early 1920s, lohn H. Patterson, summarized the welfare goals as 'physical,mental, moral, and financial' betterment for workers, instituted through threestrategies: healthful working conditions, pleasant surroundings, and educationalopportunities.6 Although I will discuss some of these programmes (andtheir photographic documentation) in more detail later, here let me summarizethat the positive publicity accorded these welfare capitalist initiatives became asimportant to the company's global reputation as the cash register itself: indeed,the two were inextricably linked.My first illustration includes five black and white photographsrepresentative of the documentation of N.C.R.'s welfare work during thisperiod (figurel). Pasted on a sheet of grey poster board with accompanyingtext, the photographs detail the educational opportunities for workers,including a library; motivational proclamations on buildings and bulletinboards; and speakers organized through the company's various employeeclubs (the top right image describes reformer Mrs. Charles Henrotin, activein the labour and suffrage movements, as well as the second president of thegeneration General Federation of Women's Clubs; she is addressing theN.C.R. women s club in this image).7 N.C.R. was also the first company inthe US to start a magazine for employees; as I have discussed elsewhere,these publications became a central managerial strategy in constructing anideology of corporate family togetherness in the increasingly rationalizedworkplace.S N.C.R. pioneered a number of conveniences for womenemployees, such as a women's dining room; restrooms - literally designedfor rest, a development that was matched in contemporary department storedesign; ten-minute recreation breaks in the morning and afternoon, and evenspecially designed chairs, at least ten years before post-Taylorite managersbegan thinking of what eventually became known, after \MWII, as the field ofergonomics.139

Ekpeth H. BrownFigure l. INDUST'I{IAL pROBLEN,IS, \,VELFARE\{ORK: UNITED STATES. OHIO. DAYTON. NAI.IONAL CAS}I I{F.GTSTER CONIPANY: \\TELFAREINSTITUI'IONS OF I'HE NATIONAL CASH I{EGTSTER CON'IPANY, DI\YTON, OHIO.: DL,PARTNIENTS, CA 1903. GClAtiN SiIT'CT PTiNtS IT'ith SClf'adhesiyelcttersonmoLrnt; mount: 71 r55.2cm(27 1-5/16xl13/,1in.).HarvardUr]iversitl'ArtNIuseums,FoggArtNIuseutn,ot deptlsitCarpcnter Celtcr fbr the Visual Arrs, 3.2002.324. Photo: h.naging Department t' President and Fcllou's of Harvarcl College140

Welfare C apitalism and D o cumentary Photogr aphy9- Dar.id E. Nye, Inage Workls: CorporateIdentities at General Electric, 1890 1930,Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1985.Although there are other images documenting still other aspects ofN.C.R.'s welfare work in the NCR archives, this placard from Harvard's SocialMuseum Collection provides a representative sample of the types of images thatN.C.R. used to publicize its welfare capitalist programmes during theProgressive Era. The photographs bear a staged awkwardness typical of bothlate nineteenth-century industrial photography and early twentieth-centurypublic relations imagery.o In the interior images, the photographer has chosen along view, seeking to fit as much of the library, auditorium, and slide-roominto the frame as possible: here, qpical of the genre at the time, the space of themodel factory is privileged over a visual emphasis on the individual subjectivityof specific figures (through the close-up, for example). The camera, rather than'catching' the employees at their tasks (a visual rhetoric of pleasurablespontaneity and company'togetherness' that would mark such images after thewar), here seems to cement them in place. Whether seated in their companychairs, or selecting one of '10,000 lantern slides', these sombre employeesearnestly pursue the uplifting educational diversions of reading, viewing, andIistening.10- Elspeth H. Brown, 'RationalizingConsumptior.r: Photography andCommercial Illustration, 1913-1919',Enterprise and Society 1:4 (December 2000),7 t5-738.1i Dalton History rvebsite, http://lwn'.daytonhistory.org/magiclantern.htm,accessed 12 April 2007.Teaching through the eye: the global circulation of the modelfactory imageCapitalist visuality - in terms of both ways of seeing and in strategies of visualrepresentation - emerged as central to N.C.R.'s relationship to employees, itsindustrial betterment programmes, its sales strategy, and its internationalpublicity campaign to render the Dalton plant a global showcase forprogressive business practices. Patterson was unique among early Progressivebusinessmen for his commitment to visual technologies. \Vhile the earlytwentieth century saw advertisers turn to what was known as 'eye appeal', thisemphasis on the visual was unusual in the manufacturing sector.r0 AlthoughPatterson first elaborated his visual pedagogy to his sales staff in the 1880sthrough drawings on blackboards and flip-charts, by 1891 he had alsoincorporated magic lantern slides to demonstrate aspects of the cash registermachinerl, to his salesmen. The method worked so well that he created aPhotography Department to produce lantern slides, which were painstakinglyhand-coloured by a staff of seven women.tt By the early 1900s, N.C.R. had over100,000 stereopticon slides as well as motion picture cameras for thedocumentation and display of N.C.R.'s machinery and work innovations.These visual technologies were central to Patterson's strategy of what he called'teaching through the eye'.The stereopticon slides became central to the global delivery of whatbecame known as'The Factory Lecture'. These representations of model factorylife circulated domestically and internationally to diverse audiences rangingfrom N.C.R. factory employees at the most local leve1 to international world'sfair audiences at the global. Though in fact the lectures about N.C.R. concerneda number of overlapping topics and titles such as 'The Model Factory', or 'ANew Era in Factory Life', standardized scripts and images emerged by the early1900s in the effort to publicize the benefits of welfare capitalism and the centralrole that N.C.R. played in progressive industrial betterment schemes in bothEurope and North America. Most of the slideshows featured between 200-230projected slides, displayed on two parallel screens, in order to compare andcontrast the factory conditions before and after the introduction of bettermentschemes (figure 2).A Newburgh, New York newspaper report describes a tlpical N.C.R.factory lecture delivered by N.C.R. 'Advance Department' head ArnoldShanklin in early March 1901. After emphasizing that'the talk was rn no141

Ekpeth H. BrownN. C" R"Lecture R

Elspeth H. BrownYork City to Da1'ton; the arrival of visitors into Dalton's Union Station; a tourof Dal,ton itself; and finally, a tour of the factory and its landscaped environs.E. D. Gibbs, the advertising manager for Europe in 1903, delivered the newfactory lecture to N.C.R. employees in Dalton, where he used both stereopticonslides and motion pictures to sketch the audience's imaginary journey fromHamburg (where Gibbs would soon be travelling) to New York, and then on toDa1ton.l6Motion pictures, as well as the older medium of stereopticon slides,reached new audiences in the era's expositions and worlds' fairs, where N'C'R'was a prominent exhibitor. At the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland,Oregon (1903), six N.C.R. lecturers delivered the stereopticon factory lectureseven times daily, with extra lectures on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturdayevenings; the lectures also simulated the audiences' journey from Portland, thesite of the Exposition, to the N.C.R. factory in Da1'ton.17 For the Louisianapurchase Exposition in 1904, N.C.R. closed its factory for a week in August,rented train cars from Dal.ton to St. Louis, and subsidized train and admissionfees for 2,200 employees (including five hundred women) to attend the world'sfair for a week at greatly reduced cost. The fair expo-sition managementdeclared 3 August 1904 the 'N.C.R. Welfare League Duy'.tt N.C.R. offered thefactory lecture on an hourly basis in the N.C.R. lecture hall at the Palace ofVaried Industries. In addition to the coloured stereopticon lectures, whichfeatured four hundred slides projected to nearly life-sized scale before crowds of'attentive listeners', the lectures included fifteen hundred feet of film.re Theseshort films featured a variety of N.C.R. activities, including scenes tlpical forthe new medium such as 'When the Whistle Blows' (views of workers arrivingat the factory); a fire drill by the N.C.R. fire department; female factory workerspiaying tennis and dancing the cotillion; male workers arriving by bicycle; and aLaseball game at the company athletic fields.2o According to one observer, thestereopticon lecture concluded with the entire audience singing 'America'. Thispatrioiic audience ritual complemented the fair's celebration of new colonialacquisitions, as exemplified in the nearby forty-seven acre Philippine exhibit,which the same observer argued was.'generally conceded to be the most uniqueand interesting feature of the Fair'."The N.C.R. factory and industrial betterment representations circulatedoutside the united states as well, through both international exhibitions andthrough the extensive business travel of N.C'R. personnel' The N'C'R' had severalexhibitions at the Paris Exposition in 1900 which functioned, as companypresident John H. Patterson wrote in an open letter to the employees' as a(successful) effort to 'inva

Welfare Capitalism and Documentary Photography30- Emily S. Rosenberg, Spreading theAmerican Dream: Economic and CulturalExpansion, 1890-1945, New York: Hill andWang 1982.31 - Tracy, How My Heart Sang, 138-139.32 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish:The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan,New York: Vintage Books 1995,200 202.33- For the lames Ditty material, seeSealander, Grand Plans,19 and SamuelCroMher, lohn H. Patterson: Pioneer inIndustrial Welfare, New York: Doubleday1923, 4-5. lohn Patterson and his brotherFrank bought a machine in 1883, whichhelped them end pilfering in their coalbusiness; lohn bought controlling interestin the company that made the machines, theNational Manufacturing Company, in 1884.Many thanks to historian Angela Blake, whoinquired about the bell, and pushed me toconsider surveillance in relationship to theaural as well.34 - Roy W. Johnson and Russell W. L1,nch,The Sales Strategy of Iohn H. Patterson,Chicago: Dartnell f932, 20-21, 53.35- For Patterson's extensive foreignbusiness, which included manufacturingabroad as early as 1903, see Crowther, /ofunH. Patterson, 264-284 and fohnson andLynch, The Sales Strategy of lohn H.Patterson,320-325. By 1903, when theSocial Museum photographs were estimatedto have been acquired by Peabody, N.C.R.had sales agent\ in the lollorving countrie::England (N.C.R.'s first agent for nondomesticterritory, hired in 1885);Germany; Holland; Italy; France; Austria;Belgium; Spain; Czechoslovakia. In 1903,the first German factory was started, inBerlin. For a recent work on the relationshipbetween US based internationalcorporations in this period and ideologiesof American empire, see Mona Domosh,American Commodities in an Age of Empire,New York: Routledge 2006.Emily Rosenberg has called 'liberal developmentalism' subordinates contestationto a triumphant narrative of Progress.30Industrial Betterment and SabotageOne of John Patterson's favourite retorts to sceptics, especially those in thebusiness community, was 'It Pays'. In other words, Patterson argued, N.C.R.'sfinancial investment in betterment programmes and in their publicity wasmore than returned in reduced labour turnover, higher productivity, and theeradication of employee sabotage. In fact, |ohn Patterson's interest in visualtechnologies, as well as in welfare capitalism, emerged in relation to thepersistent problem of worker sabotage in the early days of the company.Though this is a connection that N.C.R. rarely made in their public discussionsof their programmes, employee memoirs and archival sources demonstrate thecausal relationship between the destruction of N.C.R. property and theintroduction of a variety of betterment schemes. During 1893, the factory hadbeen set on fire three times, and in 1894 $50,000 worth of cash registers werereturned from England and Europe because employees had destroyed them,prior to shipment, through the surreptitious application of acid. In response,Patterson moved his desk into the middle of the factory floor in order toobserve more closely the mostly male workforce. For the first time, the memoirof his first Welfare Director Lena Harvey recalled, Patterson took note ofindustrial capitalism's daily indignities: the dirty water, the dark factory, theIack of lockers, the pervasive filth, and - for women workers - the chronicsexual harassment in unlit stairwells on their way to their workstations.rr Theexperience galvanized Patterson, launching him on the creation of numerousworkplace reforms documented by N.C.R.'s photographs and lantern slides.Patterson's presence in the middle of the factory floor, however, meant thatthe workers were under direct, daily observation by the company owner.Though N.C.R. sources stress paternalist good wi1l, a Foucaultian readingwould emphasize Patterson's move as an effort to make 'visibility a trap', tointernalize an obedience to managerial authority even when not underPatterson's watchful eye. As Foucault argued, 'he who is subjected to a field ofvisibility, and who knows it 1...] inscribes in himself the power relation inwhich he simultaneously plays both roles fof observer and observed, ofsupervisor and worker] '.32 In this regard, it is worth emphasizing that the cashregister itself was designed as a technology of surveillance, which was one of themain reasons why it was so prone to industrial sabotage. The entire point of acash register is to compel a clerk to record the cash taken in, and to therebyprevent the everyday employee pilfering that was understood to be part of themoral economy of making ends meet for those who made change on a dailybasis, such as barmen or sales clerks. The first machine, designed by a Daltonsaloonkeeper to prevent his employees' petty theft, featured a cabinet equippedwith keys marked in multiples of five cents with a roll of columned paper; whenpressed, a key punched a hole in the appropriate place on the paper, and themachine rang a bell. Here we have an aural surveillance as well: the sound of thebell alerted the nearby owner-proprietor that his employee had opened the cashdrawer; no doubt, the sound of that bell would cause any owner to at leastglance in the direction of the register, helping to produce in that series ofgestures exactly the relay of looks that constitute workplace surveillance.-33Patterson bought controlling interest in the company that made the cashregisters in 1884, after he had used it to discover that a night watchman, firedtwo years previously, had been continuing to perform his nightly duties whilecheerfully helping himself to his pay at the end of each evening's shift.3a At first,there was little market for the new invention. But Patterson's senius for sales147

Elspeth H. Brownand marketing, which helped make the so-called 'thief catcher' an internationalcommodity by the 1890s, also succeeded in circulating a discursiveconstruction of the employee as untrustworthy, an implicit criminal.rt As aresult, the cash register - like the stop-watch - became an important symbol ofthe battle between labour and capital and, consequently, an ongoing target ofsabotage.s6Patterson faced the problem of working class hostility outside the factory,as well as inside it. In the late 1880s, the modest N.C.R. factory was located onthe edge of the city of Dayton, in a poor, working class area known as'Slidertown'. Few of the local residents had jobs in the new factory, and localyouths expressed their class antagonism by breaking the factory windows,pulling up the few shrubs Patterson had planted, and even smearing thedelivery trucks, as well as the cash registers themselves, with mud (figure5;.37Patterson's solution was to hire an Ohio deaconess and Antioch graduate, LenaHarvey Tracy, to begin what was essentially a settlement house programmewithin N.C.R., for both employees and neighbourhood residents. Tracy was thefirst 'welfare director' in the USA; her work with the local children, as well as inthe factory itself, became a cornerstone for Patterson's industrial bettermentprogramme.The factory beautification programme began with Tracy and herneighbourhood ruffians. In May 1897, Patterson installed her in a newly-builthome on the grounds of N.C.R., called 'the house of usefulness'. Patterson hadheard John C. Olmstead speak on his theories of landscape design and hademployed the firm to plan the landscaping; Tracy was directed to work with theneighbourhood boys to create their own garden plots and, as a result, toprevent them from destroying Olmstead's work. The N.C.R. photographyl-Slrrle rto* rr llor:36 For example, when NRC rvorkers werelocked out ofthe factory in 1901 in a battleover unior.r recognition, a delegate from theNCY bartenders union announced in aCenlral federated Uniorr nreeting that insupport of the locked-out N.C.R. workers,union bartenders planned to sabotage thecash registers in their respective saloons:'On a certain day', the delegate announced,'it will be found that 10,000 cash registersthroughout the greater Nerv York will notrvork. Then machinists will be sent for to fixthem, but they will get a tip from the unionbartenders and say that they cannot berepaired. According to lhe reporter. the'secret' dir.ulged by the bartenders' delegate'proved too much for the meeting, rvhichadjourned in a hurry'. 'Saloon Keeper NotWanted as Labour Leader', New York Times,2o \ugust lq0l r, J. Iohnson and Lynchdescribe the relationship between N.C.R.and the bartenders as one of open warfare.Bartenders and clerks, organized in regionalprotective associations, confiscated all mailwith the N.C.R. logo or a Da1'ton postmark,forcing Patterson Io send mail in plainenvelopes from other locations; they refusedaccess to traveling salesmen with theirsample machines, forcing Patterson toresign new mini-samples that salesmencould carry more surreptitiously. Seefohnson and Lynch, The Sales Strategy oflohn H. Patterson, 83-88.37- Tracy, How My Heart Sang 101; Fugitt,'The Trucc Betueen Labour rnd Capital ,341 .*'riffiiI&{:'l i::Figure 5. Slidertown Bo1s, ca 1900, lanternslide. The N.C.R. Archive at DaytonHistory, CD LSO1 Fig.37.148

Welfare Capitalism and Documentary PhotographyFigUTC 6. INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS, WELFARE WORK: UNITED STATES. OHIO. DAYTON. NATIONAL CASH REGISTER COMPANY: WELFARE]NSTITUTIONS OF THE NATIONAL CASH REGISTER COMPANY, DAYTON, OHIO: LANDSCAPE GARDENING FOR A FACTORY: EMPLOYES,HOMES, ca 1903. Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art X4useum, on deposit from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 3.2002.325 Photo:Imaging Department i'. President and Fellows of Harr.ard College.149

Ekpeth H. Browndocumented the 'before' and 'after' transformation of the grounds, whichallowed Patterson and Tracey to use the images in slideshows thatdemonstrated the 'right' and 'wrong' way to mass plants; how vines couldcover and beautifr fences and sheds; and how ugly backyards could betransformed into attractive gardens (figure6).38 Olmstead visited the factorytwice in the late 1890s; he supervised both the planting of the factory groundsand some of the model yards of workers' cottages in the neighbourhood nowknown as 'South Park'. An Outdoor Art Committee, selected from the SouthPark Improvement Association, factory employees, and the Women's Guildoversaw the progress of the Olmstead plan, which eventually covered not onlythe factory but also ten surrounding blocks including, most importantly, thefront and back yards adjacent to the railway tracks that delivered visitors tothe showcase factory.3e N.C.R. provided vegetable plots for forty of theneighbourhood boys, and furnished the ground, the seed, the tools, and aninstructor. Apparently, Patterson's strategy was successful. According to Tracy,'soon the very same boys who had refused to wear our badges were gettingthemselves dismissed early from school in order to appear in the photographswhich were often taken of our factory visitors, together with representatives ofthe various clubs, the executives of the factory, and others'. Here, indeed, was acompelling 'before' and 'after' transformation: not only gardens, but also theboys themselves, appear re-made t figure 7 ).anThe documentation of the boys' gardening work became integral toPatterson's slideshows about the benefits of welfare capitalism at N.C.R.Patterson's work here had two main goals: the instrumental effort to remakethe subjectivity of his employees and neighbours, by creating model workersand citizens; and the creating of publicity materials that would sell the companyas a model factory. As I have discussed, the audiences realized in theseendeavours were multiple, and included N.C.R. employees; Dalton arearesidents; visitors to N.C.R.'s model factory al1 potential purchasers of cashregisters; world's fair visitors in the US and abroad - anyone, in other words,who encountered the company as its representation circulated throughemployee magazines, house organs, periodical literature, sales demonstrations,or exhibitions on social hygiene.38- Tracy 114 115; Fugitt,'The TruceBetween Labour and Capital', 342; Shuey'AModel Factory Town', 147-148 [145 151].For a fuller documentation of the boys'gardening work, and of the Olmstedlandscaping more generally, see Art, Nature,and the Factory: An Account of a WelfareMovement, with a Few Remarks on the Art ofthe Landscape Gardener, Dalton: NationalCash Register Company 190439 Tracy, How My Heart Sang,120-I2I;Fugitt, 'The Truce Between Labour andCapital', 342; 'Advances in LandscapeGardenir.rg', Ihe N.C.R. (January 1905),vol. lu no.1.5-9.40- Tracy, How My Heart Sang, 126. Seethis section for a fuller discussion of thegardening work, and its relationship to theIarger movement for children's gardens it.tProgressivera America.Figure 7. 'Boys Brigade Enters SundaySchool', from Lena Harvey Tracy, How MyHeart Sang: The Story of Pioneer IndustriolWelfare \{ork (Nerv York: Richard R. Smith,19s0),189.150

Welare Capitalism and Documentary Photography4l - 'Shut l)orvn at Cash Register Factory',New York Times (.4 May 1901), 9; 'Strike atDalton Spreads', New York Times (14 May1901), 2; 'Disgusted With Labour Unions',New York Times (.15 May 1901), 2; 'Dal.tonWorkmen Lose $120,000: National CashRegister Company's Version of the LabourTrotrble', New York f intes (4 June 1901), 1;'Caslr Register Strike Ends', New York Times(5 Mar 1902), 2. Daniel Nelson discussesthis strike as a harbinger ofwl-rat he calls the'new factory system' of the second industrialrevolution, marked by the twin managerialapproaches of scientific management andwelfare capitalism, in 'The New FactorySystem and the Unions: The National CashRegister Company Dispute of I90I', LabourHktory 15 (1974), 163 79.The images documenting N.C.R.'s welfare capitalist initiatives performedimportant ideoiogical work while in global circulation. The insistent visualrhetoric of promise, possibility, and, above all, progress rendered invisible thecontemporaneous political reality of shattered Iabour relations in Day.ton.Indeed, in the midst of a widely-publicized ten-month lockout in 1901,Patterson went on an extended tour of Europe where he used his imagecollection to publicize N.C.R.'s betterment work - at the same time that fivethousand workers had walked off the job to support the N.C.R. moulders, whowere striking for union recognition.4t While Patterson's welfare capitalistinitiatives were laudable under pretty much any standard, especially in the yearsbefore the codification of Progressive-era state regulation, it is the cultr-rral workof photographic documentation that we may wish to emphasize in a collectionof essays concerning the circulation of photographs. In the effort to providedocumentation of progressive reform, I suggest, these images erase a messierhistory of contestation over the details of industrial capitalism. In erasing thishistory, the N.C.R. images function not so much as commodity fetishes asvisual ones: they emphasize the exchange value of Progressive-era reformknowiedge production over the use value of - to take just one example -industrial sabotage. Details central to the production of both the images andthe cash registers (such as the seven hand-colouring women in the PhotoDepartment, or the striking moulders of 1901) disappear from the audienceview, to be replaced by an early form of corporate public relations imagery thatdoubled as object lessons in Progressive-era reform for a socially engaged,middle-class oublic.llitlirh.l5l