George F. Johnson

George Francis Johnson was born in Milford, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1857, to Francis A. Johnson and Sarah Jane (Aldrich) Johnson. His siblings were Oscar E., C. Fred Johnson, Harry L., and Charlotte. In 1881, after 10 years of experience in the shoe and boot-making factories in his home state, he was hired as the supervisor of a work crew in a section of a shoe factory in Binghamton, New York. Nine years later he became superintendent of that company's new plant, which was located in the community of Lestershire, New York, and said to be the largest factory of its kind in the entire world.

An Endicott-Johnson store in George F. Johnson's hometown of Milford, Massachusetts, can be seen during a U.S. Bicentennial Celebration on May 16, 1976

In 1899, Johnson became co-owner of the business with Henry B. Endicott, which was renamed the Endicott-Johnson Co. Under his presidency, the company grew to eight factories in Broome County, New York, employing about 10,000. Endicott-Johnson was the first company in the shoe industry to introduce the 8-hour workday, 40-hour workweek, and comprehensive medical care. This 40-hour work week was a unit-production based wage rather than an hourly based wage. Despite paying some of the highest wages in the industry, Endicott-Johnson was consistently profitable.

Although Johnson oversaw many different factories throughout the Susquehanna Valley of Broome County, he attracted many immigrant workers to the area by offering to build homes. Although the name Johnson was given to the city in NY where George F. arrived, the city of Endicott better reflects his intimate vision for a prosperous community. This is because Johnson himself developed nearly all of the residential neighborhoods in Endicott, selling houses to the workers at a cost to himself of $1000 each.

Until he died in 1948, Johnson saw to it that Endicott-Johnson employees received a range of benefits that were not typically offered by most employers at the time. The company also created parks (containing swimming pools and carousels that anyone could ride for free), medical facilities, restaurants, libraries, and recreational facilities—all designed to provide high quality goods and services to the employees for free or at a low cost.

The Square Deal Towns of Endicott & Johnson City have set the precedent of eager industrial labor habits for Broome County. The humming EJ factories and neighborhoods were the origins of International Business Machines. Endicott and Johnson City were where George F. Johnson revolutionized the pay system and improved relationships between capital and labor.

Here is a quote from George F.: "To know in the morning that your compensation is fixed; to know that you must do the same thing all day long, to know that whether you do a little more or a little less, whether you are more or less interested and more or less efficient, your pay is automatically fixed-creates the most deadly monotony that I can believe possible". Here he describes what was then called the piece worker system, whereas Professor Melvyn Dubovsky calls Johnson's ethic "welfare capitalism".

The community of Lestershire was renamed Johnson City, New York, in 1916 in honor of Johnson, and Endicott-Johnson workers built two arches over the area's main road in the early ’20s, one at the entrance to Johnson City and the other in Endicott, New York, stating that they were the gateways to the "Square Deal Towns". Endicott-Johnson would become the largest manufacturer of footwear in the United States, employing 24,000 workers at its peak.

During World War I, the Endicott-Johnson shoe factories made every pair of military boots, which equipped U.S. soldiers. On October 16, 1916, George F. Johnson announced the mandate of a 40-hour work week, which became the American Standard. This rule took effect for EJ-factory workers on November 1, 1916. His view of the 40-hour week was based on a wage-system of individual-unit-contributions from his workers, and saw the hourly-wage-system as a form of mental slavery.