ABSTRACT
Between 1908 and 1912, the A. C. Barnes Company was reorganized “on a cooperative basis worked out,” as the owner would later explain, “on lines that were merely adaptations of the principles of psychology.” Barnes said that “a good part of those four years was consumed in efforts to unify to a common purpose the diverging temperaments” of all involved in the manufacture and distribution of the firm’s product line. He identified a shared “spirit of adventure” and a “common respect for the personality of each individual” as the critical ingredients in the company’s success. In an era in which a new progressive spirit was streaked with paternalism, Barnes was discovering a high correlation between workplace democracy and enhanced productivity. “The business never had a boss and … never needed one,” he said, “for each participant had evolved his or her own method of doing a particular job in a way that fitted into the common needs.” 1 But he not only empowered his workers to help organize their toil, he sought to improve their minds. With an evangelical zeal, sometimes tempered but more often inflamed by his faith in science, Barnes embarked on a grand experiment. His goal was not simply to produce better employees. It was to produce happier people, that is, people with more options and more resources, by providing his employees with something quite like a liberal education.
