A Touch of the Divine: Repairing the World
Although he never finished high school, he was one of the most successful businessmen in history. His impact on American culture reverberates a century later.
The company he led was one of the most familiar on the continent. He managed dozens of factories, manufacturing everything from automobiles to underwear to fishing rods. He made a fortune, then became a generous philanthropist, handing out money with the same energy he had used to earn it.
His gravestone records only the years of his birth and death and his name: Julius Rosenwald.
Rosenwald was born to German immigrants in 1862. This father was a roving peddler before going into the clothing business. The family settled a block from Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Illinois. Julius dropped out of school to join the family business. He soon founded his own moderately successful firm marketing ready-made suits.
In 1895, Rosenwald invested in a company selling goods by mail order. It had been founded by a gifted salesman named Richard Sears. He and his partner, Alvah Roebuck, had begun by offering watches and jewelry, then broadened into items ranging from bicycles to sewing machines. So many orders came in that the partners were swamped. When Roebuck decided to retire, Sears sold half the company to Rosenwald.
Rosenwald and Sears made a perfect team. Sears, the imaginative entrepreneur and dynamic salesman, handled tactics. He could, it was said, “sell a breath of air.” Rosenwald, the methodical businessman, developed the systems and strategy to turn Sears, Roebuck & Co. into a highly efficient operation. The business was a roaring success and upended the turn-of-the-century retail business in a way that would anticipate the impact of Amazon a hundred years later.
Now, rather than relying on an understocked general store, farmers could order from the “wish book,” the voluminous, illustrated Sears catalog. Rosenwald introduced pneumatic tubes and conveyor belts at the company’s Chicago warehouse to process orders. One machine could open 27,000 letters every hour. Later, management expert Peter Drucker described Rosenwald as the father of “the distribution revolution which has changed the world economy in the twentieth century.”
Among those touring this state-of-the-art plant was Henry Ford. It was said the visit inspired Ford to introduce the assembly line into his own manufacturing operation.
The automobile tycoon, though, was no admirer of Rosenwald. A rabid anti-Semite, Ford accused Rosenwald of luring Blacks from the South during the Great Migration in order to exploit them, and of imposing a “tide of white dispossession” on Chicago.
Rosenwald answered Ford’s absurdities but continued to believe that prejudice was not endemic to America. In 1908, Richard Sears retired and Rosenwald took over as company chief executive. He remained in charge until 1924, a period of colossal growth. He put in place plans to move the company into retail outlets, which eventually numbered more than three thousand department stores.
Rosenwald thought it was good business to treat employees well. He pioneered giving workers paid sick days, vacations, and a chance to purchase company stock. After five years on the job, they received a yearly bonus of 10 percent of their salary.
Even before his retirement, Rosenwald became interested in philanthropy. Although he was secular in religion, he believed in the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, which is the directive to “repair the world” through justice and right behavior. The purpose of “the few precious days of our existence,” Rosenwald said, was not “to seek pleasure and fight taxes.” He saw philanthropy as a “little touch of the divine.”
Rosenwald’s motto was “Give While You Live,” and he gave widely, at one point handing out a third of his annual income in charity. He supported Jewish causes, and also the YMCA, dental infirmaries in public schools, and Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. In 1911 he met Booker T. Washington, who was making an effort to improve the lives of African Americans in the South, where Jim Crow segregation deprived most Black children of access to education.
Together, Rosenwald and Washington began to build more than five thousand school buildings throughout the South to serve Black children. Local African Americans chipped in to match his largesse, donating labor and supplies as well as money. The effort extended to teacher training and libraries. The communities in which the schools appeared gained a new sense of hope and pride. “I am interested in America,” Rosenwald said. “I do not see how America can go ahead if part of its people are left behind.”
Although he formed the Julius Rosenwald Fund in 1917, he directed that it would be of limited life so as to allow each generation to pursue its own philanthropic goals. He died in 1932 at the age of seventy. He didn’t want his name attached to any of his good works after he was gone. Unlike Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller, his name graced no buildings or institutions.
Although largely forgotten today, Julius Rosenwald found goodness in generosity. His example is worth contemplating in the season of giving.
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Another enlightening post. Thanks, Jack.
Imagine if Julius Rosenwald's example could be followed by the movers and shakers of today.