Julius Rosenwald

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Julius Rosenwald

Julius Rosenwald (born August 12, 1862 in Springfield , † January 6, 1932 in Chicago ) was an American entrepreneur . He made Sears Roebuck & Company the largest mail order business in America as Vice President (1896–1908) and President (1908–1924). From 1924 until his death he was chairman of the supervisory board.

Family and origin

Julius Rosenwald was the second of six children born to Samuel and Augusta Rosenwald. Hammerslough. His father emigrated in 1853 and his mother a year earlier. The father came from Bünde (North Rhine-Westphalia) and the mother from Bederkesa near Bremerhaven. They were married in Baltimore in August 1857. In the spring of 1861 they settled in Springfield, where his wife's brothers ran the Capitol Clothing House, which was doing well and needed help with sales. Julius was born here as the second son. He had two brothers and two sisters. They were of Jewish faith and the family attended the Friday evening service together. Julius later wrote that he was circumcised at the age of 13 and confirmed a year later. In 1868 the brothers Julius and Edward Hammerslough sold the business to their brother-in-law Samuel, who he called “S. Rosenwald ”reopened.

Youth and apprenticeship

Julius left high school at the age of 16 and his father sent him to New York to live with his uncle Edward Hammerslough in March 1879. He was now the owner of the Hammerslough Bros. company, which manufactured men's clothing for wholesalers and where he also lived. He later moved to a boarding house, where he became friends with a number of men who would later hold influential positions in government and banking. This included B. Henry Goldman , son of founder Marcus Goldman and future head of Goldman, Sachs and Company .

The first deal

Rosenwald had some savings and with some financial support from his father, he and his brother Maurice opened a men's clothing store on Fourth Avenue at the age of 21, which they called "Rosenwald and Brother". It wasn't a gold mine, but he got by. One day he heard from a colleague that he had too many summer clothing orders that he could not fulfill. Rosenwald decided to take this risk and sold his business.

Rosenwald & Weil

In order not to compete with their uncles in New York, they decided on the up-and-coming city of Chicago. In 1886 they partnered with their cousin Julius E. Weil (1864-1932), whose father had given them a loan of $ 2,000 (approximately $ 47,800 in 2010), and a comparable sum they received from their father, who ran his business in Springfield had given up. The parents also moved with their younger daughters to Chicago, where they bought a house on Wabash Avenue, Chicago's south side, and sons Morris and Julius moved into it. So they started as the first shop to manufacture men's clothing in various sizes "off the shelf" under the company name Rosenwald & Weil.

Julius traveled extensively bringing samples to stores, as far as New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas. He was also often in New York, where he consulted with his uncles and bought fabrics and other goods from them. Coincidentally, one of his customers was the entrepreneur Richard Sears who ordered men's clothing for sale in his catalogs.

Marriage and children

Julius Rosenwald married Augusta Nusbaum, called "Gussie", in April 1890, because his mother had the same first name. Because he was constantly on business trips, she too moved to his parents' house on Wabash Avenue. They had five children:

  • Lessing,
  • Adele, the wife of David Mordechai Levy,
  • Edith, the wife of Edgar Bloom Stern,
  • Marion, the wife of Alfred Kaufman Stern,
  • and William. Soon they moved into their own home at 4901 South Ellis Avenue in Chicago, the construction of which Rosenwald had supervised. Rosenwald frequently visited Germany. Two of his daughters completed a school year in a school in Dresden .

A summer villa "Rosewood Park" was on the shores of Lake Michigan in Ravinia. The park once belonged to the estate of Julius Rosenwald, who around 1910 commissioned the famous landscape architect Jens Jensen to design the garden. The house was destroyed by fire in 1932. Today the park is owned by the Park District of Highland Park (PDHP). After the death of his father in 1932, Lessing Julius Rosenwald became CEO of the company, an office which he held until 1939 and then retired into his private life.

After the death of his wife in 1929, Rosenwald married on January 8, 1930 the also widowed mother-in-law of his eldest son: Adelaide (Rau) Goodkind, daughter of Johannes Rau, and the widow of Benjamin Louis Goodkind, from St. Paul, Minnesota.

Aaron Nusbaum

Rosenwald's brother-in-law, Aaron Nusbaum, had received a contract from Marshall Field to sell soda water during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago . With 27 million exhibition visitors, he had made a small fortune. He invested some of the money in the Bastedo Tube Company (pneumatic tube), which Richard Sears also wanted to sell. But after Alvah Roebuck left, Sears was looking for a new business partner. In August 1895, Sears asked Nusbaum if he would like to buy half of it with a stake of $ 75,000 (approximately $ 2 million in 2010). Nusbaum was not comfortable with the idea and turned to Julius Rosenwald to split the stake. Rosenwald thought the mail order business was a good business idea and got involved.

On August 13, 1895, they signed the contract as a partner of Richard Sears. In 1896 Rosenwald became vice-president of Sears, Roebuck and Co. In 1901 it became apparent that Nusbaum could not get along with the staff due to his arrogant manner ("Prussian Junker type") and - despite relatives - Rosenwald decided after consultation Sears to part with him. Nusbaum asked for a million dollars in severance pay. The contract was already drawn up when Nusbaum asked for 1.25 million. That was a hard blow to the company. Until the severance payment was made in full in 1903, salaries could not exceed $ 100,000 pa and profit sharing was withheld. The lawyer Albert Loeb took Nusbaum's place.

Sears, Roebuck and Co.

Sears, Roebuck & Co. Fall 1900 catalog
The new building in 1906 with conveyor belts and slides

From the moment Rosenwald Sears, Roebuck and Co. joined as Vice President and Treasurer, his skills complemented Richard Sears' amazingly well. He brought together a rational management philosophy with Richard Sear's well-coordinated sales instincts. He joined the five-year company in 1896 and found chaos. The office was littered with piles of clothing with unopened mail between them. Boxes were used as desks and the execution of the orders was three to four months behind. Rosenwald insisted that the company's primary goal must be customer responsibility. He promised the customers the “satisfaction guarantee or money back” and ran the business according to the motto “Sell honest goods for less money - the more people will buy.” Because the name “Sears” was now firmly associated with the catalog and because “ Rosenwald ”sounded Jewish, at no time did Rosenwald care about his name appearing anywhere.

A few years after Rosenwald joined the company, the 1910 catalog offered seven pages of watches and jewelry, pens, musical instruments from the organ to wind instruments, books, groceries, hairbrushes, dolls, corsets, shoes, agricultural machinery, sewing machines and 16 pages of guns and ammunition. You could order a pair of boxing gloves or an engraved wedding ring. Accessories for animals, plows, strollers, bicycles, and even tombstones - by 1900 there was almost nothing that Sears couldn't deliver. In mostly rural America, the Sears catalog was in every kitchen. From 1895 to 1907 annual sales jumped from $ 750,000 to $ 50 million.

When the parcel service was introduced in 1913, Sears was the largest single customer. For the company this meant that the goods no longer had to be shipped, but could be picked up at a train station.

In 1904 the company bought 40 acres of land on the prairie on the west side of Chicago with a rail link for a larger, more modern factory. Rosenwald took over the building supervision, although so far he had only built his own house. The new offices and warehouse were completed in just one year. Otto Doering designed a sophisticated system of conveyor belts and slides over several floors for the plant, which made it possible to bring the various elements from separate departments together in a single order and to forward them to shipping. Sears even invited customers to tour this modern facility. It was important to Rosenwald that there were no bars within eight blocks. A drunk worker was cautioned the first time and fired the second time.

In 1906 Rosenwald negotiated with Harry Goldman from Goldman Sachs for a loan of five million dollars (approximately 125 in 2010). However, he suggested that he convert the company into a stock corporation and go public. Sears issued preferred shares for one million dollars and share capital for 30 million dollars. A small group of long-time Sears, Roebuck employees were given money to buy shares. That was the forerunner of the profit-sharing scheme that Rosenwald later introduced.

As early as 1902, Sears introduced the Mutual Benefit Association, which paid compensation for sick leave to employees who had been with the company for at least one year. In addition, employees received one week of paid vacation after five years, and later after three years. In 1912, the company introduced a system of seniority through a bonus payment, thereby promoting employee loyalty. The company also supported service in the National Guard by paying employees in full during military service. This policy, which was still in effect in 2003 when Sears announced that staff drafted to serve the National Guard in Iraq could return to work after their service.

In 1914, Sears & Roebuck owned the tent, paint and wallpaper factories in Chicago and in the New England states. So z. B. six shoe factories with an output of 24,000 pairs of shoes / day, a furnace smelter in Ohio that produced 180,000 cast iron furnaces a year, a carriage factory with 70,000 vehicles, a smelter in Iowa and a cream separator in New York; Sawmills and lumber yards in Illinois and Luisiana , the Bradley Agricultural Implement Factory in Illinois, an installation factory in Wisconsin , a gasoline engine factory in Michigan , a wire fence factory in Indiana , a fireproof safe factory in Ohio, a gun factory in Connecticut , a camera factory in Minnesota and other smaller companies elsewhere.

There were two other branches: on the west coast in Seattle , Washington, serving the Northwest and Pacific, and one in Dallas , Texas, serving the southern states. Sears also had offices in New York and Boston and even in Berlin, Germany. Details about loading by ship and rail can be found here.

In December 1916, the New York Times described Sears employee profit-sharing scheme as "the most liberal and comprehensive of its kind." Those who had been with the company for at least three years were qualified for the program (according to a news report, the majority were eligible to participate) to participate in the company with a contribution of 5% of their salary per year. The company in turn invests 5% of its profits in the fund. In the year the plan was unveiled, those profits totaled $ 11 million. It was Alfred Loeb, the vice president, who had worked out the details of the generous employee bonus system that Sears introduced in 1916.

He served during the First World War through the appointment of President Wilson as a member of the Advisory Commission on the Council on National Defense. In 1918, at the request of Secretary of State Baker, he traveled to France to look after the American troops. 1919-1920 he was active in Washington as a member of the Industrial Conference convened by President Hoover.

After the First World War, Sears found itself in a difficult financial position. By pledging about $ 21 million of his personal fortune in cash, stocks, and other assets, Rosenthal managed to save the company from bankruptcy. By 1922, Sears had regained its financial stability.

Even in the days immediately after the stock market crash of 1929, Rosenwald pledged his personal assets as security and thus prevented the company from going bankrupt.

When Rosenwald resigned as president of the company in 1924 and handed over management to his successors Charles M. Kittle and Robert E. Wood , he only oversaw the construction of the first branch in 1925. Within a few years, the company was owned by several hundred Stores that were transforming into a modern Sears chain had begun.

Social Commitment

In 1909, W. E. B. Dubois , Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Stephen Wise, and Henry Malkewitz founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

On his 50th birthday on August 12, 1912, Rosenwald gave up all gifts. Instead, he made gifts totaling $ 700,000. Of this, the University of Chicago received $ 250,000, he also gave $ 250,000 for a Jewish welfare building on the west side of Chicago, $ 50,000 for a social workers' association outside Chicago and $ 25,000 for the Tuskegee Institute .

One of the first charitable projects was a donation of $ 25,000 to build a youth hostel ( YMCA , Young Men's Christian Association) in Chicago. To this end, on January 1, 1911, he invited to a public meeting in the Odd Fellows Hall, where the well-known Chicago banker Norman W. Harris and Cyrus H. McCormick , President of International Harvester, each put $ 25,000 in the construction pot. Encouraged by these contributions, James H. Tilghman, an African-American retiree who worked for the Chesapeake Telephone Company , contributed his $ 1,000 savings.

Rosenwald later offered a $ 25,000 grant to each community in the United States who, in turn, were willing and able to raise $ 75,000 to build a YMCA for African Americans. With this campaign Rosenwald succeeded in encouraging the communities to raise the money for the construction of a total of 24 YMCA houses. Although Rosenwald shared neither race nor religion with them, he firmly believed in improving living conditions through self-help. He was convinced that the "American Dream" could come true, as he had experienced it firsthand. He declined pure charity, because everyone involved had to get involved.

In 1911, Rosenwald met Booker T. Washington , the most famous black man at the time. From this a collaboration developed for a plan to build school houses for African American children in small towns in the south where educational opportunities were lacking. It started with the construction of six smaller schools in rural Alabama, which opened in 1913 and 1914 and were overseen by Tuskegee.

In 1917 he created the Julius Rosenwald Foundation to support the "well-being of humanity". He supported Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute and funded the creation of thousands of schools for rural African Americans in the southern states. Of all of his philanthropic endeavors, Rosenwald was famous for the more than 5,000 "Rosenwald Schools" built across the south for the poor rural black youth and the 4,000 libraries that were incorporated into existing schools. The network of new public schools then employed more than 14,000 teachers.

He contributed $ 6 million to aid Russian Jews in southern Russia and Palestine.

In addition to helping the socially marginalized, Rosenwald had a strong sense of the needs of science and learning. The University of Chicago was the recipient of most of his higher education grants, but he also made handsome gifts to Harvard University including money for Professor Felix Frankfurter's research and publications .

He was one of the first to start an urban housing development in South Side Chicago, Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments, five-story staircases that were primarily rented to African Americans and served as a model for later public housing development.

He had visited the German Museum in Munich with his son William, which made a great impression on him. Based on this model, he founded the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. In 1926 he pledged $ 3 million with his innovative Matching Funds system, with his donation contingent on the museum raising the same amount from other sources.

Rosenwald summed up his philosophy of philanthropy quite simply: "What I want to do is try to heal the things that seem wrong."

In gratitude for the financial support of his first two Antarctic expeditions of the American polar explorer named Richard Evelyn Byrd to Mount Rosenwald in Transantarctic Mountains after him.

swell

literature

  • Edwin R. Embree: Julius Rosenwald Fund 1917-1936 Publisher: Chicago University Press 1936.
  • MR Werner: Julius Rosenwald: The Life of a Practical Humanitarian . Harper & Bros. 1939.
  • Peter M. Ascoli (grandson of Julius Rosenwald): Julius Rosenwald. The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South . Series: Philanthropic and Nonprofit Studies. Publisher: Indiana University Press 2006. ISBN 978-0-253-11204-0 .
  • Stephanie Deutsch: You Need a Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South . Publisher: Northwestern University Press 2011. ISBN 978-0-8101-2790-6
  • Tobias Brinkmann: Sundays at Sinai: A Jewish Congregation in Chicago . Series: Historical Studies of Urban America. Publisher: University of Chicago Press 2012. ISBN 978-0-226-07454-2 .
  • JERRY R. HANCOCK JR: DIXIE PROGRESS: SEARS, ROEBUCK & CO. AND HOW IT BECAME AN ICON IN SOUTHERN CULTURE . A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University.
  • Hasia R. Diner: Julius Rosenwald: Repairing the World. Yale University Press, New Haven 2018, ISBN 978-0-300-20321-9 .

documentary

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bar and Bath Mitzvah
  2. ↑ Julius and Augusta Rosenwald with their children around 1909
  3. ↑ Jens Jensen
  4. ^ Highland Park History
  5. ↑ "Julius Rosenwald." in National Cyclopedia of American Biography 26 (1937): 110-111
  6. ↑ Postal Museum
  7. ↑ Goldman Sachs Auf arte TV ( memento of the original from August 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.arte.tv
  8. ↑ A visit to Sears, Roebuck and Co. Company brochure 1914 with information about the various departments
  9. ↑ to read in English. language
  10. ↑ "This Profit Sharing Plan Solves Many Problems: Sears, Roebuck & Co. Have Developed a Profit-Sharing Scheme That is Attracting Widespread Attention," New York Times, December 31, 1916.
  11. ^ The Hoover program
  12. ↑ Business & Finance: Kittle. Time Magazine, Monday Nov. 10, 1924
  13. ^ Biography Robert E. Wood
  14. ^ NAACP
  15. ^ Julius Rosenwald in: Bertie Charles Forbes: Men who are making America. - page 316 ff
  16. ^ Julius Rosenwald at the Dedication of the Chicago Y, 1912 - Immigrant Entrepreneurship
  17. ↑ Norman Wait Harris Biography
  18. ↑ A Peculiar Alliance: Julius Rosenwald, the YMCA, and African-Americans (PDF; 1.2 MB) By Nina Mjagkij
  19. ↑ Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington met in 1911. The photo is from February 1915
  20. ↑ Years of Pride, Progress and Preservation: National Rosenwald Schools.
  21. ↑ Rosenwald Apartment Building ( Memento of the original from June 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.archiplanet.org

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Rosenwald, Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American businessman, co-founder of Sears Roebuck's mail order business
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Springfield , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1932
Place of death Chicago , Illinois