Photo essay on Montgomery Ward, photos by …



September, 1934 p. 69

Communist Party in America

Artist: Walker Evans

6 sets of pictures total

January 1935

Strikebreaking p. 56

Artist: Roy Aikins

56 Opening, two photos

57 chart, visual but non-photo

58 series of Pearl Bergoff “Cock of the Walk”

59 carnage pics

60 other businessmen, cool

61 Scabs or babies

89 strikebreaking in action

“The Stores and the Catalogue” (Montgomery Wards) p. 70

Artist: M B-W

How mail-ordering Montgomery Ward put 610 department stores on top of its catalogue. And how both were nearly ruined. But along came Sewell Lee Avery plus the U. S. Government. And now Ward’s—and the farmers—are happier again.

70 letter sorters “AT ITS PEAK, WARD’S HANDLES 200,000 ORDERS IN ONE DAY …and here, in the Chicago house, are girls taking orders out of envelopes that machines have already opened. A girl will extract 250 orders in an hour and there are 100 girls in the Chicago letter-opening department alone. A moving belt carries the orders along toward the warehouse department.”

71 letters “One Pound of envelopes equals $220. Wards can get a good idea of the day’s business by weighing the first mail, which arrives at 5:30 a.m. Experience has shown that in a pound of mail there is about $220. So from the first-mail poundage the day’s business can be accurately calculated. Envelopes contain 50 per cent money orders, 40 per cent checks, and 10 per cent cash. IT TAKES A HEAP OF FILING TO MAKE … a mail-order house a home. Here a girl is stenciling customers’ names on cards to file away in the big morgue (see page 74). At the Chicago house 2,700 people are opening, registering, filling, and wrapping orders. About 70 per cent of War’ds 35,000 employees are women, which emphasizes Ward’s lack of a labor problem.” “96 PER CENT OF WARD ORDERS … are filled, packed, and mailed out on the day they are received. An average of 125,000 packages a day are wrapped in Ward’s nine houses.”

72 “A MAGAZINE WITH A CIRCULATION OF 6,000,000 COPIES—TWICE A YEAR. This is the catalogue: 650 pages, 25000,000 pounds of paper, 40,000 items, 24,000,000 readers who will send in some 25,000,000 orders averaging over $4 each. The print order is split between R.R. Connelley & Songs and W. F. Hall. The book costs Montgomery Ward seventy-five cents a copy, but in 1934 it sold more than $100,000,000 of merchandise. And a dime in the catalogue makes $1 in sales.”

73 the executives, esp “SEWELL LEE AVERY From a $9,000,000 deficit in 1931 to a $10,000,000 profit in 1934 is the change that Mr. Avery has made I a three-year period. And of 35,000 employees, 22,000 have come to work at Ward’s since Mr. Avery’s arrival.”

74 “YOU HAVE TO BE A CLOCK WATCHER TO HOLD THIS JOB. After the warehouse people have filled the customers’ orders, the merchandise comes to these bins where girls sort it for delivery. Every package is stamped with the time at which it must be ready to leave the premises—and every girl words with one eye on the clock.

HERE ARE THE 8,300,000 NAMES—NOT 8,300,000 CUSTOMERS IN 1934. It is both present and past customers whose names Ward files away in these impressive filing cabinets. But whereas some 8,300,000 names have been put away, only about 6,200,000 are last year’s customers. Every customer is indexed but a name is dropped twenty-four months after the last order.”

Essay continues on for an additional 4 pages, text only, after photos are done.

February, 1935 p. 46

Congress

Artist: Aikins

Note: color photographs for FORTUNE by Mettee-Frittita, Baltimore

46 color photo of inner chambers

47 desk

50 chair, grave, mail (captioned)

51 color photo of chambers

52 landscape pics and interior

53 hallway and window

March, 1935 p. 90

Bicyclers

Artist: Stockpole?

90 layout of race, left

91 layout of race, right

June, 1935 p. 66

“A $28,000,000 Loss” (Wool)

Artist: M B-W

66 color pink boiled wool, “You are now looking at something that is really “dyed in the wool”.”

67 two photos of production, “This is the wool as it leaves the carder”, and “Here the carding of woolen—not of worsted.”

68 worker, “French spinning—sed chiefly in fabrics for women”, and spools, “Here is where the tops start to elongate.”

69 large photo of production, “Here are 86,048 spindles with a spinning capacity of 150,000 pounds of yarn a week.”

70 worker reaching “Sizing and Slashing,” two workers “The warp thread wonl up on the warp beam.”

71 color blue finished wool “Here worsteds and wollens have their parting of the ways.”

Followed directly by an article on “Wool into Cloth.”

October, 1935 p. 42

“Hearst”

Artist: Peter Stackpole

42 How to run twenty-eight newspapers before breakfast

43 Hearst in his chair

44-5 color, not stkple

46 4 photos, layout

47 facing layout

48-49 color, not stkple

50 three photos, going home, etc

51 Hearst playing sports, etc. 4 photos

December, 1935 p. 115

Essay on auto worker

Artist:

115 credenza

116 man reading, wife washing

117 home, father and sons

March, 1936

Manhattan Nightlife p. 95

Artist:

95 Dancers, 2 photos

Phillip Morris p. 97

Artist:

97 Workers at stacks

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