For more than half century music played an integral role in the efforts of the Endicott Johnson Corporation to create among its employees, managers, and senior executives the image of an harmonious, contented corporate family. Nearly every aspect of the policies implemented by the shoe company’s senior executive and patriarch, George F.Johnson, sought to build upon the concept of the happy family in which the most senior members (corporate executivesand middle managers) cared for the needs of less mature family members (employees and their children). The company provided its permanent employees and their families with medical coverage; it offered them the opportunity to purchase modest single-family homes at below market-rate prices and moderate mortgage interest rates; it provided employees and family members with low-cost, nutritious meals in the company’s cafeterias; and it sprinkled the Triple Cities with parks, playgrounds, carousels, and pools to be shared by local residents as well as employees.
Nothing symbolized George F. Johnson’s dedication to the concept of transforming a business enterprise into an extension of the traditional family better than a statue erected in a park that the Johnson family deeded to the City of Binghamton. In the center of George F. Johnson Recreation Park rises a statue of a seated George F. dressed in formal business attire encircled by a tanner with hide and a small girl presenting the corporate patriarch with a bouquet in gratitude for the company’s generosity to its employees and their families.
Along with the material fringe benefits EJ provided its employees, it also catered to their cultural needs with a variety of musical diversions.In a time before radio, advanced forms of in-home musical reproduction, and television, and when few common workers could afford to purchase pianos or quality musical instruments, EJ established a company band, a chorus, and other forms of musical entertainment for its corporate family. It offered such diversions from the era of World War I into the 1960s. Not only did the music seek to entertain its audiences; it also promoted EJ’s family ethos, George F. Johnson’s image as corporate patriarch, and the company’s products. The 1919 EJ Workers’
Song sung to the tune of Marching Through Georgia, included the following lyrics in its refrain and chorus:
'Tis Labor Day in Binghamton, Geo. F. Day, if you please…
The shoe man’s Happy Family.
We march along the way
And sing “Geo. F. is King today.”
In Endicott there lives a
man, Whose fame is far and wide;
For making shoes he leads them all, For kindness,
too, beside;
The 13,000 under him Look up to him as guide,
And swear by the man Who
treats them fair.
Or these lines:
You say there’s no dissension and that trouble is unknown
Then you folks must be living
in a small world of your own;
What's that? No strikes or agitators screeching out
their lies?
You say the name is Endicott; I'd call it Paradise.
You shake my hand and
mean it in this little spotless town,
And every smiling face is just a stranger to
a frown;
George F. can’t get you into Heaven, but I tell you what,
He did as much when
he brought Heaven here to Endicott.
Or a band march dedicated to George F. Johnson under the title Industrial King. Or as late as the 1950s, a popular song was adapted to plug a new line of superior, scientifically designed shoes promoted and sold under the trademark "Guide Step."
Most employees, however, performed the music and listened to it less to praise George F. Johnson or promote their company’s product than to enjoy inexpensive, easily accessible popular entertainment. Thus most of the songs that the band played and the chorus sang were sentimental oldies, some dating to the nineteenth century and Stephen F. Foster, or then popular Tin Pan Alley tunes made famous by the likes of George M. Cohan, Al Jolson, and Eddie Cantor. In the winter holiday season, the Chorus sang traditional carols and such popular seasonal tunes as White Christmas. During the 1920s, EJ employees performed in minstrel shows that featured the ethnic and racial stereotypes common during that decade. Many performers appeared in full blackface; others came on stage in exotic Oriental costumes; two employees appeared as the comedians "Pat and Jake," stereotypical Irish and Jewish immigrant characters. As the decades passed, the band and chorus continued to integrate the latest popular music into their repertoire. Over time, however, as first radio and later television offered a more diverse and higher quality of music, band and chorus concerts lost their appeal to local audiences.
The decline of interest in amateur musical entertainment paralleled the decline of Endicott Johnson as a successful corporation. From its postwar peak in the late 1940s, the company steadily lost market share to domestic and especially foreign competitors. The company responded by cutting back production and discharging employees, an ongoing process that led to EJ falling behind IBM as the area’s largest single employer. As the 1950s passed into the 1970s, the Johnson family withdrew from active company management to be replaced by non-family professional managers, all to no avail.
Today all that remains of the EJ heritage are memories, the old headquarters building in Endicott converted into administrative offices for the UE school district, many of the parks and playgrounds donated by the Johnson family to the local communities, the arches erected on Main Street in Johnson City and Endicott welcoming visitors to the "Home of the Square Deal," the En Joie golf course, and the company built homes scattered about Johnson City and Endicott.
This is a CD that everyone who has fond memories of Endicott Johnson and its place in the Triple Cities will want to have. It recalls a time long past when Binghamton was the "Parlor City" and the larger metropolitan region was the "Valley of Opportunity."
