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...told is the story-with-a-moral that during the first year of business Thomas Bat'a became swelled-headed and assumed the airs of a "Gentleman Manager." Upon discovering that the firm was losing money, however, he renounced gentility "and ever since hard work has been his hobby." Employes of the Founder also know that he, like Henry Ford, is a prohibitionist in theory and an abstainer in practice...
...Bat'a factories inhumanity and the exploitation of the workers are brought to a fine art. . . . The 'Ford of Zlin' prospers . . . but [his] success is built upon the living flesh and blood of . . . workers...
...Jerusalem, Amsterdam, Calcutta, Berlin and hundreds of other cities the sign Bat'a is displayed above a store which is the acme of modernity. Indeed a pilgrim to the Holy City will find that Bat'a's shoe shop in Jerusalem has "done" its windows in smart "modernistic" squares and angles...
Legends aside, the hard facts of Bat'a's career are starkly inspiring. War contracts for army boots gave him his first dip into fabulous profits. Instead of squandering or speculating with the money, he spent it on newest super-efficient shoe machinery, some of which he invented. Such intensive study of shoemaking problems led Herr Bat'a to believe that he could apply American-Ford straight line production methods to shoes-an idea then deemed mad in Europe...
Salespersons in the Bat'a shops, from Singapore to Prague, are well primed with "House organ" facts about The Founder. They know that at the age of six he teased and teased until his shoemaker father whittled him out a tiny last on which with boyish zeal he pegged toy shoes. At 18 the Founder had saved 400 kronen ($80), the fruit of hard pegging and self denial. Also his sister Anna and his brother Anthony (now dead) had each saved 400 kronen, so runs the legend. Thereupon, in 1894, with a total capital of $240, the three Bat...