Word: jessop
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Weeds & Wages. Jessop's business of high-grade steels for high-speed tools had gone to pieces in World War II, when it concentrated on defense items, e.g., armor plate, failed to recover its peacetime customers. By 1948 Jessop was almost bankrupt. Then in came a new boss. Frank B. Rackley, 33, whose blacksmith father had encouraged him to read and believe Horatio Alger. While working as a $13-a-week office boy in Pittsburgh, Rackley studied metallurgy at night school, was named Western manager for U.S. Steel's stainless and alloy division when still...
When Rackley arrived at Jessop Steel, he found an obsolete, junk-filled plant among tall weeds at the edge of town with a $4,100,000 debt, only $7,000 in the bank and 600 sullen workers demanding $300,000 in back wages...
...Yourself. Calling the workers together on his first day. Rackley made a blunt mill-yard speech. Jessop could survive, said he, if everyone contributed extra work without pay and accepted back pay in company stock. Then he led the workers in prayer. The union local president stood up and said: "The guy makes sense...
...their own time, Jessop's managers and workers alike pitched in for a year to lug away junk, paint cranes, repair roads, whitewash walls, mend roofs, hang office draperies-all led by Rackley in person. Only once did a tired worker complain, calling Rackley a phony. Equally tired, Rackley promptly punched the dissident in the nose. In admiration for his hard work and leadership, employees gave Rackley a $2,000 kitchen for his home last year, gather there for parties with the boss...
...family, Frank Rackley slowly amassed community support that helped swing a $1,000,000 Reconstruction Finance Corp. loan in 1950. With the loan for working capital, Rackley was in business. He became one of the youngest steel presidents in the industry. With heavy Korean-war orders to help, Jessop Steel netted $400,000 in 1951, $1,800,000 in 1952. Though earnings fell to $25,000 in 1954, Jessop came back handily through the rest of the post-Korean years. "We didn't take our foot off the pedal," says Rackley. "We kept right on going uphill...