Businessman
Jones had little education because he had to work in order to help his family survive economically. He held many jobs in his younger years, the most important of which was the position he accepted at the oil fields of Western Pennsylvania, where he gained a good deal of knowledge of the oil industry and was able to accumulate some modest sums. In 1870, Jones used his knowledge and savings to start his own oil firm. After the death of his wife in 1885, Jones moved to Lima, Ohio, in search of oil. He also helped established the Ohio Oil Company which was later bought by Standard Oil Company, making Jones a wealthy man. Jones later moved to Toledo, Ohio.
In 1894, he established the Acme Sucker Rod Company which manufactured tools, i.e., sucker rods, for the oil industry. Jones asked his workers to work hard, be honest, and follow the Golden Rule. Following his belief in the Golden Rule, in his factory Jones:
- paid employees prevailing wages,
- implemented an 8-hour work day,
- gave employees a one-week paid vacation,
- gave employees a Christmas bonus,
- let employees keep their own time,
- provided employees hot meals at cost,
- allowed employees to participate in a profit-sharing plan,
- created a park for employees outside the factory, and
- paid for instruments for employees in the "Golden Rule Band"
Read more about this topic: Samuel M. Jones
Famous quotes containing the word businessman:
“The businessman who assumes that his life is everything, and the mystic who asserts that it is nothing, fail, on this side and on that, to hit the truth.... No; truth, being alive ... was only to be found by continuous excursions into either realm, and though proportion is the final secret, to espouse it at the outset is to ensure sterility.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“If when a businessman speaks of minority employment, or air pollution, or poverty, he speaks in the language of a certified public accountant analyzing a corporate balance sheet, who is to know that he understands the human problems behind the statistical ones? If the businessman would stop talking like a computer printout or a page from the corporate annual report, other people would stop thinking he had a cash register for a heart. It is as simple as that—but that isn’t simple.”
—Louis B. Lundborg (1906–1981)
“A good businessman never makes a contract unless he’s sure he can carry it through, yet every fool on earth is perfectly willing to sign a marriage contract without considering whether he can live up to it or not.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)