Great Documentaries's video: Westinghouse - Chapter 35 - Remembering Uncle George

(REIS) The Westinghouse Electric Company was getting ready to celebrate its 50th anniversary in the year 1936. So they wrote a letter and sent that letter to some older retirees in Westinghouse Electric, older workers from Westinghouse Air-Brake, the Union Switch and Signal Company, the other Westinghouse companies. They also sent letters to people that they thought may have interacted with George Westinghouse at one time or another. For example, they sent letters to the various railroads.They asked these individuals to write back with personal remembrances of interactions with George Westinghouse. So, this large stack of letters came back, and they're very interesting letters, very personal. They're a real insight into his personality. They're a real insight into the various business practices that he had and his ability to get along with people. So it's most interesting and very fortunate that these letters exist today. (NARRATOR) Those who knew George Westinghouse and served with him in the army of industry considered him to be America's greatest industrialist and held him in the highest regard. Personal letters from Westinghouse employees speak volumes about the character and personality of the man whom they refer to as Uncle George. E.E. Keller said that "All of his employees who came in personal contact with him seemed to catch his enthusiasm and were glad to do the job at hand for Uncle George." Westinghouse had many nicknames. Former employees wrote letters about how "The Old Man" paid for their train fare and tickets to attend the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where Westinghouse Air-Brake made their first World's Fair appearance. The same employees said that when the Chief asked them to work all weekend to finish a job on time, they felt honored to do so. George Verity, former director of Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, said, "His industries were so solidly and completely built around his personality that the name "Westinghouse" was ingrained in our national industrial structure for all time to come. As I knew him, he was an outstanding man, who not only created many new things, but he also put old things together in a new way and then motivated both the new and the old with an invisible, mystic, and titanic power." Paul Cravath said, "I am sure that none of us has ever known a man who combined the qualities of faith, imagination, and courage as they are combined in George Westinghouse. But he was never so engrossed in his great achievements that he did not have time to help a friend in need. I need not say that we shall never see his like again." A former foreman said, "During the panic of 1893, many men were laid off at the Electric Company, but Mr. Westinghouse said, 'Get those men back to work. I am not hard up.'" It was recorded that he ordered his workers to do odd jobs around the shop rather than be laid off. "Scientific American" said, "He succeeded because he believed in himself and in his invention. An inventor who is a pessimist is doomed to failure." Mr. Samuel Gompers, former president of the American Federation of Labor, said, "I will say this for George Westinghouse. If all employers of men treated their employees with the same consideration as he does, the American Federation of Labor would have to go out of existence." Andrew Carnegie summed it up by saying, "George Westinghouse is a genius who can't be downed." In the modern era, when many billionaire CEOs are indicted for fraud, corruption, and theft, their former employees celebrate when they are sent to jail. In contrast, 16 years after the death of George Westinghouse, in 1930, former Westinghouse working-class employees paid for the construction and dedication of a monument honoring him that remains standing in Pittsburgh's Schenley Park.