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When most Japanese think about industry in the United States, pictures like these come to their minds.
Vast factory cities with plants extending as far as the eye can see.
Thousands upon thousands of men all armies of workers, clogging the streets, going to and from work in shifts.
Three shifts a day around the clock.
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So many needed to man the machines that it takes other machines to keep track of them.
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Vast cavernous plants, echoing with the ear-splitting roar of machinery at work.
[roar of machines]
But this is only one side of the industrial picture in the United States. There is another side of the picture.
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This.
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It's only a small factory, light, airy, quiet.
Employing a handful of workers.
The whole factory is hardly larger than a big house.
It is not in the middle of a vast smoke- clogged industrial metropolis,
but in the tree-lined outskirts of a small American town,
a seaport community named Sag Harbor, in the state of New York.
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Like that of so many communities in Japan, the history of Sag Harbor, USA
has been tied to the sea.
A century ago its name was known on almost all of the seven seas.
For Sag Harbor was home port to some of the most famous of America's whaling fleet.
Ships that scoured the world for the most precious and largest of the ocean's creatures.
The citizens of Sag Harbor,
today still worship in the church their whaling captain forefathers built.
And when they die, they are buried in its graveyard.
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Gazing at the monuments to the whaling captains, monuments like this, a broken ship's mast,
preserving the memory of brave men dead at sea.
What dreams of heroism and glory, must the growing generation dream?
As he walks home his head filled with the names of the Whalers of a century ago,
today's Sag Harbor youngster like Jan Harbaugh here, passes other monuments the whalers left behind.
For the very town, its house is built with individual initiative and enterprise,
to last hundreds of years, is also a monument to the whalers.
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The sea is still written on the faces of the people of Sag Harbor. The sea was good to Sag Harbor.
For nearly a hundred years, the whalers prospered. Then, in 1871, the last whaling brig left port.
Oil from the ground,
replaced oil from the sea, but the town did not perish with its industry for reasons we shall see.
One look at its homes,
well-kept, brightly painted, one look at its growing generation, young, vital, healthy vouches for that.
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Today no one strolls on the Captain's Walk, the rooftop porch high above the whaler's houses,
scanning the horizon for ships that will never return again.
For today the town looks elsewhere for its salvation. The days of whaling, the days of living off the sea, are gone forever.
Gone, but not forgotten.
The home to which young Jan Harbaugh walks for instance,
a whaler's carpenter built it.
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Inside, mementos of the whaling days like whale oil lamps still grace its rooms.
And a little boy may be forgiven if he forgets and puts his feet up on a treasured couch,
that a great-great Grandfather bought with money earned on a whaling trip halfway around the world.
A little boy may be excused---
---but not approved.
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Yes the days of whaling are gone, but not forgotten.
Jan's father whittles new models of the old ships his forebears sailed.
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The whaling days provide more than recreation for Jan's father. His skill with his hands
helps him in his work, but it's not the sea, it's small industry that provides his livelihood.
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Jan's father works at a simple machine in the far corner of a small plant in a small town.
Small industry is as typical of American business as is large industry, but Sag Harbor's is unique---
---an experiment in work incentive patterns, profit sharing and other innovations.
This is no branch factory of some great industrial concern.
It is one of several small units established in Sag Harbor as a laboratory in human relations.
This one manufactures the regulating mechanisms for clocks. Here with healthful working and living conditions,
with homes nearby,
with a pace of work, happy and relaxed.
Employees can work more efficiently and happily than in the great metropolitan centers,
where rent and food all come at premium prices,
and noise and smoke come free.
Here each employee can do any job.
When one worker gets ahead of her fellows on any given job, she shifts to another to help her co-workers out.
The management relies on the individual initiative of each employee.
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The finished product here tested to ensure the perfection of its construction, is the joint work of the combined
individual initiative of all the employees.
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And when the work is done, all employees share in the rewards.
The foreman blocks in the production on a graph.
This ever-increasing
production is graphic evidence of what it means to have employees who aren't just numbers on a time clock---
---employees who's working and living conditions are healthy and happy.
And equally important the wages and bonuses earned mean business for the town.
On Saturdays, Jan Harbaugh's father can take his family shopping for the things they want and need.
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As they stroll through the streets that whalers trod, the citizens of Sag Harbor today, know that they are keeping alive
the traditions of free enterprise their forefathers handed them.
For small industry, small associations of friendly employees,
working happily together in the American tradition of group initiative, within a system of free enterprise, is
the lifeblood of small communities all over the United States today.
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Not that the sea has been forgotten.
The Harbaughs often visit the whaling museum, with its authentic whale boat now proudly riding a sea of
carefully tended lawn.
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No, the sea has not been forgotten, but it no longer controls the destiny of the town.
And who will say looking at this happy family life, that it's calling is any less proud than that of its whaling
ancestors, or that small industry has not brought a rich and happy life to Sag Harbor, USA?
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