What Happened to the Company That Dix Made?

In the early twentieth century, progressive employers tried to turn recalcitrant workers into cooperative partners with a menu of corporate welfare programs. One of those employers, Henry A. Dix, took a leap that few contemplated. In 1922 he announced a plan to give his profitable $1 million business to his employees. Dix became famous as “the man who gave his business to his employees.†His ownership transfer scheme sought to make the welfare of the workforce the raison d'etre of a modern shareholder-owned corporation. It raised the possibility of building a capitalist society quite different from the one that emerged in the twentieth century. This paper connects the Dix plan to an understudied employer-based movement for industrial democracy and examines cultural, gender, and class dimensions of the Dix transfer from conception through the company's demise decades later.