Background
Arthur Nash was born on June 26, 1870 in Tipton County, Indiana, United States. He was the eldest of nine children of Evermont Nash and Rachel Mitchel.
(A business and spiritual autobiography of the entrepreneu...)
A business and spiritual autobiography of the entrepreneur Arthur Nash. This is his story - from his birth in post-Civil War Indiana and his upbringing amidst a confused religious environment to his eventual embrace of Christianity proper, and his building of a successful Cincinnati clothing company upon the laws of kindness and fellowship - the innermost core - the truth at the heart - of the teachings of Jesus. This is the message of service and square-dealing, the message of true human brotherhood.
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Arthur Nash was born on June 26, 1870 in Tipton County, Indiana, United States. He was the eldest of nine children of Evermont Nash and Rachel Mitchel.
Both his parents were zealous Seventh Day Adventists, and after attending high school at Greentown, Indiana, he went to the Adventist Theological Seminary at Battle Creek, Michigan.
Ordained in 1894 he became instructor in a school for Adventist missionaries at Detroit, but within a few months he was dismissed because he refused to affirm that a humanitarian woman who had not been an Adventist, had gone to hell. There ensued a period of painful religious readjustment during which he fed his mind on atheistic literature while wandering about the Middle West as a box-car hobo, carrying a hod, plastering, making brooms, and working on bridge construction.
In 1898 he returned to Detroit and organized a laundry and other measures for the relief of the unemployed.
In 1900 he entered the ministry of the Disciples of Christ and took a pastorate at Bluffton, Ohio, only to be asked to resign some two years later because in a memorial sermon he had eulogized the virtues of a kind-hearted but professedly unreligious man.
He then began selling clothing for a Chicago house and was so successful that in 1909 he established himself as a manufacturer of men's clothing in Columbus, Ohio. In 1913 he moved to Cincinnati and there organized in June 1916 the A. Nash Company which produced clothing by cutting the garments in its own establishment and "farming out" their making to a contractor. Early in 1917 he accepted an invitation to preach a sermon on the theme, "What is the matter with Christianity?" After two months of reading and hard thinking he became convinced that the way to establish on earth the Kingdom of Heaven was to apply literally the Golden Rule. Late in 1918, on taking over the business of the contractor who had been making his clothing, he discovered that the wage scale paid by a sweatshop did not square with the Golden Rule and, though his balance sheet for 1918 showed a loss, at once raised wages throughout the shop. At the same time he prepared to liquidate his business. But two months later he found that his employees were voluntarily working far more rapidly and efficiently than before and that his business was growing by leaps and bounds. From that time until his death Nash spent a large part of his time preaching with fiery oratory and sincere fervor the Golden Rule to business men's and social-welfare organizations throughout the country.
Nash lowered prices, stabilized employment, inaugurated a five-day week with eight hours a day, increased wages repeatedly, and paid his workers cash dividends based on time worked. In 1920 he began issuing stock dividends to employees and in May 1924 distributed among them his own share of a stock dividend, giving them, at the expiration of the five years, control over the business.
In December 1925 he called together his employees, the majority of whom were anti-union, and, after a dramatic struggle which attracted nation-wide attention, persuaded them to consent to the unionization of the entire plant by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. This struggle he called the supreme hour of his life. A shrewd business man, with a flair for leadership and a full understanding of the value of the publicity secured by his speeches, Nash was by nature and training a sincere and aggressive evangelist. To him the "Golden Rule in Business" was a religion and not merely a successful advertising slogan.
Shortly after having placed a representative of the union on his board of management Nash died of heart disease in Cincinnati. In addition to several magazine articles he told the story of his life and his experiment in The Golden Rule in Business. Nash also founded and endowed a movement called the "Brotherhood of Man, " an organization intended to aid young Turks in Turkey and promote amity between them and their Christian neighbors.
(A business and spiritual autobiography of the entrepreneu...)
Quotations:
"For four or five years I wandered about the Middle West, doing odd jobs here and there. .. I never cared two straws which way a freight train was headed. .. or what it was I did to keep body and soul together. "
''Whatever success has come to The A. Nash Company, in living the Golden Rule, has come, because there has been just enough business knowledge to enable us to live it to just that degree, and whenever we have failed in exercising the very highest and keenest business judgment on a truly ethical basis, it has been because we did not have sufficient insight to understand our obligation measured by the Golden Rule. In other words, perfect and infallible living of the Golden Rule would require infallible mentality and undaunted courage. This we do not claim. .. However, we are more and more convinced of the immutability and the infallibility of the Golden Rule, as we approach nearer and nearer to the ability to live it. ''
"The Golden Rule is the divine law governing human relationships, accepted by all religions and proclaimed by all prophets and teachers of every creed. It is the only infallible, workable, industrial and economic law in the universe today. "
Quotes from others about the person
''He belonged to that small group of employers who believe that the human material is a vastly different thing from the mere physical material with which they work. .. When recognition of the union in his shop became possible, he rested neither night nor day until he had inspired confidence, both in the Nash shops, and in their union representatives. He gave his loyalty to collective bargaining with every fiber of his being, and such bargaining meant just one thing—absolute and unqualified relations of trust and honor with the union. .. It is true that he preached in order to spread the gospel of service he believed in. But he did more. More important than all his principles. .. was the fact that he practiced what he preached. .. Arthur was a true humanitarian, to whom the welfare of all his fellows was a matter of vital personal concern. He has left humanity richer for his having lived, and yet, in another sense, poorer for his having gone from us. A spirit, however, has gone out from the man that Death has not power to still. What Arthur Nash believed in and tried to achieve has not died, and the only fitting way for us to honor his memory is to strive tirelessly to realize the higher civilization which he longed so much to see before he closed his eyes on this earthy scene. "
''Arthur Nash was a man lovable in his manliness, altogether admirable in his domestic relations, loyal in his friendships, prophetic in his citizenship, gentle in strength, wise and winsome in counsel, exquisite in sympathy, rich in insight, broad and tolerant in understanding, a true man. "
"He was a shrewd business man, with a flair for leadership and a full understanding of the value of the publicity secured by his speeches, Nash was by nature and training a sincere and aggressive evangelist. To him the "Golden Rule in Business" was a religion, and not merely a successful advertising slogan. "
He married Maud Lena Southwell at Cleveland, Ohio, on April 9, 1899.