Benign Boss

In the dining room of a West Side bungalow in Chicago one day last week, nine chattering girls sat down to breakfast with a fleshy, fatherly, balding man whose eyes twinkled with self-satisfaction. The cottage was their office, the man their boss. For them President Otto E. Eisenschiml of Scientific Oil Compounding Co. (processors and distributors of vegetable oils) had just bought a tank car of linseed oil--theirs to resell when they like. He gets back his purchase price and stands the losses, if any. They get the profits.

No fatuous sugar-daddy is O. E. Eisenschiml. Philosopher and humane eccentric, he is also a successful businessman. Born in Vienna, he emigrated to the U. S. in 1901, worked for six months cleaning toilets in a Pittsburgh steel mill, eventually became chief chemist of American Linseed Co. at $15,000 a year (twice the salary of his boss). In 1912 he left to manage his own company. With but $75 in capital he planked a boiler directly on the Indiana-Illinois State line, could say he was manufacturing in the other State if anyone asked for his license. Now his company has two subsidiaries, turns out a variety of products: compounds to waterproof wooden wagon wheels, oil to keep posters from warping, oils for paints and duplicator inks, a shoe filler (0. E.'s only patent) used by Florsheim to replace felt, an oil compound that gives transparency to one-piece window envelopes, etc. Small but sound, Scientific boasts a record free from layoffs, pay cuts, labor trouble. In its last published statement (1936) it reported earning $42,202 on sales of $2,671,868.41. This year it will net around $30,000.

This narrow margin of profit interferes little with President Eisenschiml's munificent obsession. Says he: "I expect the men to be treated as gentlemen and the women as ladies." But he favors the ladies. Running a commercial matriarchy, he employs only women executives (exception: his son). The other men ("Every man I have ever hired tried to double-cross me") are plant operators. Scientific's nine ladies make most of their own decisions, are paid up to $125 a week, receiving whopping gifts during illnesses, whopping bonuses fair weather or foul (one $27.50-a-week girl executive paid an income tax on $3,600). Salary includes breakfast and lunch prepared by a German refugee cook in the kitchen of the company's five-bathroomed office. Free also are supplies of cosmetics and candy, a regular allowance for clothes and books.

0. E.'s 25 gentlemen (all, for no particular reason, Catholics) do all right too. Twice a year, like the ladies, they get a tank car of linseed oil with which to speculate. When business is slack they retire to a game room, play ping-pong and poker on company time. All but three have relatives on Scientific's staff--a compact nepotism summed up by O. E. with parental pride: "It's a Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance payroll and never lets the ball get out of the infield."

To O. E., there are only three kinds of people in the world: parasites, neutrals, creators. Among parasites he classes advertising men (Scientific has never spent a penny for advertising, never had a salesman in its employ), insurance peddlers, lawyers. Neutrals include storekeepers, streetcar conductors, etc. Among creators are writers, composers, engineers--and himself. He considers the shoe filler and envelope window his minor creations, the pleasure people get from working for him his major creation.

But O. E. also makes the creative grade as a writer. During the past decade he has spent over $20,000 of his oil-gotten wealth, 90% of his leisure hours, exploring a historical hobby, the mysterious circumstances of Lincoln's death. In 1937 he published Why Was Lincoln Murdered?, a best seller whose thesis was that John Wilkes Booth was probably aided by Stanton and the Northern radicals (though it cannot be proved). Last month he pushed this thesis further in a sequel, In the Shadow of Lincoln's Death. Still mystified, 0. E. plans to keep picking at his historical knot. "Life will lose its zest if you know all the answers," says he, "I'm a naturally curious guy."

All 0. E.'s literary earnings go to charity. Reason: "I don't like the chink of money after 5 o'clock or before 8:30." The Sino-Japanese War has interfered with his imports of China wood oil, perilla oil, etc. But 0. E. refuses to worry, continues his queer, beneficent way. For rainy days he has a carefree disdain. "If you try to make money," says Otto Eisenschiml, "you never have any fun--or money."

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