Welfarism or Paternalism: Making Sense of S. D. Warrens Path in Its Nonunion Era, 1854–1967

Abstract

The S. D. Warren Company employed a mix of paternalistic and corporate welfare practices. Founder Samuel Dennis Warren’s paternalism and nascent corporate welfarism was preserved and expanded for eighty years after his death in 1888. Later managers elaborated the founder’s hybrid industrial relations approach but failed to transform it. After the 1920s, the company became a “laggard”— in Sanford Jacoby’s typology of corporate welfarism—in two senses: by continuing paternalistic practices and by failing to transform shop-floor management. This static shop-floor regime eventually made Warren vulnerable to worker dissatisfaction and dissent, leading to its unionization in the 1960s.