King Camp Gillette is remembered for an empire built on
giving away one half of his product to increase sales for the other half, but the year prior to moment of inspiration that lead to disposable razors, Gillette
published a book with a larger scope:
The Human Drift. The
work of Utopian social planning was focused on a nation-city called Metropolis, to be
powered by Niagara Falls. Gillette followed the first book with a second in 1910,
World Corporation, which was a revised vision for a better world, now focused as a corporation formed in the Arizona Territory that would grow to encompass the world, with
former President Theodore Roosevelt to head up as corporation president. Roosevelt declined the position, and Gillette's Utopian dreams faded.
In 1894, Gillette envisioned a utopia, which was
a common dream in the age of increased industrial production. The next year a more financially lucrative idea hit: a disposable razor blade made of thin metal, to replace the current standard thick metal blade that would need frequent sharpening. After years of inquiry,
Gillette teamed with engineer/inventor William Nickerson to create the replaceable safety blade. Gillette was a man with, as he said, "
two distinct entities, one devoted to earning a living and the other to the problem of how to overcome the difficulties of the industrial world."
His dream was for a densely developed community to house the all people of the United States, to be controlled as one joint corporation
free from the corrosive effect of capitalist competition on society, where everyone would be members of the United Company. While this dream lived on, the
Gillette Safety Razor was patented and sales were on the rise.
Gillette's views were also penned a tome written by Melvin L. Severy, entitled
Gillette's Social Redemption, published in 1907. The book was to be "[a] review of the world-wide conditions as they exist to-day, offering an entirely new suggestion for the remedy of the evils they exhibit," which the preface states straight-off "is not intended to be interesting, nor has it been written with the idea that it will be consecutively read from cover to cover." The goal was lofty: "It has been penned in the hope and belief that it will for a substantial basis for one of the greatest social changes ever known." Though in the end, as
The New York Times review noted, the book only provides a hint at details for how to address the ills of the world that were listed in previous 700 pages. In 1908, Severy wrote the follow-up to his earlier work on Gillete's views, entitled
Gillette's Industrial Solution, which placed Gillette's World Corporation as the answer to the world's ills.
Those two books lead up to the 1910 publishing of
World Corporation, which was Gillette's proposal for a trust that would buy up land and production facilities. By putting Gillette’s ideas into practice, the trust would return huge profits, eventually displacing all other business entities, at which point the whole world would share in the rewards. The beginning of this book includes a notice that the past publications by Gillette and Severy are no longer "considered necessary" by Mr. Gillette, and that this new publication including the new corporation's "Charter, By-laws and Prospectus, and the opinions expressed, should be read a self-contained proposition." The World Corporation would require no "long periods of education" as were necessary with new legislation, but "each additional individual converted to its purpose will add immediate strength to the organization."
Gillette registered the World Corporation in the Arizona Territory and offered its presidency to Theodore Roosevelt, recently retired as President of the United States, for a million dollars for a four-year term, but Roosevelt declined. Gillette's next effort was to woo Upton Sinclair to his ideals, and Sinclair was able to set up
a number of meetings between Gillette and Henry Ford, but the divergent economic and political beliefs would not meet. Sinclair continued to work with Gillette, and in 1924, Gillette published
The People's Corporation with help from Sinclair. There is no online digital copy for perusal and review, but
TIME Magazine has a book review, which starts off with a charming line: "
The kind of man who conceives an ideal order of society is, it seems, predestined to have the befoliaged type of face." The review includes some clips of text that display Gillette's concern for lost efforts and production due to lack of coordination and preparation for war and the economic paralysis following war.
Gillette took his socialist Utopian dreams with him to the end. King Camp Gillette used the safety razor as an example of how efficiency could make the world a better place.
But society was not the razor writ large. Reforming society was not merely a matter of good design and aggressive marketing.
Bonus media at the Internet Archive: three versions of
The World Corporation (
1,
2,
3) and
various versions of Severy's writings.
posted by RockyChrysler at 1:09 PM on July 22, 2010 [1 favorite]