December 5, 2018 • 35 mins
Nell Donnelly Reed built a successful business starting before women even had the right to vote in the U.S. Her story combines fashion, education, workers’ health and safety, kidnapping, and marital scandal. She is, like any historical figure, complicated.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Wilson. Uh. This episode
is about a person who was on my list and
then our listener Rich suggested it recently and that resparked
(00:22):
my interest in the topic. Uh. Nell donnely Reid was
a woman way ahead of her time in a number
of ways. She was creative. She had the business acumen
to turn that creativity into a very successful business before
women even had the right to vote in the United States. Uh.
And her story combines the numbers of things that make
for a fascinating tale. It's almost like a movie manuscript. Uh.
(00:44):
There's fashion, there's education, there's kidnapping, there's marital scandal. Nell
lived a long life. She did a lot with her time,
including focusing on workers health and safety needs. But she is,
like any historical figure, complicated. She was born Ellen Howard
Quinlin on March sixth in Parsons, Kansas. Her father, John Quinlin,
(01:07):
had moved to the United States from County Cork, Ireland,
and he worked on the railroad and also farmed. I
think the railroad he worked on might have actually been
the Katie which we talked about on the Crash at
Crush episode. Nel was born at home on the farm
and John and his wife Katherine Fitzgibbons, had thirteen total children.
Ellen was the twelfth child and fifth daughter, and she
(01:30):
was nicknamed Nel by her siblings. At a really early age,
uh Nel went to school at a convent. She didn't
stay there, but they had a school there that she
attended during the day, and then she went to Parsons
Business College and she started working as a stenographer in
Kansas City immediately after she graduated, and shortly after her
moved to the city, she met a man named Paul J.
(01:51):
Donnelly and the pair were soon married, and at this
point Nel was seventeen and Paul was twenty three. But
Nell did not follow the normal out for the time
of a young woman to give up her career or
education to settle down into the rule of wife. Instead,
she continued to work and both she and her husband Paul,
saved their earnings so that Nell could go to college.
(02:14):
When she attended classes at Lindenwood College in St. Charles, Missouri,
she was the only married student. She graduated in nineteen
o nine. Once she was done with school, Nell started
to focus on sewing. This was something she had done
for her whole life, and it was a skill that
she had always excelled at. Naturally, she started making clothes
both for herself and for her family when she was
(02:35):
still a kid. A lot of the time, she also
altered clothes that she had had passed down from her
sisters she would remake them for herself. Once she finished college,
she went back to sewing, largely because she was pretty
dismayed at the very frumpy options that were available for
women who were working as homemakers. They are very sack like.
(02:55):
From that time, they are very sack like. She called
the mother Hubbard dress because at that point she had
left her stenographer job to go to school full time,
and when she finished school she kind of did to
settle into a housewife e role, even though she didn't
quite know where her life was going to go. But
she really really did not enjoy the options for house dresses.
(03:17):
She thought that she should look smart, and her design
ideology was pretty simple and based on that. She just
thought that women should have clothing options that looked smart
and stylish, even if their work was taking care of
house and home, and even if no one but family
might see them. She was also really smart about cut.
She created dresses that flattered the figure, but they also
(03:37):
did not restrict movement. And when neighbors and friends saw
Nell or her sisters wearing dresses that she had designed
and made, they all wanted their own. And so in
the seven years following her graduation from college, now kind
of had a little bit of a cottage industry making
custom dresses for women in the community, but she didn't
really consider herself a dressmaker at this point. Her clients
(04:01):
and her family, though, really urged her to take her
business out to a larger market. So in nineteen sixteen,
she started getting a lot more serious about a career
in dressmaking. After taking a look at the very limited
market of clothing available to women in the Kansas City area,
she had the confidence to bring some of her ideas
to a department store. Yeah. I love that she went
(04:22):
out and did kind of her own market research, and
that's something that really was kind of an ingrained part
of her work Throughout her life. She always tried to
continue to learn and when she spoke to the buyer
at the George c. Peck Dry Goods Company, which was
where she took her dresses to show. She was worried
that she might just be laughed out of the building.
(04:44):
Even though she neither were not great options, she still
was a little scared. But instead she left with an
order for eighteen dozen dresses. So then she had a
new problem, which was figuring out how to manufacture two
hundred and sixteen garments really quickly. I think she had
a two months window, which, uh, if you do any stitching,
(05:05):
two hundred and sixteen dresses in two months is a lot. Uh.
And Nell had agreed to this order without really having
the means to fill it, so she basically had to
start her own business lickety split. So Nell and her
husband Paul talked us over. Paul, who worked as a
manager in the credit department at the Barton Shoe Company,
had one thousand, two hundred seventy dollars in savings and
(05:27):
they used that money to get Nel's business up and running.
She hired two seamstresses, bought two power sewing machines, and
then set up shop in the attic of their home.
That first batch of dresses had a pretty simple design.
They were high waisted dresses with a waist band yoke
and kimono sleeves. They were accentuated by some narrow ruffle details.
(05:49):
Nell would say later that she just wanted to make
women pretty while they did the dishes, and she must
have really been onto something. They filled the order, but
that led to another problem. Was a good problem to have,
but still a problem. All two hundred sixteen dresses sold
out the day they were put on the sales floor. Yeah,
there's a really interesting um paper that I read in
(06:10):
preparation for this, written by two women, and they're kind
of examining why these dresses sold out so quickly and
why they were so popular because it wasn't as though
they had no other options for dresses. It's an interesting
read and we'll have it in this show. Notes. But basically,
she kind of was onto this idea of like you
could look cute at home, uh, and people really liked
(06:32):
that idea. And so at this point Nell and Paul
knew that they had to expand their business, and they
had to do it really, really rapidly. They were, of course,
still operating in the red. Those two hundred sixteen dresses
had sold for a dollar each. That was uh significantly
higher than the average price point for a house dress,
which I have seen listed as around sixty nine cents. Uh.
(06:54):
But even so people snatch them up. But even so,
that's not uh anything like they were going to make
back that initial one thousand, two hundred seventy dollar investment.
But they both really saw that this business had potential,
and so their next step was to find a dedicated
factory space and move production out of their attic and
get a little bit bigger. They found a spot in
(07:15):
Kansas City, Missouri, on the corner of twenty ninth Street
in Brooklyn Avenue, but they outgrew that space really quickly,
and in eighteen they moved into a larger space on
twenty one and Grand Paul left soon after that to
fight in World War One, and Nell kept things running
while he was away. By the time he got back,
Nell had grown the company significantly. She was up to
(07:37):
eighteen staff, they were operating in the black, and they
were bringing in a quarter of a million dollars annually.
So understandably, Paul quit his credit manager job and the
two of them worked side by side full time in
the garment business. As they reorganized the company to keep
pace with its growth. Nell became the secretary treasurer and
(07:57):
Paul served as president, but no really the one running
things while Paul took care of the business in administrative details.
The Nelly Dawn clothing label, which was created by inverting
uh the name Donnelly, took off like wildfire. To keep
pace with the fashion industry, new started making regular trips
to Europe to see what was trending in Paris and Vienna.
(08:19):
She also studied the US market to make sure she
kept pace with the other designers. She kept track of
her customer base to make sure she was serving the
needs of the people who actually purchased her clothes, and
she selected the best possible fabrics and performed rigorous tests
on them at the factory to make sure that her
garments not only looked stylish but would also last. Yeah,
(08:41):
she really um had a keen sense of the balance
between fashion and utility and how you needed both to
really be successful in the market she was in. Nel
was also really really adamant that the dresses and aprons
that they made at the Donnelly Garment Company were true,
ready to wear without the need for professional alteration. She
would include little details that could be easily altered by
(09:02):
someone at home, like adjustable straps and things like that
to make it fit perfect. But she also had samples
made in every single size, and then she would put
each of those garments through their paces with models performing
the sorts of activities that a woman might encounter in
an average day. And this was all done to make
sure that there was freedom of movement and that no
matter what size the woman and the clothing, they were
(09:24):
always flattering. And a lot of the dress wearers and
our audience will also love to hear that her signature
Handy Dandy apron line and her dresses had functional pockets.
Nell insisted on this. I am happy to hear this because,
unlike Holly, I don't make all my own clothes to
have the features I personally want, so I'm always excited
(09:46):
when I find things to buy the have pockets in them.
I feel like a fashion trader because I don't really
care about pockets. I know I'm the only one. I
just don't. Pockets don't do much for me um other
than like a place to put my hand unless they
have a zipper closure. I don't trust them to hold
things anyway, So then I'm like just spoils the line sometimes.
(10:06):
I just always I always need a chap stick in there. Yeah,
that goes in my wrist wallet. Uh see, I have
a controversial pocket opinion. Don't attack me. Um. Throughout the
growth of the Donnelly Company, Nell took a very very
progressive approach to how their employees were treated. As I said,
she always studied the market and the industry, and in
(10:27):
doing so, when she really looked at the history of
manufacturing and where it was at that point in time,
so that she could learn as much as she could
and maybe find ways that she could make her factory
more efficient. She also became really keenly aware of the
poor working conditions that a lot of laborers face. She
did not want the kinds of accidents that often hurt
or frankly, very often killed workers in other factories to
(10:50):
be part of her company's legacy. Working conditions that Donnally
were a lot safer than at most other garment factories.
The wages were also better. Employees had acts us to
medical care through their jobs, and because Nell knew how
valuable her own education had been to her success, she
offered night classes and tuition grants to her employees, and
she started a scholarship program for her employees children. Yeah,
(11:13):
one of the things she did that was really unique,
particularly for the time, is like she had a regular
doctor come like I think once a week and just
do checkups. People needed them, and eventually they can bring
their kids for those check ups. The Donaldy's also really
felt like it was important that their employees felt respected
and that they were recognized as vital to the success
of the business. Now, some of this, too is part
(11:34):
of building up sort of the forward facing identity of
the company, because Nell was very, very comfortable giving interviews
and so part of this was also playing up how
great they were to work for. And she once told
a reporter quote, the attitude of our employees towards the
executives in the firm is not that they work under others,
but that they are working with others. Nell's business, which
(11:57):
started with less than one thousand, three d dollars and
two hired seamstresses, turned into a multimillion dollar company during
the nineteen twenties. By nineteen thirty one, they had a
thousand employees. And because they made affordable quality clothing, which
was a necessity instead of luxury goods. They managed to
weather the nine financial crash and the Great Depression that
(12:19):
followed it. This ability of non luxury dry goods companies
to survive times of financial instability also came up in
our Levi Strauss episode that was not long ago this year. Yeah,
but though the Donnell's managed to keep their business in
good shape during those turbulent times, their personal lives were
a little less smooth. And we're going to talk about
(12:39):
that right after we first paused for a sponsor break.
So in early Nell got pregnant, and this was a
problem for two reasons. One, her husband Paul had told
her that if she ever got pignant, he would kill himself.
(13:02):
It is not entirely clear what his motivation for this
statement was. It has been speculated by various historians UH
and people who have studied Nell's story that he likely
suffered from depression, and he reportedly did have some issues
with drinking and infidelity that drove a wedge between the
couple UH. And Two, to be clear, this child was
not his. We are going to come back to the
(13:24):
paternity of Nell's baby in just a moment. But to
deal with this problem, Nell came up with a plan,
so while she was still early enough in the pregnancy
that she was not showing, she traveled allegedly to Europe.
Some versions of this story say that instead she actually
just went to Chicago. It's all because it's all kind
of shrouded in a cloak and dagger move. We don't
(13:45):
really know she was not at home, that she was
not in Kansas City, but she had told Paul that
she wanted to adopt a child, so she came home
to Kansas City with a new baby, David, in the
late fall of nine. By this point, Nell was already famous.
She was well known in Kansas City as a very
successful and very wealthy woman. She had been profiled in
(14:07):
magazines as a business leader and an innovator. Her company
was a three point five million dollar business at this point,
and on the night of December six, nineteen thirty one,
that success made her the target of a kidnapping and
ransom plot. So after work that night, Nell got into
her car with her chauffeur, George Blair, and headed home
(14:27):
for the evening, and as they approached the driveway of
the Donnelly home, another car blocked their way. Three men
got out of that second car. One jumped in the
front seat and quickly tied up Blair, while the other
two got in the back, one on either side of Nell,
and Nell fought against them, but they pushed her to
the floorboard and they held her there. Donnelly and Blair
(14:49):
were taken to a house in Bonner Springs, Kansas that
was roughly twenty five miles to the west of Donnelly's
Kansas City home. Nell was kept on a cot and
Blair was kept and blindfolded. The kidnappers called the home
of James E. Taylor, who was the Donnally's lawyer, that night,
but Mrs Taylor, who took the call, thought it was
(15:09):
just a prank. The person on the other end of
the lines told her that she could find Nell, Donnally's
abandoned car and country club plaza. I always wonder when
I read about this why she was like, Oh, pranksters
versus what a weird call. Maybe we should check it out. Uh.
The kidnappers also sent a ransom note to Paul Donnally
demanding seventy five thousand dollars, and he received that note
(15:33):
the morning after the abduction. This missive is a little
bit awkward in that it appears to have been dictated
to Nell to write, but the voice changes from that
of Nell writing directly to Paul to that of the
kidnappers talking to Nell, and it reads as follows, Dear Paul,
these men say they want seventy five thousand dollars. Use
(15:54):
your own judgment. They kidnapped me and chauffeur Wednesday night.
If you do not pay his direct did seventy five
thousand dollars in cash dollars and twenty dollar bills, dollars
in tens and twenty thousand dollars in fifties if he
and at this point it seems like it's switched and
they're referring to Paul. If he or any does not
(16:15):
do is directed, we shall take him same as we
have taken you, meaning no. If reported to police or
any authorities, we shall blind you, meaning now and kill.
And then they use a racist slur for George Blair.
Paul yourself shall drive the car, meaning our Lincoln at
all times. If this letter is given to any police authorities,
it will be the last of me, and they will
(16:37):
get you the same way they got me. Paul called
James E. Taylor, and this is when the tailor's realized
that the call they had gotten the night before was
not a prank. Taylor called his law partner, James Read.
Just to be clear, there's James Read, there's James Taylor.
Two different James is Read was the Donnalley's next door neighbor.
When he had a long and impressive career. He had
(16:59):
been a county attorney, a counselor for the city, the
mayor of Kansas City, and had served three terms as
a U S Senator. Yeah, James A. Reid could be
his own episode. He is not a person I think
I would have enjoyed very much. Um, We'll talk a
little bit about it here, but he definitely uh had
some some outdated views. James, Reid and Nell were very close.
(17:23):
While Nell and Paul were, as we said, very successful
at running a business together, their marriage had become strained
and distant, and Nell and Reid had become involved romantically.
Nell and Paul's adopted son, David, was in fact Reid's
biological child, and so when Reid got word of this kidnapping,
he immediately asked the judge of the trial that he
(17:44):
was working on at the time if he could have
leave and once he was granted that leave, he immediately
left the courthouse in such a speedy manner that it
set off a flurry of gossip and speculation about what
might be going on. The specific instructions to Paul and
that original note had been that he was to park
the car that was mentioned in the letter in front
of the Mercer Hotel at ten o'clock on December seventeenth.
(18:06):
He was supposed to stay there for fifteen minutes as
a signal that he was willing to go along with
the kidnappers demands. If nobody appeared. He was supposed to
repeat this the next day, and then every day after
that until someone communicated with him. He eventually received another note,
this one signed by Nell, authorizing the withdrawal of the money.
But though Paul Donnelly had done as instructed and had
(18:28):
not contacted police himself, the police had heard the rumors
that started the day Read left the courthouse, and the
newspapers had picked up some rumors and had been covering
the story since then as well, even though they didn't
have a whole lot to go on. It kind of
seems like somebody at the courthouse must have blabbed when
James Reid talked to the judge about needing to to go. Uh.
(18:49):
Someone involved in that discussion must have blabbed to the
press because they were I mean, they didn't magically conjure
that she had been kidnapped. They were printing it based
on somebody's information. Uh. And all of this, this rumor
and gossip that was showing up in the press and
with the police, which they knew could sour this whole
situation made James Reid realize he had to make a
(19:11):
statement to the Kansas City Star to address the situation.
Read's statement made it clear that if Nell was returned,
the kidnappers could have that ransom that they had demanded,
but if anything happens to her, he and Paul Donnelly
would quote spend the rest of our lives running the
culprits to earth and securing for them the extreme penalty
(19:32):
of law. And soon John Lazia, a well known Kansas
City gangster with a lot of influence in the city's politics,
joined the search. Lazia had known Read for some time. Uh.
There are many verses of this story that say that
Reid actually reached out to Lazia and said, you're going
to do this for me because after Lazia told the
(19:53):
police that no one from the criminal underworld would kidnap Nell,
knowing that James Reid was her lawyer, Lazia then sent
Carl Wads of his associates to look for Nell. Donnelly
Like twenty five cars of men went out. Just feels
like a movie about corrupt political figures for sure, and
with good reasons. It was Lazia's men who eventually located
(20:17):
Nell and her driver. And the details here are a
little murky too, but Nell told the police that a
group of men forced their way into the house where
she and Blair were being held. These men took their
captors outside and then told her that they would take
her home. She and George Blair were free and relatively
unharmed after thirty four hours in captivity. The whole retrieval
(20:39):
of them went so smoothly that there were rumors that
spread that this whole thing had just been a publicity stunt.
Read's reputation in all this was also damaged because his
relationship with the city's criminal underworld became public knowledge through
Lazia's involvement in all this. Yeah, it was a big
weird mess where people were like, wait, uh, this happened,
(21:02):
and you seem really interested in this woman's welfare even
though you're just her lawyer. And now you have a
gangster finding her that did so because he's your friend.
What's going on here? Um? Again, it would make a
great movie. Uh. While the kidnappers initially fled and again
we don't really know how that played out. Uh, they
(21:22):
were captured. Paul Shite was the first man apprehended and
brought to trial. James A. Reid served as special prosecutor
in that trial. Shite claimed that he believed the kidnapping
was arranged by a husband who he thought was in
the oil business. Uh, and that when he realized that
he had been duped in this whole plan, that he
had just let the captives go. In a surprise outcome.
(21:44):
The jury completely believed him, and Shite was acquitted. Martin
Depew and Walter Werner had very different outcomes in their
court cases after those two were apprehended. Both were sentenced
to life in prison, and then a third man, Charles
I'm not sure how the last name is pronounced, Charles
Mail or Melee perhaps received a thirty five years sentence
(22:05):
for his part in the kidnapping plot, although he insisted
throughout the entire trial that he had absolutely nothing to
do with it. The only evidence against him was that
Nell identified him. We will talk about Nell's life after
this kidnapping, but first we will take a quick sponsor break.
(22:28):
So while Nell's return after her abduction relatively safe and sound,
might seem like a joyous end to the tumult in
the Donnelly home, it was absolutely not. Just a couple
of months later, Nell divorced Paul in early ninety two,
she bought out half of his business and she became
executive director of the company. And that same year, James A.
(22:49):
Reid's wife died, and so in December of ninety three,
Nell and James Reid were married in a ceremony that
surprised their guests. They had invited friends to Nell's home
for what the attendees thought was just a dinner party,
only to find a wedding happening after the meal ended.
Nell was forty four at the time and Read was
seventy two. For the next several years, Nell Donnally Reid's
(23:12):
life was pretty smooth. She and James seemed happy and
her business continued to thrive, but the same could not
be said for Paul don Lane. Sadly, he also remarried
to a woman who was much younger than he was,
named Virginia George. They married in February of nineteen thirty three,
but then just a year and a half later, he
died by suicide. That was in September of nineteen thirty four.
(23:34):
He had spent most of his fortune by that point.
In nineteen thirty seven, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union
made efforts to get the workers at Donnelly Garment Manufacturing
to unionize, But, unlike at many other companies in Kansas City,
which had become a huge clothing manufacturing hub at this point,
a lot of Nell's employees did not see the need
(23:55):
for reunion. They felt that their working conditions were safe
and their benefits were excellent, far better than any other
factory offered. A lot of the staff didn't feel like
a union would be of much benefit to them, but
this was definitely not a universally held opinion. On the
factory floor, there were employees who talked to the union
about things like tedium and exhaustion in their sections. These
(24:17):
sections were small groups of employees who were set up
to create garments, with each woman working on one specific
aspect of the garment and then turning out the garments
as a team, so each person had one job, but
they were still working together to create each stress. This
handful of women who joined the union faced layoffs and
pressure and harassment from within their jobs. The I l
(24:41):
g WU, which had been successful in unionizing most of
Kansas City's other factories, took out ads in the local
papers saying that Nell and her company were unwilling to
meet the union standards and that that was what was
really causing all of this um refusal to become a
part of the union. But between less than ens who's
enthusiastic support for the union among a lot of employees,
(25:03):
and the few who actually did favor a union facing
retribution for it, this whole idea just did not gain
much traction. To combat the I l g WU, the
Donally factory formed its own union, which was the Donal
League Garment Workers Union, in May of nineteen thirty seven.
Although that group was formed under the auspices of management
(25:23):
to try to shut down the other union's efforts, it
wasn't something that the employees decided on their own to
form the Donnally Union president, who was Rose Todd, who
was a supervisor at the company, started giving statements to
the press that they could handle their own advocacy and
they didn't need outsiders trying to manage it for them.
This union issue dragged on and on. The i l
(25:46):
g WU continued to try to force unionization under their
umbrella on the Donnally factory and also tried to dissuade
department stores from carrying the Nelly don brand UH. They
even wrote up little UH notes that that the department
stores could use to explain the situation in this case
eventually was played out in court. It went to federal court.
(26:07):
A judge forbade the International Lady's Garment Workers Union from
trying to get involved in the Donnely plant any further,
but then that decision was later overturned the Donnely factory
and this outside union continued to lock horns for years,
and as the issue continued to be a real thorn
in her side, Nell started to tell people that there
was no way an entrepreneur could start a business and
(26:29):
be successful because of all these complications that unions brought
about this. Well, it was one of the reasons that
the conditions that the factory were so so good. She like,
she wanted things to be so good that people wouldn't
want a union. Yeah. She felt like, I feel like
I'm doing everything right. Why are people still coming after me? Yeah.
So then to compound all these matters, While her husband,
(26:51):
James Reid, wasn't involved in the running of the factory,
he did have a lot of political clout. He served
in a legal capacity for his wife's company, and he
was pretty openly racist and anti Semitic, including when it
came to these labor matters and labor organizers. Yes, so,
the I L g W You president, David Dubinski was
(27:12):
a Russian born Jew, and Read referred to him as
a foreign radical and far worse. When Read appeared in
court proceedings to discuss the matter, Read made the case
that unions were dangerous to women. They were run by
rapists and violent people. He talked about them being, you know,
like the scum that was scraped from the double's cauldron. Ultimately,
though the injunction against the I L g W You
(27:34):
was lifted, the Donnelly Company had created an atmosphere like
we said, of of both fear that the these foreign
devils were going to come and try to unionize them
and make something dangerous, and also fear that anyone that
actually embraced the union would get in trouble or lose
their job. That they really did kind of make this
(27:55):
bubble that prevented the union from ever penetrating. Yeah, it
was like they were simultaneously doing things to discourage unionizing
and also really inspiring a lot a lot of loyalty
among their employees. It was complicated. World War two also
brought a lot of changes to the Nelly Don brand
as they continued to expand their lines who appeal to
(28:17):
women who had jobs outside the home. So what had
started as a business for making stylish dresses and aprons
for homemakers had by the late nineteen forties expanded to
offer business attire and accessories. The factory was turning out
one point five million dresses a year, making it the
largest facility of its kind in the world, And throughout
(28:38):
all of this, journalists and consumers marveled at how they
managed to keep quality high and prices reasonable. Yeah, they
talked about a lot of details that um would be
associated with much much higher end garments, like they talked
about the depth of the hems, which if you know,
you know, if you're looking at a dress from the
inside and the hem is what is called deep. It
means there is a lot of the outside fabric folded
(28:59):
up under to create that him And in some places
they would cut those shorter so that you would save
that couple inches of fabric, which seems like not much,
but then over one point five million garments as up
to a lot of fabric, and it's like a cost
cutting measure. But Nelly Don was not taking those shortcuts.
And the company was also really unique in that it
hired women for positions at all levels. Nell claimed that
(29:21):
she hired blindly, paying no mind to whether the applicant
was a man or a woman, and focusing simply on
whether they were the right fit and could do the job.
In one magazine interviewed, Nell told a reporter quote, I've
heard some women say they would rather talk with men,
have business dealings with men. I don't feel that way
about it. I have no preference or prejudice in the matter.
(29:43):
I like to talk business with a competent person, whether
that person is a man or a woman. When she
saw that somebody was a hard worker and could manage
their job really well, she promoted them, and that way
a lot of women who started in low level positions
that the company rose up through the ranks to become executives.
Nine out of ten employees that the Donnely Factory were women,
and unlike in a lot of factories where like the
(30:05):
line level workers would be women and the executives would
be men, these women were spread all through all levels
of the company. In nineteen forty four, as the company
was going through its growth into new markets, including all
this business, where Nell's husband, James Reid, died of pneumonia.
She did not ever marry again. In nineteen fifty two,
she donated seven thirty one acres of land the Missouri
(30:28):
Department of Conservation in honor of James, who she had
spent many happy hours with out in nature, hunting, fishing,
and just enjoying each other's company. That was something they
both really loved together. The James A. Reid Memorial Wildlife
Area remains intact today. In nineteen fifty six, Nell sold
off for company shares and retired. She had been in
the garment industry for forty years and the Donnally Garment
(30:51):
Company became Nellie don Inc. And it became a publicly
traded company two years after Nell left. But without her
ability to deal directly with tech style manufacturers to get
the best deals or to streamline production in ways that
made the factory at its most efficient, the business really struggled.
Nellie down Ink went into bankruptcy and closed permanently in
nineteen seventy eight. But from her retirement onward, Nell donnellly
(31:15):
Reid remained very, very active in the Kansas City community.
She continued to promote education and she was a board
member at Lindenwood College, where she was in alum as
well as at the Kansas City Art Institute, and she
also became a member of the city Board of Education.
She really really tried to promote a lot of education
reform and she was on the board of trustees at
(31:35):
the Midwest Research Institute. She died at home on September eight,
nineteen one. She was a hundred and two years old. Yeah,
she looked a really long life. Uh. In two thousand six,
Nell's great nephew, Terrance O'Malley, made a documentary about her
and her business titled Nelly Down a Stitch in Time,
and then more than a decade later in twenty seventeen.
He started it several years before that, but I think
(31:57):
seventeen was the first stage reading he had developed her
story into a musical. Like we said at the top,
uh Nell was complicated. Her life was not like all sunshine,
rainbow perfection. But one of the things that really struck
me in researching her story was her insistence that when
the workday ended, it was over something that grows more
and more difficult as we all tend to check email
(32:19):
late into the night and sometimes on vacation. Uh And
she also wanted people to continue to learn and grow,
And so I wanted to finish with a quote of
hers that I really liked. She gave it an interview
where she said, you can't be a well balanced person
if you insist on devoting all your attention to business,
even those details which can be managed by others, leaving
no free time for your development as a human being.
(32:43):
Ray That is Nell Donnelly Reid. Like we said, she's
still complicated. Do you also have some listener mail? I
do have some listener mail. This is another one about
our USO and Bob Hope episode. Uh. This is from
our listener Thomasina, who writes High Holly and Tracy live
in Juneo, Alaska, and I was thrilled to hear my
hometown of Cordova, Alaska name checked in your podcast about
(33:05):
Bob Hope in the us O Show. It reminded me
of my family story about my uncle encountering Bob Hope
while he was visiting before that hair raising flight that
you mentioned. When Bob Hope came to visit the town
of Cordova, which then had a population of less than
two thousand people, not including military folks station there at
the time. To say it was a really big deal
is a massive understatement. It was like a minor deity
(33:28):
was in town. A massive entourage followed him down the
main street, on which still stands the apartment building in
which my father's family then lived, my father having not
been born yet. When Bob Hope passed by the front
stoop of the building, he encountered my uncle, who was
a small child at the time. My dad's family is
of Alaska Native and Caucasian heritage, but my uncle did
not really lean toward the features of my allotique Norwegian grandpa,
(33:50):
or my can get Danish grandma. I'm sorry if I
said those words incorrectly. Instead, my father's oldest brother came
out with a blend of both of his parents attributes,
resulting in auburn hair, a ski slope, nos, and freckles.
You can see where this is going. Bob Hope saw
this little kid who looked a lot like him and
stopped to chat with him, thinking you would make for
a cute photo. Ops, sadly none of us has a
(34:11):
copy of this picture if it survived, and said, hey, son,
how old are you for said my uncle, and what's
your name? My uncle's name was George Robert Jr. But
he went by You guessed it, Bob and Bob Hope,
after learning this, paused for a beat, and then he
supposedly turned to his compatriots and equipped, Now that I
think about it, I did come through here about four
years ago. My uncle passed away back in the early
(34:34):
two thousand's, and that was one of my grandmother's favorite
stories that she liked to share about him until she
herself passed last year. Thank you for reminding me of it,
and thanks for all the hours of crunching spreadsheets at
work that your lovely show has been more bearable. That
is the cutest family story and it makes me laugh
and laugh, So thank you so much for sharing that, Thomasina.
If you would like to write to us, you can
(34:55):
do so at History podcast at how stuffworks dot com.
We are also Missed in History across the spectrum of
so social media, and you can find us at missed
in history dot com, where every episode of the show
is archived and there are show notes for any of
the episodes Tracy and I have worked on. And you
can also subscribe to stuff you Missed in History class
on Apple podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, or anywhere
(35:15):
you get your podcasts. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to steph you missed in history Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Wilson. Uh. This episode
is about a person who was on my list and
then our listener Rich suggested it recently and that resparked
(00:22):
my interest in the topic. Uh. Nell donnely Reid was
a woman way ahead of her time in a number
of ways. She was creative. She had the business acumen
to turn that creativity into a very successful business before
women even had the right to vote in the United States. Uh.
And her story combines the numbers of things that make
for a fascinating tale. It's almost like a movie manuscript. Uh.
(00:44):
There's fashion, there's education, there's kidnapping, there's marital scandal. Nell
lived a long life. She did a lot with her time,
including focusing on workers health and safety needs. But she is,
like any historical figure, complicated. She was born Ellen Howard
Quinlin on March sixth in Parsons, Kansas. Her father, John Quinlin,
(01:07):
had moved to the United States from County Cork, Ireland,
and he worked on the railroad and also farmed. I
think the railroad he worked on might have actually been
the Katie which we talked about on the Crash at
Crush episode. Nel was born at home on the farm
and John and his wife Katherine Fitzgibbons, had thirteen total children.
Ellen was the twelfth child and fifth daughter, and she
(01:30):
was nicknamed Nel by her siblings. At a really early age,
uh Nel went to school at a convent. She didn't
stay there, but they had a school there that she
attended during the day, and then she went to Parsons
Business College and she started working as a stenographer in
Kansas City immediately after she graduated, and shortly after her
moved to the city, she met a man named Paul J.
(01:51):
Donnelly and the pair were soon married, and at this
point Nel was seventeen and Paul was twenty three. But
Nell did not follow the normal out for the time
of a young woman to give up her career or
education to settle down into the rule of wife. Instead,
she continued to work and both she and her husband Paul,
saved their earnings so that Nell could go to college.
(02:14):
When she attended classes at Lindenwood College in St. Charles, Missouri,
she was the only married student. She graduated in nineteen
o nine. Once she was done with school, Nell started
to focus on sewing. This was something she had done
for her whole life, and it was a skill that
she had always excelled at. Naturally, she started making clothes
both for herself and for her family when she was
(02:35):
still a kid. A lot of the time, she also
altered clothes that she had had passed down from her
sisters she would remake them for herself. Once she finished college,
she went back to sewing, largely because she was pretty
dismayed at the very frumpy options that were available for
women who were working as homemakers. They are very sack like.
(02:55):
From that time, they are very sack like. She called
the mother Hubbard dress because at that point she had
left her stenographer job to go to school full time,
and when she finished school she kind of did to
settle into a housewife e role, even though she didn't
quite know where her life was going to go. But
she really really did not enjoy the options for house dresses.
(03:17):
She thought that she should look smart, and her design
ideology was pretty simple and based on that. She just
thought that women should have clothing options that looked smart
and stylish, even if their work was taking care of
house and home, and even if no one but family
might see them. She was also really smart about cut.
She created dresses that flattered the figure, but they also
(03:37):
did not restrict movement. And when neighbors and friends saw
Nell or her sisters wearing dresses that she had designed
and made, they all wanted their own. And so in
the seven years following her graduation from college, now kind
of had a little bit of a cottage industry making
custom dresses for women in the community, but she didn't
really consider herself a dressmaker at this point. Her clients
(04:01):
and her family, though, really urged her to take her
business out to a larger market. So in nineteen sixteen,
she started getting a lot more serious about a career
in dressmaking. After taking a look at the very limited
market of clothing available to women in the Kansas City area,
she had the confidence to bring some of her ideas
to a department store. Yeah. I love that she went
(04:22):
out and did kind of her own market research, and
that's something that really was kind of an ingrained part
of her work Throughout her life. She always tried to
continue to learn and when she spoke to the buyer
at the George c. Peck Dry Goods Company, which was
where she took her dresses to show. She was worried
that she might just be laughed out of the building.
(04:44):
Even though she neither were not great options, she still
was a little scared. But instead she left with an
order for eighteen dozen dresses. So then she had a
new problem, which was figuring out how to manufacture two
hundred and sixteen garments really quickly. I think she had
a two months window, which, uh, if you do any stitching,
(05:05):
two hundred and sixteen dresses in two months is a lot. Uh.
And Nell had agreed to this order without really having
the means to fill it, so she basically had to
start her own business lickety split. So Nell and her
husband Paul talked us over. Paul, who worked as a
manager in the credit department at the Barton Shoe Company,
had one thousand, two hundred seventy dollars in savings and
(05:27):
they used that money to get Nel's business up and running.
She hired two seamstresses, bought two power sewing machines, and
then set up shop in the attic of their home.
That first batch of dresses had a pretty simple design.
They were high waisted dresses with a waist band yoke
and kimono sleeves. They were accentuated by some narrow ruffle details.
(05:49):
Nell would say later that she just wanted to make
women pretty while they did the dishes, and she must
have really been onto something. They filled the order, but
that led to another problem. Was a good problem to have,
but still a problem. All two hundred sixteen dresses sold
out the day they were put on the sales floor. Yeah,
there's a really interesting um paper that I read in
(06:10):
preparation for this, written by two women, and they're kind
of examining why these dresses sold out so quickly and
why they were so popular because it wasn't as though
they had no other options for dresses. It's an interesting
read and we'll have it in this show. Notes. But basically,
she kind of was onto this idea of like you
could look cute at home, uh, and people really liked
(06:32):
that idea. And so at this point Nell and Paul
knew that they had to expand their business, and they
had to do it really, really rapidly. They were, of course,
still operating in the red. Those two hundred sixteen dresses
had sold for a dollar each. That was uh significantly
higher than the average price point for a house dress,
which I have seen listed as around sixty nine cents. Uh.
(06:54):
But even so people snatch them up. But even so,
that's not uh anything like they were going to make
back that initial one thousand, two hundred seventy dollar investment.
But they both really saw that this business had potential,
and so their next step was to find a dedicated
factory space and move production out of their attic and
get a little bit bigger. They found a spot in
(07:15):
Kansas City, Missouri, on the corner of twenty ninth Street
in Brooklyn Avenue, but they outgrew that space really quickly,
and in eighteen they moved into a larger space on
twenty one and Grand Paul left soon after that to
fight in World War One, and Nell kept things running
while he was away. By the time he got back,
Nell had grown the company significantly. She was up to
(07:37):
eighteen staff, they were operating in the black, and they
were bringing in a quarter of a million dollars annually.
So understandably, Paul quit his credit manager job and the
two of them worked side by side full time in
the garment business. As they reorganized the company to keep
pace with its growth. Nell became the secretary treasurer and
(07:57):
Paul served as president, but no really the one running
things while Paul took care of the business in administrative details.
The Nelly Dawn clothing label, which was created by inverting
uh the name Donnelly, took off like wildfire. To keep
pace with the fashion industry, new started making regular trips
to Europe to see what was trending in Paris and Vienna.
(08:19):
She also studied the US market to make sure she
kept pace with the other designers. She kept track of
her customer base to make sure she was serving the
needs of the people who actually purchased her clothes, and
she selected the best possible fabrics and performed rigorous tests
on them at the factory to make sure that her
garments not only looked stylish but would also last. Yeah,
(08:41):
she really um had a keen sense of the balance
between fashion and utility and how you needed both to
really be successful in the market she was in. Nel
was also really really adamant that the dresses and aprons
that they made at the Donnelly Garment Company were true,
ready to wear without the need for professional alteration. She
would include little details that could be easily altered by
(09:02):
someone at home, like adjustable straps and things like that
to make it fit perfect. But she also had samples
made in every single size, and then she would put
each of those garments through their paces with models performing
the sorts of activities that a woman might encounter in
an average day. And this was all done to make
sure that there was freedom of movement and that no
matter what size the woman and the clothing, they were
(09:24):
always flattering. And a lot of the dress wearers and
our audience will also love to hear that her signature
Handy Dandy apron line and her dresses had functional pockets.
Nell insisted on this. I am happy to hear this because,
unlike Holly, I don't make all my own clothes to
have the features I personally want, so I'm always excited
(09:46):
when I find things to buy the have pockets in them.
I feel like a fashion trader because I don't really
care about pockets. I know I'm the only one. I
just don't. Pockets don't do much for me um other
than like a place to put my hand unless they
have a zipper closure. I don't trust them to hold
things anyway, So then I'm like just spoils the line sometimes.
(10:06):
I just always I always need a chap stick in there. Yeah,
that goes in my wrist wallet. Uh see, I have
a controversial pocket opinion. Don't attack me. Um. Throughout the
growth of the Donnelly Company, Nell took a very very
progressive approach to how their employees were treated. As I said,
she always studied the market and the industry, and in
(10:27):
doing so, when she really looked at the history of
manufacturing and where it was at that point in time,
so that she could learn as much as she could
and maybe find ways that she could make her factory
more efficient. She also became really keenly aware of the
poor working conditions that a lot of laborers face. She
did not want the kinds of accidents that often hurt
or frankly, very often killed workers in other factories to
(10:50):
be part of her company's legacy. Working conditions that Donnally
were a lot safer than at most other garment factories.
The wages were also better. Employees had acts us to
medical care through their jobs, and because Nell knew how
valuable her own education had been to her success, she
offered night classes and tuition grants to her employees, and
she started a scholarship program for her employees children. Yeah,
(11:13):
one of the things she did that was really unique,
particularly for the time, is like she had a regular
doctor come like I think once a week and just
do checkups. People needed them, and eventually they can bring
their kids for those check ups. The Donaldy's also really
felt like it was important that their employees felt respected
and that they were recognized as vital to the success
of the business. Now, some of this, too is part
(11:34):
of building up sort of the forward facing identity of
the company, because Nell was very, very comfortable giving interviews
and so part of this was also playing up how
great they were to work for. And she once told
a reporter quote, the attitude of our employees towards the
executives in the firm is not that they work under others,
but that they are working with others. Nell's business, which
(11:57):
started with less than one thousand, three d dollars and
two hired seamstresses, turned into a multimillion dollar company during
the nineteen twenties. By nineteen thirty one, they had a
thousand employees. And because they made affordable quality clothing, which
was a necessity instead of luxury goods. They managed to
weather the nine financial crash and the Great Depression that
(12:19):
followed it. This ability of non luxury dry goods companies
to survive times of financial instability also came up in
our Levi Strauss episode that was not long ago this year. Yeah,
but though the Donnell's managed to keep their business in
good shape during those turbulent times, their personal lives were
a little less smooth. And we're going to talk about
(12:39):
that right after we first paused for a sponsor break.
So in early Nell got pregnant, and this was a
problem for two reasons. One, her husband Paul had told
her that if she ever got pignant, he would kill himself.
(13:02):
It is not entirely clear what his motivation for this
statement was. It has been speculated by various historians UH
and people who have studied Nell's story that he likely
suffered from depression, and he reportedly did have some issues
with drinking and infidelity that drove a wedge between the
couple UH. And Two, to be clear, this child was
not his. We are going to come back to the
(13:24):
paternity of Nell's baby in just a moment. But to
deal with this problem, Nell came up with a plan,
so while she was still early enough in the pregnancy
that she was not showing, she traveled allegedly to Europe.
Some versions of this story say that instead she actually
just went to Chicago. It's all because it's all kind
of shrouded in a cloak and dagger move. We don't
(13:45):
really know she was not at home, that she was
not in Kansas City, but she had told Paul that
she wanted to adopt a child, so she came home
to Kansas City with a new baby, David, in the
late fall of nine. By this point, Nell was already famous.
She was well known in Kansas City as a very
successful and very wealthy woman. She had been profiled in
(14:07):
magazines as a business leader and an innovator. Her company
was a three point five million dollar business at this point,
and on the night of December six, nineteen thirty one,
that success made her the target of a kidnapping and
ransom plot. So after work that night, Nell got into
her car with her chauffeur, George Blair, and headed home
(14:27):
for the evening, and as they approached the driveway of
the Donnelly home, another car blocked their way. Three men
got out of that second car. One jumped in the
front seat and quickly tied up Blair, while the other
two got in the back, one on either side of Nell,
and Nell fought against them, but they pushed her to
the floorboard and they held her there. Donnelly and Blair
(14:49):
were taken to a house in Bonner Springs, Kansas that
was roughly twenty five miles to the west of Donnelly's
Kansas City home. Nell was kept on a cot and
Blair was kept and blindfolded. The kidnappers called the home
of James E. Taylor, who was the Donnally's lawyer, that night,
but Mrs Taylor, who took the call, thought it was
(15:09):
just a prank. The person on the other end of
the lines told her that she could find Nell, Donnally's
abandoned car and country club plaza. I always wonder when
I read about this why she was like, Oh, pranksters
versus what a weird call. Maybe we should check it out. Uh.
The kidnappers also sent a ransom note to Paul Donnally
demanding seventy five thousand dollars, and he received that note
(15:33):
the morning after the abduction. This missive is a little
bit awkward in that it appears to have been dictated
to Nell to write, but the voice changes from that
of Nell writing directly to Paul to that of the
kidnappers talking to Nell, and it reads as follows, Dear Paul,
these men say they want seventy five thousand dollars. Use
(15:54):
your own judgment. They kidnapped me and chauffeur Wednesday night.
If you do not pay his direct did seventy five
thousand dollars in cash dollars and twenty dollar bills, dollars
in tens and twenty thousand dollars in fifties if he
and at this point it seems like it's switched and
they're referring to Paul. If he or any does not
(16:15):
do is directed, we shall take him same as we
have taken you, meaning no. If reported to police or
any authorities, we shall blind you, meaning now and kill.
And then they use a racist slur for George Blair.
Paul yourself shall drive the car, meaning our Lincoln at
all times. If this letter is given to any police authorities,
it will be the last of me, and they will
(16:37):
get you the same way they got me. Paul called
James E. Taylor, and this is when the tailor's realized
that the call they had gotten the night before was
not a prank. Taylor called his law partner, James Read.
Just to be clear, there's James Read, there's James Taylor.
Two different James is Read was the Donnalley's next door neighbor.
When he had a long and impressive career. He had
(16:59):
been a county attorney, a counselor for the city, the
mayor of Kansas City, and had served three terms as
a U S Senator. Yeah, James A. Reid could be
his own episode. He is not a person I think
I would have enjoyed very much. Um, We'll talk a
little bit about it here, but he definitely uh had
some some outdated views. James, Reid and Nell were very close.
(17:23):
While Nell and Paul were, as we said, very successful
at running a business together, their marriage had become strained
and distant, and Nell and Reid had become involved romantically.
Nell and Paul's adopted son, David, was in fact Reid's
biological child, and so when Reid got word of this kidnapping,
he immediately asked the judge of the trial that he
(17:44):
was working on at the time if he could have
leave and once he was granted that leave, he immediately
left the courthouse in such a speedy manner that it
set off a flurry of gossip and speculation about what
might be going on. The specific instructions to Paul and
that original note had been that he was to park
the car that was mentioned in the letter in front
of the Mercer Hotel at ten o'clock on December seventeenth.
(18:06):
He was supposed to stay there for fifteen minutes as
a signal that he was willing to go along with
the kidnappers demands. If nobody appeared. He was supposed to
repeat this the next day, and then every day after
that until someone communicated with him. He eventually received another note,
this one signed by Nell, authorizing the withdrawal of the money.
But though Paul Donnelly had done as instructed and had
(18:28):
not contacted police himself, the police had heard the rumors
that started the day Read left the courthouse, and the
newspapers had picked up some rumors and had been covering
the story since then as well, even though they didn't
have a whole lot to go on. It kind of
seems like somebody at the courthouse must have blabbed when
James Reid talked to the judge about needing to to go. Uh.
(18:49):
Someone involved in that discussion must have blabbed to the
press because they were I mean, they didn't magically conjure
that she had been kidnapped. They were printing it based
on somebody's information. Uh. And all of this, this rumor
and gossip that was showing up in the press and
with the police, which they knew could sour this whole
situation made James Reid realize he had to make a
(19:11):
statement to the Kansas City Star to address the situation.
Read's statement made it clear that if Nell was returned,
the kidnappers could have that ransom that they had demanded,
but if anything happens to her, he and Paul Donnelly
would quote spend the rest of our lives running the
culprits to earth and securing for them the extreme penalty
(19:32):
of law. And soon John Lazia, a well known Kansas
City gangster with a lot of influence in the city's politics,
joined the search. Lazia had known Read for some time. Uh.
There are many verses of this story that say that
Reid actually reached out to Lazia and said, you're going
to do this for me because after Lazia told the
(19:53):
police that no one from the criminal underworld would kidnap Nell,
knowing that James Reid was her lawyer, Lazia then sent
Carl Wads of his associates to look for Nell. Donnelly
Like twenty five cars of men went out. Just feels
like a movie about corrupt political figures for sure, and
with good reasons. It was Lazia's men who eventually located
(20:17):
Nell and her driver. And the details here are a
little murky too, but Nell told the police that a
group of men forced their way into the house where
she and Blair were being held. These men took their
captors outside and then told her that they would take
her home. She and George Blair were free and relatively
unharmed after thirty four hours in captivity. The whole retrieval
(20:39):
of them went so smoothly that there were rumors that
spread that this whole thing had just been a publicity stunt.
Read's reputation in all this was also damaged because his
relationship with the city's criminal underworld became public knowledge through
Lazia's involvement in all this. Yeah, it was a big
weird mess where people were like, wait, uh, this happened,
(21:02):
and you seem really interested in this woman's welfare even
though you're just her lawyer. And now you have a
gangster finding her that did so because he's your friend.
What's going on here? Um? Again, it would make a
great movie. Uh. While the kidnappers initially fled and again
we don't really know how that played out. Uh, they
(21:22):
were captured. Paul Shite was the first man apprehended and
brought to trial. James A. Reid served as special prosecutor
in that trial. Shite claimed that he believed the kidnapping
was arranged by a husband who he thought was in
the oil business. Uh, and that when he realized that
he had been duped in this whole plan, that he
had just let the captives go. In a surprise outcome.
(21:44):
The jury completely believed him, and Shite was acquitted. Martin
Depew and Walter Werner had very different outcomes in their
court cases after those two were apprehended. Both were sentenced
to life in prison, and then a third man, Charles
I'm not sure how the last name is pronounced, Charles
Mail or Melee perhaps received a thirty five years sentence
(22:05):
for his part in the kidnapping plot, although he insisted
throughout the entire trial that he had absolutely nothing to
do with it. The only evidence against him was that
Nell identified him. We will talk about Nell's life after
this kidnapping, but first we will take a quick sponsor break.
(22:28):
So while Nell's return after her abduction relatively safe and sound,
might seem like a joyous end to the tumult in
the Donnelly home, it was absolutely not. Just a couple
of months later, Nell divorced Paul in early ninety two,
she bought out half of his business and she became
executive director of the company. And that same year, James A.
(22:49):
Reid's wife died, and so in December of ninety three,
Nell and James Reid were married in a ceremony that
surprised their guests. They had invited friends to Nell's home
for what the attendees thought was just a dinner party,
only to find a wedding happening after the meal ended.
Nell was forty four at the time and Read was
seventy two. For the next several years, Nell Donnally Reid's
(23:12):
life was pretty smooth. She and James seemed happy and
her business continued to thrive, but the same could not
be said for Paul don Lane. Sadly, he also remarried
to a woman who was much younger than he was,
named Virginia George. They married in February of nineteen thirty three,
but then just a year and a half later, he
died by suicide. That was in September of nineteen thirty four.
(23:34):
He had spent most of his fortune by that point.
In nineteen thirty seven, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union
made efforts to get the workers at Donnelly Garment Manufacturing
to unionize, But, unlike at many other companies in Kansas City,
which had become a huge clothing manufacturing hub at this point,
a lot of Nell's employees did not see the need
(23:55):
for reunion. They felt that their working conditions were safe
and their benefits were excellent, far better than any other
factory offered. A lot of the staff didn't feel like
a union would be of much benefit to them, but
this was definitely not a universally held opinion. On the
factory floor, there were employees who talked to the union
about things like tedium and exhaustion in their sections. These
(24:17):
sections were small groups of employees who were set up
to create garments, with each woman working on one specific
aspect of the garment and then turning out the garments
as a team, so each person had one job, but
they were still working together to create each stress. This
handful of women who joined the union faced layoffs and
pressure and harassment from within their jobs. The I l
(24:41):
g WU, which had been successful in unionizing most of
Kansas City's other factories, took out ads in the local
papers saying that Nell and her company were unwilling to
meet the union standards and that that was what was
really causing all of this um refusal to become a
part of the union. But between less than ens who's
enthusiastic support for the union among a lot of employees,
(25:03):
and the few who actually did favor a union facing
retribution for it, this whole idea just did not gain
much traction. To combat the I l g WU, the
Donally factory formed its own union, which was the Donal
League Garment Workers Union, in May of nineteen thirty seven.
Although that group was formed under the auspices of management
(25:23):
to try to shut down the other union's efforts, it
wasn't something that the employees decided on their own to
form the Donnally Union president, who was Rose Todd, who
was a supervisor at the company, started giving statements to
the press that they could handle their own advocacy and
they didn't need outsiders trying to manage it for them.
This union issue dragged on and on. The i l
(25:46):
g WU continued to try to force unionization under their
umbrella on the Donnally factory and also tried to dissuade
department stores from carrying the Nelly don brand UH. They
even wrote up little UH notes that that the department
stores could use to explain the situation in this case
eventually was played out in court. It went to federal court.
(26:07):
A judge forbade the International Lady's Garment Workers Union from
trying to get involved in the Donnely plant any further,
but then that decision was later overturned the Donnely factory
and this outside union continued to lock horns for years,
and as the issue continued to be a real thorn
in her side, Nell started to tell people that there
was no way an entrepreneur could start a business and
(26:29):
be successful because of all these complications that unions brought
about this. Well, it was one of the reasons that
the conditions that the factory were so so good. She like,
she wanted things to be so good that people wouldn't
want a union. Yeah. She felt like, I feel like
I'm doing everything right. Why are people still coming after me? Yeah.
So then to compound all these matters, While her husband,
(26:51):
James Reid, wasn't involved in the running of the factory,
he did have a lot of political clout. He served
in a legal capacity for his wife's company, and he
was pretty openly racist and anti Semitic, including when it
came to these labor matters and labor organizers. Yes, so,
the I L g W You president, David Dubinski was
(27:12):
a Russian born Jew, and Read referred to him as
a foreign radical and far worse. When Read appeared in
court proceedings to discuss the matter, Read made the case
that unions were dangerous to women. They were run by
rapists and violent people. He talked about them being, you know,
like the scum that was scraped from the double's cauldron. Ultimately,
though the injunction against the I L g W You
(27:34):
was lifted, the Donnelly Company had created an atmosphere like
we said, of of both fear that the these foreign
devils were going to come and try to unionize them
and make something dangerous, and also fear that anyone that
actually embraced the union would get in trouble or lose
their job. That they really did kind of make this
(27:55):
bubble that prevented the union from ever penetrating. Yeah, it
was like they were simultaneously doing things to discourage unionizing
and also really inspiring a lot a lot of loyalty
among their employees. It was complicated. World War two also
brought a lot of changes to the Nelly Don brand
as they continued to expand their lines who appeal to
(28:17):
women who had jobs outside the home. So what had
started as a business for making stylish dresses and aprons
for homemakers had by the late nineteen forties expanded to
offer business attire and accessories. The factory was turning out
one point five million dresses a year, making it the
largest facility of its kind in the world, And throughout
(28:38):
all of this, journalists and consumers marveled at how they
managed to keep quality high and prices reasonable. Yeah, they
talked about a lot of details that um would be
associated with much much higher end garments, like they talked
about the depth of the hems, which if you know,
you know, if you're looking at a dress from the
inside and the hem is what is called deep. It
means there is a lot of the outside fabric folded
(28:59):
up under to create that him And in some places
they would cut those shorter so that you would save
that couple inches of fabric, which seems like not much,
but then over one point five million garments as up
to a lot of fabric, and it's like a cost
cutting measure. But Nelly Don was not taking those shortcuts.
And the company was also really unique in that it
hired women for positions at all levels. Nell claimed that
(29:21):
she hired blindly, paying no mind to whether the applicant
was a man or a woman, and focusing simply on
whether they were the right fit and could do the job.
In one magazine interviewed, Nell told a reporter quote, I've
heard some women say they would rather talk with men,
have business dealings with men. I don't feel that way
about it. I have no preference or prejudice in the matter.
(29:43):
I like to talk business with a competent person, whether
that person is a man or a woman. When she
saw that somebody was a hard worker and could manage
their job really well, she promoted them, and that way
a lot of women who started in low level positions
that the company rose up through the ranks to become executives.
Nine out of ten employees that the Donnely Factory were women,
and unlike in a lot of factories where like the
(30:05):
line level workers would be women and the executives would
be men, these women were spread all through all levels
of the company. In nineteen forty four, as the company
was going through its growth into new markets, including all
this business, where Nell's husband, James Reid, died of pneumonia.
She did not ever marry again. In nineteen fifty two,
she donated seven thirty one acres of land the Missouri
(30:28):
Department of Conservation in honor of James, who she had
spent many happy hours with out in nature, hunting, fishing,
and just enjoying each other's company. That was something they
both really loved together. The James A. Reid Memorial Wildlife
Area remains intact today. In nineteen fifty six, Nell sold
off for company shares and retired. She had been in
the garment industry for forty years and the Donnally Garment
(30:51):
Company became Nellie don Inc. And it became a publicly
traded company two years after Nell left. But without her
ability to deal directly with tech style manufacturers to get
the best deals or to streamline production in ways that
made the factory at its most efficient, the business really struggled.
Nellie down Ink went into bankruptcy and closed permanently in
nineteen seventy eight. But from her retirement onward, Nell donnellly
(31:15):
Reid remained very, very active in the Kansas City community.
She continued to promote education and she was a board
member at Lindenwood College, where she was in alum as
well as at the Kansas City Art Institute, and she
also became a member of the city Board of Education.
She really really tried to promote a lot of education
reform and she was on the board of trustees at
(31:35):
the Midwest Research Institute. She died at home on September eight,
nineteen one. She was a hundred and two years old. Yeah,
she looked a really long life. Uh. In two thousand six,
Nell's great nephew, Terrance O'Malley, made a documentary about her
and her business titled Nelly Down a Stitch in Time,
and then more than a decade later in twenty seventeen.
He started it several years before that, but I think
(31:57):
seventeen was the first stage reading he had developed her
story into a musical. Like we said at the top,
uh Nell was complicated. Her life was not like all sunshine,
rainbow perfection. But one of the things that really struck
me in researching her story was her insistence that when
the workday ended, it was over something that grows more
and more difficult as we all tend to check email
(32:19):
late into the night and sometimes on vacation. Uh And
she also wanted people to continue to learn and grow,
And so I wanted to finish with a quote of
hers that I really liked. She gave it an interview
where she said, you can't be a well balanced person
if you insist on devoting all your attention to business,
even those details which can be managed by others, leaving
no free time for your development as a human being.
(32:43):
Ray That is Nell Donnelly Reid. Like we said, she's
still complicated. Do you also have some listener mail? I
do have some listener mail. This is another one about
our USO and Bob Hope episode. Uh. This is from
our listener Thomasina, who writes High Holly and Tracy live
in Juneo, Alaska, and I was thrilled to hear my
hometown of Cordova, Alaska name checked in your podcast about
(33:05):
Bob Hope in the us O Show. It reminded me
of my family story about my uncle encountering Bob Hope
while he was visiting before that hair raising flight that
you mentioned. When Bob Hope came to visit the town
of Cordova, which then had a population of less than
two thousand people, not including military folks station there at
the time. To say it was a really big deal
is a massive understatement. It was like a minor deity
(33:28):
was in town. A massive entourage followed him down the
main street, on which still stands the apartment building in
which my father's family then lived, my father having not
been born yet. When Bob Hope passed by the front
stoop of the building, he encountered my uncle, who was
a small child at the time. My dad's family is
of Alaska Native and Caucasian heritage, but my uncle did
not really lean toward the features of my allotique Norwegian grandpa,
(33:50):
or my can get Danish grandma. I'm sorry if I
said those words incorrectly. Instead, my father's oldest brother came
out with a blend of both of his parents attributes,
resulting in auburn hair, a ski slope, nos, and freckles.
You can see where this is going. Bob Hope saw
this little kid who looked a lot like him and
stopped to chat with him, thinking you would make for
a cute photo. Ops, sadly none of us has a
(34:11):
copy of this picture if it survived, and said, hey, son,
how old are you for said my uncle, and what's
your name? My uncle's name was George Robert Jr. But
he went by You guessed it, Bob and Bob Hope,
after learning this, paused for a beat, and then he
supposedly turned to his compatriots and equipped, Now that I
think about it, I did come through here about four
years ago. My uncle passed away back in the early
(34:34):
two thousand's, and that was one of my grandmother's favorite
stories that she liked to share about him until she
herself passed last year. Thank you for reminding me of it,
and thanks for all the hours of crunching spreadsheets at
work that your lovely show has been more bearable. That
is the cutest family story and it makes me laugh
and laugh, So thank you so much for sharing that, Thomasina.
If you would like to write to us, you can
(34:55):
do so at History podcast at how stuffworks dot com.
We are also Missed in History across the spectrum of
so social media, and you can find us at missed
in history dot com, where every episode of the show
is archived and there are show notes for any of
the episodes Tracy and I have worked on. And you
can also subscribe to stuff you Missed in History class
on Apple podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, or anywhere
(35:15):
you get your podcasts. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
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