September 13, 2024 • 39 mins
Paul Starrett has just won a major building contract. If everything goes according to plan, this will be the tallest building in the world. But will everything go according to plan?
This prestigious new project will have Starrett's biggest workforce yet. Everyone will need to pull together, but labour relations in the United States have been rough. There have been tens of thousands of strikes in recent years, many ending in shootings and arbitrary mass arrests.
Something else is bothering Starrett too: enormous steel-framed buildings normally take three or four years to complete. The deadline on this one? Just thirteen months.
This is the second episode in a four-part series about how to succeed without being a jerk. It's based on David Bodanis' excellent book The Art of Fairness: The Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean.
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. One late afternoon in June nineteen twenty eight, the
sixty two year old man from Kansas, Paul Starrett, was
leaving an elegant private office high up in Manhattan's built
Moore Hotel. He ran a construction company with his brothers
(00:37):
and had just pitched for their largest contract yet. It
was a building on a site just a few blocks
away that would make or break their company's fortunes. Starrett
was a handsome man, always dressed in the latest trim suits,
but he didn't smile much. He had suffered from periods
(00:58):
of depression for years, and on this day was especially acute.
That wasn't because he had lost out on the contract.
It was because he had a sinking feeling he was
going to win it. Starrett was embarrassed by his depression,
this sadness that came over him in overwhelming waves. What
(01:22):
he loved was, as he put it, the practical machinery
of architecture, turning drawings and plans into reality. As a
young man in Chicago, he'd use his lunch breaks to
watch the world's first skyscrapers going up. In the years
since then, he and his brothers had created their own
(01:43):
company building ever larger hotels and office buildings. This, however,
would surpass them all. If everything went according to plan,
it would be the tallest building on the fast changing
Manhattan skyline, and that meant it would be the tallest
building in the world, with all the associated money and prestige.
(02:09):
But would everything go according to plan, That could hardly
be guaranteed. Starrett's new project would have a bigger workforce
than any he and his brothers had ever run. He
couldn't know them all, and if the workers were obstreperous
or the four men weren't committed, he'd be sunk. It
(02:32):
wasn't just the complexities of the workforce that were bothering him.
There was something else too. Enormous steel framed buildings generally
took three or four years to complete, and they always
had to be able to handle last minute changes. The
deadline on this one just thirteen months. I'm Tim Harford,
(02:59):
and you're listening to cautionary tales. Paul Starrett was worried
(03:29):
by the same thing that would worry any construction manager.
In the nineteen twenties, across the United States, labor relations
were rough. There had been tens of thousands of strikes
in the decades when he was establishing his business in
oil construction, steel coal. Some ended peacefully, but many did not.
(03:53):
Owners hired strike breakers and often armed thugs. There were
shootings and arbitrary mass arrests in coal mines in Virginia,
in Rockefeller's oil fields in Pennsylvania and further west. Troops
and those are armed thugs would use their superior weaponry
to fire into crowds tame. Governors and judges would support them.
(04:17):
Workers where possible, fought back. The underlying issue was one
of fairness. Who got to determine what fairness is and how,
if at all, it could be used to help organizations operate.
This episode is the second in our four part series
on that topic, following my friend David Badana's his excellent
(04:41):
book The Art of Fairness, The Power of Decency in
a World Turned Mean. The most important labour struggle Paul
Starrett had experienced, the one that seemed to loom largest
in memory, had come when he was a young man,
still just in his twenties. This was the famous Pullman
(05:04):
Strike of eighteen ninety four. Up until that year, George S.
Pullman was revered in high circles across America for building
one of the nation's largest corporations. The Pullman Company dominated
the market for luxury train compartments in America and was
(05:24):
as powerful as Apple or Google today. It made Pullman
one of the wealthiest men in the United States, mansions
in Chicago and elsewhere, a regular guest at the White House.
He'd also created an entire city for his employees on
four thousand acres of land a few miles south of Chicago.
(05:47):
His publicists said he'd done this out of benevolence, but
he instructed his accountants to squeeze money from the residents.
They couldn't buy their homes, only rent, and Pullman was
the only landlord in town. Food could only be bought
from the company stores, water and gas from the company
(06:10):
pipes at a hefty markup. It was a complete monopoly,
which he abused for financial gain as much as possible.
The city had street after street of small apartments designed
for social control. Children had to go to the company schools,
and when Pullman didn't like the theology of the main
(06:32):
local church, he closed it down. No newspapers were allowed,
or public speeches or town meetings of any sort. Company
representatives could enter any of these homes Pullman rented at
any time to inspect whatever they saw fit with due modesty.
(06:54):
He named this utopia Pullman, Illinois. His own family would
never spend time in such a place. His twin boys,
age nineteen, showed no signs of any greater social consideration
than their father. They were known for mockingly riding around
Chicago in cabs filled with champagne bottles. At one point,
(07:19):
one of them nearly killed a newsborer hurtling along fast
when drunk. Paul Starrett was in his twenties then and
living in Chicago, just a few miles up from Pullman, Illinois.
He knew about Pullman's twin sons. Everyone did. One person
who did live in Pullman City was a young seamstress
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named Jenny Curtis. Curtis had a friendly look and round face,
shortish hair, which she tied back in a bun. With
her low income, she could only afford simple, dark cotton blouses,
but she liked ones with neat pin tuck folds running
down the front. Jenny Curtis would play an important part
(08:03):
in the strike that Starret would still ponder decades later,
as he tried to reshape the Manhattan Skyline. She was
the same age as Pullman's boys, just nineteen, but she
had been working full time since fourteen, trying to pay
off debts her father had incurred in his years working
(08:23):
for Pullman when forced to buy everything at extortionate rates
in Pullman's stores. In eighteen ninety three, an economic panic
began to spread across the country. There were runs on
the banks and industrial orders slowed. Since the railways were
losing traffic, they began to cut down their orders, and
(08:46):
now Pullman's own sales began to suffer. George Pullman realized
he had to make some savings instead of cutting profits. However,
he announced he was cutting wages by a third, and
he was also going to keep rents and food prices
the same. This meant his income stayed as high as ever,
(09:10):
and it was his workers who took the hit. He
didn't need their good will because he controlled everything they did.
For those workers. This finally was a step too far.
Her delegation got up the nerve to meet mister Pullman himself.
Jenny Curtis was with them. She was getting a reputation
(09:31):
as a great activist holding impromptu secret meetings among the
girls in the stitching workshops. No need for secrecy now,
Pullman said he was open to listening, that anyone who
spoke up would be safe. Curtis used that opportunity. Later,
she recalled what she'd told mister Pullman. We worked as
(09:52):
hard as we possibly could, but the most experienced of
us could only make eighty cents a day. Many a time,
I've drawn nine or ten dollars for two weeks work,
paid seven dollars for board, and given the company the
remaining two or three on the rent. Wherever I didn't,
I was insulted and almost put out by the clerk. That,
(10:13):
she explained is what was so unjust. He was giving
them less, but still paying full dividends to shareholders. Pullman
listened quietly and again promised the group they'd be safe. Then,
immediately after they had left, he had a quiet word
(10:34):
with his foreman. The three most senior workers, along with
miss Curtis, were to be fired the next day. With
that done, he got on the train to New York,
confidence that everything would return to normal soon, but nothing
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went as he assumed. Instead of giving in the rest
of his factory hands went on strike. Jenny Curtis, still
just nineteen, became their leader. Pullman still wasn't too worried.
He was rich and his workers were poor. He could
simply wait and starve them out. Curtis and the others
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knew they had to get the strike to spread, for
other workers across the country to back them. She told
the story to journalists and visiting politicians, and then a
few weeks later had her biggest opportunity. The American Railway
Union was having its convention and she was invited to speak.
(11:40):
Get them on her side and the pullman workers would
have a chance. But how to pull this off? She
was a teenager, She'd had little schooling, she was physically slight,
and her voice wasn't loud at all. Soon, though, it
was time to get up on the wooden platform. A
(12:00):
crowd of hundreds was before her, almost all men, almost
all older. She knew they didn't know much about her
and just saw an unexpected, diminutive figure on their stage.
This would be daunting even for an experienced speaker. Yet
everything depended on this moment, on getting the nationwide Railway
(12:24):
Union on her side. There was only one thing to do.
Cautionary tales will return alone on stage in front of
hundreds of men, Young Jenny Curtis had a powerful weapon,
(12:46):
the truth. She started by describing how Pullman ran the factories.
She'd worked him since she was fourteen. Cotton thread handles
best when moist, so windows in their workrooms were nailed
shut to raise the humidity. In the one hundred degree
fahrenheit's Chicago summers, it was awful when there were a
(13:08):
lot of orders. Pullman pumped in extra scheme. Girl workers
had been receiving seventeen cents an hour in the sewing units,
now it was down to eleven cents. There was a
constant danger from the massive industrial sewing machines used for
the heavy carpets and drapes, and the Pullman cars. Supervisors
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had complete control over how they spoke to the young girls,
or threatened them or punished them. The working day was
eleven hours. She ended, Pullman owns the houses, the schoolhouse,
and the churches of God in the town. He gave
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his wance humble name. This Mary war goes on and
it will go on forever unless you stop it, end it,
crush it. The convention delegates voted to back Jenny Curtis's
Pullman workers almost immediately after her speech. All rail traffic
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out of Chicago stopped a few days more, and over
one hundred thousand rail workers nationwide had stopped work as well.
It was the largest strike America had seen in this era,
before lorries and airplanes. It almost closed the country down.
(14:40):
Paul Starrett had a junior role in an architect's office then,
watching the catastrophic impact of harsh labor practices on the
world around him. Years later, as he pondered his skyscraper,
he wouldn't forget George Pullman was watching two monitoring everything
(15:00):
from his New York office. He didn't have popular opinion
on his side, nor the local government, but he he
had friends in high places, specifically the Supreme Court and
the Justice Department. Under Pullman's guidance, the Attorney General delivered
(15:21):
injunctions that declared the strikes illegal. Seven thousand troops were
sent to Chicago, along with three thousand private enforces from
the rail companies. Several dozen workers were shot dead there
and at the other supporting strikes. No one could resist that,
(15:42):
and the strike quickly ended. Everyone had to go back
to work with the conditions he had decided on before
their salaries would stay low, on their rents would be
kept high. George Pullman had won, but the city of Pullman, Illinois,
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full of sullen, aggrieved workers, was never quite the same
All that had happened when Paul Starrett was a young
man in Chicago. His father had been a farmer and carpenter.
When young Paul had worked on a ranch and as
a stock boy in a hardware store. His empathy was
(16:24):
with Jenny Curtis, not Pullman. He founded a construction company
with his brothers, always keeping in mind the lesson of
the strikes. Human beings shouldn't be treated as slaves. Others
had drawn a different conclusion. Business leaders in steel and
coal and other fields, even now in nineteen twenty eight,
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had concluded from that huge strike that they had to
be even harder than Pullman, stifling unions, keeping workers too
humiliated or poorly paid to rise up. And with the
task at hand building a big skyscraper, how else could
the Starret brothers meet their tight deadline. There were big
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loans to be paid off, penalty clauses for failure. It
was a lot of pressure. Starrett wrote that he felt
lost and unhappy, detached from the activities that satisfy me,
and yet none of the Starrett brothers wanted to go
about the challenge the pullman way. Paul took the lead.
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He was gruff and short tempered on the outside, but
there was more to him than that. Paul Starrett and
his brothers spent a lot of time working out how
to go forward, and what they finally resolved to do
was what's called providing efficiency wages. The idea is that
if you pay more and treat your workers better, then
(17:49):
you'll get better, more motivated staff. And if they were
going to get everything done in thirteen months, their need
motivated staff. Other construction sites in New York tended to
treat their workers awfully. Lots of high rise buildings were
being constructed and workers were one hundred feet up from
the ground for hours on end. Yet there were almost
(18:13):
no safety laws, and sudden gusting winds were fatal. Workers
were blown off or skidded on slippery wet beams in
the rain. There were dozens hundreds of deaths, yet if
workers refused to go up, they were fired. Wages throughout
were low, and if anyone wanted a hot meal, they'd
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have to climb all the way down, find a diner,
then climb all the way up again. Starrett was going
to be different. He knew his wealth now gave him
power over others, but he also knew it wasn't fair
to treat them badly. His doctors had never been able
to cure his depression, but his decency was one thing
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he could hold onto. So long as a project like
this one was underway, it would help keep his inner
darkness from getting worse. He and his brothers set out
their new approach. From the beginning. There'd be at least
one restaurant inside the structure as it was getting started,
with schnitzels and tangy sauerkraut and fresh French fries and
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other good things. There were also smaller subsidized food stands
every few floors higher up sandwiches and hot coffee, and
this being the prohibition era, a pretty gruesome liquid called
near beer. For gaps in the floor where lifts or
hoists were being built. Starret had dedicated safety teams to
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keep barriers up to date, and most importantly, no one
ever would have to go out when the wind was
too high. Instead, they'd get the day off on full
pay and full pay was twice what it was at
other sites. Everyone would see that the Starrets kept their word,
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But there was one big problem. Efficiency wages sound so sensible,
so kind. Progressive business schools talk about them all the time,
but it's worth remembering what the physicist Enrico Fermi said
when he was told there were likely to be hundreds
of complex civilizations existing across our galaxy. Well where is everybody?
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He asked? The same question applies to efficiency wages. If
there were such a good idea in theory, why didn't
everyone pay efficiency wages to their staff? After all, Pullman
did the opposite, and he was one of the richest
men in America. Sheer force can work, at least for
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a while. If efficiency wages and kindness to all were
the only things Starret knew, it wouldn't have worked. He
had enough experience to recognize that along with the carrot
the efficiency wages, Starret also needed a stick. Enter John Bowser,
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a world weary engineer originally from Canada. Bowser had left
home when he was young, traveled and worked around the world.
Had been on construction sites in Japan and across the
United States. He knew every scam imaginable, and while he
could be patient and tactful, he also had, as one
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historian delicately put it, a forceful personality. That's the mix
you need to make generosity work on a complex new project.
It's always tempting for a foreman to say they have
one hundred people working away, while in fact they've only
brought in ninety. They get to pocket the extra salary.
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To thwart such scams, Bowser high they had staff to
physically visit each man on the site twice in the
morning and twice in the afternoon. And since many of
the workers were on beams dangling high above the ground,
that was not an easy job. To keep inventory from
walking away, Bowser created another department of accountants who'd also
(22:29):
clamber through the building, keeping track of all the equipment
that was scooting around the site on monorails, trolley cars,
and steam engines. With all these inspections, cheating seemed unlikely
to succeed. The workers realized this, but they also saw
that they were still being treated respectfully, with nourishing food,
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safety aids and high pay. With Bowser's help, Starrett had
created a site where it didn't pay to cheat, and importantly,
where it did pay to put in an honest day's work.
Thus reciprocity, the idea at the heart of paying efficiency wages,
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began to flourish. Everyone was with Starret, not against him.
The first positive result was simple efficiency. When four men
didn't fudge their numbers, you had more workers on site.
And when inventry didn't get pilfered and stayed on site,
no one had to wait around for the tools and
materials they needed. Even better was the creativity. If you
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hate your boss, you're going to be sullen and resentful,
but if you know, you're trusted and treated with respect.
On most other sites, bricks were stacked on wheelbarrows, then
pushed along robbling wooden gang plants to where they were needed.
Workers on Starret site came up with a creative solution.
(23:55):
They spontaneously suggested building a miniature railway line into the
site instead, and then smaller railway lines on the actual
floors under construction. Because thousands of bricks arrived in a
single AI eight hour shift, this miniature railway sped construction
along considerably. Building sites also tended to have high turnover rates,
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and as a result, they incurred hefty retraining costs too,
But on Starret site, the workers didn't want to walk out,
not with these wages and with the respect they felt
from their employers. At its peak, the Starret Brothers Building
was rising up at four and a half floors. Each week,
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five hundred trucks were arriving with materials at the site
each day. Some of the steel beams that arrived were
still warm, having been fabricated just days before. One innovation
was especially noticeable from Afar. In most big construction projects,
when large stones were placed on the outside for an
(25:04):
attractive surface, expert craftsmen had to spend a long time
moving the edges. Starrett's teams came up with a new idea.
Why not just bolt thin metal panels over the joins.
Then you could use stones still rough from the quarries.
The result was an attractive exterior of shining stainless steel
(25:28):
strips standing out from the gray limestone around them. But
while the project seemed to be going well, Starrett was
gazing watchfully across town to forty second Street, where a
rival skyscraper was rising over the Manhattan skyline. Starrett, remember
(25:48):
was aiming to build Manhattan's tallest skyscraper with all the
prestige and money that meant for his clients. As far
as he knew, his rival's building was going to be
smaller than his. Nothing to worry about there, or was there.
The competing skyscraper on forty Seconds was nearly complete while
(26:11):
Starret's was still underway. He had assumed he'd surpass it,
just like all the others when he was finally finished.
But then something happened that meant this competitor's building was
going to be taller. All Starrett's work compared to that
would seem a failure. Cautionary tales would return. Paul Starrett
(26:53):
had known a lot about this competitor, the automobile magnet
Walter P. Chrysler, who was funding a building in his name.
Mister Chrysler was a good Kansas boy, like Paul Starrett.
After making his fortune in Detroit, he was not used
to coming second. When he found out that Starrett's building,
(27:14):
which had started construction after his, was going to be taller,
he couldn't bear it, and so he concocted a scheme
with his architects and construction chiefs. While everyone on the
outside thought the Chrysler building was nearly done quietly secretly
(27:35):
inside the empty top floors of their own building, where
no one could see it. Chrysler's team had been constructing
an enormous one one hundred and eighty five foot tall
glass and metal structure. On one tremendous day, to the
city's astonishment, they had it hoisted up through the top
(27:58):
of the building to perch on top, making it taller
than anything Starret had planned. That's when Starrett, John Bowser,
and the rest of their team realized that their rival
had stolen a march on them. Walter Chrysler relished his victory.
He prepared ad campaigns which showed his majestic Chrysler building
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at the end of a long chain of world dominant buildings,
at the start where the Pyramids of Egypt, then came
Europe's great medieval cathedrals, then Paris's Eiffel Tower, and finally,
tallest to them all, his great Chrysler Building in Manhattan.
Starrett's work in progress didn't even figure. The world press
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lapped the Chrysler building up, and the fact that Starret's
enlightened management methods had made the project fast and efficient
didn't seem to count for much. Starrett and his financiers
didn't want to accept defeat. But what to do. You
can't really start redesigning a giant skyscraper once everything is underway,
(29:13):
The steel had already been ordered, the detailed construction schedule
laid out. Changing one part of the building would mean
changing a multitude of other connected parts, from the architect's
plans and steel fabricators to truck deliveries and the schedules
of thousands of workers. But they also couldn't really settle
(29:35):
for being second. Winning in terms of speed meant nothing
if they didn't also win in height. If they tried
some little trick, the Chrysler building might just add a
bigger spire. What Starret needed was a modification to their
plans that was not only achievable, but was also so
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huge and so impressive that it would be untouchable. The
records don't show who first came up with the answer.
It probably emerged when all the top staff were convened
in one of their frantic planning meetings, but it was
an idea of genius. A mooring mast. In the nineteen twenties,
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aviation technology wasn't just propeller driven aeroplanes. It was also
enormous lighter than air dridgibles zeppelins. These beer moths were
hundreds of feet long, with elegant gondolas suspended beneath, where
passengers could travel in the greatest of comfort. At the time,
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the zeppelins that arrived in New York had to dock
out in Lakehurst, New Jersey, seventy five miles from the city.
But what if they could be tethered to a majestic
structure right in the center of Manhattan. It would be
a boon for mankind and very nicely stick it to
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Chrysler too. Best of all, the architects could design it
to be big enough that there was no way any
future stunt by Chrysler could outdo them. They settled on
two hundred feet. It was here that Starret and his
team reaped the benefits of his workforce's high morale. There
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was much to do. Although construction had only just started
on the building and the foundations were still being prepared,
all the design and orders and work schedules had been
set up. This meant that from the moment of Christless surprise,
a very great deal had to change. Even while work
continued on getting the site properly cleared and the equipment
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for the lower floors in place. For the new mast
to be fitted, the top of the building needed to
be altered. New structural steel had to be ordered, and
the mast itself, complete with internal walkways, had to be designed,
and the parts ordered, delivered and assembled. All of this
would start at one thousand feet in the air and
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rise ever higher. Imagine if George Pullman had tried such
an ambitious swerve in strategy after his oppressive tactics and
murderous strike breaking, his company had lost nearly half a
year of output. Skilled workers had quit, those who remained
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were sulking at best, mutinous at worst, especially as their
working conditions deteriorated. Imagine if Pullman showed up at work
and addressed his workforce asking for a big, creative, collaborative
push together, they would have laughed him out of the
factory or worse. After the strike and for the rest
(32:55):
of his life, whenever George Pullman ventured out in Chicago,
he had to be guarded by detectives armed with shotguns.
When he died, his family were so afraid that former
employees might desecrate his grave that his coffin was sealed
into a triple reinforced block of steel and concrete. George
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Pullman had made a lot of enemies, No such problems
for Paul Starrett. His workers were right behind him. He
had been fair to them. There'd be fair to him.
Not that Starrett was an angel. There was a slight
bending of the truth involved in that airship mast. It
was obviously impractical, more ornaments than utility. If a mighty
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airship filled with champagne and cocktail parties and piano music
had actually tried to dock more than a thousand feet
above the streets of Manhattan, there would be a few problems.
First of all, the passengers would be a little less
welcome than they might have imagined. Airships adjusted their height
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by letting out water, large volumes of it. Several hundred
gallons would have to be splashed onto the Manhattan crowds
watching them from below to get the height exactly right.
Attaching the mooring ropes would also be difficult because of
the winds at that height, all boosted by the skyscraper
(34:26):
canyons across Manhattan. Then, if the bucking airship did get
in position, the passengers, once they got off, wouldn't find
a convenient lift waiting for them. The mast was too
narrow for that. Instead, they'd had to climb down a
ladder to get to the main floors of the building,
where they could then take an elevator. It was in
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fact never used for passenger airship docking. At one point
a government contact arranged for a smaller airship carrying post
to offload a few leather packages of letters that way,
but aside from a brief later visit by King Kong,
(35:11):
that was it. New Yorkers didn't care. The building site's
ethos meant everything got done, and within the thirteen month target,
the journey from the luxurious offices in the Biltmore Hotel
to the roar and welding and bolting on the building
site was over. That unprecedented speed was just what their
(35:33):
funders had wanted to get rents coming in so that
the enormous loans for construction could be paid off quickly.
This was something Pullman's resentful workers would never have pushed
to succeed at. The good wages and conditions mixed with
sensible auditing, had led to energetic work teams, far less cheating,
(35:55):
greater innovation, and the ability to adapt fast when mister
Chrysler's efforts to outscale were sprung on them even when
they were underway. The result made star At famous because
of his skill, his benevolence, and his hard nosed Canadian
(36:15):
construction superintendent. When Starret declared his vast skyscraper complete, it
was indeed the tallest building in the world, and it
had a name to match, the Empire State Building. Starret
still didn't smile much and always looked pretty grumpy when
(36:38):
he snapped out his decisions. But that didn't matter. You
don't have to love someone to respect them. You don't
even have to like them. If someone's fair and you
realize they're competent, that's enough. That's how to make efficiency
wages work. Be fair, be generous, but audit. As I mentioned,
(37:10):
this episode is based on my friend David Badonnas's book
The Art of Fairness. That's where I learned about Paul's
Tarrett and the Empire State story. As David himself put.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
It, the ancient sage Hillel had a nice insight about
all this. He was writing two thousand years ago. But
he raised in essence were two linked questions. If I'm
not for myself? Who is for me? But if I'm
only for myself, what am I? The answer is that
neither extreme will do. You will have to stand up
(37:43):
for yourself. Otherwise in the real world you'll never get far.
But if that's the only thing you do, if you're
only for yourself, what kind of person are you? Staret
Empire State Building shows what the middle path can achieve.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
You need the smarts to guard against cheats, but when
you offer generosity, creative gratitude can come pouring back. Cautionary
(38:29):
Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
This mini series is based on David Bardanas's book The
Art of Fairness, The Power of Decency in a World
Turned Mean, and it was written with David Bandanas himself.
For a full list of our sources, see the show
notes at Timharford dot com. The show is produced by
(38:51):
Alice Fines, with Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original
music for the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited
the script. Cautionary Tales features the voice talents of Ben Crowe,
Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Gemma Saunders, and Rufus Wright. The
show Wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
(39:13):
Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohen, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan,
Kira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production
of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at ward Or Studios in
London by Tom Gary. If you like the show, please
remember to share, rate and review. It doesn't really make
(39:34):
a difference to us and if you want to hear
the show ad free, sign up to Pushkin Plus on
the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm,
slash plus
Pushkin. One late afternoon in June nineteen twenty eight, the
sixty two year old man from Kansas, Paul Starrett, was
leaving an elegant private office high up in Manhattan's built
Moore Hotel. He ran a construction company with his brothers
(00:37):
and had just pitched for their largest contract yet. It
was a building on a site just a few blocks
away that would make or break their company's fortunes. Starrett
was a handsome man, always dressed in the latest trim suits,
but he didn't smile much. He had suffered from periods
(00:58):
of depression for years, and on this day was especially acute.
That wasn't because he had lost out on the contract.
It was because he had a sinking feeling he was
going to win it. Starrett was embarrassed by his depression,
this sadness that came over him in overwhelming waves. What
(01:22):
he loved was, as he put it, the practical machinery
of architecture, turning drawings and plans into reality. As a
young man in Chicago, he'd use his lunch breaks to
watch the world's first skyscrapers going up. In the years
since then, he and his brothers had created their own
(01:43):
company building ever larger hotels and office buildings. This, however,
would surpass them all. If everything went according to plan,
it would be the tallest building on the fast changing
Manhattan skyline, and that meant it would be the tallest
building in the world, with all the associated money and prestige.
(02:09):
But would everything go according to plan, That could hardly
be guaranteed. Starrett's new project would have a bigger workforce
than any he and his brothers had ever run. He
couldn't know them all, and if the workers were obstreperous
or the four men weren't committed, he'd be sunk. It
(02:32):
wasn't just the complexities of the workforce that were bothering him.
There was something else too. Enormous steel framed buildings generally
took three or four years to complete, and they always
had to be able to handle last minute changes. The
deadline on this one just thirteen months. I'm Tim Harford,
(02:59):
and you're listening to cautionary tales. Paul Starrett was worried
(03:29):
by the same thing that would worry any construction manager.
In the nineteen twenties, across the United States, labor relations
were rough. There had been tens of thousands of strikes
in the decades when he was establishing his business in
oil construction, steel coal. Some ended peacefully, but many did not.
(03:53):
Owners hired strike breakers and often armed thugs. There were
shootings and arbitrary mass arrests in coal mines in Virginia,
in Rockefeller's oil fields in Pennsylvania and further west. Troops
and those are armed thugs would use their superior weaponry
to fire into crowds tame. Governors and judges would support them.
(04:17):
Workers where possible, fought back. The underlying issue was one
of fairness. Who got to determine what fairness is and how,
if at all, it could be used to help organizations operate.
This episode is the second in our four part series
on that topic, following my friend David Badana's his excellent
(04:41):
book The Art of Fairness, The Power of Decency in
a World Turned Mean. The most important labour struggle Paul
Starrett had experienced, the one that seemed to loom largest
in memory, had come when he was a young man,
still just in his twenties. This was the famous Pullman
(05:04):
Strike of eighteen ninety four. Up until that year, George S.
Pullman was revered in high circles across America for building
one of the nation's largest corporations. The Pullman Company dominated
the market for luxury train compartments in America and was
(05:24):
as powerful as Apple or Google today. It made Pullman
one of the wealthiest men in the United States, mansions
in Chicago and elsewhere, a regular guest at the White House.
He'd also created an entire city for his employees on
four thousand acres of land a few miles south of Chicago.
(05:47):
His publicists said he'd done this out of benevolence, but
he instructed his accountants to squeeze money from the residents.
They couldn't buy their homes, only rent, and Pullman was
the only landlord in town. Food could only be bought
from the company stores, water and gas from the company
(06:10):
pipes at a hefty markup. It was a complete monopoly,
which he abused for financial gain as much as possible.
The city had street after street of small apartments designed
for social control. Children had to go to the company schools,
and when Pullman didn't like the theology of the main
(06:32):
local church, he closed it down. No newspapers were allowed,
or public speeches or town meetings of any sort. Company
representatives could enter any of these homes Pullman rented at
any time to inspect whatever they saw fit with due modesty.
(06:54):
He named this utopia Pullman, Illinois. His own family would
never spend time in such a place. His twin boys,
age nineteen, showed no signs of any greater social consideration
than their father. They were known for mockingly riding around
Chicago in cabs filled with champagne bottles. At one point,
(07:19):
one of them nearly killed a newsborer hurtling along fast
when drunk. Paul Starrett was in his twenties then and
living in Chicago, just a few miles up from Pullman, Illinois.
He knew about Pullman's twin sons. Everyone did. One person
who did live in Pullman City was a young seamstress
(07:41):
named Jenny Curtis. Curtis had a friendly look and round face,
shortish hair, which she tied back in a bun. With
her low income, she could only afford simple, dark cotton blouses,
but she liked ones with neat pin tuck folds running
down the front. Jenny Curtis would play an important part
(08:03):
in the strike that Starret would still ponder decades later,
as he tried to reshape the Manhattan Skyline. She was
the same age as Pullman's boys, just nineteen, but she
had been working full time since fourteen, trying to pay
off debts her father had incurred in his years working
(08:23):
for Pullman when forced to buy everything at extortionate rates
in Pullman's stores. In eighteen ninety three, an economic panic
began to spread across the country. There were runs on
the banks and industrial orders slowed. Since the railways were
losing traffic, they began to cut down their orders, and
(08:46):
now Pullman's own sales began to suffer. George Pullman realized
he had to make some savings instead of cutting profits. However,
he announced he was cutting wages by a third, and
he was also going to keep rents and food prices
the same. This meant his income stayed as high as ever,
(09:10):
and it was his workers who took the hit. He
didn't need their good will because he controlled everything they did.
For those workers. This finally was a step too far.
Her delegation got up the nerve to meet mister Pullman himself.
Jenny Curtis was with them. She was getting a reputation
(09:31):
as a great activist holding impromptu secret meetings among the
girls in the stitching workshops. No need for secrecy now,
Pullman said he was open to listening, that anyone who
spoke up would be safe. Curtis used that opportunity. Later,
she recalled what she'd told mister Pullman. We worked as
(09:52):
hard as we possibly could, but the most experienced of
us could only make eighty cents a day. Many a time,
I've drawn nine or ten dollars for two weeks work,
paid seven dollars for board, and given the company the
remaining two or three on the rent. Wherever I didn't,
I was insulted and almost put out by the clerk. That,
(10:13):
she explained is what was so unjust. He was giving
them less, but still paying full dividends to shareholders. Pullman
listened quietly and again promised the group they'd be safe. Then,
immediately after they had left, he had a quiet word
(10:34):
with his foreman. The three most senior workers, along with
miss Curtis, were to be fired the next day. With
that done, he got on the train to New York,
confidence that everything would return to normal soon, but nothing
(10:54):
went as he assumed. Instead of giving in the rest
of his factory hands went on strike. Jenny Curtis, still
just nineteen, became their leader. Pullman still wasn't too worried.
He was rich and his workers were poor. He could
simply wait and starve them out. Curtis and the others
(11:18):
knew they had to get the strike to spread, for
other workers across the country to back them. She told
the story to journalists and visiting politicians, and then a
few weeks later had her biggest opportunity. The American Railway
Union was having its convention and she was invited to speak.
(11:40):
Get them on her side and the pullman workers would
have a chance. But how to pull this off? She
was a teenager, She'd had little schooling, she was physically slight,
and her voice wasn't loud at all. Soon, though, it
was time to get up on the wooden platform. A
(12:00):
crowd of hundreds was before her, almost all men, almost
all older. She knew they didn't know much about her
and just saw an unexpected, diminutive figure on their stage.
This would be daunting even for an experienced speaker. Yet
everything depended on this moment, on getting the nationwide Railway
(12:24):
Union on her side. There was only one thing to do.
Cautionary tales will return alone on stage in front of
hundreds of men, Young Jenny Curtis had a powerful weapon,
(12:46):
the truth. She started by describing how Pullman ran the factories.
She'd worked him since she was fourteen. Cotton thread handles
best when moist, so windows in their workrooms were nailed
shut to raise the humidity. In the one hundred degree
fahrenheit's Chicago summers, it was awful when there were a
(13:08):
lot of orders. Pullman pumped in extra scheme. Girl workers
had been receiving seventeen cents an hour in the sewing units,
now it was down to eleven cents. There was a
constant danger from the massive industrial sewing machines used for
the heavy carpets and drapes, and the Pullman cars. Supervisors
(13:32):
had complete control over how they spoke to the young girls,
or threatened them or punished them. The working day was
eleven hours. She ended, Pullman owns the houses, the schoolhouse,
and the churches of God in the town. He gave
(13:54):
his wance humble name. This Mary war goes on and
it will go on forever unless you stop it, end it,
crush it. The convention delegates voted to back Jenny Curtis's
Pullman workers almost immediately after her speech. All rail traffic
(14:17):
out of Chicago stopped a few days more, and over
one hundred thousand rail workers nationwide had stopped work as well.
It was the largest strike America had seen in this era,
before lorries and airplanes. It almost closed the country down.
(14:40):
Paul Starrett had a junior role in an architect's office then,
watching the catastrophic impact of harsh labor practices on the
world around him. Years later, as he pondered his skyscraper,
he wouldn't forget George Pullman was watching two monitoring everything
(15:00):
from his New York office. He didn't have popular opinion
on his side, nor the local government, but he he
had friends in high places, specifically the Supreme Court and
the Justice Department. Under Pullman's guidance, the Attorney General delivered
(15:21):
injunctions that declared the strikes illegal. Seven thousand troops were
sent to Chicago, along with three thousand private enforces from
the rail companies. Several dozen workers were shot dead there
and at the other supporting strikes. No one could resist that,
(15:42):
and the strike quickly ended. Everyone had to go back
to work with the conditions he had decided on before
their salaries would stay low, on their rents would be
kept high. George Pullman had won, but the city of Pullman, Illinois,
(16:03):
full of sullen, aggrieved workers, was never quite the same
All that had happened when Paul Starrett was a young
man in Chicago. His father had been a farmer and carpenter.
When young Paul had worked on a ranch and as
a stock boy in a hardware store. His empathy was
(16:24):
with Jenny Curtis, not Pullman. He founded a construction company
with his brothers, always keeping in mind the lesson of
the strikes. Human beings shouldn't be treated as slaves. Others
had drawn a different conclusion. Business leaders in steel and
coal and other fields, even now in nineteen twenty eight,
(16:46):
had concluded from that huge strike that they had to
be even harder than Pullman, stifling unions, keeping workers too
humiliated or poorly paid to rise up. And with the
task at hand building a big skyscraper, how else could
the Starret brothers meet their tight deadline. There were big
(17:07):
loans to be paid off, penalty clauses for failure. It
was a lot of pressure. Starrett wrote that he felt
lost and unhappy, detached from the activities that satisfy me,
and yet none of the Starrett brothers wanted to go
about the challenge the pullman way. Paul took the lead.
(17:29):
He was gruff and short tempered on the outside, but
there was more to him than that. Paul Starrett and
his brothers spent a lot of time working out how
to go forward, and what they finally resolved to do
was what's called providing efficiency wages. The idea is that
if you pay more and treat your workers better, then
(17:49):
you'll get better, more motivated staff. And if they were
going to get everything done in thirteen months, their need
motivated staff. Other construction sites in New York tended to
treat their workers awfully. Lots of high rise buildings were
being constructed and workers were one hundred feet up from
the ground for hours on end. Yet there were almost
(18:13):
no safety laws, and sudden gusting winds were fatal. Workers
were blown off or skidded on slippery wet beams in
the rain. There were dozens hundreds of deaths, yet if
workers refused to go up, they were fired. Wages throughout
were low, and if anyone wanted a hot meal, they'd
(18:36):
have to climb all the way down, find a diner,
then climb all the way up again. Starrett was going
to be different. He knew his wealth now gave him
power over others, but he also knew it wasn't fair
to treat them badly. His doctors had never been able
to cure his depression, but his decency was one thing
(18:59):
he could hold onto. So long as a project like
this one was underway, it would help keep his inner
darkness from getting worse. He and his brothers set out
their new approach. From the beginning. There'd be at least
one restaurant inside the structure as it was getting started,
with schnitzels and tangy sauerkraut and fresh French fries and
(19:22):
other good things. There were also smaller subsidized food stands
every few floors higher up sandwiches and hot coffee, and
this being the prohibition era, a pretty gruesome liquid called
near beer. For gaps in the floor where lifts or
hoists were being built. Starret had dedicated safety teams to
(19:43):
keep barriers up to date, and most importantly, no one
ever would have to go out when the wind was
too high. Instead, they'd get the day off on full
pay and full pay was twice what it was at
other sites. Everyone would see that the Starrets kept their word,
(20:08):
But there was one big problem. Efficiency wages sound so sensible,
so kind. Progressive business schools talk about them all the time,
but it's worth remembering what the physicist Enrico Fermi said
when he was told there were likely to be hundreds
of complex civilizations existing across our galaxy. Well where is everybody?
(20:32):
He asked? The same question applies to efficiency wages. If
there were such a good idea in theory, why didn't
everyone pay efficiency wages to their staff? After all, Pullman
did the opposite, and he was one of the richest
men in America. Sheer force can work, at least for
(20:55):
a while. If efficiency wages and kindness to all were
the only things Starret knew, it wouldn't have worked. He
had enough experience to recognize that along with the carrot
the efficiency wages, Starret also needed a stick. Enter John Bowser,
(21:20):
a world weary engineer originally from Canada. Bowser had left
home when he was young, traveled and worked around the world.
Had been on construction sites in Japan and across the
United States. He knew every scam imaginable, and while he
could be patient and tactful, he also had, as one
(21:43):
historian delicately put it, a forceful personality. That's the mix
you need to make generosity work on a complex new project.
It's always tempting for a foreman to say they have
one hundred people working away, while in fact they've only
brought in ninety. They get to pocket the extra salary.
(22:06):
To thwart such scams, Bowser high they had staff to
physically visit each man on the site twice in the
morning and twice in the afternoon. And since many of
the workers were on beams dangling high above the ground,
that was not an easy job. To keep inventory from
walking away, Bowser created another department of accountants who'd also
(22:29):
clamber through the building, keeping track of all the equipment
that was scooting around the site on monorails, trolley cars,
and steam engines. With all these inspections, cheating seemed unlikely
to succeed. The workers realized this, but they also saw
that they were still being treated respectfully, with nourishing food,
(22:50):
safety aids and high pay. With Bowser's help, Starrett had
created a site where it didn't pay to cheat, and importantly,
where it did pay to put in an honest day's work.
Thus reciprocity, the idea at the heart of paying efficiency wages,
(23:10):
began to flourish. Everyone was with Starret, not against him.
The first positive result was simple efficiency. When four men
didn't fudge their numbers, you had more workers on site.
And when inventry didn't get pilfered and stayed on site,
no one had to wait around for the tools and
materials they needed. Even better was the creativity. If you
(23:34):
hate your boss, you're going to be sullen and resentful,
but if you know, you're trusted and treated with respect.
On most other sites, bricks were stacked on wheelbarrows, then
pushed along robbling wooden gang plants to where they were needed.
Workers on Starret site came up with a creative solution.
(23:55):
They spontaneously suggested building a miniature railway line into the
site instead, and then smaller railway lines on the actual
floors under construction. Because thousands of bricks arrived in a
single AI eight hour shift, this miniature railway sped construction
along considerably. Building sites also tended to have high turnover rates,
(24:20):
and as a result, they incurred hefty retraining costs too,
But on Starret site, the workers didn't want to walk out,
not with these wages and with the respect they felt
from their employers. At its peak, the Starret Brothers Building
was rising up at four and a half floors. Each week,
(24:42):
five hundred trucks were arriving with materials at the site
each day. Some of the steel beams that arrived were
still warm, having been fabricated just days before. One innovation
was especially noticeable from Afar. In most big construction projects,
when large stones were placed on the outside for an
(25:04):
attractive surface, expert craftsmen had to spend a long time
moving the edges. Starrett's teams came up with a new idea.
Why not just bolt thin metal panels over the joins.
Then you could use stones still rough from the quarries.
The result was an attractive exterior of shining stainless steel
(25:28):
strips standing out from the gray limestone around them. But
while the project seemed to be going well, Starrett was
gazing watchfully across town to forty second Street, where a
rival skyscraper was rising over the Manhattan skyline. Starrett, remember
(25:48):
was aiming to build Manhattan's tallest skyscraper with all the
prestige and money that meant for his clients. As far
as he knew, his rival's building was going to be
smaller than his. Nothing to worry about there, or was there.
The competing skyscraper on forty Seconds was nearly complete while
(26:11):
Starret's was still underway. He had assumed he'd surpass it,
just like all the others when he was finally finished.
But then something happened that meant this competitor's building was
going to be taller. All Starrett's work compared to that
would seem a failure. Cautionary tales would return. Paul Starrett
(26:53):
had known a lot about this competitor, the automobile magnet
Walter P. Chrysler, who was funding a building in his name.
Mister Chrysler was a good Kansas boy, like Paul Starrett.
After making his fortune in Detroit, he was not used
to coming second. When he found out that Starrett's building,
(27:14):
which had started construction after his, was going to be taller,
he couldn't bear it, and so he concocted a scheme
with his architects and construction chiefs. While everyone on the
outside thought the Chrysler building was nearly done quietly secretly
(27:35):
inside the empty top floors of their own building, where
no one could see it. Chrysler's team had been constructing
an enormous one one hundred and eighty five foot tall
glass and metal structure. On one tremendous day, to the
city's astonishment, they had it hoisted up through the top
(27:58):
of the building to perch on top, making it taller
than anything Starret had planned. That's when Starrett, John Bowser,
and the rest of their team realized that their rival
had stolen a march on them. Walter Chrysler relished his victory.
He prepared ad campaigns which showed his majestic Chrysler building
(28:22):
at the end of a long chain of world dominant buildings,
at the start where the Pyramids of Egypt, then came
Europe's great medieval cathedrals, then Paris's Eiffel Tower, and finally,
tallest to them all, his great Chrysler Building in Manhattan.
Starrett's work in progress didn't even figure. The world press
(28:49):
lapped the Chrysler building up, and the fact that Starret's
enlightened management methods had made the project fast and efficient
didn't seem to count for much. Starrett and his financiers
didn't want to accept defeat. But what to do. You
can't really start redesigning a giant skyscraper once everything is underway,
(29:13):
The steel had already been ordered, the detailed construction schedule
laid out. Changing one part of the building would mean
changing a multitude of other connected parts, from the architect's
plans and steel fabricators to truck deliveries and the schedules
of thousands of workers. But they also couldn't really settle
(29:35):
for being second. Winning in terms of speed meant nothing
if they didn't also win in height. If they tried
some little trick, the Chrysler building might just add a
bigger spire. What Starret needed was a modification to their
plans that was not only achievable, but was also so
(29:55):
huge and so impressive that it would be untouchable. The
records don't show who first came up with the answer.
It probably emerged when all the top staff were convened
in one of their frantic planning meetings, but it was
an idea of genius. A mooring mast. In the nineteen twenties,
(30:20):
aviation technology wasn't just propeller driven aeroplanes. It was also
enormous lighter than air dridgibles zeppelins. These beer moths were
hundreds of feet long, with elegant gondolas suspended beneath, where
passengers could travel in the greatest of comfort. At the time,
(30:40):
the zeppelins that arrived in New York had to dock
out in Lakehurst, New Jersey, seventy five miles from the city.
But what if they could be tethered to a majestic
structure right in the center of Manhattan. It would be
a boon for mankind and very nicely stick it to
(31:02):
Chrysler too. Best of all, the architects could design it
to be big enough that there was no way any
future stunt by Chrysler could outdo them. They settled on
two hundred feet. It was here that Starret and his
team reaped the benefits of his workforce's high morale. There
(31:24):
was much to do. Although construction had only just started
on the building and the foundations were still being prepared,
all the design and orders and work schedules had been
set up. This meant that from the moment of Christless surprise,
a very great deal had to change. Even while work
continued on getting the site properly cleared and the equipment
(31:46):
for the lower floors in place. For the new mast
to be fitted, the top of the building needed to
be altered. New structural steel had to be ordered, and
the mast itself, complete with internal walkways, had to be designed,
and the parts ordered, delivered and assembled. All of this
would start at one thousand feet in the air and
(32:07):
rise ever higher. Imagine if George Pullman had tried such
an ambitious swerve in strategy after his oppressive tactics and
murderous strike breaking, his company had lost nearly half a
year of output. Skilled workers had quit, those who remained
(32:32):
were sulking at best, mutinous at worst, especially as their
working conditions deteriorated. Imagine if Pullman showed up at work
and addressed his workforce asking for a big, creative, collaborative
push together, they would have laughed him out of the
factory or worse. After the strike and for the rest
(32:55):
of his life, whenever George Pullman ventured out in Chicago,
he had to be guarded by detectives armed with shotguns.
When he died, his family were so afraid that former
employees might desecrate his grave that his coffin was sealed
into a triple reinforced block of steel and concrete. George
(33:20):
Pullman had made a lot of enemies, No such problems
for Paul Starrett. His workers were right behind him. He
had been fair to them. There'd be fair to him.
Not that Starrett was an angel. There was a slight
bending of the truth involved in that airship mast. It
was obviously impractical, more ornaments than utility. If a mighty
(33:45):
airship filled with champagne and cocktail parties and piano music
had actually tried to dock more than a thousand feet
above the streets of Manhattan, there would be a few problems.
First of all, the passengers would be a little less
welcome than they might have imagined. Airships adjusted their height
(34:05):
by letting out water, large volumes of it. Several hundred
gallons would have to be splashed onto the Manhattan crowds
watching them from below to get the height exactly right.
Attaching the mooring ropes would also be difficult because of
the winds at that height, all boosted by the skyscraper
(34:26):
canyons across Manhattan. Then, if the bucking airship did get
in position, the passengers, once they got off, wouldn't find
a convenient lift waiting for them. The mast was too
narrow for that. Instead, they'd had to climb down a
ladder to get to the main floors of the building,
where they could then take an elevator. It was in
(34:47):
fact never used for passenger airship docking. At one point
a government contact arranged for a smaller airship carrying post
to offload a few leather packages of letters that way,
but aside from a brief later visit by King Kong,
(35:11):
that was it. New Yorkers didn't care. The building site's
ethos meant everything got done, and within the thirteen month target,
the journey from the luxurious offices in the Biltmore Hotel
to the roar and welding and bolting on the building
site was over. That unprecedented speed was just what their
(35:33):
funders had wanted to get rents coming in so that
the enormous loans for construction could be paid off quickly.
This was something Pullman's resentful workers would never have pushed
to succeed at. The good wages and conditions mixed with
sensible auditing, had led to energetic work teams, far less cheating,
(35:55):
greater innovation, and the ability to adapt fast when mister
Chrysler's efforts to outscale were sprung on them even when
they were underway. The result made star At famous because
of his skill, his benevolence, and his hard nosed Canadian
(36:15):
construction superintendent. When Starret declared his vast skyscraper complete, it
was indeed the tallest building in the world, and it
had a name to match, the Empire State Building. Starret
still didn't smile much and always looked pretty grumpy when
(36:38):
he snapped out his decisions. But that didn't matter. You
don't have to love someone to respect them. You don't
even have to like them. If someone's fair and you
realize they're competent, that's enough. That's how to make efficiency
wages work. Be fair, be generous, but audit. As I mentioned,
(37:10):
this episode is based on my friend David Badonnas's book
The Art of Fairness. That's where I learned about Paul's
Tarrett and the Empire State story. As David himself put.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
It, the ancient sage Hillel had a nice insight about
all this. He was writing two thousand years ago. But
he raised in essence were two linked questions. If I'm
not for myself? Who is for me? But if I'm
only for myself, what am I? The answer is that
neither extreme will do. You will have to stand up
(37:43):
for yourself. Otherwise in the real world you'll never get far.
But if that's the only thing you do, if you're
only for yourself, what kind of person are you? Staret
Empire State Building shows what the middle path can achieve.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
You need the smarts to guard against cheats, but when
you offer generosity, creative gratitude can come pouring back. Cautionary
(38:29):
Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
This mini series is based on David Bardanas's book The
Art of Fairness, The Power of Decency in a World
Turned Mean, and it was written with David Bandanas himself.
For a full list of our sources, see the show
notes at Timharford dot com. The show is produced by
(38:51):
Alice Fines, with Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original
music for the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited
the script. Cautionary Tales features the voice talents of Ben Crowe,
Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Gemma Saunders, and Rufus Wright. The
show Wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
(39:13):
Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohen, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan,
Kira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production
of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at ward Or Studios in
London by Tom Gary. If you like the show, please
remember to share, rate and review. It doesn't really make
(39:34):
a difference to us and if you want to hear
the show ad free, sign up to Pushkin Plus on
the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm,
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Host
Tim Harford
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