Tall, white-haired James Finney Lincoln of Cleveland is a hard man to his foesand a gold mine to his employes. His obsession on incentive pay has led him into one head-on collision after another with the U.S. Treasury, the U.S. Navy, and even the U.S. Congress (TIME, June 8, 1942). But it has also been responsible, he unshakably believes, for making his Lincoln Electric Co. the world's biggest, lowest-cost producer of electric welding equipment.
Last week James Lincoln backed his pet economic theory with a smacking $3,000,000 annual bonus that will give every Lincoln employe, on the average, about as much as...