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Cranes & Softball. At Harvester's two Southern plants, 915 Negroes now work with 4,468 whites. (Of Harvester's total payroll of 55,000 employees, 11% are Negroes.) As Negroes advance in skill, they get better pay, better jobs, sometimes even beat out white workers for positions. There are Negro lab technicians, crane operators, drop-forge men, welders, draftsmen and assembly men, all skilled or semiskilled jobs. Friction has not disappeared completely. But incidents are fewer since everybody knows that the company means business. A few cracks are even appearing in the social barricades. Negroes now play on plant softball teams, go to the same company picnics with whites. When wives toured the plants in 1951, they did it in mixed groups and ate at the same tables.
Accepting the Urban League's award this week, Harvester Personnel Chief Ivan Willis explained Harvester's policy in the kind of hard, sensible terms businessmen understand. Harvester is not running a crusade, he said; a fair-employment policy is nothing more than good business. Said Willis: "Our basic approach is that the Negro shall be given the opportunity to earn a living that is in keeping with his native intelligence, his education and skill and his ambition. It is our belief that if this policy is not followed, our company and the nation are the losers."