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Right Speed, Right Time. Gustave Marquot considers himself un capitaliste éclairé (an enlightened capitalist). He has set up a profit-sharing plan, health insurance, a pension fund. To combat absenteeism, Marquot has instituted an "assiduity bonus"—each worker gets 150 francs for each two-week period in which he has not been absent from work. There is no union at Marquot's. About 100 of his 400 workers once belonged to the Communist-dominated C.G.T., but the union fell apart six months ago when the secretary found himself unable to collect dues. Workers' gripes are now handled by an employee-management council. There are twelve Communists on the Marquot payroll, but Marquot says with a twinkle, "They are theoretical Communists who vote Red but who want no Communism in the factory."
Plump, apple-cheeked Gustave Marquot, who lives with his family 100 yards from the plant, spends two hours of his nine-hour day at his desk, the other seven talking to workers or watching them make glass. He and his employees use the familiar tu when speaking to one another, but there is no doubt who is boss. A TIME correspondent recently watched Marquot among his workers. Against the eerie background of a dozen gaping furnaces belching fire, men & women moved swiftly as fireflies carrying red-hot glass at the end of prongs, molding, blowing, cooling. There was not much room, but the workers never got in each other's way. Said the capitaliste éclairé, "It is all a matter of going to the right place at the right speed at the right time."
Said one worker about his boss: "He knows his job and so do we—that's what matters . . . Sure, I believe the world is moving irresistibly toward socialism." Then he added: "But if all the factories were like this, maybe it wouldn't."