Exemplary Entrepreneurs? The Public Image of Two of New York State’s Female Business Leaders, 1915–1935

Abstract

Exemplary Entrepreneurs? The Public Image of Two of New York State’s Female Business Leaders, 1915–1935 Rachel Greenfield (bio) In March 1920, a “small, modishly dressed, delicately groomed” woman with a “smart hat sat on top of her correctly arranged grey hair” walked into the luxurious parlor of the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. She “harmonized so completely . . . that one might have imagined her graciously stepping from the elevator to greet a tea guest.”1 This woman, Mrs. Charles B. (Rose) Knox, was the hands-on president of the Charles B. Knox Company, the largest plain gelatine corporation in the United States, based in Johnstown, New York. She had travelled west for a working vacation, visiting food brokers and jobbers and giving interviews as she went. Characterized by newspapers across the country as “a successful woman in the fullest sense of the word,” Knox’s image contrasted with the “mannish ways and clumpy shoes”the newspaper usually associated with successful businesswomen.2 Knox portrayed a life that combined devotion to business with an equal devotion to her domestic realm. She became a nationwide exemplar—a feminine woman, dedicated to family while highly successful in business. Her particular synthesis was an important forerunner of expectations for many American working women today. In 1927 a syndicated columnist inspired “all ambitious girls” by recounting the “simple” life story of another New York female industrialist, Mary E. Dillon, the president of Brooklyn Boro Gas Company.3 Dillon was described as a “‘two-job wife,’ who by daytime is [End Page 228] executive of a public service corporation with a capitalization of $12,000,000, and by night is the charming, unaffected mistress of a delightful home and a gracious consort.”4 In 1935 Eleanor Roosevelt called Dillon one of the women she most admired in America for her “well-rounded life.”5 Dillon and Knox—two leading New York State female business leaders of the 1920s and 1930s—ran companies that were industrial rather than beauty or apparel oriented. What was it about Knox and Dillon that made national columnists hold them up as paragons to be admired? These two women portrayed a new type of white female leader of the interwar period. Each was a corporate president of a multimillion-dollar New York State industrial corporation, married, and involved in her community. While they reached their positions via different paths, both shared critical similarities. Both had married, though only Knox raised children. Both were Republicans and steadfast believers in individual effort and capitalism. They both came from the working class, as did many of their customers. Neither attended college. And most importantly, both concurred with the traditional domestic role played by white middle-class women while at the same time believing women had equal abilities to men in the workplace. Before World War I, women such as Knox and Dillon concealed their gender from others in the manufacturing world.6 High-profile, locally active, married white women were more likely to devote themselves to women’s clubs, social welfare work, philanthropy, or suffrage than to business.7 After World War I, Knox and Dillon came out of the shadows and publicly embraced the idea that middle-class white women could combine husband [End Page 229] and home with paid employment and community activities.8 Knox and Dillon were lauded by national press syndicates and women’s magazines for their apparent ability to simultaneously manage home and corporation. This article argues that these two New York businesswomen displayed an early version of what we now call “doing it all” by modeling a life in which they were equally accomplished at home and in business.9 Mrs. Charles B. (Rose M.) Knox Rose Knox provided one of the first twentieth-century examples of a female industrialist. She was approachable and cared for her home. She believed women needed to know how to work. American women, newly interested in the business world, responded to Knox’s perspective on domesticity and business and to the story the press told of her journey from traditional wife and mother to widow and business leader.10 Knox’s early life resembled that of many late nineteenth-century upstate New...