1935: 90 Years Ago as Johns-Manville Worked to Help Housing Financing and Construction

I like to give credit to companies when deserved, even those which manufactured asbestos-containing products or mined asbestos. This includes Johns-Manville in the depth of the depression. You may remember my earlier blog discussing statements by Manville, in which I quoted New Jersey residents who refused to sue Johns-Manville for illnesses arising from asbestos exposure; they made that decision not to sue because the option during the depression to working in the asbestos filled factory was to starve and their family getting evicted for lack of paying mortgages. A good article to supplement that prior blog is titled “Modernizing the Building Industry: Johns-Manville Thinks its Way through the Tangle of Construction” authored by Arthur Pound and published in the Atlantic Magazine during October 1935.

I cannot provide this complete article as an attachment as it is copyrighted against full distribution. However, each of you may download your own copy for free for your personal use and education at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1935/10/modernizing-the-building-industry-johns-manville-thinks-its-way-through-the-tangle-of-construction/652934/. I have attached certain pages from that article to this blog within the Fair Use Doctrine.

The article on page 1 goes straight to what is really a conclusion, stating:

“Yet, in this very field one finds in the Johns-Manville Corporation an acceptance and application of a concept of business which lifts the company well above the horizon of an industry decisively in need of a constructive example of this sort as it struggles to raise shelter to a new dignity and significance of the social order.

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New materials, undreamed of in earlier days and applicable alike to large structures and small, have effected advances in durability, cleanliness, economy, quiet, and safety. For many of the later Johns-Manville is responsible.”

I am not saying that the officers of Johns-Manville were choir boys. Remember, the first asbestos related injury lawsuits were filed in 1928 and quietly settled for a combined $30,000 in 1932 with a confidentiality agreement along with a promise by the Plaintiff attorney that he would bring no more lawsuits. What I am saying, however, is that the officers did have an understanding of the need to help people in ways that would also benefit the company. To quote Mr. Pound:

“If you ask what Johns-Manville stands to recover from this research, the answer is clear. Being one of the greatest fabricators of building materials of wide range and adaptability, whatever tends to revive building and place that industry in a strong, go-ahead position must inevitably reach to Johns-Manville’s advantage.”

There is a great deal more contained in the 10 pages in the article and, if you are interested in the primary source material, then please download the article consistent with the copyright notice.

History is good. The readers will need to decide whether Johns-Manville was trying to protect people who were desperate or just trying to increase sales through some free advertising. Let me know what you think either by leaving a comment or sending me an email at TheAsbestosBlog@gmail.com. Thanks. Marty