Hasaan

Managing Motivation

The Seth Seiders Syndicate and the Motivational Publicity Business in the 1920s

Author(s): David A. Gray

Source: Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Spring 2010), pp. 77-122

Published by: University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur

Museum, Inc.

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/651088

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Managing Motivation

The Seth Seiders Syndicate and the Motivational Publicity

Business in the 1920s

David A. Gray

This article examines workplace posters and Pivot Man Letters (illustrated stories for foremen) sold to employers by the Seth

Seiders Syndicate in the 1920s. The article analyzes the Syndicate’s efforts to hone and market its products as versatile forms of

emotional conditioning in the workplace. It also analyzes the Syndicate’s corporate photograph album to demonstrate its

promotion of similar motivational techniques within its own sales force. By adapting an older good/bad worker dichotomy to

emerging ideas about aesthetic training, the Syndicate provided managers with a form of motivational aesthetics consistent

with both traditional and newer management conceptions...