The White Supremacist who Popularized Automated Employee Surveillance in 1884

Banned Histories of Race in America

You know that feeling when the cashier turns the iPad around and you have to choose the tip? Like you’d better make the right decision here because you’re being watched? Like you’re being policed a little, maybe? Guess what? That’s white supremacy at work! it doesn’t have anything to do with you or even the cashier, necessarily. I know this doesn’t immediately make sense, but follow me all the way back to 1879…

That was the year that brothers James and John Ritty created the National Manufacturing Company in Dayton, Ohio. The sole purpose of this company was to manufacture their brand-new invention: the mechanical cash register. There was just one problem: it was a shitty idea. You see, they hadn’t invented the machine to save time or prevent mistakes or anything like that. The Ritty brothers were the spoiled sons of a local doctor and they invented the cash register for the expressed purpose of policing those beneath them. They figured anyone who would work for a business without owning it would have to be a thief and the cash register would force such thieves into documenting their own thievery.

The reality was that not only did using the machine take up too much time, but as you might’ve guessed, inserting paranoia and distrust as fundamental functions of a business was bad for morale. According to James Ritty, “Employees got ‘sore’ and said they didn’t want a thing to do with a machine that reflected on their honesty.”

Ritty seemed sad when he explained one more problem with the cash register, “A lot of bartenders and clerks using the machines when they first came out used to play with the keys and ring up the machine for the entertainment of the curious. When the bosses went to add up the day’s receipts they found the totals recorded were far in excess of the amount actually in the drawer so then somebody was suspected of stealing. But it wasn’t really stealing for many times the keys were pressed for the fun of the thing.” There’s probably a lesson in there somewhere about the act of policing requiring an assumption of guilt. Perhaps something about employee surveillance? Maybe. I dunno.

Anyway, Ritty is being generous in saying “a lot of bartenders and clerks” because after making only about a dozen of the machines, the Rittys were laughed right out of business. The mechanical cash register was well on its way to join Fundies, Harley-Davidson Perfume and Google Glass on the trash heap of American Silliness, but then along came whiney, entitled, shitty little silver spooned racist John Patterson.

Patterson had grown up on his Grandpa Robert’s nearly 2,000-acre Dayton estate. Grampa Robert had been a founder of Lexington, KY and Cincinnati, OH as well as a mass killer of indigenous peoples and a notorious enslaver. And he named his giant estate Rubicon because he likened himself to Julius Caesar because of course he did because all these assholes are the same.

Eventually Patterson inherits Grampa Robert’s wealth and white supremacist beliefs and like a lot of other nepo baby robber barons, he gets into mining. Along the way he developed his love for policing people he believed to be beneath him, so when he finally heard about the cash register, it was like a calling from white Jesus. Patterson bought up all the gear and patents and began building a white supremacist empire of his very own, eventually becoming one of the most influential Americans to ever live that you’ve likely never heard of.

In 1884 Patterson created the National Cash Register Company (NCR) employing thousands of workers making and selling millions of the machines. But popularizing cash registers nearly to the point of cash itself wasn’t the key to Patterson’s influence. The trick was how he did it.

Before we get to that, remember when I said Patterson was a white supremacist? That’s actually too kind of a description. First of all, he was a devout and evangelical eugenicist. His employees followed in practice. For example, eugenicists were obsessed with gardening and physical fitness, so NCR employees were required to work out and attend lectures in gardening.

Patterson also practiced what was called at the time “scientific management” which was basically business eugenics. An example of this is that he had 80 Black employees who were all cleaning staff. A further example is the reason he fired them all, as stated in a 1905 edition of the Dayton Evening Herald:

“The management of the National Cash Register Company made a change in its janitor force on Friday afternoon by bringing in white men to take the places of the colored employees,” the paper reported. “The managers want every person working for the firm to have a chance for promotion through any of its various departments. Therefore, the company has decided to start good, bright boys in the positions that the colored men have filled so that they may be eligible for promotion in its service. This change in the janitor force will give 80 young men a chance to get into the company’s service and show their various qualities.… There is absolutely no hard feelings on the part of the company or its President [Patterson] towards colored people, as that gentleman has a number of them employed at his home, and has no intention of dismissing them. At the factory, however, there was no chance for these colored men to advance.”

Patterson also bought and sold property in the small town of Oakwood, OH specifically to his white upper management, essentially creating his own sundown town. Eventually, as listeners of the 99 Years podcast will probably remember, Patterson also strong-armed the entire city of Dayton, OH into installing the white supremacist city manager form of government. This form of government not only led to the segregation of Dayton but made it one of the most Klan-populated cities in the country. The point is, this motherfucker hated Black people.

Back to the question, how do you sell the cash register, a destructive burden of a thing, let alone make that thing essential? Simple. You don’t. Instead, you do what every con man does: sell someone their aspirations. You sell whiteness. Not actual whiteness, of course. Not the unspoken one that benefits from systemic privilege, but the other one. The loud one. The whiteness that believes it is owed, that it must protect itself, that has earned being in charge so it deserves to be in charge and biologically belongs in charge. So, as you see here, sir, this mechanical cash register will make sure things stay that way—no matter who you graciously hire.

Patterson’s brother in law wrote up a twelve-page sales guide filled with the pushy and manipulative techniques of the average lightning rod peddler. This guide was given to Patterson’s army of eugenicist salesmen who hit the road ready to sell whiteness to white folks.  Patterson pulled off the classic billionaire move of claiming someone else’s ideas and paying other people to figure out how to make them work. And they did. When NCR went public in 1922 it was the biggest public offering on record up to that point.

Whole fortunes and an entire industry was made normalizing employee surveillance, but it doesn’t stop there. NCR’s con man pressure techniques of sales were also studied and copied and eventually normalized.

So, the next time the cashier spins the iPad around and you feel that reversed surveillance, please know that feeling as well as every shitty little manipulative sales experience you’ve had from junk mail to buying a car to telemarketing all comes straight from John H. Patterson, the white supremacist who ruined America.