42 Facts About Edward Filene

Edward Albert Filene was an American businessman and philanthropist.

Edward Filene is best known for building the Filene's department store chain and for his decisive role in pioneering credit unions across the United States.

In 1865, at the age of 5, Edward Filene was injured in a fall that left him with a permanent limp.

In 1872, Clara Edward Filene enrolled her three boys in the "Brusselsche Handels und Erziehungsinstitut", a boarding school known for excellence in instruction and discipline in her Franconian hometown Segnitz-am-Main.

In 1881, when Edward Filene was 21 years old, his father William founded a department store in Boston.

Edward Filene began traveling in the 1880s, purchasing merchandise, studying business practices, and increasingly examining how different societies were organized and the problems they faced.

Edward Filene had passed his entrance exams for Harvard University when in 1890 his father became seriously ill.

Thirty years old at that time, Edward Filene gave up his educational ambitions to take over the family business.

Edward Filene's ouster allowed him to dedicate more time to his passions of travel, civic organizations, and philanthropy.

Edward Filene drew inspiration from the scientific management ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor and adapted these ideas for use in the retail environment.

Edward Filene is credited with refining a number of under-utilized and in some cases novel retailing techniques.

Edward Filene was a proponent of the scientific approach to retail management.

Edward Filene personally supervised construction of the first basement in Boston.

Edward Filene instituted a profit sharing program, a minimum wage for women, a 40-hour work week, health clinics and paid vacations.

Edward Filene played an important role in encouraging the Filene Cooperative Association, "perhaps the earliest American company union".

In 1907 Edward Filene traveled around the world, and by February reached Calcutta, India.

Edward Filene realized that credit unions could help ordinary American workers to access loans at reasonable rates.

Edward Filene donated $1 million to the Consumers Distribution Corporation to help them organize a national network of cooperative retail stores.

However, little came of this until 1921, when Edward Filene observed in Roy Bergengren the key organizer he needed.

Edward Filene seems to have been responsible, with the collaboration of Pierre Jay, for the adoption of the term "credit union" in the United States.

In 1921, Edward Filene founded the Extension Bureau, to which he donated nearly $1 million during its 14-year history.

Edward Filene hired Roy Bergengren, and their collaboration and the work of the Extension Bureau proved very effective, bringing state laws to fruition in 26 states and substantially revised flawed legal frameworks in 5 others.

Edward Filene favoured asking for $100 million in reconstruction credits to be pumped into credit unions.

Edward Filene had a great distaste for material things, lived very modestly, never owned an automobile and was scrupulously careful about small expenditures, all because he felt that he was a trustee for the money that he had earned and that the trustee-ship involved turning his accumulations into the greatest possible disinterested public service.

Edward Filene saw credit unions as an important part of the answer.

Edward Filene was for world peace; he joined the League to Enforce Peace founded 1915 in New York after World War I had broken out, and he supported the League of Nations after the war.

Edward Filene corresponded with a wide range of leaders from Woodrow Wilson and Georges Clemenceau to Mahatma Gandhi and Vladimir Lenin.

Edward Filene was appalled by the growing strength of the Fascist movement and worried about the growing anti-Semitism in Europe.

Edward Filene gave many speeches on the subject and wrote against the growing anti-Semitism in the United States.

Edward Filene argued that higher wages and shorter hours for workers would enable them to buy materials they could not otherwise afford.

Edward Filene wrote several books on the subject and proposed that mass production, mass distribution and worker purchasing power were the answer to economic depression.

Edward Filene admired the methods of Henry Ford in the auto industry.

Edward Filene again contracted pneumonia and died in the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine on September 26,1937.

Edward Filene's death was reported on the front page of every major newspaper in the world.

Mr Edward Filene was more than a champion of popular rights.

Edward Filene was a prophet who perceived the true meaning of these changing times.

Edward Filene was an analyst who was able, by mathematical calculations, to make plain to us that our modern mechanism of abundance cannot be kept in operation unless the masses of our people are enabled to live abundantly.

Edward Filene's faith was more than a mere assent to principles which have proved to be tried and true.

Edward Filene did not repudiate the past, after the fashion of some reformers, nor did he repudiate the future after the fashion of those who fear reform.

Edward Filene believed in learning and searching out the ways of human progress.

Edward Filene is considered the father of the US credit union movement, which by the end of 2008, with 89 million members, had the largest membership of any country and one of the highest levels of market penetration in the world.

Edward Filene asked Whittaker Chambers to help him write it; when Chambers declined, he turned to Robert Cantwell.