Alice B. Massa, When Employer Became Bankrupt: Established Her own Business

"You've got to plug hard. I train my salemen so that they may go back a dozen times. I tell them to keep right at it."

The language of hard fisted business fell oddly from the lips of a very feminine young person, exquisitely dressed in a blue crepe gown of the newest shade, a fluffy blue flower on her shoulder, correct rings on her hand, a soft voice. "Plugging hard" is the key to her success. And yet she reveals no trace of the hand to hand battle which she has fought, entering the lists where many a man has gone down to defeat.

Six years ago Alice B. Massa, a Brooklyn girl, was in the employ of a paper company that failed; today she is treasurer of the organization that bears her name.

"Keeping right at it" has taken Miss Massa out of the ranks of stenographers and put her among the mahogany furnishings of Fifth Avenue. "Plugging" has brought succeess to her organization in a day when the paper business still feels the depression of war. And all this has followed on the heels of failure.

In this age of cushioned limousines, soft tires, silk hose and easy money, in a day when young women frequently defy the power of hard work to bring results, and bow before the God of Putting Things Over, the philosophy of Alice B. Massa is impressive and heartening. She is brown-haired, clear-eyed, straightforward, good-looking and courteous. She lives the life of a high-powered executive, every moment with her ear on the receiver!

"Keeping right at it" - those four words sum up in large measure her success. As you sit in an office charmingly furnished in antique mahogany, a bouquet of pink roses on the orderly desk, a cluster of pussy willows in a beautiful blue vase on the mahogany drop-leaf table opposite, facing an executive who is still a girl, you feel that here is the real Cinderella, except that the ash heap was a paper mill.

Contact with the hard, sharp edges of business, the drive of industrialism, nerve-wracking competition seem to have passed her by.

Big business surges in over the telephone on her desk. She excuses herself during the interruption; she writes the order on the neat pad in front of her as easily as if it were a date for a theater or a supper engagement.

There's a reason why business comes to this young woman's door - and knocks and waits.

And as she talks the romance of paper unfolds before your eyes.

If you have pictured this young woman distributing dainty bits of stationery or deckled edge envelopes your will have to shift your mental images.

She sells the coarse paper and cardboard used for cartons, for display advertising, for cigarette signs; she sells to bleacheries the lining papers for boxes. The paper which goes into hat boxes and suitcases of the less expensive variety are her products.

How she turned failure into success is the interesting story of Alice B. Massa's founding the business which bears her name.

The daughter of Ambrose B. Massa - a paper merchant - the girl's early days were spent in Florida. The family later moved to Brooklyn, and here Miss Massa attended the Girls High School. She studied stenography and entered the office of a wholesale paper organization.

After the war the company employing this young business woman failed. She was suddenly faced with a situation. She must seek a new position or go into business for herself. She chose to start a paper company of her own. It sounds easy, but - it wasn't.

Alice B. Massa knows the meaning of work. Long experience as a buyer for one of the big paper companies gave her the preparation to swing the new job.

"It's all practical knowledge that I have," she will tell you.

In November 1921 , she organized the company and it showed a profit the first year. Now there is between $60,000 and $70,000 worth of rough paper in her New York warehouse, which will one day be converted into bill posters, book binders, printers' supplies.

"Women have to work hard for what they get. Men are still antagonistic to women in business."

"How do you budget your time to get it all in?"

"System," was the answer. "I have a system about my home and about my business. If it were run haphazard, you can imagine where I'd be."

"If it's necessary to get in at 7 o'clock in the morning I do. If it is necessary to stay until 9 at night I stay."

"I like to get here at 8 o'clock and open the mail before the day's business begins."

There's a reason why this feminine vendor of cardboard keeps her hand always on the wheel.

Merchants are talking these days about suggestive sales. Miss Massa knows that often if a man cannot get one kind of paper he will take another. It requires ability to make the substitution.

"A man wants a price on 100,000 posters," said Miss Massa. "If we haven't the line he wants I try to give him what he can get for quick delivery. He might have to wait ten days for the paper if it were ordered from the mill."

This young woman can juggle figures so deftly that most of us don't know what it's all about!

She understands the press requirements and she knows paper sizes and weights. If a piece of cardboard cannot be cut to advantage in one direction she sees the possibility of cutting it at another angle.

One does not marvel that customers ask for the treasurer - and sometimes refuse to do buiness with other representatives of the company.

"I've been all through the paper mills," she is telling you. "I used to go with my father."

"And this company is your idea?"
"Yes."
"I've been everything. I used to be a stenographer."

"If you know it," continued the treasurer, "there's romance in paper. It's very interesting. We sell in nearly every line. We sell cardboard that's made into hats; paper that goes into fans; bridge table tops; winter fronts for automobiles."

Knowing that this is a day when the public is always looking for something new she tries to supply it.

Bridge table tops made of paper, chemically treated, are comparatively new; they have been on the market about two years, according to Miss Massa. It might surprise the layman, too, to learn that some of the paper products go into the oven and are baked! These are the big pans used by the baking companies. They are made of imported strawboard.

There is a great future, Miss Massa believes, in treating paper chemically, as in the case of the winter front for the automobile which, treated with black paint, presents the appearance of steel or cast-iron.

Pointing to a beautiful picture on the wall, which had all the fine texture and coloring of a Japanese print, the head of the office said with pride, "That's on our paper."

"Now we're getting out square hat boxes. We are always trying to get something new."

"You can't make a success unless you're on the job," is her theory.

So while she plays bridge every week she confesses to telephoning her secretary - to find what is happening. "If anything is up that's big I can always be reached," she said. This is big business catapulted even into a "rubber" or a grand slam.

"What are the traits that make for success in the business girl?" we inquired.
"Initiative first," said this fine representative of the class.

"You've got to plug hard. I train my salesmen that they may go back a dozen times. I tell them to keep right at it. A man may get used to seeing them and finally give an order."

"Don't you think they may antagonize?" we queried doubtfully.
"Sometimes," she smiled, "to the extent of getting an order. One salesman kept on calling for a year and a half," she added in illustration, "before he got a chance to bid on an order. Finally the merchant said, 'How can I keep you out?' 'Give me an order,' was the salesman's answer.

Now," she concluded, "these two men are good friends."

"The paper industry hasn't recovered since the war," said Miss Massa, "but we have gone ahead each year and each month."

We looked at the photograph of a brown-eyed baby opposite. He belongs to the treasurer, too. While she sits at the mahogany desk directing business, out on Long Island the handsome little boy of two is playing in the sandpile.

For Miss Massa is really Mrs. Herbert Henry Miller and lives in a Long Island suburb. Her only regret in business, which she confesses she likes better than bridge, is that five days a week are spent away from her little boy.

In answer to our query about Europe, the treasurer smiled happily. "Yes, I expect some day to go to Europe and do all the nice things I have wanted to do."

Standing on the brink of the new industrial world which chemistry is opening up today, this young woman looks out into a future of limitless possibilities for the paper market.

Some will say she is fortunate in her opportunities; those who love the good old philosophic saws will doubtless breathe something about the "ill wind" and its salutary consequences. But the rest of us will be inspired to hit the line again and tackle hard, remembering the salesmen who return a dozen times and their leader who just keeps "plugging hard."