Acceptance Speech on Behalf of Martha Matilda Harper's Induction into National Women's Hall of Fame October 4, 2003

Written and accepted by Jane R. Plitt

This is a momentous honor for Martha and the thousands of Harper shop owners and operators she enabled.  Some of them are here today.  (Betty Wheeler, who doggedly moved and preserved boxes of Harper documents and history. Sally Knapp who ran a Harper shop in Baltimore, MD, Maria Hinchey, who ran a shop in Rochester, and Centa Sailer who still runs Martha’s original Harper Shop).

It is also wonderful that the National Women’s Hall of Fame to have included Martha, a businesswoman,  into its distinguished ranks.  For too long there has been a societal disdain for women who worked in  business, as if there was something unclean about working for profit, instead of looking at the impact of those dollars.

Martha’s life and destiny seemed doomed from birth, just like just like thousands of other poor, rural Canadian women.  Bound into servitude at the age of seven, she remained a servant for nearly 25 years.  Her only option was to marry and to Martha, that was just the same career.  She was determined to find a way out.

Then opportunity struck.  Her last Canadian employer bequeathed Martha his formula for hair tonic.  With that document she thought she might have the keys to freedom and she fled to the Rochester, NY in hopes of changing her career and life options.

In 1888, Martha declared her independence from servitude and became a businesswoman, opening one of America’s earliest beauty salons.  By 1891 delighted out-of-area customers wanted the Harper experience in their communities.  Faced with clear customer demand, Martha conceived an entirely new way of doing business.  She created modern retail franchising, as a means to creatively expand her shops while enabling her fellow servant women to become Harper shop owners and operators.  Her form of franchising truly was a win-win model, empowering women who had previously been forgotten and considered insignificant.  Martha knew their potential since she was one of them.  She also knew the power of earning money.

Why was and is money important?  Because in our society, money empowers; it enables choice.  Women have always worked.  They have not always, and still are not necessarily paid equitably for their work.  In 1996, full-time women workers were paid $.74 to every dollar earned by men.  A college educated African-American women earned $400 less per year than a white male high school graduate.  How do women manage when they are the primary caretakers of children?  Two-third of all poor adults are women and so are their children.

Martha understood all of this first hand and she heard her mentor, Susan B, Anthony, preach that that “every woman needs her own pocketbook.” Harper took it to heart.   That’s why Anthony cited Martha’s economic achievement from the lecture platform.

Unlike the corporate corruption scandals of today, the Harper Method was the personification of honorable people, leadership, and values.   Her creation of franchising was an affirmative example of designing a system based on win-win rather than winner take all philosophy.

Martha, while always the perfect lady, was unafraid to stand up to powerful people.  Originally she was unable to get a lease since the building owner her salon attracted the wrong kind of women.  Later when he saw how successful she was, he offered her a lease.  Did she jump at the chance?  No, she simply thanked him for his kindness and suggested that their original agreement would be just fine.  She remained in his building for 50 years, but was the only tenant who did not sign a lease! 

What I loved most about Martha was her consistency;  who you saw in business was who she was at home.  Martha  was not afraid of her employees unlike John D. Rockefeller who erected an elaborate security system around his house to protect him from former employees who he was sure were ready to assassinate him for his greed.  Martha, on the other hand, converted a floor of her house to what she called the Harper dorm where out of town Harper personnel were welcome to stay. 

She was also a beguiling woman.  While vacationing in Yellowstone National Park she fell in love with her guide, an intelligent, handsome man, 24 years her junior.  She recruited him as her executive assistant and ultimately announced to him while they were in NYC that she had bought her trousseau.  He replied, “Really, I didn’t know that you were getting married; who is the lucky man?”  To which she replied, “You!”  The next day they were married.  She was 63 and he 39.

As Martha’s biographer for the last 10 years, it has been my honor to piece together the path blazing tale of Martha Matilda Harper, a 19th century businesswoman who believed in herself, in the potential of other women, and who did something concrete to unleash that potential.  When a significant business leader praised Martha for her international enterprise of over 500 franchise shops worldwide, five training schools, and two manufacturing centers, Martha, of course thanked him, but later wrote, “He didn’t get it.  The great achievement of the Harper empire is not that the sun never sets on it, nor that the cash registers are overflowing.  The great achievement of the Harper empire is the women it has made.”

On behalf of those women, Martha thanks you and dares you to dream and make a difference, too.