'fi LIBRARY Umvcmity of Caiifamb^ 9-^- o^ THE INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT REPORT ON The Steel Strike OF 1919 The Commission of Inquiry consisted of Bishop F. J. McConnell D. A. Poling G. W. Coleman Nicholas Van Der Pyl Alva W. Taylor John McDowell Mrs. Fred Bennett Secretary, Heber Blankenhorn 'J ( Bishop W. M. Bell Advisory | Bishop C. D. Williams With the technical assistance of The Bureau of Industrial Eesearch. m ' ' On the commission arc a Methodist and an Episcopal Bishop, a secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, and other persons of character and intelligence. Their conclusions are entitled to respectful consideration." Philadelphia Record. "A challenging document. The whole question of industrial relationships is raised, and needs to be." Springfield Republican. "The report of men whose good faith is not questioned. " N. Y. Tribune. "Carries the impress both of factual truth and correct judg- ment. " N.Y. Evening Post. REPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE OF 1919 BY THE COMMISSION OF INQUIRY, THE INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT BISHOP FRANCIS J. McCONNELL Chairman DANIEL A. POLING Vice-Chairman GEORGE W. COLEMAN NICHOLAS VAN DER PYL ALVA W. TAYLOR JOHN McDOWELL MRS. FRED BENNETT j BISHOP WILLIAM MELVIN BELL vtsory -j gjgjjQp CHARLES D. WILLIAMS HEBER BLANKENHORN Secretary to the Commission With the technical assistance of THE BUREAU OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH, NEW YORK n NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE 1920 COPYBIGHT, 1920, BY HABCOUBT, BBACE AND HOWE, INC. THE QUINN ft BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY. N. J, TO THE PRESIDENT [Following is the essential part of the letter addressed by the oflBcers of the Commission of Inquiry to President Wilson in presenting a copy of the Report.] Authorized by the Interchurch World Movement to investi- gate industrial unrest in general and the steel strike in par- ticular, the Commission, of which the undersigned are Chairman and Vice-Chairman, respectively, has gone forward with its work for a little more than seven months. The publication of its completed report has been authorized. It is the very earnest desire of the Commission that since this report ventures to suggest certain actions by the Federal Government, it should come first to the President of the American people. The Commission finds in the iron and steel industry condi- tions which it is forced to describe as not good for the nation. It fails to fin(J any federal agency which, with promise of early result, is directly grappling with these conditions. Unless vital changes are brought to pass, a renewal of the conflict in this industry seems inevitable. The report suggests the appointment of a special commission to bring about imme- diately free and open conference between employee and employer. This commission to go forward on the precedents of the presi- dential commission for the bituminous coal industry, named by you after a strike, and of the anthracite commission, appointed to avert a strike. . . . The conviction has grown upon this Commission that it should not fail to recommend a practical suggestion of peace for an industry drifting toward unrestricted warfare. As Christians we can do no other. Frajtcis J. McCoNNELL, Bishop Metho- dist Episcopal Church, Chairman, Commission of Inquiry. Daniel A. Poling, Associate General Secretary, Interchurch World Move- ment, Vice-Chairman, Commission of Inquiry. [The White House received the copy of the Report on July 27, 1920.] CHEONOLOGY OF THE INVESTIGATION Establishment of an independent, representative Commission of Inquiry by the Industrial Relations Department of the Interehurch World Movement . . . Oct., 1919. Personnel: Bishop Francis J. McConnell (Methodist) Dr. Daniel A. Poling (United Evangelical) Mr. George W. Coleman (Baptist) Dr. Alva W. Taylor (Disciples) Dr. John McDowell (Presbyterian) Dr. Nicholas Van der Pyl ( Congregationalist) Mrs. Fred Bennett (Presbyterian) Advisory ^ Bishop William Melvin Bell (United Brethren) Bishop Charles D. Williams (Protestant Episcopal) Field investigation .... Oct., 1919— Feb., 1920. (Mediation effort, Nov. 28,— Dec. 5, 1919.) Report adopted unanimously by the Commission of Inquiry March 29-30, 1920. Report received by the Executive Committee of the Interehurch Movement May 10 Recommended for publication by Sub-committee of Executive Committee June 25 Personnel: Dr. Hubert C. Herring, (Congregationalist); Bishop James Cannon, Jr., (Methodist South) ; Mr. Warren S. Stone (Congregationalist). Adopted unanimously by the Executive Committee of the Inter- ehurch Movement June 28, 1920 ' The advisory members did not take part in the active field investiga- tion but signed the report after full examination of it and the evidence on which it was based. CONTENTS PAGE Letter to President Wilson iii Chronology of the Investigation v List of Sub-Reports 1 1. Introduction 3 Inauguration of Inquiry 6-7 Scope and Method 8-10 Siimmarized Conclusions 11-16 Recommendations 16-19 II. Ignorance 20 Gary Testimony 23-26 Espionage 27-30 Bolshevism 31 W. Z. Foster's Red Book . 34-35 National and Local Strike-Leaders .... 37-38 British Experience 41-42 III. The Twelve-Hour Day in a No-Conference Industry 44 Nimiher on Eight-Hour Day 48-49 Tables of Hours 52-53 Diary of Carnegie Workman 60-64 Senate Committee Testimony 67-68 Testimony of Clergymen re Seven-Day Week . . 70-71 Engineer's Findings 77-78 Americanization 82-84 IV. Wages in a No-Conference Industry .... 85 U. S. Steel's Wage and Salary Budget .... 87-91 Comparison v?ith Minimum Standards .... 92-95 True Average Annual Earnings 97 Open Hearth Schedule 98 Family Budget— A. R. C 100-101 Comparisons with Other Trades 102-103 U. S. S. C. Housing 104 Investigator's Findings 105-107 Tables of Hours, Wages and Budgets .... 108-109 Typical Cases 110-118 V. Grievances AND Control IN A No-Conference Industry 119 Carleton Parker's Conclusions 125 U. S. S. C. Finance Committee Resolution . . . 126 Diary of Gary, Ind., Worker 129-131 Homestead Nationality Report 133 "• Typical Grievances 138-141 Senate Testimony 141-143 vii viii CONTENTS PAGE VI. Organizing fob Confeeence 144 List of 24 Unions in National Committee . . 145-146 John Fitzpatrick 147 Foster's "Boring from Within" 156-159 Testimony on Attitude of Slavs 161-164 Fitzpatrick's Position 165-167 Organizing of National Committee 169-170 Attitude of New Recruits 171 Attitude of International Unions 172 Attitude of National Committee 176 Causes of Failure 177-183 Size of U. S. Steel Corporation 184-185 Appendix to Section VI 189 Report of National Committee 189-196 VII. Social Consequences of Arbitrary Control . . 197 Consequences for Employers 197 Consequences for Communities 197 Contents of Sub-Reports 198-199 Conclusions (a and b) 199 Causes of Steel Corporation's Policy .... 200 Excerpts from IMinutes of Steel Corporation . . 200-205 Analysis of Minutes 206-207 Mr. Gary's Testimony 210 Discharge for Unionism 211-213 Affidavits of Discharge 213-218 Blacklists 219-220 Espionage 221-224 Testimony of Federal Official 225-226 Agents — provocateurs 230 Spying on Commission of Inquiry 233-234 Abrogation of Civil Liberties 235-237 Uses of Armed Forces 240-242 Pulpit and Press 242-243 Concluding 245 Christian Findings 246-250 Appendix A — Standards of Living 255 Ogburn Budget 256-257 Chapin Budget 257-258 N. Y. Factory Commission's Budget .... 258 N. Y. Board of Estimate's Budget 259 U. S. Bur. of Labor Statistics Budget .... 262-263 Appendix B — Wages in Iron, Steel and Other Industries . . . 264 Average Hourly Earnings 265-266 Wages in Pittsburg District 267-268 Sources of Data 269 Appendix C — Classification According to Skill 270-271 Index 273 KEPOKT ON THE STEEL STRIKE, 1919 MAIJST SUMMARY Note. — This volume presents the Summary of industrial facts as drawn from all data before the Commission and adopted as the Report of the Commission. On it a sub-committee of the Com- mission based the Findings, from the Christian viewpoint, which are printed at the conclusion of the book. Another volume will be required for the supporting reports and exhibits by the staff of field investigators : George Soule, David J. Saposs, Miss Marian D. Savage, M. Karl Wisehart, and Robert Littell. Heber Blankenhorn had charge of the field work and later acted as Secretary to the Commission. The principal sub-reports, frequently quoted in this Summary and awaiting full publication, deal with the following topics : Civil Liberties. Welfare Work, Pensions, Etc. Discharges for Unionism. The Press and the Strike. The Pulpit and the Strike. The Strike in Johnstown. The Strike in Bethlehem. Pamily Budgets and Living Conditions. Intellectual Environment of Immigrants. Rank and File View. Under-cover Men. History of the National Committee. The Steel Corporation's Labor Policy. The Negro in the Steel Industry. MAIN SUMMARY I INTEODUCTION STJMMAEIZED CONCLUSIONS. RECOMMENDATIONS The steel strike of SeptemlDer 22, 1919, to January 7, 1920, in one sense, is not over. The main issues were not settled. The causes still remain. Moreover, both, causes and issues remain uncomprehended by the nation. The strike, although the largest in point of numbers in the history of the country up to the first date, exhibited this extraordinary phase; the basic facts concerning the work and lives of the 300,000 strikers were never comprehensively discovered to the public. The strike's real issues were swallowed up in other issues, some just as real as the actual causes of the strike, some unreal but in general quite characteristic of American indus- trial development. Moreover the little-known working conditions, which caused the strike, persist in the steel industry. Also the engulfing circumstances, nationally characteristic, persist. The following report, therefore, in attempting to analyze and publish the facts, though belated, finds peculiar justifi- cation in a central phase of the strike and of conditions left after the strike. If the steel industry is to find a peaceable way out of its present state, it must do so on the basis of a general understanding of such facts as are here set forth. If the country is to find peaceable ways out of the present industrial tension it must find them through an enlightened 9 4 EEPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE public opinion based upon a more general understanding of those national conditions and trends here analyzed. In the months after the close of the strike no effort was being made to settle the issues raised by the strike in the steel industry through reasoned public discussion of the basic facts. Employers and employees began to wait for " the next strike " ; they and the public wondered, careless rather than fearful, whether " the next strike " would come in months or years, and whether it would be " without violence " as in 1919 or with guns and flame as at Homestead in 1892. The steel industry continued in the same state as in the past, a state of latent war. It was expected that the next outbreak would be precipitated as was the last, by efforts for work- men's organization and collective bargaining. Meanwhile the civil liberties of entire communities were subordinated to the " necessities " of this state of war and the situation in the steel industry continued, in a peculiar way, to threaten the industrial peace of the nation. Eank and file strikes of such spontaneity, intensity and duration as to slow up the industry of the whole nation char- acterized the period succeeding the steel strike. Labor unions which had been striving toward internal reform by democra- tizing their organizations and by defining their responsibili- ties to the public ; employers who were working toward plans for industrial cooperation; those few government agencies and social institutions which had been at work on the nation's after-war industrial problem — all felt a set-back. Conditions of industrial disorganization set in, directly related to events in the steel industry. Put tersely, the public mind completely lost sight of the real causes of the strike, which lay in hours, wages and con- ditions of labor, fixed " arbitrarily," according to the head of the United States Steel Corporation, in his testimony at a Senatorial investigation. It lost sight of them because it INTEODUCTION 5 was more immediately conceiiied with the actual outcome of the great struggle between aggregations of employers and aggregations of workers than it was with the fundamental circumstances that made such a struggle inevitable. This investigation and report deal primarily with the causative facts, — with abiding conditions in the steel industry — and only secondarily with conflicts of policies and their influence on national institutions and modes of thought. Out of the first set of undisputed facts, these may be cited in the beginning: (a) The number of those working the twelve-hour day is 69,000. (Testimony of E. H. Gary, Senate Investiga- tion, Vol. I, p. 157.) (b) The number of those receiving the common labor or lowest rate of pay is 70,000. (Letters of E. H. Gary to this Commission.) This means that approximately 350,000 ^ men, women and children are directly affected by the longest hours or the smallest pay in that part of the industry owned by the United States Steel Corporation, which fixes pay and hours without conference with the labor force. Since this corporation controls about half the industry, it is therefore a reasonably conservative estimate that the work- ing conditions of three quarters of a million of the nation's population have their lives determined arbitrarily by the twelve-hour day or by the lowest pay in the steel industry. This nub of the situation, the Commission found, was subordinated, and after the strike remained subordinate, to the industry's warfare over collective bargaining. Both sides were enmeshed. The huge steel companies, committed to a non-union system (and offering no alternative) and the masses 1 The average American family, the so-called statistical family, con- sists of five persons. 6 EEPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE of workers, moving as workers do traditionally, seemed both to be Helpless. Espionage replaced collective bargaining or cooperative service. Inauguration of Inquiry: The data for this report were obtained by and for an independent Commission of Inquiry appointed at the request of the Industrial Relations Department of the Interchurch World Movement of North America after a National Indus- trial Conference in New York on October 3, 1919. The Con- ference rejected a resolution condemning one party to the strike for refusing to adopt the principle of collective bar- gaining but unanimously supported a resolution directing a thorough investigation of the strike and publication of the reports of the investigators. Those parts of the evidence obtained directly by the Com- mission were secured through personal observation and through open hearings held in Pittsburgh in November, sup- plemented by inspection trips in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. More technical and detailed data were obtained by a staff of investigators working under a field director from the Bureau of Industrial Research, New York. Other evidence was obtained directly by the Bureau of Industrial Research, by the Bureau of Ap- plied Economics in Washington, by a firm of consulting engineers, and by various other organizations and tech-' nical experts working under the direction of the Com- mission. The results are presented in a Main Report with sub- sidiary supporting reports. Pertinent phases of other in- vestigations and surveys, including governmental studies, the recent findings of the Senate Committee on Labor, evidence on the limitation or abrogation of civil rights, before and during the strike, have been collected and analyzed. The INTRODUCTION 7 relation of " welfare work " to the workers was determined, chiefly hy the analysis of available statistics. A detailed analysis was made of the relation of the press and of the pulpit to the strike, fields hitherto neglected ; and a similar analytical study was made of companies' " under- cover men " and " labor detective agencies." A body of over five hundred afiSdavits and statements from striking and non- striking steel workers was collected and analyzed. The chief effort at intensive study was limited to the Pitts- burgh district, including Johnstown and Youngstown. The evidence may be said to center in the plants of the United States Steel Corporation and particularly its plants in the Pittsburgh district. Difficulties in obtaining evidence were expected; — ^they exceeded expectations. In certain quarters the Commission of clergymen were charged with being " Bolshevists " and " anarchists " ; their investigators were rebuffed as " Reds " ; one was " an ^sted." Formal action was finally necessary to combat the circulation in written form of charges whose only basis, apparently, was that any persons had ventured to make any investigation. In other quarters great courtesy was accorded, coupled with inability to furnish the desired statistics. Moreover the lack of up-to-date and available statistics which should have been possessed by union officials, the over-supply of unverified complaints from strikers and the reluctance to impart any information on the part of the companies combined to lengthen unduly the period of field investigation. The Commission's effort was in itself a reve- lation of the lack of authoritative means for acquainting the public with industrial information at a time of industrial crisis. At one period, investigation was delayed by an effort of the Commission to settle the strike. The Commission, hav- ing been urged to do so in a manner impossible to refuse, 8 EEPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE actually formulated a plan of mediation which was formally accepted by the leaders of the strike but was definitely re- jected by the Steel Corporation. Scope and Method'. The scope of the inquiry was delimited by applying two simple questions: (a) What workers constituted the bulk of the strikers ? The answer is not disputed : the backbone of the strike consisted of the mass of common labor and the semi-skilled, constituting roughly three-quarters of all employees, and mostly " foreigners." By " foreigners " the steel industry means not all im- migrants or sons of immigrants, but only the " new immigra- tion," consisting of the score of races from southeastern or eastern Europe. About half of these " foreigners " had citizenship papers. In many places all the skilled struck ; in a few places the skilled went out and many unskilled stayed in the mills. The foreigners had never been organized before; hitherto they had been looked upon by the unions as potential strike breakers, " stealing Americans' jobs and lowering the Ameri- can standard of living." (b) What was the chief factor on the employers' side? The answer is not in dispute : the U. S. Steel Corporation was the admittedly decisive influence. Whatever the Steel Corporation does, the rest of the in- dustry will ultimately do; whatever modifications of policy fail to take place in the industry fail because of the opposition of the Steel Corporation. Throughout the report great emphasis is laid on Mr. Gary's testimony, partly because he was almost the sole spokesman for the industry during the strike and partly because officials, corporation and " independent/' referred investigators to Mr. INTRODUCTION 9 Gary and often limited their own testimony to reading ex- tracts from Mr. Gary's statements or approving his policies. The scope of the inquiry, therefore, included chiefly repre- sentative cross-sections of the mass of low-skilled " foreign- ers " in the Pittsburgh and Chicago district plants of the Steel Corporation. Of the Corporation's 268,000 employees, 80,000 are miners, railworkers and dockmen, ship crews and shipyard workers, who were untouched by the strike and are therefore excluded. The method was to carry the inquiry to the steel workers themselves, strikers and non-strikers. Effort was made to get beyond the debates of Mr. Gary and Mr. Gompers. The statements and affidavits of 500 steel workers carefully compared and tested, constitute the rock bottom of the findings, the testimony of the leaders on both sides being used chiefly to interpret these findings. Effort was made to keep in mind, that a strike is not merely a call to strike, it is a walk-out, frequently without a call. Everything, — Mr. Gary, Mr. Gompers, the Corpora- tion's labor policies, Mr. Foster's record, — was viewed in the light of whether or not it had or had not a relation to the separation of 300,000 men from their jobs. The Commission and its investigators went to the steel workers with two main questions: A. Why did you strike ? (Or why refuse to strike ?) B. What do you want ? Answers to A. were found to deal with things that existed, — schedules of hours, wages, conditions, grievances, physical states and states of mind. Answers to B. were found to deal with a method (hitherto non-existent in the steel industry), for changing A.; the strike leaders called it collective bargaining and the right to organization; the steel employers called it the closed shop and labor autocracy. 10 REPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE Therefore, the first half of the inquiry concerned, prima- rily, conditions of labor. The second half concerned, primarily, methods for chang- ing the conditions revealed by the first half. The second line of inquiry was found to stretch back with decisive effect over the first half; in short, the key to the steel industry, both before and during the strike and now was found in following to its furthest implications this question : What means of conference exist in the steel mills ? Both sides agreed that the occasion of the strike, leaving aside for the moment its relation to any fundamental cause, was the denial of a conference, requested by organized labor and refused by Mr. Gary. The inquiry into the means of conference was pursued through the three possible forms of conference: (a) through individuals ; (b) through shop committee or company unions ; (c) through labor unions. The complete scope of this phase of the inquiry might be restated as follows: (A) Investigation of a system of denial of organization and collective bargaining (the policy of the Steel Corpora- tion). (B) Investigation of a system or systems of non-union collec- tive bargaining (existent in certain "independent'' plants where strikes had once existed or were feared). (C) Investigation of a movement for collective bargaining and organization of the traditional trade union kind (ini- tiated by the American Federation of Labor and fought by the Steel Corporation). Inquiry B. was not sufficiently completed to be presented in this report, except as a sidelight on the main conditions. The plans in operation or attempted in the Pueblo plant of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, the Midvale-Cambria mTRODUCTION 11 Company, the Bethlehem, Inland and International Harvester plants, etc., did not suggest to the dominant factor, the Steel Corporation, any modification of its policy. Summarized Conclusions: SuflBcient data were analyzed to warrant the following main conclusions concisely stated here and discussed at length in this report and the sub-reports. 1. The conduct of the iron and steel industry was deter- mined by the conditions of labor accepted by the 191,000 employees in the U. S. Steel Corporation's manufacturing plants. 2. These conditions of labor were fixed by the Corporation, without collective bargaining or any functioning means of conference; also without above-board means of learning how the decreed conditions affected the workers. 3. Ultimate control of the plants was vested in a small group of financiers whose relation to the producing force was remote. The financial group's machinery of control gave it full knowledge of output and dividends, but negligible information of working and living conditions. 4. The jobs in the five chief departments of the plants were organized in a pyramid divided roughly into thirds; the top third of skilled men, chiefly Americans, resting on a larger third of semi-skilled, all based on a fluctuating mass of common labor. Promotion was at pleasure of company representatives. 5. Eates of pay and other principal conditions were based on what was accepted by common labor; the unskilled and semi-unskilled force was largely immigrant labor. 6. The causes of the strike lay in the hours, wages and con- trol of jobs and in the manner in which all these were fixed. 7. Hours: Approximately one-half the employees were sub- jected to the twelve-hour day. Approximately one-half of these in turn were subjected to the seven-day week. 12 EEPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE Much less than one-quarter had a working day of less than ten hours (sixty-hour week). The average week for all employees was 68.7 hours; these employees generally helieved that a week of over sixty hours ceased to be a standard in other industries fifteen to twenty years ago. Schedules of hours for the chief classes of steel workers were from twelve to forty hours longer per week than in other basic industries near steel communities; the Ameri- can steel average was over twenty hours longer than the British, which ran between forty-seven to forty-eight hours in 1919. Steel jobs were largely classed as heavy labor and hazard- ous. The steel companies professed to have restored practically pre-war conditions; the hours nevertheless were longer than in 1914 or 1910. Since 1910 the Steel Corporation has increased the percentage of its twelve-hour workers. The only reasons for the twelve-hour day, furnished by the companies, were found to be without adequate basis in fact. The increased hours were found to be a natural develop- ment of large scale production, which was not restricted by public sentiment or by organization among employees. The twelve-hour day made any attempt at " Americani- zation " or other civic or individual development for one- half of all immigrant steel workers arithmetically impos- sible. 8. Wages: The annual earnings of over one-third of all pro- ductive iron and steel workers were, and had been for years, below the level set by government experts as the minimum of subsistence standard for families of five. The annual earnings of 72 per cent, of all workers were, and had been for years, below the level set by government experts as the minimum of comfort level for families of five. This second standard being the lowest which scientists are willing to term an " American standard of living," it fol- INTRODUCTION 13 lows that nearly three-quarters of the steel workers could not earn enough for an American standard of living. The bulk of unskilled steel labor earned less than enough for the average family's minimum subsistence; the bulk of semi-skilled labor earned less than enough for the aver- age family's minimum comfort. Skilled steel labor was paid wages disproportionate to the earnings of the other two-thirds, thus binding the skilled class to the companies and creating divisions between the upper third and the rest of the force. Wage rates in the iron and steel industry as a whole are determined by the rates of the U. S. Steel Corporation. The Steel Corporation sets its wage rates, the same as its hour schedules, without conference (or collective bargain- ing), with its employees. Concerning the financial ability of the Corporation to pay higher wages the following must be noted (with the under- standing that the Commission's investigation did not in- clude analysis of the Corporation's financial organization) : the Corporation vastly increased its undistributed financial reserves during the Great War. In 1914 the Corporation's total undivided surplus was $135,204,471.90. In 1919 this total undivided surplus had been increased to $493,048,- 201.93. Compared with the wage budgets, in 1918, the Corporation's final surplus after paying dividends of $96,382,027 and setting aside $274,277,835 for Federal taxes payable in 1919, was $466,888,421, — a sum large enough to have paid a second time the total wage and salary budget for 1918 ($452,663,524), and to have left a surplus of over $14,000,000, In 1919 the undivided sur- plus was $493,048,201.93, or $13,000,000 more than the total wage and salary expenditures.^ 1 Detailed figures on the Corporation's surpluses, accumulation of which was begun in 1901, are: 1913— Total undivided surplus $151,798,428.89 1914— Total undivided surplus 135.204,471.90 1915— Total undivided surplus 180,025,328.74 1916— Total undivided surplus 381,360,913.37 1917— Total undivided surplus 431,660,803.63 1918— Total undivided surplus 466,888,421.38 1919— Total undivided surplus 493,048,201.93 14 ITEPOnT ON THE STEEL STRIKE Increases in wages during the war in no case were at a sacrifice of stockholders' dividends. Extreme congestion and unsanitary living conditions, prev- alent in most Pennsylvania steel communities, were largely due to underpayment of semi-skilled and common labor. 9. Grievances: The Steel Corporation's arbitrary control of hours and wages extended to everything in individual steel jobs, resulting in daily grievances. The Corporation, committed to a non-union system, was as helpless as the workers to anticipate these grievances. The grievances, since there existed no working machinery of redress, weighed heavily in the industry, because they incessantly reminded the worker that he had no " say " whatever in steel. Discrimination against immigrant workers, based on ri- valry of economic interests, was furthered by the present system of control and resulted in race divisions within the community. 10. Control: The arbitrary control of the Steel Corporation extended outside the plants, affectiug the workers as citi- zens and the social institutions in the communities. The steel industry was under the domination of a policy whose aim was to keep out labor unions. In pursuit of this policy, blacklists were used, workmen were discharged for union affiliation, " under-cover men " and " labor de- This report does not go into the long dispute over the Corporation's financing, a controversy which blazed up during the strike but not as a part of the issue. A typical criticism printed about this time was the following from the Searchlight, commenting on Basil Manly's analysis of Senate Document 259, (a report from the Secretary of the Treasury) : " On the basis of the Steel Corporation's public reports, its net profits for the two years 1916 and 1917, ' after the payment of interest on bonds, and other allowances for all charges growing out of the installation of special war facilities,' amounted, according to Mr. Manly, to $888,931,511. The bonds of the corporation represent all the money actually invested in the concern, for the common stock is ' nothing but water.' " Of course out of the net income the Steel Corporation had to pay its taxes to the federal government, but the hundreds of millions that re- mained represented earnings on ' shadow dollars.' " INTKODUCTION 15 tectives " were employed and efforts were made to influ- ence the local press, pulpit and police authorities. In Western Pennsylvania the civil rights of free speech and assembly were abrogated without just cause, both for individuals and labor organizations. Personal rights of strikers were violated by the State Constabulary and sher- iff's deputies. Federal authorities, in some cases, acted against groups of workmen on the instigation of employees of steel companies. In many places in Western Pennsylvania, community authorities and institutions were subservient to the maintenance of one corporation's anti-union policies. 11. The organizing campaign of the workers and the strike were for the purpose of forcing a conference in an in- dustry where no means of conference existed; this specific conference to set up trade union collective bargaining, par- ticularly to abolish the twelve-hour day and arbitrary meth- ods of handling employees. 12. No interpretation of the movement as a plot or conspiracy fits the facts; that is, it was a mass movement, in which leadership became of secondary importance. 13. Charges of Bolshevism or of industrial radicalism in the conduct of the strike were without foundation. 14. The chief cause of the defeat of the strike was the size of the Steel Corporation, together with the strength of its active opposition and the support accorded it by employers generally, by governmental agencies and by organs of pub- lic opinion. 15. Causes of defeat, second in importance only to the fight waged by the Steel Corporation, lay in the organization and leadership, not so much of the strike itself, as of the American labor movement. 16. The immigrant steel worker was led to expect more from the twenty-four International Unions of the A. F. of L. conducting the strike than they, through indifference, self- ishness or narrow habit, were willing to give. 16 EEPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE 17. Racial differences among steel workers and an immigrant tendency toward industrial unionism, which was combated by the strike leadership, contributed to the disunity of the strikers. 18. The end of the strike was marked by slowly increasing disruption of the new unions; by bitterness between the "American" and "foreign" worker and by bit- terness against the employer, such as to diminish pro- duction. The following question was definitely placed before the Commission of Inquiry: Were the strikers justified? The investigation's data seem to make impossible any other than this conclusion: The causes of the strike lay in grievances which gave the workers just cause for complaint and for action. These un- redressed grievances still exist in the steel industry. Recommendations: I. Inasmuch as — (a) conditions in the iron and steel industry depend on the conditions holding good among the workers of the U. S. Steel Corporation, and — (b) past experience has proved that the industrial policies of large-scale producing concerns are basically influenced by (1) public opinion expressed in governmental action, (2) labor unions, which in this case have failed, or (3) by both, and — (c) permanent solutions for the industry can only be reached by the Steel Corporation in free cooperation with its employees, therefore — INTKODUCTION 17 It is recommended — (a) that the Federal Govermnent be requested to initiate the immediate undertaking of such settlement by bring- ing together both sides ; (b) that the Federal Government, by presidential order or by congressional resolution, set up a commission repre- senting both sides and the public, similar to the Com- mission resulting from the coal strike; such Commis- sion to — 1. inaugurate immediate conferences between the Steel Corporation and its employees for the elimination of the 12-hour day and the Y-day week, and for the readjustment of wage rates ; 2. devise with both sides and establish an adequate plan of permanent free conference to regulate the conduct of the industry in the future; 3. continue and make nation-wide and exhaustive this inquiry into basic conditions in the industry. II. Inasmuch as — (a) the administration of civil law and police power in Western Pennsylvania has created many injustices which persist, and — (b) no local influence has succeeded in redressing this con- dition, therefore — It is recommended — (a) that the Federal Government inaugurate full inquiry into the past and present state of civil liberties in West- em Pennsylvania and publish the same. 18 EEPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE III. Inasmuch as — (a) the conduct and activities of " lahor-detective " agencies do not seem to serve the best interests of the country, and — (b) the Federal Department of Justice seems to have placed undue reliance on cooperation with corporations' secret services, therefore — It is recommended — (a) that the Federal Government institute investigation for the purpose of regulating labor detective agencies; and for the purpose of publishing what government depart- ments or public moneys are utilized to cooperate with company " under-cover men." IV. It is recommended that the proper Federal authorities be requested to make public two reports of recent in- vestigations of conditions in the steel industry, in mak- ing which public money was spent, and to explain why these and similar reports have not hitherto been made public, and why reports which were printed have been limited to extremely small editions. (Reference is made specifically to Mr. Ethelbert Stewart's report on civil liberties in Western Pennsylvania, made to the Secretary of Labor ; to Mr. George P. West's report made to the War Labor Board; to the Testimony of the Senate Commit- tee's strike investigation, 2 vols., printed in an edition of 1,000 only; and to Senate Document 259.) V. It is recommended that the Industrial Relations De- partment of the Interchurch World Movement continue and supplement the present inquiry into the iron and steel industry with particular reference to — INTRODUCTION 19 1. Company unions and shop committees; 2. Social, political and industrial beliefs of the immi- grant worker; 3. Present aims of production in the industry. 4. Conduct of trade unions with reference to democracy and to responsibility. VI. It is recommended that immediate publication, in the most effective forms possible, be obtained for this report with its sub-reports. 11. IGNORANCE: BOLSHEVISM As a preliminary to the whole report, analysis of the data gathered in the inquiry warrants the following conclusions on two salient and inter-related phases of the strike: The steel companies had no adequate means of information on the usual conditions of employment, previous to the strike, nor on the motives of employees in joining the unions during the organizing campaign; they therefore placed undue reliance on information obtained from secret and mercenary sources. The public purveyors of information on normal steel condi- tions and on the causes of the strike failed to ascertain and publish the facts. Ignorance of the facts was so general that it was possible for one interpretation of the strike to obtain wide acceptance, viz. the companies' explanation that the strike was a plot of Bolshevists, sup- ported mainly by " radicals " who were largely aliens. Evidence on this interpretation of the strike as a Bolshevist plot failed entirely to substantiate it. On the contrary, it tended to show that this conception was without foun- dation in fact. Concerning the basic facts of normal steel employment conditions, not only were the public and the companies un- informed but the strikers' leaders were also uninformed. It is not unusual for strikes, like presidential elections and wars, to be fought out on extraneous issues, with little elucidation of fundamental facts. In most such cases, however, some of the basic facts finally do come to the surface. In this strike, 20 IGNORANCE: BOLSHEVISM 21 so far as the public was concerned, lack of information re- mained so general that it was possible to set up straw-man explanations and keep public attention diverted to knocking them down. It was necessary for this Commission to consider such questions as the following: Was there any substantial general knowledge of the customary organization of the steel industry, its hours, its wages, its workers and their modes of living ? Did the government have the basic facts regard- ing employment in the industry, and did it make use of the facts it had ? Did the United States Steel Corporation, in normal times, possess adequate means of ascertaining the truth about living conditions and the desires of its workers ? Was the Corporation subject to misinformation? Were the press and the pulpit in possession of the facts ? Within steel communities, are the facts about steel workers' lives obvious and immediately accessible to the rest of the community? As to the allegation that the strike was plotted and led by " Reds " or syndicalists or Bolshevists, that it was supported mainly or entirely by alien " radicals," and that its real objects were the overthrow of established leaders and es- tablished institutions of organized labor and perhaps the overthrow of the established government of the country, it was necessary to consider such questions as: What sort of facts were essential to determine the problem ? Who offered this allegation and with what proof? Why was this allegation made? Did the allegation seriously affect the strike? What were its effects on the public? Analysis of the data collected proved that neither the United States Steel Cor^Doration, nor organized labor, nor governmental agencies have considered it their normal busi- ness to ascertain the current facts regarding conditions of employment, etc., in the steel industry and to take the public constantly ipto their confidence on such facts. The Corpora- 22 EEPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE tion's annual report is made public, but the facts therein which deal with labor are confined to a few lines and are not illuminating. Organized labor has never understood the business of gathering facts about any industry nor the advisa- bility of presenting such facts to the public. The govern- ment's bureaus for collecting such statistics as hours, wages, working conditions, costs and profits, are ridiculously in- adequate, are almost invariably undercut by Congress in appropriations, and are not primarily concerned with pop- ularizing such facts as they possess. What might be con- sidered as a prime business of any government, i.e. the discovery and current publication of fundamental facts of the country's basic industries was not considered the national government's business in relation to the steel industry. In normal times, the Steel Corporation had no adequate means of learning the conditions of life and work and the desires of its employees. Company officers admitted that they had no real way of reaching, or of keeping in touch with, the mass of workers who became involved in the strike, that is the foreign-speaking unskilled workers and the lower half of the semi-skilled, constituting up to 80 per cent, of the force in representative plants. Even such machinery of contact as is provided in " modern employment management " systems had not been installed very long in the steel plants and was not developed beyond the point of keeping in con- tact at the moment of hiring and firing. With the employ- ment managers were usually joined one to four welfare workers of limited training who were little concerned with interpreting the difficulties and desires of the " foreign " steel worker because they were powerless to efi'ect changes. The President of the Carnegie Steel Company declared to the Commission that there was " no real way of getting hold of the foreigner." The head of the Corporation's Sani- tation, Safety and Welfare Department, Mr. C. L. Close IGNORANCE: BOLSHEVISM 23 agreed with this statement. Neither seemed to think that this inability was due to a lack of machinery and it was apparent that steel officials generally relied on some other method for information than an openly organized system of studying the minds and needs of the workers. A suggestion that companies might foster and enlist the aid of organizations of the workers themselves for the purpose of insuring such information was commented on by company officers with surprise not to say suspicion. Mr. Gary gave the clearest testimony in confirmation of his subordinates, though that was not his immediate purpose. He told the Senate Com- mittee that his men were " contented." He said he knew this to be the case and that he had adequate means for know- ing it ; that there was " no cause " for the strike and that " the men were not complaining ; the workmen had found no fault; we are on the best of terms with our men and have always been, with some very slight exceptions, very in- consequential exceptions." Then he volunteered the follow- ing, (quoted in full from the Senate Testimony, Volume I, pages 161 and 162) : Senator Walsh. " How did you personally know that hun- dreds and thousands of your men were content and satisfied ? " Mr. Gary. " Senator, I know it because I make it my par- ticular business all the time to know the frame of mind of our people. Not that I visit every man ; I do not do that ; of course, I could not do that; not that there could be something done or something said in the mills that I would not know; but, in the first place, my instructions regarding the treatment of the men are absolutely positive, given to the presidents at the presi- dents' meetings regularly — plenty of my remarks to the presi- dents have been printed and can be exhibited if necessary — and because I am inquiring into that; and we have a man at the head of our welfare department, Mr. Close, who is here, who is around among the works frequently, and all the time, 24 KEPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE more or less, trying to ascertain conditions; because public writers, unbeknown to us, have been among our works mak- ing inquiry and reporting and writing articles on the subject; and because we come in contact with the foremen and often with the men, going through the mills, Mr. Farrell and myself, and others from time to time; because we have a standing rule, and have had, that if any of our men in any department are dissatisfied in any respect they may come singly or they may come in groups, as they may choose, to the foremen and ask for adjustments, make complaints, and if necessary they may come before the president of the company, or they may come to the chairman of the Corporation. Now then, sometimes there have been complaints made. For instance, to mention a some- what trivial circumstance, some three or four years ago — not to be exactly specific as to date — one of our presidents tele- phoned to the president of our Corporation, who is in general charge of operations, that a certain number of men — it may have been a thousand or it may have been two thousand men — in a certain mill had all gone out, and his report was that there was no reason for their going out " Senator Sterling. " When you speak of * one of our presi- dents,' you mean the president of a subsidiary company ? " Mr. Gary. " Yes ; the president of a subsidiary company. And he said, ' It is very easy for me to fill this mill, and I will proceed to do it.' The president of the Corporation came to me immediately and reported this. I said, ' Tell him to wait and to come to New York.' He came the next morning and he made substantially that same statement to me. I said, ' Have you taken pains to find out; has anybody spoken to you? ' * No,' he said, 'I have not received any complaint whatever.' I said, * Are you sure no complaint has been made to anj^one ? ' He said, ' I will find out.' I said, * You had better do so before you decide what you are going to do or what you propose to do.' He went back; got hold of the foreman. A committee of men had come to the foreman and said that they thought three things, if I remember, were wrong — not very important, but they claimed they were wrong. And the president came IGNORANCE: BOLSHEVISM 25 back the second time and reported that; and I said, 'Well, now, if they state the facts there, isn't the company wrong ? ' ' Well,' he said, ' I don't consider it very important.' I said, * That is not the question. Are you wrong in any respect ? It seems to me you are wrong with respect to two of those things, and the other not. Now, you go right back to your factory and just put up a sign that, with reference to those two par- ticular things, the practice will be changed.' " The foregoing revelation of Corporation practice must be analyzed from the standpoint of Mr. Gary's machinery for getting information about his workmen. Mr. Gary's sys- tem is; 1) To give instructions to the subsidiary com- pany presidents ; as to whether the presidents carry out those instructions, he " is inquiring into that." 2.) He has one man, head of a busy and complex department, who is " more or less trying to ascertain conditions." 3.) Public writers write articles on his steel works. 4.) Mr. Gary and Mr. Farrell sometimes go through the mills and " come in con- tact with the foremen and often with the men." 5.) Mr. Gary knows his system is adequate because of " a standing rule " that anybody in the plant is privileged to come to him with complaints. He did not cite, nor, so far as the Com- mission has been able to ascertain has anybody in his office cited, any example of any workman or committees of work-' men coming to him. In short, it would appear that he gets no information under "the standing rule." Finally, he gives in full the circumstances of how he learned of the desires of one thousand, " it may have been two thousand," whose grievance was so vital to themselves that they went on strike. That is, these one thousand, or two thousand, workmen whose complaint was just, or two-thirds just, according to Mr. Gary himself, after weeks or months of effort to obtain redress, took the desperate venture of quitting their jobs. 26 EEPORT OX THE STEEL STRIKE That they might never get the jobs back again was likely, as the president of the subsidiary company told Mr. Gary that he could easily fill their places. The livelihood of more than five thousand men, women and children (if the strikers numbered one thousand) of over ten thousand men, women and children (if the strikers numbered two thousand) was vitally involved. Without redress, and without jobs, this population would have had to move from their community, perhaps, and would certainly have had to seek new ways of earning a living except for Mr. Gary's casual intervention in deciding to ask them what they wanted. "Why it is normally impossible for steel workers to get their lesser grievances considered by officers in power is con- sidered in another section of this report. The greater griev- ances, concerning hours and wages, are admittedly outside the province of the Corporation's theoretical committee sys- tem. In practice, grievances which drive workers out of the steel industry are effectually stopped from getting higher than the first representative of the company reachable by the workers, — the foreman. Is it not clear, therefore, that the Steel Corporation disposes of the work and livelihood of its 260,000 employees without learning how such disposal really affects them ? The Corporation relies upon other means of information than a system of open and cooperative machinery operating within the mills. Mr. Gary's testimony on this subject is brief: (Senate Testimony, Volume I, Page 177:) Senator Walsh. "Have you a secret service organization among your employees at any of the subsidiary plants of the Steel Corporation ? " Mr. Gary. " Well, Senator, I cannot be very specific about that, but I am quite sure that at times some of our people have used secret service men to ascertain facts and conditions." IGNORANCE: BOLSHEVISM 27 It was not the original intention of the Interchurch Com- mission to gather evidence on the widespread charges of " company spy systems," " industrial espionage," etc. Steel workers and their spokesmen asserted that such spy systems were the ever-present instruments resulting in an ever-present fear, — some workers called it " terrorization," — evident among the rank and file of steel workers. For one thing, it would have seemed impossible to get such secret evidence. For another thing, the Commission doubted its importance. But it became apparent that some officials of some steel com- panies were so accustomed to look upon their secret service reports as the basis on which their, or any company's, labor policy would have to be formed that they showed no hesitancy in producing information about them from their secret files. The Commission's investigators, asking the officers of a company in the Pittsburgh district for information concern- ing their machinery for ascertaining their workers' needs, encountered this: "Bring in the labor file." The labor file, this company's basis for a labor policy, consisted of the secret service reports of various detectives and of "labor agencies." Here were hundreds of misspelled reports of " under-cover men," " operatives * X,' ' Y,' and ' Z," con- tracts for their services, official letters exchanged between companies giving lists of strikers, commonly known as " black lists." In some instances original pencilled scraps of paper contained secret denunciations of workers, which denunciations, raised to the dignity of typed documents, were then circulated to other companies and even to the Federal Department of Justice. The names of independent concerns and of subsidiary companies of the Steel Corpora- tion appear on letterheads showing how this information or misinformation was passed along. A detailed study of this file and of the spy system is given in another section of this report. It is sufficient to 28 EEPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE note here that no small part of the labor policy of this com- pany was founded on the inaccurate, prejudiced and usually misspelled reports of professional spies. In Chicago one labor detective agency had operatives at work during the strike in the South Chicago district, where a subsidiary of the Steel Corporation and independents have plants. This concern was investigated by agents of the War Department, its offices were raided by the State's Attorney and one of its responsible heads was indicted for intent to " kill and murder divers large numbers of persons " and to create riots. A published statement that these operatives had been employed in behalf of the Steel Corporation among others was put before the President of the Illinois Steel Com- pany, the Corporation's big Chicago-Gary subsidiary, who declared it untrue. The statement was put before the head of the raided concern who declared that his operatives were working for the Illinois Steel Co. The Commission of Inquiry had not expected to ask Mr. Gary whether the head of the United States Steel Cor- poration made use of such detectives' reports. However, one such report, received by Mr. Gary, was produced by him. This document dealt with the present investigation of the steel strike, the activities of the Interchurch World Move- ment and its Commission of Inquiry. The same curious il- literacy, characteristic of the labors of these " under-cover men," characterized the " report " on the Commission of Inquiry. Mr. Gary made this document the primary sub- ject of discussion when conferring with a committee of Com- missioners whose business with him was nothing less than a plan of mediation designed to end the whole strike.^ * That is, the committee men representing the Interchurch Commis- sion visiting Mr. Gary by appointment were first asked by Mr. Gary's secretary if they had seen the secret document which he handed them. They replied that they had. Mr. Gary's secretary expressed surprise and he wondered " where it had come from." A Conunissioner noted that " The report is anonymous." The sec- IGNOKANCE: BOLSHEVISM 29 It is undeniable that labor policies in the steel industry rest in considerable part on the reports of " under-cover men " paid directly by the steel companies or hired from concerns popularly known as " strike busters." The " opera- tives " make money by detecting " unionism " one day and " Bolshevism " the next. The importance of the espionage system as revealed by this evidence lies in the light it sheds on the atmosphere of war normal to the steel industry, and this atmosphere is due to the dominant policy of preventing organization among the workers, even organization for above- board study of the men's conditions of labor and thought. This state of latent warfare is now so customary that the highest company officers can consider it a matter of routine, consonant with their practice and dignity, to examine with judicial solemnity the reports of anonymous spies. For the country at large, the source of information about conditions in the steel industry and the progress of the strike, was, of course, principally the press. The wide discrepan- cies between the facts now disclosed and most of the press reports at the time are the subject of exhaustive analysis elsewhere. The findings are that most newspapers, tradition- ally hesitant in reporting industrial matters, failed notably to acquaint the public with the facts, failed to take steps necessary to ascertain the facts, failed finally to publish adequately what was brought out by the brief investigation of the U. S. Senate committee.^ Within the steel communities themselves the facts about the organization of the steel industry are not known. Even in the case of the American workers, the conditions of their retary agreed that "the copy which they had was also anonymous and they had no idea where it came from." Then the whole matter of the weighty business in hand had to wait while Mr. Gary read excerpts of the " anonymous " report and cross- examined the Commissioners as to whether the persons named in the report were Bolshevists or I.W.W.'s or some other kind of radical. (The secret report is analyzed elsewhere.) 1 A notable exception to the general rule was shown by a series of articles during the strike carried by the New York World. 30 EEPOHT ON THE STEEL STRIKE jobs, their hours, rates of pay, methods of promotion and attitude to the companies are not common knowledge. Even in normal times it is difficult to get American skilled steel workers to discuss their jobs. These men say when pinned down, "How do I know who you are? Even in the mill I can't talk about conditions. If I talk, I may find myself transferred to a worse job or laid off. I can't afford to talk." In the case of the " foreigner," the facts lie behind the further screen of physical and mental segregation. The unskilled foreign-language steel workers congregate in com- munities of their own. In the narrow valleys of the great Pittsburgh and Mahoning Valley districts, they are for the most part crammed into old houses and tenements fringing the great plants. The worker's life is to hurry from his segregated home to the plant and then hurry back and sleep. Not even on street cars is there much communication between the " foreigner " and the ordinary American citizen. Within these bounds of physical segregation there are twenty or thirty distinct mental worlds, belonging to as many different races. What influences move those worlds is an un- answered question to most good Americans and for the most part an unasked question. To this lack of understand- ing and sympathy much of our popular distrust of the " foreigners " can be traced. Physically powerful men, with dark or dirty faces, with heavy brows or long mus- taches, in whose former home lands strange political events are going on, these men are feared because nothing is known about them. A few years ago East Youngstown, the dis- trict's " hunkie " town, was a scene of riot and wholesale burning during a strike. But what caused that strike and what moved those " foreigners " to violent outbreak are still unknown to the good Americans who live on the hill tops. The employment managers, welfare workers and other mill officials who try to make it their business to know at IGNORANCE: BOLSHEVISM 31 least a little something of what is going on in the " foreign- er's " head, say frankly that they cannot follow hira, they cannot speak his twenty or thirty languages nor break down his suspicion of " bosses." The situation, then, during the strike, and existent now, is that the fundamental facts about the steel industry and especially about the masses of unskilled foreign workmen are not known and that this ignorance breeds a public fear akin to panic. " Bolshevism " : The second preliminary phase of the report concerns the charge, widely current, that the strike was a product of Bolshevism. The evidence, from steel company officials, strike committee records, local and national governmental cfBcers and from observations by the Commission and its in- vestigators is completely adequate for forming a judgment. A stranger in America reading the newspapers during the strike and talking with steel masters both in and out of steel communities must have concluded that the strike repre- sented a serious outbreak of Bolshevism red hot from Rus- sia. The chief memory that American citizens themselves may have a few years from now may well be that the strike was largely the work of Reds. " ' Reds ' hack of the Steel Strike " was a frequent headline in September. As late as January 4, 1920, an article in The New York Times con- tained the following: " Radical leaders planned to develop the recent steel and coal strike into a general strike and ultimately into a revolution to overthrow the government, according to information gathered by federal agents in Friday night's wholesale round-up of mem- bers of the Communist parties. These data, officials said, tended to prove that the nation-wide raids had blasted the most men- acing revolutionary plot yet unearthed." 32 EEPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE Data on the strike as a Bolshevist manifestation were analyzed with the following questions in mind: 1. Who started this explanation? 2. Why was it offered ? 3. Was there Bolshevism in the strike? Was there radi- calism ? The allegation was not offered by the strikers nor by the government. It was traced chiefly to two sources: first, the newspapers ; and these led to the second and main source, the steel companies. The following efforts, among others, were made to obtain from oflScials of the steel companies their evidence. First, the commission addressed to Mr. Gary, after long discussions with him personally and after considering particu- larly his statements that men still out were " Bolsheviki," a letter which formally asked him to furnish the evidence on which he based that judgment. The Commission at the time felt confident that Mr. Gary could furnish considerable evi- dence and that any discussion would turn on whether or not the evidence he produced proved the case. But Mr. Gary produced nothing. Second, Mr. H. D. Williams, President of the Carnegie Steel Company, the largest subsidiary corporation, when asked for the evidence referred the Commission to " Margolis' testi- mony before the Senate Committee." When told that the Margolis testimony established no connection between Bol- shevism and the leaders of the strike, Mr. Williams expressed surprise. He admitted that he had not read the transcript of the testimony but was sure, however, that the newspapers had said so. Anyway, he said, there were many other things that could be produced to prove the point. Eleven subse- quent calls for this evidence were made on Mr. Williams' office but without result. IGNOEANCE: BOLSHEVISM 33 Third, the Commission's desire for evidence on this point was explained to Mr. E. J. Buffington, President of the Illi- nois Steel Company, and he was asked for the facts on which he endorsed Mr. Gary's Bolshevist theory of the strike. He expressed wonder at the Commission's inability to find such proofs. He did produce a photograph of a poster, saying, " Look at that." The poster consisted of photographs of strike scenes, showing among other things the dead body of a union organizer, Mrs. Fanny Sellins. This poster was signed by A. F. of L. officials and was headed " Abolish Garyism." When doubt was expressed as to the conclusiveness of this exhibit as proving the Bolshevist origin of the strike, Mr. Buffington was certain that he had seen other " evidence," but he produced none. Of the many interviewed, no steel company official pre- sented to the Commission any evidence of Bolshevism. In declaring on December 5 that the workmen who " followed the leadership of Fitzpatrick and Foster were Bolsheviki," Mr. Gary insisted to the Commission that the strike aims were " the closed shop, Soviets and the forcible distribution of property." Mr. Gary warned the Commissioners to remem- ber that any statement that they might make about the U. S. Steel Corporation and the strike should be " gravely con- sidered " inasmuch as " the foundations of the United States Government were involved." Mr. Buffington, in supporting Mr. Gary's position, said : " The organizers were all subversive. They said things to make the labor forces want more than fair wages ; made 'em want to share the profits." Mr. Gary was finally asked in the course of one of these discussions if he did not ireally mean that " labor was getting too strong." To this he gave general assent. In addition to the efforts above cited, the Commission care- fully examined the organization of the strike, and the union 34 REPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE literature, listened to speakers, consulted Federal and State officials, and in every way sought to get at the bottom of the Bolshevist theory. The line of inquiry included such ques- tions as: What induced the nevt^spapers in many states in the first week after September 22 to print on their front pages extensive extracts of a pamphlet called " Syndicalism " by Wm. Z. Foster ? Why was " radicalism " charged ? Were ideas of political radicalism as inextricably mixed with ideas of industrial radicalism in the actual situation as they were in the published charges? Was there industrial radicalism, that is, ulterior strike aims for something beyond orthodox trade union demands on hours, wages, conditions and organi- zation ? The first facts persistently brought up were : Mr. William Z. Foster, Secretary-Treasurer of the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers, and his " Eed Book," the above mentioned tract on " Syndicalism." The two must be separated. The " Red Book's " actual relation to the strike is undisputed. No copy of the original book, out of print for several years, was found in possession of any striker or strike leader. A reprint, which was a fac-simile in every- thing except the price mark and the union label, was widely circulated from the middle of September on by officials of the steel companies. The absence of the union label indicated that the reprint was not in behalf of any labor organization. What organization bore this expense of reproducing the book was not investigated. There was no need to investigate who distributed it. Steel company officials openly supplied it to newspapers, to preachers and investigators. In McKeesport, for example, it was mailed to all the pastors in the city who were then summoned to a meeting with the Mayor, attended also by representatives of the Sheriff, the State Constabulary and the Steel Corporation. The representative of the Steel Corporation, who was the Superintendent of the local Cor- IGNORANCE: BOLSHEVISM 35 poration plant, came well supplied with '^ Red Books " and read extracts. In cities like New York and Boston, far from the strike areas, newspapers carried extracts from the book as the principal news of the beginning of the strike. The book's relation to the strike, therefore, was in no sense causative ; it was injected as a means of breaking the strike. Mr. Foster, however, was a causative factor in the strike. Attempts to raise the question, " Was Mr. Foster really sincere in recanting Syndicalism," inevitably raised the other question, " Was Mr. Gary really sincere in charging Bolshe- vism." It seemed best to leave such analysis to speculative psychologists. Instead the test of Mr. Foster's acts was applied to Mr. Foster's mind. In two other sections of the report this analysis is made, based on full examination of the private official records involved and on reports of first hand observers both of the strike and of the organizing cam- paign. Only the conclusions need be set down here and these are — That the control of the movement to organize the steel in- dustry, vested in twenty-four A. F. of L. trade unions, was such that Mr. Foster's acts were perforce in har- mony with old line unionism. That Mr. Foster " haraioniously " combated the natural tendency of sections of the rank and file toward in- dustrial unionism. That a mass movement involving 300,000 workers and twenty- four national unions cannot be controlled to secret, opposite ends. The organizing plan was the same and was directed by the same two men as that of the stock yards employees in 1918. That campaign was carried through to recognition of the unions without anyone calling it Bolshevism. The 36 KEPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE plan rejected the opportunity to organize along the line com- monly called the One Big Union. From the standpoint of the Industrial Workers of the World and the other One Big Unionists, no group ever had such an opportunity to establish the new kind of organization as did the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers. I. W. W.s throughout the campaign spoke with contempt of the Committee's plan of splitting up each batch of union re- cruits into twenty-four separate craft unions. Despite the fact that most professed industrial revolutionaries " favor " all strikes there is evidence as to their indifference or active opposition to this one. When Mr. Foster's organization was having hard sledding in organizing Youngstown, Ohio, Eugene V. Debs visited the district and began severely criticis- ing the whole plan in public speeches. It was necessary to send a committee to Debs before he could be indued to drop the subject. In the Pittsburgh District, I. W. W.s tried to break the strike a few days after it had been started by circularizing the mills with leaflets declaring that the old A. F. of L. plan would fail and that the A. F. of L. would not support the strike. As to literature: the official strike pronouncements and leaflets were confined to orthodox texts. Investigators saw one bunch of Communist leaflets but these had been con- fiscated by strike leaders who had thrown the distributor out of a hall into which he had wormed his way. Mr. Foster refused to allow in an official strike bulletin even the mild advice that laboring men should join a labor party, until the chairman of the National Committee, John Fitzpatrick him- self, ordered it put in. One of the leaflets ended with the supposedly poetical quotation : " Forward to bleed and die ! " The Committee's translator rendered this into Polish to read, " Forward to wade through blood ! " The Polish leaflets were returned by local Polish organizers with this IGNORANCE: BOLSHEVISM 87 objection, — " My people are all good Catholics. They won't stand for advice like that." As to national organizers: there were socialists among them but the most were old organization standard bearers of the A. F. of L. Moreover in the Pennsylvania district the meetings were few, police were on the platform and the power of the organizers was greatly lessened. Most organizers were overworked and preoccupied with details. These A. F. of L. veterans could not get over their surprise at being de- nounced as Bolshevists. As to local leaders : these generally followed the ideas and methods of the National Committee but were less considerate of A. F. of L. doctrine and more influenced by the feeling of the rank and file. Finding that organization by shops, de- partments and plants was often the most natural to their inexperienced fellow- workers, they followed that plan even though the result was industrial unionism in miniature. They had no labor reputations to preserve against charges of Bolshevism. They used as assistants the boldest and most energetic spirits and these were frequently readers of the only sort of labor papers customarily circulating among un- organized workers, that is, socialist and I. W. W. papers. The local leaders' talk ran more freely to downright terms and to soaring speculation about " sharing in industrial control." Their sole object was to win the strike. They expected to have " public opinion " against them anyway and so they cared less about exhibiting to the public a conventionally conservative front. They looked to their followers, men speaking thirty different dialects, and did not mind if some of the followers imbibed ambitious ideas about " ending the rule of the bosses." But it took very few repetitions of these ambitions, in broken English, to the mill bosses to spread the fear that the " foreigners " had revolutionary intentions. The investigators searching for political revolutionaries 38 EEPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE among the leaders or even the great rank and file became convinced, from the attitude taken by local, state, federal and array officials, that if such revolutionaries existed the authorities would surely find them. No leaders of the strike were convicted of " radicalism " in court. Hundreds of strikers were rounded up in " radical raids," but none tried and convicted. In McKeesport in one raid 79 workmen were taken, three were detained and one on final examination was held by the Federal authorities. Federal officers testified that the denunciations which had led to these arrests were made by plant detectives or " under- cover men " of the steel companies, many of them sworn in as sheriff's deputies during the strike. In the Pittsburgh District raids and arrests for Bolshevism were made on the sole complaint of company " under-cover men." Meetings were broken up but most of those arrested were released. The testimony of Federal authorities in two districts in December was that after the raiding and arresting at the instigation of company " under-cover men," no striker had been held by the Federal authorities on any charge of radical agitation in the strike. In the Gary district in October out of 16,000 strikers, seven immigrants were turned over for deportation by the military officers whose agents had been working in Gary since May, 1919. In February, 1920, these seven had still not been ordered deported. None of these was arrested on charges of radical agitation during the strike but for being members of organizations, such as the I. W. W. and various Russian societies or for professing Communist beliefs. That is, the arrests might have been made, so far as the charges were concerned, at any time irrespective of the strike. In view of the undoubted efforts by various organizations to spread political or industrial revolutionary teachings in America, it seemed probable that some of the workers, if not IGNORAN^CE: BOLSHEVISM 39 the leaders, among 300,000 strikers would utilize the strike as a platform for organizing agitation of their views. De- spite this, no records of conviction through legal process on charges of such agitation were discovered by investigators. (The charges on which many hundreds of arrests were made are considered elsewhere.) Were there any radicals in the sense of rebels against their present way of life? The steel industry was full of them. They wanted big changes. But the changes were all related definitely to the right to organize, the twelve-hour day, the seven day week, the foremen's ways, the company's methods, or some other definite thing which they were sick of. It is possible that the workers throughout the whole steel industry might much more easily have been organized on a radical appeal. But the Strike Committee were opposed in prin- ciple to any such appeal. After the first three months of the strike when the nerves of strikers and leaders were worn by the struggle, Mr. Foster was constantly complaining of fight- ing the " radicals," meaning those who wanted to have a general strike called or the whole strike called off in order to be called on again and again and again. But that kind of " radical " still was concerned only with steel matters, not with social or political programs. The upshot of the matter is this: the methods of organi- zation used in the steel strike were old fashioned and became ostentatiously so as the organizers recognized the radical possibilities of the strike and conscientiously believed that anything other than tried trade unionism would be bad for the steel workers in their newly organized state. The cry of Bolshevism was not only a fraud on the public ; it was a dangerous thing because it advertised to the mass of immi- grant steel workers, who went down to defeat under old flags and old slogans, an idea and untried methods under which they might be tempted to make another battle. It roused in 40 EEPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE tlie minds of hundreds of thousands who know best that they are not Bolsheviki a distrust, which abides, and a suspicion of government agencies and of American public opinion which seemed to lend themselves to a campaign of misrepresentation. The evidence justifies the following observation of general significance: I^ot one new development of major importance was discovered in this strike. That is, in the light of indus- trial history there was nothing in the strike which deserves to be called industrially new, or revolutionary. It was an old-fashioned strike, preceded by a slightly new mechanical quirk in organizing. It ran on rather unusually old-fashioned lines, especially in comparison with such up- heavals as the coal strike, the printers' strike, the clothing strikes of recent years and the recent aims of railroad labor organizations. The steel strike had old style methods and aims, it was attended by the usual futile governmental at- tempt to avert and futile Senatorial effort to investigate. By the end of the year it was evident that the strikers were getting an old-fashioned licking. There was the usual crip- pling of industry, threatening to hang over into the months after the strike was called off. As the strike ended there was in steel master circles the usual after-strike feeling " that something would have to be done." The word was " the Corporation is going to do some- thing." The Corporation in January raised wages 10 per cent. " Independent " small concerns began trying to put in the eight-hour day. The feeling was general that the eight- hour day and collective bargaining could not be staved off forever. Corporation subsidiaries announced more extensive welfare work, company stores, etc. The latter weeks of the strike saw Mr. Gary expressing to public-spirited inquirers his open-minded desire " to consider any well thought out plan which anyone can suggest " for bettering conditions in the steel mills. (Another section of this report considers what IGNOEANCE : BOLSHEVISM 41 soundness there may be in any attitude of looking outside the industry for " any well thought out plan.") That the whole strike seemed extraordinarily old-fashioned to observers in England is evident from even a hasty examina- tion of such conservative papers as the London Times (October 28, 1919) : " The steel workers' strike, which is the rock upon which the Industrial Conference split, turns on the question of recog- nizing unions, an issue which has gone into the Umbo of almost forgotten things here, as between employers and employed. . . . The employers in America have evidently something to learn in these matters. They have been apt to compare with some complacency their own relations with labor to those existing in this country and to attribute their comparative immunity from labor troubles to the superior atmosphere of the United States or to their own superior management. It is really due to the simple fact that the Labor Movement in the United States is historically a good many years behind our own. But it will infallibly tread the same broad course with certain dif- ferences determined by local conditions, and to resist the in- evitable is a great mistake. There are many different elements present in the States, and a far greater tendency to violence is one of them.'* Not only the issues but the attendant circumstances of the steel strike seem antique. A hundred cases could be cited. The famous " Dorchester Laborers' case " which happened in 1833, was also a first attempt at organizing common labor, that time on the farm. Farm hands at Tolpuddle, a tiny English village, faced with a cut in wages from 8 shillings to 6 shillings a week went to the magistrate who interpreted to them the noted " law of supply and demand." " We were told," writes their leader, the Methodist lay preacher, Love- less, " that we must work for what our employers saw fit to give as there was no law to compel masters to give a fixed 42 REPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE sum." Then the farm hands heard of trade societies in the nearby towns and they were visited by two delegates or " out- side agitators," who formed a Friendly Society among them and " instructed them how to proceed." Among the instruc- tions were the directions for a secret oath. The union's con- stitution read : " That the object of this society can never be promoted by any act of violence, but on the contrary, all such proceedings must tend to injure and destroy the society it- self." Within four months, six of the leading members were arrested as " evil disposed persons " and thrown into jail. Since the law against unionization had been repealed in 1824 it was necessary to discover some other under which these men could be tried. An old statute intended for the suppression of seditious societies was specially invoked and the six persons, after a brief trial, were sentenced to seven years' transportation to Botany Bay, for the crime of having administered an oath. This law, Daniel O'Connell said, " has only been raked up to inflict an enormous punishment on unfortunate men who were wholly ignorant of its existence and innocent of any moral offence." But the London Times of that age declared that " The real gravamen of their guilt was their forming a dangerous union to force up, by various modes of intimida- tion and restraint, the rate of laborers' wages." Other spokesmen of public opinion agreed on the need for rigorous action against " that criminal and fearful spirit of combina- tion." A wave of panic swept the country; Lord Howick tried to prove in Parliament that these laborers, who worked all day, knew they were doing wrong for " did they not hold their meetings at night? '^ The first great procession of in- dustrial protest ever formed in England marched through London to present a petition which the government refused to receive. In western Pennsylvania in 1919 steel workers were tried IGNORANCE: BOLSHEVISM 43 and fined in cases "where the major allegation was " smiling at the State police." In his testimony before the Senate Mr. Gary, discussing the cause of the strike, specifies " intimidation " on pp. 151, 153, 164, 174, 201, et al. In the course of the strike deputations of workers sought the government with petitions. Attorney General Palmer, they considered, gave them the government's only answer in his letter, published on November 26, commending a patriotic society's efforts to run labor " agitators " out of Pennsyl- vania. " It is a pity," the Attorney General wrote, " that more patriotic organizations do not take action similar to that of your order." Altogether, analysis of all data seems to make it more profitable to consider the steel strike of 1919 in the light of one hundred years' industrial history than in the glare of baseless excitement over Bolshevism. Ill THE TWELVE-HOUE DAY IN A NO-CONFERE:N'aE INDUSTRY Analysis of the data gathered in this inquiry proves that a prime fact in the organization of the steel industry and a prime fact in explaining the strike may he formulated as follows : Approximately half of the employees in iron and steel manu- facturing plants are subjected to the schedule known as the twelve-hour day (that is a working day from 11 to 14 hours long). Less than one-quarter of the industry's employees can work under 60 hours a week " although in most industries 60 hours was regarded as the maximum working week " ^ ten years ago. In the past decade the U. S. Steel Corporation has increased the percentage of its employees subject to the twelve- hour day. The mass of unskilled and semi-skilled workmen, mostly " foreigners," in the twelve-hour day class were the backbone of the strike. The relation of a prevailing schedule of excessive hours to the facts that no means of conference affecting hours and wages, or collective bargaining exist in the plants of the Steel Corporation, and that the Corporation's workmen hitherto * " Conditions of Employment in Iron and Steel Industry," Senate Document 110, Vol, I, p. xlii { 1910) . At that time 14.39 per cent, of all steel employees worked less than 60 hours. 44 THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY 45 were unorganized, is analyzed in Section V of this Report, on " Control in a No-Conference Industry." What is true of the Corporation's hours and wages is mainly true of the industry of which it constitutes the domi- nating half. Consideration of hours is inseparable from wages ; the next section determines what proportion of the twelve-hour day men fall in the following class: The high percentage of steel workers whose earnings, despite their long hours, fall from 5 to 25 per cent, below the lowest level which Government experts have been will- ing to call an " American standard of living " for an average family. It must be clearly noted that the twelve-hour day schedules are compulsory. The Steel Corporation's " basic eight-hour day " is a method of paying wages and in no way concerns hours. The twelve-hour day workman cannot knock off at the end of eight hours, if he wants to retain his employment. Neither can he escape the eighteen-hour or twenty-four hour " turn," usually every fortnight, which goes with most of the twelve-hour day schedules. He can " take it or leave it " but he cannot bargain over his job's hours. The present analysis deals with the length of hours in the industry and the nature of the long-day jobs ; whether the hours are necessary; what excuses for such schedules are made by the Corporation; what validity attaches to these excuses; what amount of seven-day work persists; and what the twelve-hour day means to the worker and to the com- munity. Data considered were drawn from the U. S. Steel Cor- poration, " independent " concerns. Federal bureau reports, diaries by steel workers before the strike, records of indepen- dent investigators, the testimony before the Senate strike in- 46 EEPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE vestigating committee, hearings before this Commission and interviews with hundreds of strikers and non-strikers. Literature on the subject of the steel industry's hours, especially on the twelve-hour day enforced by the U. S. Steel Corporation, has accumulated since 1907; each year of these records is punctuated with plans, promises or expectations that the Corporation was about to abolish such hours. Ten years ago the practice was referred to as " notorious " ; the literature includes sardonic references even by steel masters. For example, W. B. Dickson, Chairman and Vice President of the Cambria-Midvale Co., and former director of the U. S. Steel Corporation, in an address in 1919 to a scientific body, spoke of the spectacle of Mr. Gary as chairman of a com- mittee to relieve unemployment (in 1916 in New York), when the " large proportion of his men were working twelve hours a day and are still doing so." General conclusions to be drawn from this literature are, — that the development of large-scale production enter- prises under absentee financial control tends inevitably to sacrifice the labor force in favor of utilizing, to the maximum, the costly machines; that is, trust manage- ment lengthens hours, unless combated by — (a) public opinion (generally, in legislation), or (b) organization of the workmen (generally, in unions) : — that in the steel industry the Corporation, by resisting public opinion and by preventing organization among its workmen, tends persistently to lengthen the hours of labor. Examination of government statistics assembled in this Inquiry proves that hours in the steel industry have actually lengthened since 1910 and that now over 400,000 steel THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY 47 workers, or a population of about two million men, women and children are more or less directly affected by this un- restricted tendency toward lengthened hours. In the following discussion, therefore, the frequent quo- tation of Mr. Gary — necessary because he was almost the sole spokesman of the industry during the strike and is the only authorized source of statistics for the Steel Corporation — must not be misinterpreted to imply that Mr. Gary could be personally and solely responsible for the labor hours of which he testifies. Industrial history would seem to indicate that despite the " good deal of authority and power " which Mr. Gary ^ says he possesses, the effectiveness of personal wills, once they have committed an industry to a labor 'policy such a^ the Corporations, greatly diminishes, as regards hours and several other matters. However, the Corporation ended the strike without mak- ing any promises on the twelve-hour day and the Corpora- tion's statements on " eliminating " the seven-day week were found to be inaccurate. The term " twelve-hour day " is precise only where the day's work at the blast furnace, open hearth and other more or less continuous processes, is actually divided into two shifts of twelve hours each. But in many plants it is divided into an 11-hour day shift and a 13-hour night shift, or a 10-hour day and 14-hour night. Usually the shifts alternate weekly and men must work the " long turn " of 18 hours or 24 hours, — a solid day at " heavy " labor. In some plants the 36-hour turn is still not unknown. (The 7-day week of 12-hour turns will be considered later.) Consideration of the number on the 12-hour day may begin with Mr. Gary's figure of 69,000 ; and might stop there since this means that the daily hours and lives of over 350,000 men, women and children are directly dominated and " arbi- * Senate Testimony, Vol. I, p. 216. 48 KBPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE trarily " * ordered by the Corporation's 12-hour day. The total, however, assignable to this class seems to be larger. Mr. Gary testified (Senate Testimony, Vol. I, p. 157) : "Twenty-six and a half per cent, of all employees work the twelve-hoTir turn and the number is 69,284." " All employees," however, include nearly 80,000 of the Corporation's metal miners, coal miners, railroaders, ship crews, dockers, etc., not concerned in the strike or in the 12-honr day. Mr. Gary furnished data to the Commission, howerer, enabling correction of the misleading " twenty-six and a half per c-ent" ; the total of all Corporation employees in " the manufacturing plants," that is, in the strike areas, is 191,000. Mr. Gary's "69,284 " is 36 per cent, of 191,000. The 36 per cent, of men working 12 hours or over fails to account for a large number working 11 hours or even 10 hours, and, on alternate weeks, 13- and 14-hour turns; that is, a large number properly to be classed as 12-hour men. The only attempt at exact analysis of hours furnished by a Corporation plant to the Senate Investigating Committee was the following given by Superintendent Oursler of the typical Homestead works (Senate Testimony, Vol. II, p. 482) : "21.2 per cent, working eight hours; 25.9 per cent, work- ing ten hours; 16.4 per cent, working eleven hours; 36 per cent, working twelve hours." The " 16.4 per cent, working 11 hours " is made up of day shift " 12-hour men " whose hours on night turn will be 13; ^ that is, a proper classification is 36 per cent, plus 16.4 per cent, or 52.4 per cent, on the 12-hour turn at Homestead. * " Arbitrarily " controlled is Mr. Gary's term in relation to fixing wages. Senate Testimony, Vol. I, p. 226; it also applies to hours. 2 Mr. Gary's explanation, letter of Feb. 13: " 16 per cent, of the total employees at Homestead work 11-hour and 13-hour turns alternately weekly." See next footnote, quoting letters. THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY 49 This does not equal the verbal estimate of the President of the Carnegie Co. (of which the Homestead works is a part), made to the Commission of Inquiry in November, 1919, whose estimate was 60 per cent, of his 55,000 employees on the 12-hour turn. Moreover the Homestead figures seem to be compiled on the same method of classification as Mr. Gary's for the total of the Corporation's manufacturing plants: the Homestead 36 per cent, agrees exactly with Mr. Gary's 36 per cent. ; the Homestead 21.2 per cent, on " the 8-hour day " agrees with Mr. Gary's 22 per cent, on " the 8-hour day," as furnished to the Commission. The proper classification, indicated for the Corporation's manufacturing plants, is thus 52.4 per cent, on " the 12-hour " turns. Hours in the " independent " plants comprising the other half of the industry are approximately the same as the Cor- poration's (with a few notable exceptions such as the Pueblo works of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co., which, are on a three-shift 8-hour basis, and Pacific Coast plants which are on an 8-hour basis). The only exact figures obtained for an " independent " plant were for a department in the Youngstown Sheet and Tube as follows : On 8 hours , 10 per cent. On 10 hours.. 35 per cent. On 12 hours.... ....... 55 per cent. The Corporation's figures which were submitted by Mr. Gary as estimates, not as exact tabulations^ (admittedly diffi- *The Steel Corporation's lack of knowledge of how its decrees affect its workmen extends to its statistics of hours. Mr. Gary's letters to this Commission, again and again replying that "we have no compiled statistics" showing the exact data requested, indicate thatthe task of determining precisely the trend of steel hours is left to outside agencies, such as the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even the apparently abso- lutely precise figures supplied by the Homestead Superintendent, cited above, fail to total up precisely 100 per cent. Mr. Gary's explanation of Mr. Oursler's testimony, in a letter to this Commission dated Feb. 13, 50 REPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE cult to compile owing to the widely differing methods of time-keeping in the Corporation's 300 plants) are borne out by more comprehensive statistics from more impartial sources. The chief of these sources is the U. S. Bureau of Labor Sta- tistics whose figures are taken from the company pay rolls of representative plants all over the country. Government statistics are reckoned on the basis of hours per week ; roughly interpreted these mean that hours avera- ging TO to 72 weekly mean 6 days of 12 hours each; hours averaging 80 to 84 weekly mean 7 days of 12 hours each; this is irrespective of how the shifts are actually divided in various plants, of 12, 11, 10% or 10 hours, alternating weekly with 12, 13, 13-14 or 14 hours. Taking the statistics for the center of the industry, the Pittsburgh District, by departments of plants, for the last quarter of 1918 and the first quarter of 1919, as compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (October, 1919, Monthly Keview), we have for the largest department in the industry : 1920, contains the following interesting comment: "The percentage Mr. Oursler quoted of 16 per cent, for employees working 11 hours is cor- rect although his statement, to be exactly right, should have read ' 16 per cent, of the total employees at Homestead work 11-hour and 13-hour turns alternating weekly.' " So far so good, but Mr. Gary went on : " The percentage given of 36 per cent, is not correct if the percentage was intended to indicate those who work straight 12-hour turns. The number of these straight 12-hour turn men is 26 per cent, of the total. Thus at Homestead 26 per cent, of the total men work straight 12-hour turns, 16 per cent. 11 and 13-hour turns, alternating as explained and the balance of the men work 10 hours or less." Now, statistically analyzed, Mr. Gary's letter comes to this: Supply- ing his "26 per cent." of "straight 12-hour men" (Avhatever that may mean) for Mr. Oursler's 36 per cent, and totaling all up gives only 89.5 per cent, and fails to account for the remaining 10.5 per cent, at Homestead. His letter indicates plainly that the two classifications should be lumped, that is, 16 per cent, plus " 26 per cent.," or 42 per cent.; the remaining 10 per cent., of course, is in Mr. Oursler's figures, making 52.4 per cent, as the true total of 12-hour men. Mr. Gary's letter of Jan. 30 to the Commission contains estimates even harder to reconcile with his other estimates. This letter gives the "standard daily service or turn" as "for about 70,000 — 10 hours; for about 68,000 — 11, 12, 13 hours." This attempts to limip the 13-hour men imder the 68,000 but Mr. Gary gave the Senate Committee (Vol. II, p. 157 ) " 69,284 " on " the 12-hour turn," with no mention of the I THE TWELVE-HOUK DAY 51 Stockers, 83.6; larrymen, 82.6; larrymen's helpers, 82.3; skip operators, 81.6; blowers, 81.7; blowing engineers, 81.7; keep- ers, 81.9; keepers' helpers, 81.8; pig machine men, 83; cinder- men, 81.8; laborers, 82. Average, 82.1. That is, the whole department, the largest in the industry is on the 12-hour basis, 7 days a week, a mathematical average for all workers in the department being 11.7 hours daily. Open hearth furnaces, the next largest producing depart- ment, hours per week by occupations are : Stockers, 78.8; stock cranemen, 76.6; charging machine men, 76.8 ; melters' helpers, first, 78.9 ; melters' helpers, second, 76.1 ; melters' helpers, third, 76; stopper setters, 75.8; steel pourers, 75.7; mold cappers, 77; ladle cranemen, 76.1; ingot strippers, 70.5; laborers, 78.5. Average, 76.4. That is, with one exception, all occupations are above 72 hours, or the 12-hour day, on a 6-day week basis, and the thousands of 12-hour men whose hours on alternate weeks are Hi; that is, 10 hours by day for one week, and 14 hours by night for the next week. It would be a highly misleading classification to lump under the 10-hour class, for example, 15,000 men actually working 10 hours one week but subject to 14 hours the next. At the same time that Mr. Gary was writing to the Commission, he made the following admission, as quoted in the statement made by Dr. Devine of the Federal Council of Churches to the presidents of the Corporation's plants: "the proportion (of 12-hour men) would be 50 or 60 per cent. Judge Gary said that this might be correct." The Corporation's entire statistical reckonings, as furnished to the public, are on the wrong basis. The hundreds of different kinds of steel jobs vary so in hours-requirements that, for its own benefit, the Cor- poration can get accurate estimates only by dropping the vague " alter- nating turns" classification and by adopting the long-established gov- ernment bureau classification of " hours per week." The government's " 72 hours per week," for example, plainly indicates 6 daily 12-hour "turns" whether the turns are actually divided into 12 and 12, 11 and 13, 10 and 14, or any other shifts; likewise "82 or 84 hours weekly" indicates the 7-day week of 12-hour turns, no matter how divided. Aa against this system the total " 69,284 " on " the 12-hour turn " sounds very exact but means little without additional information as to (a) the length of the period for which the figure is given; (b) the number outside this 69,284 working 10 or 11 hours but subject bi-weekly to 13 and 14. 52 EEPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE 78.5 weekly hour average of laborers (who constitute 46 per cent, of the whole) is nearer the 12-hour day, 1-day week average. Take the same departments, from the latest figures for 1919 in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, giving the numbers employed instead of percentages and affording comparison of other districts with the Pittsburgh District. HOURS Blast Furnaces No. estab- lishments °^ ^ a CD Average full time hours Schedule of 12-hour day 56 60 60-66 66-72 72 72-78 78 78-84 84 24 6315 78.8 456 178 29 364 483 38 702 16 4049 All under 72 hours per week are from Great Lakes and Mid- dle West and Southern Districts (except one laborer at 60 hours, and 41 laborers at 66-72 hours, in Pittsburgh District). With this exception, Pittsburgh blast furnace workers are all twelve-hour day and three-quarters are seven-day week. Open Hearth Furnaces m a) a; g at 0) it 01 Average full time hours Schedule of 12-hour day 56 60 60-66 66 66-72 72 73-78 78 84 19 4702 73.8 751 80 10 38 39 1010 24 1913 337 In this table the only men 60 hours or under, in the Pitts- burgh District, are five ingot strippers at 56 and one laborer at 60. Practically everything 60 and under is Great Lakes and Middle West and Pacific Coast Districts (which include a num- ber of three-shift, eight-hour day plants). THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY 53 The only available late figures for a rolling mill depart- ment exhibit 78 per cent, of the employees on the 12-hour day, almost altogether with the 6-day week. Rail Mills No. estab- No. of employees Hours lishments 48 50-60 60 72 84 5 1170 237 3 18 900 12 None under 60 in the Pittsburgh District. All 60-hour and 84-hour men were laborers in this district. The 48-hour men were from one mill in the Great Lakes and Middle West Dis- trict. What do these figures for principal departments mean in relation to the Corporation's statistics (keeping in mind that half the industry is in the Pittsburgh District and that the influence of Corporation practice is less hampered in this District) ? They mean altogether — that the large continuous-process producing depart- ments, — the pace setters of the industry — ^were being run largely on a 12-hour day basis and largely 7 days a week; that the resultant hours approximated 12 hours daily for about half the employees; that to these must be added about a quarter more, mak- ing three-quarters of all employees whose hours per week were 60 or over, that is, beyond the generally accepted maximum for most other industries. 54 EEPOET ON THE STEEL STEIKB These long hours appeared, in the course of the Commis- sion's inquiry, to have a more causative bearing on the strike than " Bolshevism." Of the hundreds of strikers and nom strikers interviewed in this inquiry, few could put together two sentences on " Soviets " but almost all discoursed or, more accurately, cursed " long hours." Comparisons of wider-sweeping government statistics, also based on company pay-rolls, only confirm conclusions. The average of hours for the entire industry, including great numbers of foundries and fabricating plants whose hours average less than those of the plants against which the strike was aimed, was 68.7 hours per week or over 11% hours per day on a 6-day mathematical average. (U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Monthly Review, Sept., 1919.) Ten years ago the Labor Commissioner, at the order of Congress, made the exhaustive survey of the industry (Senate Document 110, four vols.) which formed the standard on which to make comparisons. In May, 1910, the percentage of employees working 72 hours and over per week, i.e. at least 12 hours a day, was 42.58 per cent, (ibid.. Vol. I, p. xlii). How much the 1919 percentages of 12-hour men may have increased over that 42 per cent, cannot be exactly de- termined. The average of weekly hours for the industry in 1910 was 67.6; for 1919 it was 1.1 hours higher. The average weekly hours for the Pittsburgh District in 1910 and 1919 for three departments for which 1919 statistics were available were: Year Blast Furnaces Open Hearth Plate Mills 1910 78.7 75.3 67.3 1919 82.1 76.4 7L1 These increases were from 1 to nearly 4 hours weekly. They are insufficient to prove, but they do suggest, that if the government had ordered another exhaustive survey of the THE TWELYE-HOUR DAY 55 iron and steel industry in the months immediately preceding the strike, it would have found conditions materially worse than they were in 1910 when strikes due to lengthening hours started the government survey. The requirements of the war, which permitted the steel companies free rein as regards hours, ceased with the armi- stice and according to steel company officials war conditions were largely eliminated ^ in the spring of 1919. By the sum- mer of 1919 then there could be no legitimate excuse for war conditions ; yet it was in the months of July, August and early September, 1919, that the steel industry was speeded up in every direction ; and for these critical months the gov- ernment statistical bureaus have published no figures. These, then, were the steel hours constituting one of the " relics of barbarism " referred to by an official of a steel company, who told an independent investigator ^ that his sympathies in the strike were " entirely with Judge Gary " but whose stand on hours was set forth in a letter as follows : " At the greatest personal sacrifice, both in friendship and in money, for the past twenty-five years I have waged unceasing warfare against the Steel Corporation on the question of the seven-day week, the twelve-hour day and the autocratic methods of dealing with workmen." These were the hours which must be compared with hours in other industries of the coimtry. The steel workers' 68.7 hours a week must be compared with the street railwaymen's 56.4 in another " continuous industry " and the nearest com- petitor to steel hours in the list of principal industries com- piled by the Bureau of Applied Economics, Washington, D. C. ; ^ with the anthracite coal miners' 52-hour weekly ' " With the close of the war . . . the 7-day service has been largely eliminated. At the present time there is comparatively little of it." Letter of Mr. Gary to Commission, Jan. 30, 1920. " R. S. Baker in N. Y. Evening Post, Dec. 31, 1919. * See Sub-Report for charts and details. 56 REPOET ON THE STEEL STEIKE schedule and the bituminous coal miners' 52.9-hour weekly schedule; with the standard 48 hours weekly of the United States Arsenals, the United States Navy Yards, the railroad shop men, railroad freight firemen, the ship yards ; compari- son is impossible with the 44 hours weekly of the building trades, the 30 hours average for passenger firemen on the railroads. These were the hours which must be compared with steel hours in England ^ where the twelve-hour day had largely dis- appeared before 1914 and where the elimination of the twelve-hour day was directly retarded by the competition of the American plants' longer schedules. These were the hours which must be compared with what government sanction and public opinion had for manys years considered a standard work week, — 48 hours ; the steel week averaged more than 20 hours longer. For thousands of steel workers the " normal " work week was nearly twice as long as the 44-hour standard customary in many industries. These were the hours for 1919 which must be compared with the industry's own hours for 1914 and 1910. Five years ago the steel week was 2.4 hours shorter ; 10 years ago 1.1 hours shorter. Steel hours have lengthened in a decade when other industries were shortening hours. This in spite of Mr. Gary's statement before the Senate Committee : " The Chairman of the Committee will bear in mind that we have been reducing these hours from year to year, going back many years, as rapidly as we could " (Senate Testimony, Vol. I, p. 202). The emphasis of the analyst must be laid on the " as we could." Industrial history, as noted before, indicates that hours inevitably tend to lengthen under absentee cor- poration control, unless restricted by public opinion or by labor organization. Competition, foreign markets, " the 1 General average of steel hours in England, July, 1919, 47-48 hours weekly. THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY 57 war," each in turn, is an actual cause for lengthening hours, or an excuse for it long after the cause is gone. Personal, will alone, — or " as we could," — simply has not worked re- form. Whoever ought to do the reforming, it is a matter of record that in England the abolition of the twelve-hour sched- ule was initiated and pressed by trade unions. So far as the twelve-hour day can be laid to choice, the responsibility is flatly put by " independent " steel companies on the Steel Corporation. The twelve-hour day is not a metallurgical necessity ; steel masters are not caught in the grip of their gigantic machin- ery. Thirty years ago train wrecks burned up a lot of pas- sengers because of the " deadly car stove " ; and the solidest, most responsible railroad presidents assured the legislatures that coal stoves were an unescapable necessity, that cars could not be heated by steam from the engine. Do steel masters fail to end tlie twelve-hour day because they cannot? The fact that the eight-hour day has replaced the twelve-hour day in England, on the Pacific Coast, in the Pueblo plant of the Colorado Euel and Iron Co., and in some " independent " plants near Chicago and Pittsburgh, proves that it is not a matter of necessity. Metallurgists agree that production is better, — by a small percentage, but better, — on the three-shift eight-hour day. Steel engineers do not dispute that three shifts mean more steel and better steel. Only one process is absolutely " continuous," requiring, on the eight-hour basis, three shifts. The final findings of the 1910 survey of the industry, which are true today, read (Senate Document 110, Vol. I, p. Ixii) : " The blast-furnace department is the only one of the four- teen departments where there is any metallurgical necessity for continuous operation day and night throughout seven days per "week. . . . Throughout the iron and steel industry . . . the employees were expected to work seven days wherever the de- 58 REPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE partment in which they were working was running seven days and the occupation in which they were engaged required con- tinuous work, . . . " The large proportion of Bessemer converters, open hearth furnaces and rolling mills working seven days or turns was due to the fact that these departments were in continuous operation in some plants, although no real necessity for this condition ex- isted, only a desire to increase the output of the plant." Only two excuses were oifered to the Commission for the twelve-hour day: labor shortage and workmen's preference. On analysis we shall see that both are baseless and that the true causes concern much more the helplessness of disorgan- ized immigrant labor. First, it is advisable to analyze steel production sufficiently to understand the kinds of jobs these are which must be followed twelve hours a day. It is an epigram of the industry that " steel is a man killer." Steel workers are chiefly attendants of gigantic machines. The steel business tends to become, in the owners' eyes, mainly the machines. Steel jobs are not easily char- acterized by chilly scientific terms. Blast furnaces over a hundred feet high, blast " stoves " a hundred feet high, coke ovens miles long, volcanic bessemer converters, furnaces with hundreds of tons of molten steel in their bellies, trains of hot blooms, miles of rolls end to end hurtling white hot rails along, — these masters are attended by sweating servants whose job is to get close enough to work but to keep clear enough to save limb and life. It is concededly not an ideal industry for men fatigued by long hours. To comprehend precisely what the twelve-hour day meant, the Inquiry gathered data from steel mill officials and from the workers themselves. Mr. Gary's testimony was : "It is not an admitted fact that more than eight hours is too much for a man to labor per day. ... I had my own ex- THE TWELVE-HOUE DAY 59 perience in that regard (on a farm) ; and all onr officers worked up from the ranks. They came up from day laborers. They were all perfectly satisfied with their time of service; they all desired to work longer hours . . . the employees generally do not want eight hours. ... I do not want you to think that for a moment." (Senate Testimony, Vol. I, p. 180.) Mr. H. D. Williams, president of the Carnegie Steel Com- pany, said that he had worked fourteen hours a day and did not feel he was any the worse for it. Mr. W. B. Schiller, president of the !N'ational Tube Com- pany, said that he had worked the twelve-hour day when young and that it never did him any harm. Mr. E. J. Buffington, president of the Illinois Steel Com- pany, said that he had worked the twelve-hour day when a young man and he rather thought it did him good. This official attitude is important despite the fact that it is the testimony of experience undergone twenty-five to forty years before, the severity of early work being tempered and mellowed in recollection by decades in comfortable office chairs. Corporation officials do regard the twelve-hour day as a young man's " experience," to be left early. Eor the workers who do not rise to be a steel corporation's subsidiary president but who are held for years to the twelve-hour day a phrase has been coined which is well understood by them : " Old age at forty." Especially they understood it when a \ corporation plant made the rule of hiring no man over forty years of age. First, what exactly is the schedule of the twelve-hour worker ? Here is the transcript of the diary of an American worker, the observations of a keen man on how his fellows regard the job, the exact record of his own job and hours made in the spring of 1919, before the strike or this Inquiry, and selected here because no charge of exaggeration could bo made concerning it. It begins : 60 EEPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE " Calendar of one day from the life of a Carnegie steel work- man at Homestead on tlie open hearth, common labor: "5:30 to 12 (midnight) — Six and one-half hours of shovel- ing, throwing and carrying bricks and cinder out of bottom of old furnace. Very hot. " 12 :30 — Back to the shovel and cinder, within few feet of pneumatic shovel drilling slag, for three and one-half hours. "4 o'clock — Sleeping is pretty general, including boss. " 5 o'clock — Everybody quits, sleeps, sings, swears, sighs for 6 o'clock. " 6 o'clock — Start home. " 6 :45 o'clock — Bathed, breakfast. " 7 :45 o'clock — Asleep. "4 P. M. — Wake up, put on dirty clothes, go to boarding house, eat supper, get pack of lunch. " 5 :30 P. M.— Report for work." This is the record of the night shift ; a record of inevitable waste, inefficiency and protest against " arbitrary " hours. Next week this laborer will work the day shift. What is his schedule per week ? Quoting again from the diary : " Hours on night shift begin at 5 :30 ; work for twelve hours through the night except Saturday, when it is seventeen hours, until 12 Sunday noon, with one hour out for breakfast; the fol- lowing Monday ten hours ; total from 5 :30 Monday to 5 :30 Monday 87 hours, the normal week. " The Carnegie Steel worker works 87 hours out of the 168 hours in the week. Of the remaining 81 he sleeps seven hours per day ; total of 49 hours. He eats in another fourteen ; walks or travels in the street car four hours; dresses, shaves, tends furnace, undresses, etc., seven hours. His one reaction is ' What the Hell ! ' — the universal text accompanying the twelve-hour day." What kinds of job are these twelve-hour turns ? Here are the observations of his own successive jobs by a second worker, also an AmericaUj also written before the strike THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY 61 began, in the summer of 1919 in an " independent " plant in the Pittsburgh district. (Both these workers were distinctly- critical of labor organizers.) "Job of labor in the clean-up gang in pit of open hearth furnaces: " The pit is the half-open space where furnaces are tapped into ladles (pocket shaped, ten feet high, swung by overhead cranes) and ' poured ' into ingot molds. As the hot metal comes from the tap-hole much spills and when partially cool must be broken with picks and cleaned out, and *slag' and * scrap' separated into different cars. " The job is : clean up cinder when ladle is dumped ; break clay covers from valve pipes, pile pipes at side of pit, repile pipes on flat car. After pipes have been moved to blacksmith, affix chains for swinging them to blacksmith's door, repile in shop. Get straightened pipes back to pit by same series of steps ; same going and returning for broken chains. Affix hooks to ladles when crane shoves ladle in your face. Clean out all hot cinder and scrap under all furnaces, take cinder by hand or barrel to cinder boxes. Clean hot overflow metal or slag from tracks. Very hot work. Tools used, pick, shovel, fork, crowbar, sledge-hammer, chains, barrel. Heavy work, but con- sidered here as one of the ^easier jobs.' Hours: 14 hours on night turn, 10 hours on day turn; long turn of 24 hours every two weeks. "Job of third-helper, open hearth furnace: "With other helpers he makes ^back wall,' which means throwing heavy dolomite with a shovel across blazing furnaces to the back wall, to protect it for the next bath of hot steel. Every third-helper makes the back wall on his own furnace and on his neighbor's, sometimes making three or four a shift. You march past the door of the furnace, which is opened in your face for a moment. Heat about 180° at the distance from which the shovelful is thrown in; each shoveler wears smoked gog- gles and protects his face with his arm as he throws. After a back wall it is necessary to rest at least 15 minutes. 63 REPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE " Second and first helpers work ' hook and spoon * to spread dolomite for the front wall. Very easy for a new man to get badly burned in approaching furnace to fill his spoon. "When front wall and back wall are both made there is usually a long ' spell ' unless the adjoining furnace needs atten- tion. A man may have four or five hours to himself out of the fourteen-hour shift or he may work hard the whole turn. He may have two or three such easy days or he may have a week of the most continuoiLS and exhausting Icind. " After making the front and back walls the third-helper wheels mud to the tap-hole for lining on the spout; it takes 40 minutes to one hour; temperature around spout about 110°. " Scrap, in chunks from small bits to thousand-pound blocks, fall from charging boxes when furnace is being charged and must be cleaned up by second and third-helpers. "The third-helper fills large bags with coal to throw into the ladle at tap time ; easy to burn your face ofE. "Helps drill a * bad ' hole at tap time, work of the most exhausting kind ; also must shovel dolomite into ladle of molten steel. This is the hottest job and certainly the most exposed to minor burns. Temperatures around 180°, but it takes only four or five minutes. Nearly every tap time leaves three or four small burns on neck, face, hands or legs. It is usually necessary to extinguish little fires in your clothing. Altogether not so bad as heavier lifting parts of the furnace job which are most hateful, together with the monotonous exposures. "On the blast furnaces. Job of the stove gang: " Six to ten men in a gang keep the blast furnace stoves cleaned (a stove is an oven for heating the blast and is as big as the blast furnace itself, full of a gigantic brick checker work) ; as stove cools, gang cleans out hardened cinder in combustion chamber with pick and shovel. Men go inside the stove. Ten minutes to one hour is the length of time inside, according to degree to which the stove has been allowed to cool. Before going in the man puts on wooden sandals, a jacket which fits the neck closely and heavy cap with ear flaps; also goggles. THE TWELVE-HOUE DAY 63 Cleaning out the flue dust not so hot^ but men breathe dust- saturated air. " Hardest job is ' poking her out/ ramming out the flue dust in checker work at top of stove. Large pieces of canvas tied over feet and legs to keep heat from coming up the legs; two pairs of gloves needed; handkerchiefs cover all head except the eyes. Three minutes to ten minutes at a turn are the limit for work in the chamber at top of stove ; very hard to breathe. Aver- age man can do four holes each trip. "Easy days with couple of hours' sleep are sandwiched in betiveen hard ones, after which the men leave the mill exhausted. Hours: 12 hours a day. " Joh of stove-tender helper: "Learners' job following stove tender; manipulates large, clumsy valves; operations, if performed in wrong order, stove tender will break his stove and kill himself. Unless tremen- dous pressure is first * blown off ' the opening of another valve will blow the opener into bits. Hours: day shift, 10 hours; night, 13 hours." These workers' records were made before the strike began and are open to no possible charge of bias. They record in exact form what many " hunkies " tried to tell investigators. As actual experience — as opposed to theory — they may be contrasted with this excerpt from Mr. Gnary's testimony be- fore the Senators (Senate Testimony, Vol. I, p. 160) : Mr. Gary. " Nowadays none of these men, with very few exceptions, perform manual labor as I used to perform it, on the farm, neither in hours, nor in actual physical exertion. It is practically all done everywhere by machinery and the boy who opens the door I think touches a button and opens the door. And this work of adjusting the heavy iron ingots is done by the pulling of a lever. It is largely machinery, almost alto- gether machinery. That is not saying there is no work in that, because of course there is, and I would not belittle it^ of course. 64 EEPOET ON THE STEEL STEIKE It is hard work to work hard whatever one does, and to the extent one does work hard he, of course, is doing hard work." Mr. Gary submitted to the Senate Committee " photo- graphs of open hearth laborers at leisure " and asserted that they worked but half the time. This hardly accords with the open hearth laborer himself who worked that twelve-hour day every day in the week and whose daily job includes such as the following, and this is described as " not the worst of his daily grind " (from Carnegie Steel worker's diary) : " You lift a large sack of coal to your shoulders, run towards the white hot steel in a 100-ton ladle, must get close enough without burning your face off to hurl the sack, using every ounce of strength, into the ladle and run, as flames leap to roof and the heat blasts everything to the roof. Then you rush out to the ladle and madly shovel manganese into it, as hot a job as can be imagined." !N'or are the above at all the extreme hours of the plant. In the millwright department of the Carnegie Steel Company everyone in the department works fourteen working days out of every fourteen calendar days, on the thirteen-hour night turn, including the twenty-four-hour turn within the four- teen days. Here is the actual schedule of the above quoted worker when employed in the millwright department of the Carnegie Steel Company last spring : "Five nights at 13 hours, regularly ..,. . 65 hours Saturday night, regular 15 hours Sunday double turn, regular every other week 24 hours Total 104 hours " Add to this half an hour each night for dinner means three hours more, or 107 hours under the plant roof in the 168 hours in the week." THE TWELVE^HOUR DAY 65 That conditions in Corporation plants are not worse than in " independents " is shown by this from the records of an investigator for the Commission (Youngstown, Oct. 2Y, 1919) : " Timekeeper in the sheet mill department of a large ' inde- pendent ' stated : that among the men whose time he kept there were about 45 rollers who worked eight hours^ 110 laborers who worked ten hours and 190 who were on the twelve-hour basis, seven days a week. They changed every week from day to night turn, making a 24-hour shift. These latter included electricians, mill hands, engineers, pipefitters, cranemen, loaders, loader- helpers, and gasmen. In the sheet galvanizing department the men worked a twelve-hour day with no rest spells and no lunch hour. Their rates were 42, 42%, and 44 cents. So many men gave out under the strain and had to be fired for not being able to do the work that checks for these men gave out in the time department, and the timekeeper begged the foreman not to discharge so many. There were about 100 men in the de- partment, and from 35 to 50 were hired and fired each month." !N'one can dispute the demoralizing eifects on family life and community life of the inhuman twelve-hour day. As a matter of arithmetic twelve-hour day workers, even if the jobs were as leisurely as Mr. Gary says they are, have abso- lutely no time for family, for town, for church or for self- schooling, for any of the activities that begin to make full citizenship ; they have not the time, let alone the energy, even for recreation. At Johnstown a member of the Commission was ap- proached by a man of middle age who said that he was determined never to go back to work until the question of hours was settled. He gave as his reason the fact that his little daughter had died within the last few months ; he said he had never known the child because he was at work when- 66 REPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE ever she was awake, or else he was asleep, during the day time. He was determined that he would know the other children and for that reason felt that it was imperative that he should have the eight-hour day. This man was an American, getting good wages and embit- tered, not by " outside agitators " but by the facts of his life as he found them. When the Commissioners spoke to President Williams of the Carnegie Company about this, he smiled and said that it was very evident that the man's case was an exceptional one and not to be taken as typical. He did not go on to explain how such a man who worked from eleven to thirteen or four- teen hours a day or a night could secure time in which to be a normal father to a family of children. Insufficient evidence was gathered by the Commission to pass any judgment on one phase of the twelve-hour day — the resultant rate of accidents. The accident rate in the steel industry is, of course, still high. After the various criticisms of its policies thirteen years ago, and after engineers had proved to the companies the loss entailed by accidents and especially after compensation laws threatened to make acci- dents pretty costly to the companies, the steel companies began installing safety devices; the Steel Corporation set up a Safety Department which has been the recipient of many medals. Only statistics can determine to what extent the safety campaign is adequate. Statistically steel still ranks with mining for fatal accidents. The 1918 report of compen- sable accidents for the state of Pennsylvania gives the four largest hazardous industries as follows: Number Percent of Total Mines and quarries 23,161 33.13 Metals and metal products. .. 22,223 31.78 Public service 4,985 7.13 Building and contracting. . . . 4,184 5.98 THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY 67 It was surprising, in view of the reputation which the Steel Corporation had been accorded for safety, to find so large a number of strikers complaining about hazards. They de- scribed with specificness menaces to limb or life, concerning which they had complained to foremen and superintendents month in and month out without avail. Without adequate statistics it was impossible to weigh the value of these com- plaints just as it was inadvisable to pay great heed to the number of crooked-legged men always seen in the streets of a steel mill town. Here is a specimen of such complaints, this from a worker's testimony before the Senate Committee (Vol. II, pp. 728-9) : Mr. Colson — I worked in the mill in 1913, in the nail mill. I drew 17% cents an hour. I enlisted in the army during the trouble in Mexico and from there I was sent to West Point Military Academy with a detachment of Engineers, and from there to Washington, D. C, with the First Battalion of Engi- neers. From there I went to France and I was one of the first fifty men that got off the boat — one of the first men in France. The Chairman — What mill are you in? Mr. Colson — The bloom mill at the steel works at Donora, Pa.; and, so far as safety conditions up there are concerned, a man has no chance, because if he ever slips, his hands are greasy and the steps are greasy, and there is no rail, and there is no chance for your life, unless you jump out of the window and kill yourself. Senator Sterling — Did you ever know of anybody slipping there ? Mr. Colson — ^Yes, sir; there was one man who slipped and fell off and I got his job. I took his place as millwriglit helper. Chairman — Why did you go on strike? Mr. Colson — I went out with them, because I did not get 68 REPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE satisfaction from the company in no way. I had to get down on my hands and knees and ask for a job. Senator McKellar — 'What job did you have before you en- listed in tlie Regular Army? Mr. Colson — I was in the tool room ; and they said, ' When you come back we will give you a good job.' Senator McKellar — And when you came back you got 44 cents an hour? Mr. Colson — And longer hours, sir. The Chairman — How long did you work? Mr. Colson — Thirteen hours during the night and 11 hours during the day. Ten years ago the Steel Corporation and all steel com- panies were under fire because of Sunday work, the seven- day week, the possible 365-day year, chiefly the work on the largest single department of a steel plant, the blast furnace. During the strike the Steel Corporation flatly asserted that that condition had been reformed before the war and that although the seven-day week was resumed during the war, it was quite done away with by 1919. The president of the Carnegie Steel Company and of the Illinois Steel Company, Corporation subsidiaries,^ assured this Commission that " seven-day work is all done away with," or where it persists, as it must in the blast furnace department, that " the seven- day week work is a thing of the past " ; that is, that blast furnace employees got one day off in seven. Mr. Gary testified before the Senate Committee (Vol. T, p. 179) : " We decided to eliminate the seven-day week if we possibly could and we practically eliminated it. At times and places there were strikes, because the compensation was decreased." * President Schiller of the National Tube Co. said that the 7-day week was " indefensible," that his company had none of it but that " most other companies' blast furnaces were still on a 7-day basis." THE TWELVE-HOUK DAY 69 On January 30, 1920, in a letter to the Commission, Mr. Gary said : "We have no compiled statistics in respect of employment at blast furnaces which you ask for. " As to the seven-day week, however, beg to state that prior to the war it had been eliminated entirely except as to main- tenance and repair crews on infrequent occasions. During the war, at the urgent request by government officials for larger production, there was considerable continuous seven-day serv- ice in some of the departments. With the close of the war this attitude was changed and the seven-day service has been very largely eliminated. At the present time there is com- paratively little of it. We expect to entirely avoid it very shortly." Concerning the eighteen-, twenty-four- or thirty-six-hour shifts customary with the twelve-hour day, especially at blast furnaces, Mr. Gary could find for the Senate Committee only " 82 employees working a continuous twenty-four hours once each month," and " 344 working continuous eighteen hours twice each month." (Vol. I, p. 202.) Analysis of all data before the Commission proved that conditions regarding the seven-day week work are radically different from the impression conveyed by Mr. Gary. Moreover the evidence showed this fact : that the conditions concerning seven-day week work complained of and proved in 1910 still exist in the steel industry. The thing in the situa- tion which needs explaining is not so much whether these evil and unnecessary conditions exist today as why they exist, especially in the face of the Steel Corporation's asserted de- sire to better them. The Commission of Inquiry composed as it was of church- men, liable to a biased interest in the observance of Sunday, for that very reason attempted to confine its studies to in- 70 EEPOET ON THE STEEL STEIKE dustrially important facts. Sunday violation by sevenrday work is a minor consideration compared to the violation of American life worked by the twelve-hour day even for only six days a week throughout an industry. The seven-day week on blast furnaces and the avoidable Sunday work will go when the twelve-hour day is eliminated as the industry's basis. The Commission tried not to be unduly swayed by the testimony of local preachers and priests over the havoc wrought in their congregations by' the seven-day week worked by members of their congregations. For example, part of the interrogation of the Rev. Charles V. Molnar, pastor, Slovak Lutheran Church at Braddock, Pa., by the Commission reads : "My people are on strike. They work mostly in the Edgar Thompson Works. Some are working in Eankin, and have some members in Homestead and Duquesne, but most of the congregation are in Braddock." Question — " Are practically all of your members on the twelve-hour day?" Answer — " Yes, some of our men have been working longer than twelve hours." Question — "Is there much Sunday work?" Answer — "Very much; that is what we suffer from. The men would be very glad to be excused from Sunday work, but it seems impossible to accomplish anything." The testimony of a Eoman Catholic priest before the Senate Committee was even more emphatic. When asked about " the number of times that persons have omitted to go to church " (Senate Testimony, Vol. II, p. 544) : Father Kazinei — Well, these are from the furnaces in the Braddock mills. There are nine furnaces there, and furnaces H and A allow the men to go to church every second Sunday. The balance of the nine furnaces do not allow their men at THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY 71 all to go to church. Some get a Sunday off, joerhaps, once in six months ; but it is not taking care of their souls. The Chairman — Do many members of your church congre- gation work on Sunday? Father Kazinci — Most of them work on Sunday; and they do not see the inside of a church more than once in six months, because they are forced to work on Sunday. What are the simple statistical facts concerning the " elimination " of seven-day work and the " reduction " of hours which according to Mr. Gary have been the object of such earnest effort by the Corporation ? Beginning by re-stating the comparison of hours in 1910 when private institutions and governmental agencies began the "great drive" against such hours, with hours in 1919, we have (Figures from Senate Document 110 and October Monthly Keview, IT. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) : Average steel week, 1910 67.6 hours Average steel week, 1919 68.7 hours That is, ten years of " reduction " has increased the num- ber of hours. In this time several " independent " concerns, such as the Pueblo plant and all the Pacific Coast plants have adopted the eight-hour day; the Corporation's hours have helped overbalance this " deficit " for the total increase. Take the figures for 1914 and 1919 : 1914 1919 Common labor — hours per week.... 70.3 74. Skilled and semi-skilled — hours per week 57. 66. All employees — hours per week 66.3 68.7 In each classification the length of the week has increased. Take the seventy-nine separate occupations in the steel in- dustry for which statistics are given by the U. S. Bureau 72 REPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE of Labor Statistics and compare 1914 and 1919. In eighteen classes hours have decreased; in four remained stationary; in fifty-seven of the seventy-nine classes hours 'per week have increased, from a few minutes up to fourteen hours per week. Blast furnace and open hearth laborers constitute the great bulk of the eeven-daj week workers. For all districts the figures are : 1914 1919 Blast furnace, common labor 70.8 78.9 Open hearth, common labor 69.5 72.7 In one case an increase of eight hours per week or more than an hour per day since 1914; in the other an increase of three hours. In the Pittsburgh District, thus eliminating the principal eight-hour independents and confining the comparison more to Steel Corporation conditions, the figures are: 1914 1919 Blast furnace, common labor 73.1 82. Open hearth, common labor 71.3 78.5 Increases of nearly nine hours in one class and over seven in the other. Statistics from Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin 218 (Oct., 1917) reveal what actual successes were accomplished by the Corporation in "eliminating" seven- day work. Seven-day workers in blast furnaces were: (p. 17) 1911, 89 per cent.; 1912, 82 per cent.; 1913, 80 per cent.; 1914, 58 per cent. ; 1915, 59 per cent. Open hearths, during the same period, " about equally divided among the seven-day, the seven-day and six-day alternately and the six- day groups." Even before the war seven-day " eliminating " waited on what " steel demand " decided. The best year's figures show that the Corporation never achieved even a half- reform. THE TWELVE-HOUE DAY 73 For 1919, after the war, the latest figures for blast fur- naces, referred to earlier in this report, mean not even a real attempt to reform. The figures were drawn from the twenty- four representative establishments' pay-rolls and of the employees in the blast furnace department, totalling 6,315, exactly 4,049 were on the flat eighty-four-hour week, i.e. seven-day week. An additional 756 were on twelve hours, six days a week, plus Sunday work rcmging up to eleven hours. The Pittsburgh section of the twenty-four plants had on schedules below seventy-two hours only the following: 1 laborer at 60 hours and 41 laborers at 66 to 72 hours. All the rest of these Pittsburgh blast furnace workers in twenty- four representative plants were on the twelve-hour day and all but 485 of the 5,290 were on this twelve-hour-day seven days a week. In the open hearth, where there was no metallurgical excuse for seven-day work, conditions were similar. In nine- teen representative establishments whose open hearth em- ployes total 4,702, 2,750 were on the six and one-half or the flat seven-day week, all on the twelve-hour schedule. It is in the face of such facts, buried in statistics usually unread by the public, that Steel Corporation officials from Mr. Gary down assured the Commission that " seven-day work was a thing of the past" Such statements were maddening to the strikers. A Home- stead worker whose evidence happened to be in the shape of the notebook in which he had recorded all his hours and " turns " for eight months and twenty days previous to the strike, went to the Senate Committee hearing in Pittsburgh to read what the notebook showed. It showed : Hours worked 2,930 Number of 24-hour turns — ..... 18 Number of days off ,. . . . 17 74 REPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE That is, he worked the twelve-hour day in ten and one-half - hour shifts by day and thirteen hours by night for thirty- seven weeks, with the twenty-four-hour shift every fortnight and one day off every fortnight. These were the hours of his department in a Corporation mill ; the schedule of that de- partment allowed its employees seventeen days off out of 244. He did not testify. He explained to an investigator that he saw what he feared were Corporation " spotters " in the room. He ovmed his home in Homestead and he said he could not afford to testify and run the risk of being blacklisted. Mr. Gary began his account of " elimination " to the Senate Committee with the telegram sent by him to the presi- dents of all constituent companies on March 18, 1910, read- ing as follows : "Mr. Corey, Mr. Dickson and I have lately given much serious thought to the subject matter of resolution passed by the Finance Committee April 23, 1907, concerning Sunday or seventh-day labor. . . . The object of this telegram is to say that all of us expect and insist that hereafter the spirit of the resolution will be observed and carried into effect. There should and must be no unnecessary deviation v^ithout first tak- ing up the question with our Finance Committee. ... I em- phasize the fact that there should be at least twenty-four con- tinuous hours interval during each week in the production of ingots. E. H. Gary." This " peremptory order," putting into effect a resolution passed three years before, was sent the day after the Federal Labor Commission began an investigation of seven-day work in the Bethlehem plant on an order from Congress; which investigation was later extended to Corporation plants and the whole industry. Following this telegram, Mr. Gary told the Senate Com- mittee, " We practically eliminated it/' and he asserted that THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY 75 the Corporation had now sufficiently recovered from the emer- gencies of war practically to re-eliminate seven-day work. To what extent the Steel Corporation lived up to this peremptory order even in peace time can be estimated. In 1916 the Lacka- wanna Steel Company in its petition for exemption from the one day rest law of New York State showed plainly what Professor Commons (who qnotes it in the American Labor Legislation Review, March, 1917) calls "the futility of de- pending on even the most prosperous of the tariff's bener- ficiaries " : " We are advised that the chairman of the United States Steel Corporation several years ago, while labor conditions were entirely different from those obtaining at the present time, gave instructions quite peremptory in character to all the sub- sidiaries of that company requiring them to follow out the one day of rest principle and warning them that any devia- tion from the published instructions would result in dismissal from office. We have, therefore, directed our investigations to these subsidiaries and state, without fear of successful con- tradiction, that ihe corporation is now disregarding the one day of rest in seven principle which it so strongly advocated several years ago and which it in the past, in good faith, earn- estly strove to put into practice. It, too, has felt the shortage of men, and owing to the great and pressing demand for its product no longer observes the practice which its chairman promulgated. Having taken so firm a position, it is not strange that it is difficult to get heads of subsidiaries to admit that the published rule has become a dead letter. Wlien labor condi- tions become normal the corporation will doubtless return to an observance of the rule. So far as we can ascertain, the rule was only observed by the corporation during the years when the employees of this company had far more time off than the one day of rest statute requires." There is then some basis for estimating the probable effi- cacy of what Mr. Gary told the Senate Committee (Vol. I, 76 EEPOET ON THE STEEL STEIKE p. 180) when he assured the Senators that he believed in the eight-hour day and that he believed, " there are a good many employees, I do not say the majority or anything like the majority, but there are a good many employees v^ho believe the same thing." Mr. Gary asserted that the Corporation was " very carefully considering that question." He added : " If we can make it practicable to develop the eight-hour shift throughout our works universally and the men are willing to accept that basis we would be very glad to adopt it for the reason, if for no other, that we think there is a strong public sentiment in favor of it and I would not want to be put on record here or any other place as against the eight-hour day if the men themselves want it." The Steel Corporation oflFered but two excuses for the twelve-hour day to the Commission. The first was the shortage of labor. President Williams of the Carnegie Steel Company said it would take 50 per cent, or 26,000 more workers to put in three shifts on the eight-hour day in the Carnegie Steel Company (which employs 55,000 men). He asked: "And if we could get the labor, where could we house it? It would take 20,000 more houses." Steel masters in general agreed with this viewpoint except that Mr. Gary wrote the Commission that only 16% per cent, more men would be required. On the other hand it was admitted, even by the steel masters themselves, that one of the reasons why the industry faced a shortage of labor was " because you can't get Ameri- cans to work the twelve-hour day." The labor shortage in the industry is a problem, according to the opinion of the steel masters or of their employment managers, of getting Slavic, Greek, Italian and Turk labor which will work the twelve- hour day, or even of admitting Chinese coolie labor into the country. It was admitted that Americans dislike the slavish character of common labor steel jobs as being " hunkie jobs." THE TWELVE-HOUE DAY 77 Despite this, inasmuch as the steel mills were once entirely manned by Americans, it was admitted that a great many men would come back to the industry if the twelve-hour day were eliminated. But the decisive factor, setting aside all consideration of the moral questions involved in the twelve-hour day and in suggestions of flooding the steel industry with Balkan immi- grants or coolie labor, lies in this consideration which, ac- cording to engineers, disposes of the labor shortage argu- ment against the eight-hour day ; the steel requirements of the country could be met by utilizing all the first-class machinery, scrapping the rest and distributing the work throughout the available labor supply and throughout the year on a three- shift eight-hour day basis. Engineers' findings are: that the steel industry being run for the making of profit and not primarily for the making of steel as the country needs it, favors (a) spells of idleness during which the country and the steel workers pay for the maintenance of idle machinery, and later (b) spurts of long hour, high speed labor. Here is an analysis of steel production, made in 1919 by W. ]Sr. Polakov, who compiled coal production studies for the Council of National Defense during the war : "It is a well-known fact that during 1914 the mills were running considerably below their capacity because of an in- dustrial crisis manifested in a general business depression. Pro- duction of pig-iron during the two preceding years averaged thirty million tons, even at that time, however, utilizing less than 75 per cent, of the productive capacity of equipment; full productive capacity of blast furnaces in 1914 was 44,405,000 tons per year. The fact that only 23,300,000 tons were 'pro- duced in 1914 left nearly half of the equipment idle. A con- sumer of iron should not be asked to pay for the use of fur- naces in which his iron was not made any more than the tenant 78 REPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE to pay rent of the vacant apartments of his landlord. Yet exactly the same thing was being done when the overhead charges, rent, etc., amounting to $104,052,085, were distributed on only 23,000,000 tons, while they should have been spread over 44,000,000 tons. The consumer was asked to pay rent at a rate of $4.47 per ton instead of only $2.17. The country, therefore, had to pay $2.30 more for each ton of pig-iron than it was worth and than it would have cost if production had not been curtailed by the companies. Total over-charges, therefore, appear to be about $53,552,084. " Similarly, the capacity of steel mills was sufficient to pro- duce 45,000,000 tons while only about 23,500,000 tons were made. Were the overhead expenses, rent, etc., of only that portion of plant and equipment that was actually used in the production of steel charged to consumer, the overhead per ton would have been not $9.95, but only $5.17, and the country would not have had to pay $112,350,000 to the steel makers for the equipment the country and the people received no benefit from. In other words, the expense of idle plant equip- ment was charged to consumers of both iron and steel, and this item alone cost the country $175,009,084." The second excuse offered for the twelve-hour day was this : that the workers prefer the twelve-hour day. This was urged by the Corporation's subsidiary presidents before this Commission just as solemnly as Mr. Gary urged it before the United States Senate. Mr. Gary said " Let me tell you, the question of hours has been largely a question of wishes, of desire on the part of the employees themselves." Steel presidents assured this Commission that in a few plants where the three-shift day was inaugurated the plants lost their men " because the foreigner wants to work the twelve-hour day, he wants to make as much money as he possibly can." They united in telling the Commission that " if the Corporation put in the eight-hour day, the ' inde- THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY 79 pendents ' would steal all our men, because they want to work the twelve-hour day." They stated, what there is little reason to doubt, that some- times when they tried to put in a rule of one day's rest in seven, blast furnace laborers would desert to a seven-day job or go to a neighboring plant and work for that extra day when they were supposed to be " off." This whole argument is based on what Mr. Gary called " compensation." Mr. Gary himself said, " Of course if we should immediately limit hours to eight and pay for the eight hours the same the men are now getting for ten or twelve hours every employee would favor it." (Senate Testi- mony, Vol. I, p. 180.) There seems to be not the slightest disposition on the part of the Corporation in tackling the twelve-hour day evil to go at their problem from this standpoint: "What is a wage necessary for an American standard of living? Let us pay at least that minimum for an eight-hour day." Many pages of the Steel Corporation's testimony and hours of discussion by presidents and plant superintendents would vanish if the Steel Corporation would consent to such a basis of considera- tion of its problems. Of course there are " hunkies " who will work just as long as possible for all the money they can get ; these are chiefly the immigrants who want to hurry back to Europe to live in comparative leisure for the rest of their days. Are these men to be favored at the expense of the immigrant who has become an American, who wants to stay here with his family, who is growing up to American speech and ways and who wants to keep himself and his money here forever? This latter is the immigrant who struck by the tens of thousands against the twelve-hour day; but he looks, to Mr. Gary, the same as the un-American worker. Mr. Gary told the Senate Committee (Senate Testimony, Vol. I, p. 183) : " Some of the men prefer to secure their own places 80 EEPORT ON THE STEEL STEIKE of residence and save their money and take it home — take it abroad. Of course this is not objectionable from our stand- point at all." But is it not emphatically objectionable from the standpoint of American citizenship? Mr. Gary propounded his question of pay, what he called twelve hours wages for eight hours work, as if it could not be taken seriously by practical men. It is taken seriously by his entire common labor force. Witnesses before the Senate Committee and scores interviewed in this Inquiry took the stands set forth in the following paragraph from the diary of the Carnegie Steel worker at Homestead in the spring of 1919 : "A rumor of the coming eight-hour day is commented on as follows: Negro laborer says he doesn't see how he can get along with only eight hours as long as family groceries stay up so high. One of the best first-helpers, pay check $175 to $200 every fifteen days, mainly tonnage, says it would be fine; it would cost money, but it would give him a chance to get the good of being alive." There in a nutshell are the answers given by the two main parts of the labor force. The upper third, consisting of the skilled workers and upper half of the semi-skilled, would willingly accept a compromise cut in wages for the sake of the eight-hour day. The other and greater half, especially the common labor section, feel they must have their present pay when they get the eight-hour day. That the Corporation recognized some reasonableness in this stand was evidenced when Mr. Gary announced a 10 per cent, raise for all com- mon labor three weeks after the strike was called off. This Inquiry hesitated to raise the issue as to whether or not the rates of pay for the Steel Corporation's common labor are purposely kept low in order to force men to submit to the inhuman twelve-hour day. THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY 81 Progressive steel masters have fought the Corporation's twelve-hour day for years. They instance what is well known, that the actual work delivered toward the end of the twelve-hour shift, much less the eighteen, twenty-four, or thirty-six hour shift, is nothing compared to the wear and tear on the workman delivering the lahor. The following quotation from the diary of the Carnegie steel worker is pertinent : " The twelve-hour day for common labor is impossible. To deliver heavy muscular effort for twelve hours cannot be done. The last six hours is done with a 35 per cent. load. After midnight it is a contest to see who keeps out of the boss's way and does the least work." In sum, the twelve-hour day is the most iniquitous of the by-products of the Corporation's labor policy; which is to get cheap labor and keep it cheap. The Corporation baits floating labor with the wage possibilities of excessive hours, does nothing to combat the drainage of money out of the country by the smaller fraction of the incorrigibly un-Ameri- can immigrant; and for the greater bulk of immigrants who want to be Americans it imposes un-American hours. In the light of thirteen years' history of " eliminating " the seven- day week, the conclusion seems unescapable: that the Steel Corporation moves to reform only when it has to. It must be added that if the twelve-hour day is bad for the country, the government is to blame and as long as it fails to tackle the twelve-hour day it imposes upon the trade unions alone the humane task of moving the Steel Corporation in the direction of reform. Moreover, the conclusion is unescapable that a real cause of the persistence of the twelve-hour day and the seven-hour week is the defenselessness of the unorganized immigrant worker. Again the government, as much as the Steel Cor- poration, is to blame and again the Corporation and the 83 REPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE government have seen fit to leave the field of reform to the trade unions. In the twenty-eight pages of the Senate Committee's Re- port on the steel strike much space is devoted to the need for Americanization. Only a few lines were devoted to the twelve-hour day. But Americanization is a farce, night schools are worthless, Carnegie libraries on the hilltops are a jest, churches and welfare institutions are ironic while the steel worker is held to the twelve-hour day or the fourteen- hour night. Not only has he no energy left, he has literally no time left after working such schedules. He has not even time for his own family. The facts have long been known. The National Associa- tion of Corporation Schools, the chief employers' organization for furthering workers' education, at its 1919 session heard A. H. Wyman of the Carnegie Steel Company of Pittsburgh cite the reasons given by immigrant workers for dropping out of the nightly English classes for foreigners in the South Chicago public schools : Fatigue from long hours , 2T Change of jobs, unable to get to school by 7 P. M. .... . 36 Change from day to night work 37 Overtime work ,. 69 Total 169 That is, nearly fifty per cent, of the startlingly small group of 341 enrolled out of the tens of thousands in the district dropped out for reasons connected with hours. Mr. Wyman did not mention the relation of steel workers' hours to the defeat of the South Chicago Americanization educational campaign ; neither did anybody else in the audience mention it.^ The Committee of Senators investigating the strike heard * Report National Association of Corporation Schools, 1919, p. 493. THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY 83 testimony directly related to this matter of Americanization of which the following is typical (Vol. II, p. 602) : A. Pido — Twenty-three years old, an immigrant striker, on the stand. The Chairman — "WHiat is the reason you struck this time? Mr. Pido — I strike on eight hours a day and better condi- tions. Senator McKellar — Wliat sort of conditions do you want better ? Mr. Pido — This better; I think that a man ought to work eight hours today and have eight hours sleep and eight hours that he can go to school and learn something; and I think that an education is much better than any money. I have been going to night school in Clairton for a while. The Chairman — Did a good many of the men go to night school ? Mr. Pido — They don't have any chance. They work 12 hours a day, and they do not have any chance. The Chairman — How long did you go to night school? Mr. Pido — I went about twenty nights altogether. The Chairman — Is that all of the schooling that you hare ever had? Mr, Pido — I did not have any chance. The Chairman — How many men went to the night school? Mr. Pido — Not very much. There were about twenty-three altogether. The Chairman — Do you think they would go to night school if they had an opportunity? Mr. Pido — I think they would if they had a chance to go, but the way they are now they have no chance to go to school. Another witness, a Slovak priest in Braddock, testified aa follows : Father Kazinci : " We have an Americanization course in project taking place, and they have been instructed to go and attend those night schools. They are not a very great success, 84 HEPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE for the simple reason that the men are overworked, working from 10 to 13 hours a day; and they do not feel like going to the schools and depriving their families of their own com- pany and society even after those hours, those long hours. Sundays, they have none, for most of them go off to work. " The men are worked from 10 to 13 hours a day. The conditions under which they are living are bad for America. The housing conditions are terrible. The work conditions, the hours of work, are absolutely impossible, and I think that it tends to make the men become disgusted with the country, and they will say, ' Well, let us go back to the old country ; perhaps it is going to be better than it is for us here.* There is no hope for them bettering their condition, for they work from the time the whistle begins to blow in the morning until they are whistled out at 6 o'clock in the evening." (Vol. II, p. 544-6.) Americanization of the steel workers cannot take place while the 12-hour day persists. Human beings un- Ameri- canized by the 12-hour day in such scores of thousands are a stiff price paid by America for the profits of steel com- panies. Recommendations along the following lines seem unescap- able : That the 12-hour day is a barbarism without valid ex- cuse, penalizing the workers and the country. That the church and every other American institution has a duty to perform to the immigrant worker and that this duty cannot be fulfilled until the 12-hour day is abolished. That effective elimination of the 12-hour day must and can be initiated and worked out only by (a) the IT. S. Steel Corporation in free cooperation with its workers, and (b) by the Federal Government. IV WAGES m A N"0-CONFERENCE INDUSTRY Analysis of the wages paid in the iron and steel industry, together with comparisons with wages in other industries and with two recognized standards of living, results in the fol- lowing conclusions directly bearing on the causes of the strike : The annual earnings of over one-third of all productive iron and steel workers were, and had been for years, below the level set by government experts as the minimum of subsis- tence standard for families of five. The annual earnings of 72% of all workers were, and had been for years below the level set by government ex- perts as the minimum of comfort level for families of five. This second standard being the lowest which scientists are willing to term an " American standard of living," it follows that nearly thre-e-quarters of the steel workers could not earn enough for an American stomdard of living. The bulk of unskilled steel labor, with exceptions here- after noted, earned less than enough for the average family's mirdmum subsistence. The bulk of semi-sMlled steel workers earned less than enough for the average family's minimum comfort. Skilled steel labor is paid wages disproportionate to the earnings of the other two-thirds, thus binding the skilled class to the companies and creating divisions between it and the rest of the force. 41.6 per cent, of the payroll goes to the skilled, who number but 30.4 per cent, of the whole. 85 86 REPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE 30.6 per cent, of the payroll goes to the semi-skilled, who number 31.5 per cent, of the whole. 37.8 per cent, of the payroll goes to the unskilled, who, how- ever, are 38.1 per cent, of the whole.^ One-half of the three-quarters earning less than an Ameri- can living wage reached even their wage levels only because of the twelve-hour day with its " 14-hour earnings." Wage rates in the iron and steel industry are determined by the rates of the U. S. Steel Corporation. The Steel Cor- poration sets its wage rates, the same as its hour schedules, without conference (or collective bargaining) with its em- ployees; it decrees them arbitrarily. Mr. Gary testified before the Senate Committee : " I have forgotten how many times we increased wages dur- ing the war, but repeatedly, voluntarily — arhiirarily, but arbi- trarily in favor of the workmen." (Senate Testimony, Vol I, p. 226.) The Commission's data on wages were furnished primarily by the U. S. Steel Corporation. The Corporation's Annual Reports, together with more recent statistics supplied by Mr. Gary are here analyzed through the media of the standard government survey of the industry, (Senate Document 110, 4 vols.), the analyses of the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statis- tics; and are checked by data accumulated by the Commis- sion's investigators. Comparison is made with budgets of expenditures supplied by workers' families in the Pitts- burgh District and with wage rates paid in similar industries. In relation to the strike these wage analyses warrant the following conclusion: 1 Figures derived from analysis of the wage tables In Senate Docu- ment 110. The proportion between the different classes of workers and other general conditions have not changed vitally since then (1910). The percentages have been carried out to the decimal point, although, of course, they represent no such precise division in fact. WAGES IN NO-CONFERENCE INDUSTRY 87 Besides the skilled workers who struck principally against arbitrary (or autocratic) control and besides the mass which struck mainly against the 12-hour day, a large proportion of the unskilled and semi-skilled struck also against wages which, statistics indicate, were actually inadequate to maintain an American standard of liv- ing. In regard to the Steel Corporation's financial ahility to pay higher wages than it does the following facts were noted : The Corporation increased its total undivided surplus from $135,204,471.90 in 1914 to $493,048,201.93 in 1919, that is, to a figure larger than its total wages and salary budget for 1919. Increases in wages during the war in no case were at a sacri- fice of stockholders' dividends. Net earnings per ton of steel in 1918 were $14.39, that is, higher than the average since 1910, ($13.03). Net earnings per ton of steel in 1917 were $19.76. These conclusions being true, some explanation should be made of what would then seem to be a popular illusion, — that steel is a highly paid industry. The most recent cause of this illusion is, perhaps, Mr. Gary's testimony on wages before the Senate Committee. Mr. Gary began his wage list with " rollers, $32.56 per day " (Senate Testimony, Vol. I p. 156). Although it became quickly apparent (ibid. p. 159) ^ that there was only one roller in the steel business making that $32.56 per day, nevertheless, the public at large seems to have accepted Mr. Gary's flat statement that " the Corporation has been in the van all the time " ^ and his applications of this to wages, such as the following : ' Mr. Gary : " Senator, I believe there is only one who gets as high as $32.56." = P. 178. 88 REPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE Mr. Gary : " I wish to state that there is no basic industry in this country, nor in the world, in my opinion, which has paid larger wages to its employees than the United States Steel Corporation, and perhaps not as large. . . . " For the year 1914 in manufacturing the wages were $2.93 ; July, 1919, $6.27, an increase of 114 per cent, ... all com- panies, 1914, $2.88; July, 1919, $5.99, an increase of 108 per cent; unskilled labor, 10 hours, 1914, $2 per day; July, 1919, $4.62, an increase of 131 per cent. Twelve hours, in 1914, $2.40; in July, 1919, $5.88, an increase of 145 per cent, (p. 158). " We hare stood for the highest wages, anvariably. We have been the first to increase wages and the last to decrease them.'' (Senate Testimony, Vol. I, p. 175.) Altogether, Mr. Gary's figure of $6.27 per day as the average for the "whole industry, his figures on wage increases in hundred percentages and exhibits of photographs of beauti- ful homes owned by steel "workers, combined to leave with the public the impression that " steel may be mighty hard labor but its wages are mighty big," and that " whatever else the steel trust may be, it pays well." It might not be unfair to say that the impression is general that the Steel Corpora- tion's reason for hiring 24 different races of foreigners was that they could stand the hours, not that the kind of wages these foreigners would take had anything to do with it Another means of misleading public opinion undoubtedly was the appearance in the press and in magazines during the strike of many articles such as the one entitled " Think of the ' Poor Steel Workers ' Who Get From Four Dollars to Seventy Dollars a Day " in the Current Opinion of Janu- ary, 1920. The article is taken from the N. Y. Sun and goes on to say: " According to a writer who has been investigating condi- tions in the Pittsburgh steel mill district for the New York WAGES IN NO-CONFERENCE INDUSTRY 89 Sun, the worker on an ice wagon or on a moving van in any large city does more real hard work in a day than the aver- age mill laborer does in two or three days. . . . Wages of from $8.26 to $9 a day have been made right along by semi-skilled workers, a large nimiber of whom are foreign born. For what are known as skilled workers in the steel mills, to which positions all workers may aspire and many of which are held by aliens, the average daily wages are, at this writing; Steel rollers $28.16 Sheet heaters 21.12 Roughers 11.92 Steel pourers 12.84 Vessel men , 14.65 Engineers, manipulators, etc 12.63 Blooming mill heaters ,. 17.92 Skelp mill heaters 18.18 Skelp mill rollers 21.73 Lap welders 16.08 Blowers 13.76 Bottom makers 12.91 Regulators 13.52 "It is stated authoritatively that emploj^ees of the United States Steel Corporation now are the highest paid body of men in the steel industry in the world." The list of employees given above, " rollers," etc., consti- tutes a fraction of 1 per cent, of all employees. Of these in turn, the " aliens," or immigrants who " may aspire " to such jobs, constitute a fraction of 1 per cent. It was " stated authoritatively " — on behalf of steel companies, — many times during the strike that steel workers were highly paid, on the basis of such citations as the above. The result was that most persons had the imprecision that " wages were not an issue in the strike." Even public spirited citizens who conferred with Mr. Gary on the strike 90 REPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE remained under this misapprehension. Persons "who took the trouble to mingle with strikers, however, found every other man complaining of wages. Half the strikers inter- viewed by the Senate investigating committee talked of " low wages." It is entirely possible that the Steel Corporation heads sincerely believe their workers are well off^ financially. 'No such analyses as the following were obtainable from the Cor- poration's statisticians. Analysis shows that the misconception of steel as a high wage industry arises from: (a) The existence of a very small highly skilled and highly paid body of American workers prominently visible at the top of the industry. (b) Failure to realize that the amounts earned by the low- skilled, (the bulk of the labor) are determined chiefly by the extraordinary long hours rather than by a high rate per hour. That is : steel rates are the same or lower than in similar industries if earnings are compared on a basis of equal hours. As regards common labor steel is a low wage industry. Com- parison of common labor earnings in steel with common labor earnings in five other major industries in the Pitts- burgh district for the latter part of 1919 on the basis of a common standard week shows steel labor the lowest paid of the six. " This class (common labor) is of the greatest importance in the industry, not only because of the very large propor- tion employed, but even more because their wage forms the base rate of the entire industry, above which the wages of the other employees are graded." (Senate Document, 110, Vol. I p. xxxix.) This finding of the Labor Department's famous study of the steel industry in 1910 is admittedly true today. The steel wage, as well as the organization of the WAGES IN NO-CONFERENCE INDUSTEY 91 steel business, (see next section of this report) is pyramided on a broad and tremendous base of common labor, restlessly drifting and with a high turnover while the industry is held together by the tight and almost unbreakable skilled organi- zation at the apex. Yet the high pay rates at the top depend largely on the rates which the mass at the bottom are will- ing to take. True understanding of the wage complaints of thousands of steel workers depends on analyzing the huge wages budget of the Corporation to show how the earnings are divided. It is no comfort to the underpaid worker to learn that the Corporation paid in wages and salaries for 1918, $452,663,- 524. ; and for the first eight months of 1919, to manufacturing employees, $255,861,264. The following figures make the matter plainer than gigantic totals, though the figures are based on the totals, which include many salaries in the administrative force, admittedly larger than the run of pro- ducing employees' wages. (Reference is made to tables in sub-reports.) These figures are maxima, too high to be rep- resentative. The figures cover approximately the union or- ganizing period of a year before the beginning of the strike, September 22, 1919. In 1918 the the Corporation's wage and salary budget " for the manufacturing properties," $344,907,626 went to the 198,968 employees as follows: 60,486 skilled (30.4 per cent, of all) got 41.6 per cent., or $143,581,571 62,675 semi-skilled (31.5 per cent, of all) got 30.6 per cent., or 105,531,733 75,807 unskilled (38.1 per cent, of all) got 27.8 per cent, or 95,884,320 In 1919 the Corporation's wage and salary budget ($255,- 861,264 for eight months) went to 191,000 employees as fol- 92 EEPORT ON THE STEEL STRIKE lows : (eight months budget multiplied by 50 per cent, for an annual basis) : 58,064 skilled (30.4 per cent, of all) got 41.6 per cent., or $159,657,328 60,165 semi-skilled (31.5 per cent, of all) got 30.6 per cent., or 117,440,320 72,771 unskilled (38.1 per cent, of all) got 27.8 per cent., or 106,694,145 That is, individual average earnings were not higher than as follows, since the above totals contain administrative salaries : In 1918: Skilled annual earnings averaged under $2,373 Semi-skilled annual earnings averaged under. . 1,683 Unskilled annual earnings averaged under 1,265 In 1919: Skilled annual earnings averaged under $2,749 Semi-skilled annual earnings averaged under. . 1,952 Unskilled annual earnings averaged under. . . . 1,468 With this must be compared what the workingman is always comparing with his wage — his cost of living. Before taking up detailed discussion of standards of living, it will be convenient to set down here brief definitions of two stand- ards, (disregarding a third commonly called the pauper line, because the latter has not been defined with scientific exacti- tude comparable to) — (1) the minimum subsistence level, and (2) the minimum comfort level) both for families of five. These standards, derived from the most exhaustive extant analysis of cost of living statistics, incorporated in govern- ment reports and used in government wage awards, are defined as follows: WAGES m NO-CONFEKENCE INDUSTEY 93 1. The minimum of subsistence level. This is based essen- tially on animal well-being, with little or no attention to the comforts or social demands of human beings. 2. The minimum comfort level. This is somewhat above that of mere animal subsistence, providing in some measure for comfortable clothing, insurance, a modest amount of rec- reation, etc. This level provides for health and decency, but very few comforts, and is probably much below the idea had in mind in the frequent but indefinite expression, " the Ameri- can standard of living." In other words, these standards applied to families, mean first, the level at which a wage-earner can keep himself and his dependents healthfully alive; second, the lowest level at which scientists would be willing to put " the American standard of living." (The detailed calculations of these stand- ards, chiefly on the basis of the work done for the govern- ment by Prof. W. F. Ogburn, the best known American authority on costs of living statistics, will be set forth later in an appendix.) It must be noted that as standards for wages, these levels are bitterly protested by organized labor. The whole princi- ple of limiting wage rates to their relation to bare standards of subsistence or of minimum comfort has been denounced again and again by Mr. Gompers. The following figures therefore may be considered simply at the rock bottom of calculation for those who wish to grasp the meaning of exist- ing wage rates, not as representing rates which organized labor considers just. For 1918, Family of Five (June) Minimum of subsistence level , $1,386 Minimum of comfort level 1,760 For 1919, Family of Five (August) Minimum of subsistence level $1,575 Minimum of comfort level 2,024 94 REPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE These figures, — which are hammered down to the most conservative possible levels — may be compared with the (highest possible) individual averages based on the Corpora- tion's payrolls above, as follows: — 1918 1919 Minimum of comfort level $1,760 $2,024 Minimum of subsistence level , 1,386 1,575 Unskilled labor's annual average 1,265 1,466 That is, in 1918, the unskilled worker's annual earnings were more than $121 below the minimum of subsistence level and more than $495 below the " American standard of living " for families. In 1919 the unskilled worker's annual earnings were mpre than $109 below the minimum of subsistence level and more than $558 below the " American standard of living." Comparing the semi-skilled earnings and the minimum of comfort level: 1918 1919 Minimum of comfort level $1,760 $2,024 Semi-skilled labor's annual average 1,683 1,952 That is, in both years the semi-skilled's annual earnings Were below the lowest " American standard of living " for families. These two groups, unskilled and semi-skilled, comprise 72 per cent, of all manufacturing iron and steel workers. If, leaving average annual earnings for a moment, com- parison is made between (a) the two standards of living cited and (b) the wages of those groups of workers whose highest earnings just fail to reach these standards, the following curious and significant revelation results. That is, the labor force of 191,000 men for 1919 can be classified by grada- tions upward, beginning with the group earning $3.36 a day or approximately $1,000 a year, then the group earning WAGES IN NO-CONFEEENCE INDUSTRY 95 $1,200, then $1,300, etc. The level at which $1,575 (the minimum of subsistence standard) appears in this classifi- cation leaves just 38 per cent, of the workers below it. If the classification is continued on upward, through $1,600 annually, $1,700, $1,800, etc., the level at which $2,024 (the minimum of comfort standard) appears leaves just 72 per cent, of the workers below it. But 38 per cent, marks the limit of unskilled labor and 72 per cent, the limit of semi-skilled. That is, as if by the workings of a law, all in the unskilled class fall just short of the level of living to which common labor ordinarily feels it is entitled and should attain, — the level of a healthful animal existence. And all in the semi- skilled class (workers in steel jobs usually from 1 year to 5 years or more) fall just short of the level of living to which more steady workers feel they ought to attain — the level of decency and at least a few comforts. Such a " law " might be put thus : that the " labor market," if left only to " supply and demand," uninfluenced by trade union or other forces, tends to leave the top level of possible earnings for each class of worker just out of reach. Each class of worker must always be striving for the level of livelihood which seems " due " him and always be just short of it. He must, therefore, always be working his hardest. The worker is, therefore, by the workings of such unre- stricted industrialism, " speeded " to the limit by the hope of attaining the standard which seems surely attainable. Employers capitalize the situation, partly consciously, — " if you pay 'em too much, they won't work " — and partly un- consciously, by making each wage raise just enough to meet " increased costs of living." Consciously, employers have utilized this " law " to speed workmen by skilfully adjust- ing reductions in piece-rates of payment to increases in out- put. This is the practice of " increasing output by ' shaving ' 9e EEPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE rates, a method raised to perfection by the steel trust," ^ as observed by Prof. Carleton Parker in 1914. The wage averages given above, it should be noted again, ■were based on the money actually palid out. The true aver- ages for each class of work, therefore, could not be over the figures given. How much lower than the given averages the true averages should be is hard to determine. It depends mainly on the extent to which the Steel Corporation has lumped into its totals for wages for the labor force, the sums spent for salaries for the great office and administrative or- ganizations. That these have been lumped in is obvious ; * but to what extent can only be estimated. Besides the adminis- trative salaries which must be paid out of the industry's productiveness, there are such items as the thousands of " plant police " and other adjuncts of anti-union policies, whose pay must also be earned by the productive steel workers. This percentage of deduction for administrative overhead, etc., should be, judging by the only statistics available, about 9 per cent. In 1910 the indicated average for all Steel Corporation employees, obtained by di^dding the given total payroll of $174,995,130 by the 218,435 employees, was $801 per man annually. But the actual average annual earnings, as determined by the government's exhaustive survey of that year, were about $726 per man, or 9 per cent, below the Steel Corporation's indicated average. In 1919 the Cor- poration's indicated average, obtained by dividing the given manufacturing plant payroll by the number of manufacturing employees, was $2,009 per man. If this " manufacturing * " The Technique of American Industry," Atlantic Monthly, Jan., 1920. • The fact is plainly indicated by analysis of the figures cited by Mr. Gary to the Commission in the letter of Jan. 30. This gives $344,907,- 626, as the " total payroll " for " the employees of the manufacturing plants." If this excluded administrative salaries, etc., these salaries should raise unduly the average annual wage for the rest of the Cor- poration's 70,000 employees. Instead the average for the remaining 70,000 is $200 lower than the average given as for " the employees of the manufacturing plants " alone. WAGES IN NO-CONFEEENCE INDUSTEY 97 payroll " contains the same proportion of overhead as the Corporation's customary " total payroll," as seems to be true, this average of $2,009 should be 9 per cent, too high as a true average. But the $Y26 true average of 1910, increased by 150 per cent., (the actual increase in iron and steel wages according to government reports ^) would be $1,815 and this is also just 9 per cent, below the Corporation's indicated average. This would mean that the true average annual earn- ings of iron and steel workers for 1918 and 1919 would be as follows : 1918 1919 Unskilled $1,153 $1,335 Semi-skilled 1,534 1,777 Skilled 2,178 2,502 That is, if a survey were made of company payrolls, it would probably indicate the above as the actual average earnings of steel workers.^ These facts, then, should be borne in mind in consider- ing the following recapitulating table. The above averages are probably much truer estimates of actual annual earn- ings than the averages given below which, on the com- panies' own statistics, are maxima. The true averages for semi-skilled and unskilled are farther below the standards of living than this table indicates: 1918 1919 Skilled $2,373 $2,749 Minimum of comfort ,. 1,760 2,024 Semi-skilled 1,683 1,952 Minimum of subsistence 1,386 1,575 Unskilled 1,265 1,466 ^ Increase in average hourly earnings 1910 to 1919 is 150 per cent. Bulletins U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics No. 218 and Monthly Labor Review, November, 1919, p. 192. * An increase of 10 per cent, for common labor with proportionate adjustments for skilled was granted by the U. S. Steel Corporation at the close of the strike. This was immediately met by tncreasea from the independent companies. 98 EEPORT ON THE STEEL STEIKE In each of two classes, in each year, the average earnings were below the standard of living which each class normally feels to be the least " due " him. How far one class, common labor, was below the minimum comfort or lowest " American standard of living " was striking. For many years this was so in the industry; decency, or comfort, just out of reach, for two-thirds of the workers. Therefore many strikers, who looked blank at mention of " Bolshevism " and who knew little even of the A. F. of L., insisted on talking a great deal about wages to this Com- mission's investigators and to the Senate Committee. Such were the hard facts of which all but skilled steel workers were more or less conscious year in, year out. They realized that by the long day, and its overtime they could earn considerable sums, but, what with exhaustion due to overwork and what with lay-offs due to shut-downs, the an- nual income was disappointing. Though they were laid off, they must eat and their families be kept alive. Iron men, with plants running full time, could earn much more than the $24.32 (1918) or the $28.19 (1919) maximum weekly averages actually paid to common labor in those years. For example, the following is an Open Hearth gang actual sched- ule for a Pittsburgh District plant, July, 1919 : Hours: ten-hour day, fourteen-hour night (Alternate 6-day and 7-day week) Weekly Rate Common lahor . , . imskilled $35.28 $ .42 Pit unskilled 36.12 43 Third-Helper ....semi-skilled ... 45.00 (6 wks. to learn) .45 Second-Helper ...skilled 45.00 (8 mo.-2y2 yrs.) . 7.00 a day First-Helper skilled 69.00 10.07 plus tonnage ($lor$2) 17 (hours) X 45 (cents) X 6 (days) = night week 11 " X 45 " X 6 " 4- (32 X 45) = day week The mathematics of overtime for the semi-skilled man at the end illustrates the story. This Third-Helper makes his total on his " night week," 14 hours for 6 nights, by multiplying his hourly 4.1 cents by 17 hours by 6. He makes his "day week" total by multiplying 45 cents by 11 hours by 6 plus one 24 hour turn, or (overtime pay, 32 hours in all), $14.40. WAGES IN NO-CONFEEENCE INDUSTRY 99 If this semi-skilled man kept this up for 52 weeks ho would, being allowed only 26 days rest in all that year of 12-hour days, earn $2,340 or $216 over the minimum of comfort level for 1919. And if the common laborers who Tnahe up 49 per cent, of Open Hearth employees, worked this 12-hour schedule for all but 26 of the 365 days in the year, they would still be nearly $200 below the lowest " American standard." But few men can stand it and few plants run without a lay-off, — many are " down " from 8 to 20 weeks a year, and the years' earnings are never " full time." Thus common labor's income is annually below healthful existence for families. It is these possibilities of overtime on 12 to 24-hour shifts which give to steel jobs the reputation of " high pay " which they actually enjoy among a considerable class of husky unmarried immigrant workers. This touches one of the real reasons why the 12 -hour day has persisted in the steel industry: 30 per cent of steel workers are umnarried, with no responsibilities and with the strength and desire to pile up as much as they can for a few weeks or months, then '' lay off " to enjoy life or take an " easy job " until " broke." From this 30 per cent, the steel companies recruit their 12- hour gang in considerable part, irrespective of whether the development of such intermittent working is good for the industry or the community. The long overtime constitutes the bait to this class and to many a simple foreign laborer who sees what one day can bring in but not what the years do bring in, to him and his class. Moreover 68 per cent, of the " foreigners " are married, with an average of 6.63 mem- bers to each household, and 81 per cent, of the " foreigners " in the industry are paid the unskilled or semi-skilled wage rates. These married and familied " foreigners " are the ones who desire to keep their money and themselves here, to be " Americans ;" and these are the immigrants most worth 100 REPOKT ON THE STEEL. STKIKE while and yet most penalized by steel's long hours and un- American wage rates. It must be noted too that 15 per cent, of immigrant steel workers have families of ten members or over; of the Croa- tians 37 per cent, have families of 10 or over; of the Mag- yars, 21 per cent. With large families, with the unskilled jobs where the " lay offs " strike first in slack times, with the communities such that none other than steel jobs are near, with the work such that " old age at forty " is its watch- word, the average immigrant steel worker, after a dozen years at it, often finds himself contemplating not the " long overtime " which first tempted him but actual conditioni nearer the following: This is the official family budget and verbal report made by the Home Service Division of the Pittsburgh Red Cross for the only case of relief growing out of the strike that had come to it by November 26, 1919. (The question of helping a stAher was the subject of very serious debate by the Pitts- burgh Red Cross.) Polish worker living in Braddock, employed by American Steel and Wire Company. Father, mother, and nine children. Oldest boy, 21, was making about $60 a month, went into army eervice. Father, 42, common laborer, was making $80 to $90 a month on the average. His employment was irregular, although his foreman reported that he was a good, steady workman and worked every day there was a job. Last summer his monthly earnings went up, being $129 in July, and $118 in August. There is no record of the family ever having been a charity case. Another boy makes about $15 per month, and some of the girls occasionally pick up some money. The father went on strike; since the strike he has applied WAGES IN NO-CONFERENCE INDUSTRY 101 for other jobs and was refused them because he belongs to the union. At length he got a Job on a government dam. Minimum Budget for the above family of father, mother and eight children, worked out specially with reference to the special needs of the family for milk, medicine, etc.: Rent $ 20.00 Food 101.65 Clothing 43.00 Fuel 3.00 Spending money 5.00 Medicine 4.00 Education .60 Polish tuition 1.50 Insurance 2.00 Recreation 1.00 $180.75 Family income in normal times. . . . 143.00 Actual relief needed before the strike $ 37.75 Comment : Almost any ordinary workman's family has a hard time to get along at present prices. The worst problem is hous- ing. Not only are rents high, but there is an absolute shortage of fit housing. In this case the " decency budget " set hy local authorities was $2,168 a year, or over $700 more than the average actual earnings of common labor for that period; and over $1,000 more than the average earnings of the father himself. Before making detailed comparisons with costs of living, reference should be made to the other of the two comparisons which the steel worker is always making in regard to his wages — the comparison with the wages of his neighbor miner, builder, railroader, etc. Detailed comparisons of hours and 102 KEPOET ON THE STEEL STRIKE wages in nine industries are given in Appendix B, based on the " earnings per full week," not on the actual annual earn- ings. With this is a comparison of weekly earnings in six principal industries, besides steel, in the Pittsburgh District, on the basis of a common standard-length week. The earn- ings of (1) steel workers, (2) bituminous coal miners, (3) metal trades, (4) railroad employees, (5) building trades, (6) street railwaymen, (Y) printers, are compared on the basis of the same week for all, in this case a 44-hour week.^ In the comparison steel earnings due to overtime for the customary excessive hours are averaged in, but even so the following facts are brought out: Comparative earnings for 4:4:-hour week at prevailing hourly rates (Pittsburgh District, 1919) : Common labor — Iron and steel $21.12 Bituminous coal 25.30 Building trades Building laborers $22.00 Hod carriers 30.80 Plasterers' laborers 30.80 Average for laborers 27.85 The comparison makes it plain that steel common lahor has the lowest rate of pay of the trades for which there are separate statistics for laborers. The two principal factors to be considered in the comparison are, of course, (a) seasonal influences; (b) unionism. Excluding laborers the main comparisons run as follows: (still on 44-hour week basis) : Iron and steel — Skilled and semi-skilled $38.32 * It could be any week for the purposes of comparison, 44-hour week, 90-hour week, 120-hour week; the comparison would result the same. WAGES IN NO-CONFEEENCE INDUSTRY 103 Bituminous coal miners — Hand miners • . 34.50 Machine miners 41.67 Metal trades — Blacksmiths 30.80 Iron molders 33.00 Eailroad employees — Machinists 31.68 Boilermakers 31.68 Building trades — Bricklayers 49.50 Carpenters . 39.60 Painters 38.50 Structural iron workers 44.00 Street railwaymen 23.76 Printers — Newspaper linotypers 38.50 Newspaper compositors 33.88 Book and job 26.58 With this should be noted the average for all steel workers — $32.02 ; the whole comparison makes plain why steel work- ers found that steel rates of pay were not " high " when com- pared with similar industries ; that " high " earnings in steel plants were due principally to long hours. Steel work- ers often carried the comparisons on to the causes of differ- ences : e.g. to comparisons of the amounts of time lost by un- employment in steel, building, mining, etc.; and to the fact that the building trades, street railways, railroads and mines were more or less completely unionized and steel not at all. A first and foremost item in living costs, conditioned by wages, is housing. This Inquiry for adequate reasons did not go extensively into two phases of housing: (a) the Steel Corporation's housing provisions; (b) comparison of present conditions with findings of investigations of a dozen years o. (a) The Steel Corporation testimony on the houses, includ- 104 EEPORT ON THE STEEL STEIKE ing whole towns, built for workmen and leased at low rentals, takes up over ten pages in the Senate Investigating Com- mittee's record. It includes the millions expended for this purpose and this item as a total (Vol. I, p. 192) : Dwellings and boarding houses constructed and leased to eniployees at low rental rates , 25,965 But most of these houses, it was well known, were for the Corporation's miners, erected in hitherto uninhabited regions where towns had to be built before mining could go on. Inquiry of the Corporation determined the fact that less than 10,000 of these houses were available for steel workers. The facts were simple : Total employees at manufacturing plants 191,000 Total Corporation houses near plants ,. ., 10,000 Employees not company-housed , 181,000 That is, 181,000 steel workers had just as much chance to get a Corporation-built, low-rental house as they had to get Mr. Gary's Niew York mansion. Moreover most of the 10,000 houses were occupied by " American " workers. (b) A dozen years ago the Pittsburgh Survey revealed conditions of housing of steel workers which shocked public opinion and which, Pittsburgh authorities state, have been improved practically not at all since then. It was impossible to conduct another such exhaustive housing survey in this investigation but sufficient observation was made to bear out the local statement, that housing was as bad as ever. The U. S. census, taken in January, 1920, should reveal com- plete statistics of conditions. The census takers found in Braddock, for example, that in this steel suburb of Pitts- burgh 200 families were living in 61 houses; 35 boarders were in one house where three different persons occupied each bed in the 24 hours of each day, sleeping in eight-hour shifts. WAGES IN NO-CONFEEENCE INDUSTRY 105 It was of Braddock that Senator Kenyon, chairman of the Senate Investigating Committee, was quoted as saying: " This is the worst place I have ever seen and I have watched the living conditions of many immigrants." A sub-report ^ contains the detailed findings of an investi- gator for this Inquiry who spent three weeks in November, 1919, in the Pittsburgh District collecting data on the actual living conditions of steel workers' families. The investi- gator obtained, as far as the workers could supply them, data on the family budgets of expenditures for rent, food, clothes, children's education, benefit societies, etc. and observed the housing conditions. Questions were also asked, principally of the wives, dealing with the strike, what were their ideas of its causes, whether they approved the strike. Strikers and non-strikers, " foreigners " and " Americans," were in- terviewed. The visits were haphazard, including neighbor- hoods in Pittsburgh, Braddock, Homestead and Monessen, sometimes with an interpreter, sometimes with a member of the strike relief committee or with a settlement worker, fre- quently alone. The neighborhoods were principally those of the immigrant semi-skilled and unskilled workers who con- stitute the bulk of steel communities. At the end of the investigation, tabulation of the results proved that this hap- hazard inquiry had achieved a representative survey inas- much as the average of income for the families visited ap- proximated the average income for the semi-skilled and un- skilled workers for the whole industry. The semi-skilled and unskilled actual average for the eight months of 1919 before the strike was not over $128 monthly. The average income of the forty-one immigrant strikers' families visited was $132 a month. The excerpts from the investigators' family reports, given herewith, are representative of the forty-one immigrant households. 1 Family Budgets and Living Conditions," by Marian D. Savage. These families ran from four to eight members. The tabulation of the forty-one immigrant families brought out the first characteristic of steel communities, — overcrowding; Living in 1 room ........ . . . . . 2 families Living in 2 rooms 22 families Living in 3 rooms , 14 families Living in 4 rooms 2 families Living in 5 rooms. ...,.., 1 family (with two boarders) Over half of these four to eight-member families lived in " apartments " of two rooms; over one-third in three rooms. The resultant physical and moral conditions are not suffi- ciently portrayed by the bare figures. An excerpt from the report reads : The first thing which strikes the attention of one who visits the homes of the strikers is the shocking overcrowding. The majority of families which I have seen live in only two rooms, and only four of them have more than three rooms. As the families are composed of from four to eight people, this means that the air space necessary for hygienic living is wholly lacking, and the right kind of home life is made impossible. It means that frequently a bed must stand in the kitchen all the time, taking up space greatly needed for other things. In a few cases the crowding is due to the presence of lodgers, but usually it is not. In one case I was told that the family had tried to find an apartment with three rooms instead of two, but had been unable to, as many landlords objected to having such a large family of children in their houses. Such a policy, of course, means that the largest families may be forced into the smallest accommodations. In general, however, the burden of paying rent for an additional room seemed too great for the family to undertake. In many cases the apartments have no water in them and several families are forced to use a single pump in the court yard. In still a larger number of eases there are no toilet arrangements except dilapidated water closet sheds in the yard. WAGES IN NO-CONFERENCE INDUSTRY 107 In a few places there are open unsanitary drains in the court yard, around which the wooden houses are built. Many of the strikers live in alleys which are very dirty and cluttered with rubbish collected by the authorities at infrequent intervals. In one place in Homestead I found what appeared to be drainage water flowing down the middle of the alley. In a good many cases families live in rear houses which can only be reached by narrow dark passageways or ramshackle wooden staircases lead- ing in from the street. Although the wages in many departments of the industry have more than doubled in the last five or six years, the women are quite convinced that the cost of living has risen very much higher in proportion, so that they are worse off than they used to be. According to the Associated Charities of Pittsburgh, a food order which in 1914 cost $5.88 in New York City (where prices are not very different from those here), in 1919 cost $11.10 in Pittsburgh. This food order, though intended as a minimum standard for a family of five for one week, is not con- sidered adequate by the Pittsburgh A. C, which substitutes a food budget of $17.04 that makes it possible to have meat twice a week instead of once. Compared with this minimum standard, the amount spent for food by the women visited seems to be enough to sustain life, but in most cases, especially in the larger families, to do little more than that. Considering how hard and long-continued the work of a man in the steel industry is, a food budget which does not allow him meat more than twice a week is hardly sufficient, so even in the cases where somewhat more than $17.04 is spent for food for a family of five every week the amount seems far from exorbitant. Out of forty-eight families from which data could be obtained for estimating each family's budget of expenditures, twenty-eight of the budgets fell below the minimum of sub- sistence level for 1919 and ten below the minimum of com- fort level. Following are the tables of hours, wages and budgets for the immigrant strikers and for native-born strikers : a o a (< s « •1 V ^ S * V eJ'Oa n Li a> + ■o :o .to !>» + Oj o 4>.2J n o a V4 ^OOOOO© NOIOO© ©©©ooooo US' S5 (S^ g . S . . .>".'''. iHiH ^ g g iH r-llH j-i »-(lH ?-< t-li-(iHi-( I rt r1 iH M ©■*'»< i-iiO 11 df .■c ■ c :l c a do a a a "0 a ip a •« 1 I fci cS ti u «- t, u 2a|£2*2 bbtkbiU Mb(w' N^ >-• ^--CO 2 a -^^co^ g i; iH oa>H 0000^ b s op"' !:;w*22g3®o ;? ;? ^ tH O 0) fc.*J o tn'C u 3 I' 0.0) a-s It:- 5 Si a3"S S T3 » M ;>. i-» CW >J H^ 1^ 3 o t- > 3 O b IS— fr 4; >* 4) 4) Q) III. Housing, fuel and light 428.00 " IV. Miscellaneous 546.82 tV; (, V Total budget at market prices $2,262.47 ^Ji-A APPENDICES 263 Possible saving upon market cost by a family of extreme thrift, of high intelligence, great industry in shopping, good fortune in purchasing at lowest prices, and in which the wife is able to do a maximum amoiuit of home work. I. Food (71/2 per cent. ) $58.04 II. Clothing (10 per cent.) 51.37 III. Housing 30.00 IV. Miscellaneous 97.50 Total economies 236.91 Total budget minus economies $2,025.56 Savings. — No provision is made in this budget for savings, other than the original cost of household furniture and equip- ment, which would average about $1,000 in value. No definite estimate, of course, can be made as to the amount which a low- salaried Government employee should be expected to save. But an average saving of 12% per cent, of yearly salary during an employee's single and early married life would seem to be the maximum which could be expected. Over a period of, say, 15 years this would result in a total accumulation of about $2,000. Assuming $1,000 of this to be invested in household equipment, there would be a net sum of $1,000 available for investment in a home or in other direct income-producing form. In any case, it would represent an annual income of approximately $50 per year. Eecognizing the high prices prevailing in Washington, and recognizing also that the Government employee's family may have certain necessary expenses not falling upon the working- man's family, it would seem that the fact that this budget cost $2,662 would tend to confirm the $2,000 minimum comfort budget of Professor Ogburn as conservative for workingmen's families generally in the country as a whole. Appendix B Wi^GES IN IRON AND STEEL AND OTHER INDUSTRIES From report made for this inquiry by the Bureau of Applied Economics, Washington, D. C. Information regarding hourly earnings and full time hours per week in the iron and steel industry is presented in consid- erable detail in an article in the Monthly Labor Review of the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for October, 1919. Similar information of recent date is not available for many other in- dustries, but there is sufficient to make possible a valuable com- parison of earnings and hours of labor in the steel industry with conditions in other lines of emplo3rment. The data presented below are divided into four groups: 1. WAGES AND HOURS IN THE STEEL INDUSTRY COMPARED WITH OTHER INDUSTRIES, FOR THE COUNTRY AS A WHOLE The following table gives the hourly earnings, full time hours per week and full time earnings per week, for specified classes of labor in the steel industry and in all other important indus- tries for which information in comparable form is available. All figures are for 1919, and, with few exceptions, for the latter part of 1919. The sources of the information are given on a later page. The full time hours per week, it is important to note, are the regular weekly working hours for the occupation. The actual hours worked by individuals and, in consequence, their weekly earnings may be considerably less, 264 APPENDICES 265 AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS AND HOURS PER FULL TIME WEEK IN VARIOUS INDUSTRIES Average Full Time Earnings Hourly Hours per Full Rate per Week Week IRON AND STEEL All employeej 68.1 68.7 $46.78 Common labor 46.2 74.0 34.19 Other labor (including skilled and semi-skilled) 78.4 66.0 51.74 MINING 1. Anthracite: Company miners 58.1 51.6 29.98 Contract miners 84.2 51.6 43.45 Company miners' laborers 52.6 51.6 27.14 Contract miners' laborers 63.9 51.6 32.97 Laborers 51.9 52.2 26.90 Average for all inside occupations . . 67.3 52.0 35.00 2. Bituminous : Miners, hand 78.4 47.3 37.08 Miners, machine 94.7 48.1 45.55 Loaders 80.2 47.4 38.01 Laborers 57.5 52.0 29.90 Average for all inside occupations . . 74.4 51.9 38.42 UNITED STATES ARSENALS: Common labor 46.0 4.80 22.08 All other employees, average 76.1 48.0 36.53 BUILDING TRADES: Average for all building trades 85.4 44.0 37.58 Common labor 52.0 44.0 22.88 Bricklayers 89.3 44.2 39.47 Carpenters 78.2 44.2 34.56 Cement workers and finishers 80.8 44.9 36.28 Wiremen, inside 79.9 44.3 35.40 Painters 76.2 42.8 32.61 Plasterers 89.5 43.6 39.02 Plumbers 92.4 44.0 40.66 Sheet-metal workers 80.9 44.0 35.60 Steam fitters 92.8 44.0 40.83 Structural iron workers 94.2 44.0 41.45 New York, N. Y. Average for all building trades 83.5 44.0 36.74 NAVY YARDS: Laborers, common 44.5 48.0 21.36 All other occupations 79.9 48.0 38.35 Boilermakers 80.0 48.0 38.40 Coppersmiths 86.0 48 41.28 Electricians 80.0 48.0 38.40 Machinists 80.0 48.0 38.40 Machinists, electrical 80.0 48.0 38.40 Molders 80.0 48.0 38.40 Patternmakers 86.6 48.0 41.57 Pipefitters 80.0 48.0 38.40 266 APPENDICES Average Hourly NAVY YARDS (cont.) i Rate Plumbers 80.0 Riveters 80.0 Shipfitters 80.0 Shipsmitha 80.0 Toolmakers 86.0 Holders-on 60.6 PRINTERS: Various Cities. Linotype Operators Newspapers, day Book and job Compositors Newspapers, day Book and job RAILROAD EMPLOYEES: Shopmen Machinists 72.0 Blacksmiths 72.0 Boilermakers 72.0 Road freight Engineers and motormen 82.5 Firemen 60.0 Conductors 69.2 Road passenger Engineers and motormen 98.7 Firemen 88.0 Conductors 83.3 Yard Service Firemen 52.0 Hostlers 53.1 Laborers Mechanics' helpers and apprentices 47.1 Section men 37.2 Levermen 49.6 Yard switch tenders 34.7 Other yard employees 37.4 Enginehouse men 42.3 Other unskilled laborers 41.3 SHIPYARDS: Pacific Coast District Laborers 52.0 Other occupations 75.8 Atlantic Coast District Laborers 36.0 All occupations (including laborers) 72.7 STREET RAILWAY EMPLOYEES: Average for various cities North Atlantic 49.8 South Atlantic 39.8 North Central 49.6 Western 49.4 * 5 hours per day. Full Time Earnings Hours per Full per Week Week 48.0 38.40 48.0 38.40 48.0 38.40 48.0 38.40 48.0 41.28 48.0 29.09 35.72 ... 30.50 35.59 ... 26.28 48.0 34.56 48.0 34.56 48.0 34.56 48.0 30.0 48.0 48.0 28.80 26.40 24.96 25.49 48.0 48.0 24.96 36.38 48.0 48.0 17.28 34.90 56.4 56.4 56.4 56.4 28.09 22.45 27.97 27.86 APPENDICES 267 3. PITTSBURGH DISTRICT. WAGES AND HOURS OF LABOR IN THE IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRY COMPARED WITH WAGES IN OTHER INDUSTRIES IN THE PITTSBURGH DISTRICT. The next table compares hourly earnings, full time hours per week, and full time weekly earnings in the iron and steel in- dustry with other industries in the Pittsburgh District for which information was available. As available information is not very extensive the comparison was necessarily limited, but is believed to be sufficient to indicate how wage rates and hours of employees in the steel industry compare with other lines of employment. Inasmuch as the primary comparison desired is one which will bring out the extent to which the relatively high full time weekly earnings in the steel industry may be due to long hours, there is added to a table a column showing how much would be earned by each group for 44 hours per week, at the prevailing hourly rates. In doing so, 44 hours is used as a base simply because a number of trades in the table were already working 44 hours per week. For the purpose of the comparison, of course, it would make no difference what base were chosen. Again, it Is important to emphasize that the weekly hours here presented are the regular full time hours per week of the occupation, not the actual hours worked by individuals. COMPARISON OF EARNINGS PER HOUR, REGULAR FULL TIME HOURS PER WEEK, AND EARNINGS PER FULL TIME WEEK IN VARIOUS INDUSTRIES AND OCCUPATIONS IN THE PITTSBURGH (PA.) DISTRICT Average Regular Earnings Earn- Hourly Hours per per Full Inga for Rate Week Week 44 Hours per Week IRON AND STEEL: All employees , 72.8 T4.2 54.02 32.03 Common labor 48.0 77.8 37.34 21.12 Other labor (including skilled and semi-skilled) 87.1 72.1 62.80 38.32 368 APPENDICES Average Regular Hourly Hours per Rate Week BITUMINOUS COAL MINING: Miners, hand 78.4 Miners, machine 94.7 Loaders 80.2 Laborers 57.5 Average for all inside occupa- tions 74.4 METAL TRADES: Blacksmiths 70.0 Boilermakers 66.0 Molders, iron 75.0 RAILROAD EMPLOYEES: Shopmen Machinists 72.0 Blacksmiths 72.0 Boilermakers 72.0 Road freight Firemen 60.0 BUILDING TRADES: Laborers Building laborers 50.0 Hod carriers 70.0 Plasterers' laborers 70.0 Average for laborers 63.3 Bricklayers 112.5 Carpenters 90.0 Cement finishers 82.5 Granite cutters, inside 84.4 Wiremen, inside 90.0 Painters 87.5 Plasterers 97.5 Plumbers 93.8 Sheet-metal workers 90.0 Structural iron workers 100.0 STREET RAILWAY EMPLOYEES: Motormen and conductors 54.0 PRINTERS: Linotj^De operators Newspapers, day 87.5 Book and job 68.8 Compositors . . Newspapers, day 77.0 Book and job 60.4 Earnings Earn- per Full ings for Week 44 Hours per Week 47.3 48.1 47.4 52.0 51.9 48.0 50.0 48.0 48.0 48.0 48.0 48.0 56.4 48.0 48.0 48.0 48.0 37.08 45.55 38.01 29.90 38.61 33.60 33.00 36.00 34.56 34.56 34.56 28.80 30.46 42.00 33.02 36.96 28.99 34.50 41.67 35.29 25.30 32.74 30.80 29.04 33.00 31.68 31.68 31.68 26.40 48.0 24.00 22.00 44.0 30.80 30.80 44.0 30.80 30.80 45.3 28.67 27.85 44.0 49.50 49.50 44.0 39.60 39.60 44.0 36.30 36.30 44.0 37.14 37.14 44.0 39.60 39.60 44.0 38.50 38.50 44.0 42.90 42.90 44.0 41.27 41.27 44.0 39.60 39.60 44.0 44.00 44.00 23.76 38.50 30.27 33.88 26.58 APPENDICES 269 SOURCES OF DATA USED IN COMPILING DATA ON WAGES AND HOURS USED IN THIS STUDY Iron and Steel; Mining: United States Arsenal : Building Trades Navy Yards: Printers : Railroad Employees: Shipyards : Street Railway Employees : Monthly Labor Review, U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, October, 1919. Press Report of U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, entitled " Hours and Earnings of Employees in the Coal Mining Industry," dated Nov. 2, 1919. Monthly Labor Review, U. S. Department of Labor Statistics, October, 1910. ; (1) Union wages for various trades for most of the larger cities of the country, as compiled by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics and supplemented by data furnished by union officials; (2) Wage rates of building laborers under the scales of the Hod Carriers' and Building Laborers' Union, and (3) Prevailing wages in the building trades of New York as published by the Building Trades Council of that city. Data supplied by United States Navy Department. The data presented were obtained from the wage scales and advances as published in the journals and Bul- letins of the Typographical Union and from computa- tions made by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. From a Statement prepared by the U. S. Railroad Administration under date of April 8, 1919. From the award of the Shipbuilding Labor Adjust- ment Board in October, 1918, still in effect. This award provided for two general scales of shipyard wages — one for the Atlantic Coast and one for the Pacific Coast. The compilation gives the hourly maximum rates of motormen and conductors in representative cities. The information was compiled from trade and labor publications and is believed to be closely accurate. The data for full time hours per week is based on an estimate made by Arthur Sturgis in his "Analysis of Electric Railway Operating Costs and the Cost of Living as Related to Wages of Conductors, Motormen, and Other Trainmen " and presented to the Electric Railway Commission, Washington, D. C, in October, 1919. APPENDIX C CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO SKILL The classification of unskilled, semi-skilled and skived fol- lowed in this report is that used by the government survey in 1910 (Senate Document 110, 4 vols.), and is based primarily on wage rates. That division made all earnings under 18 cents an hour, unskilled; all 25 cents an hour or over, skilled; and those between, semi-skilled. The percentages of the three classes for the industry were derived from the table for a typical estab- lishment. (S. D. 110, vol. Ill, p. 80.) These percentages were, in Section IV of this report, applied to the exhaustive tables of full time earnings (S. D. 110, vol. Ill, pp. 550-551) in order to discover the corresponding per- centages of total payrolls. The percentages thus applied and carried over to the column of weekly earnings made all below $12 weekly, unskilled (median wage $10.25) ; all over $15.50 weekly, skilled (median wage $19.10) ; all between, semi-skilled (median wage $13.50). It is perfectly understood that this three-fold classification, with dividing lines drawn at percentages in decimal points, rep- resents no corresponding precision of classification in the in- dustry itself, either as organized or as possible. The gradations according to pay were used by the government (and by this report) solely because they formed the only accurate measure- ment existent of relative skill, a measurement which is very exact in the industry, meaning a hundred gradations in typical departmental payrolls. The usefulness of any precise classifica- tion is obvious ; the use of the threefold classification is a make- shift, partly to conform to industry nomenclature, partly to dis- tinguish the three chief differing types of worker, who may be described as being found clearly recognizable in the middle of each class. At the two edges of the semi-skilled class there is no definable dividing line in points of observable skill. These 270 APPENDICES 271 three clear types are (a) common labor, learning in a day how to do something; (b) skilled labor, unreplaceable by men who have not had many years of training; (c) semi-skilled labor, men of months or years of training, potentially able to do skilled work, but never having had opportunity actually to do it. It is an indication of the backwardness of steel as an industry that no exact classifications of jobs have been generally worked out in it. Observation indicates that a classification much closer to facts would be five-fold, as follows: (a) common labor; — shiftable, replaced by "anybody," learning the " know how " in from 1 day to 2 months. (b) low-skilled; — common labor, but assigned steadily to set jobs re- quiring considerable " knack " and some responsibility. (c) semi-skilled; — trained men, potentially able to take over a job, or occasionally doing it; of the next higher class (d). (d) skilled; — men not only of many years' training but long experience on set jobs involving adeptness, judgment and responsibility. (e) high-skilled; — long-experienced men, characterized by judgment amounting to " genius," and by executive ability. That is a gamut of (a) yard labor; (b) "skip" operators; (c) melters' third helpers; (d) melters' first helpers; (e) rollers, blowers, etc. INDEX Absenteeism, 148 Accidents in steel industry, 66-67 A. F. of L., 157; steel department wanted, 176; strike support, 180; strikers' attitude towards, 244; unions involved, 145 Agents — provocateurs, 230, 232 Agitators, 43, 210, 212 " Anonymous report " on Commis- sion of Inquiry, 28, 233, 234 Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, 164, 169, 175, 179, 181 Amalgamated Clot"hing Workers, 176, 182 Americanization, 12, 82, 179, 249 Americans, distrust foreigners, 30, ers; distrust foreigners, 30, 179; as trade unionists, 162-164 Arbitration and conciliation rec- ommended, 249 Armour, Mr., Conference with John Fitzpatrick, 165-167 Blacklists, 15, 27, 74, 121, 198, 209, 219-221 Blast furnace, hours of labor, 52; continuous operation, 57; job description, 62-63 ; seven-day week, 69 Bolshevism, 15, 20-42 "Boring from within," 156, 158, 159 Braddock, Pa., 104 British experience, 41, 56, 57, 187 Brown, Jay G., 194 Budgets, see Family Budgets BufSngton, E. J., 210; on Bol- shevism of strikers, 33; on John Fitzpatrick, 165; on labor detectives, 231; on twelve-hour day, 59 Bureau of Applied Economics, 6; study of family budgets, 255- 263; study of hours of labor, 55-56, 264-268 Bureau of Industrial Research, 6 Burnett, H. D., 211 Carnegie Steel Co., 32, 49, 60, 64, 76 Chapin, Prof., family budget, 257- 258 Churches, see Pulpit Civil liberties, denied, 15, 235, 238, 239, 240, 248; inquiry rec- ommended, 17-18, 250; sub-re- port cited, 198 Classification of steel workers, 270-271 Clergy, see Pulpit Close, Charles L., 22-23 Collective bargaining, in packing industry, 165-167; U. S. War Labor Board policy, 149 Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, shop committees, 10-11; eight- hour day, 49, 57, 247 Communism, 31, 36, 38, 151 Company houses, 103-104 Company unions, 10, 19 Corporations Auxiliary Company, 228-229 Cost of living, see Family bud- gets. Standard of living Debs, Eugene V., criticises steel strike, 36 Detectives and spies, 15; co-opera- tion with Department of Justice, 221, 225-226; investigation rec- ommended, 18, 250; used by Corporation, 26 Dickson, W, B., on twelve-hour day, 46 Discharge for unionism, 171, 205, 209-218 Dorchester laborers' case, 41-42 Eight-hour day, see Hours of labor Employment management, 22, 120, 121 Employment managers, 137 Espionage, see Detectives and spies Family budgets, 86, 100, 101, 105- 118; Chapin's budget, 257; mini- 273 274 INDEX mum comfort level, 261-263; minimum subsistence level, 256- 261; Ogburn's budget, 256, 257, 262; N. Y. Board of Estimate, 259-260; U. S. Bureau of Labor _ Statistics, 262-263; N. Y. Fac- " tory Commission, 258 Family life, effect of twelve-hour day, 65-66 Farrell, James A., 24, 25 Fatigue, 65, 82, 147. 8ee also Hours Federal Council of Churches, 250 Federal government, see United States Financial control of Corporation labor policy, 11, 125, 201-206 Findings, Christian, 246 Finns, socialism of, 150 Fitzpatrick, John, 145, 147; or- ganizes packing workers, 157, 165-168 Foreigners, see Immigrants Foremen, handle grievances, 24, 26; power of discharge, 210 Foster, William Z., 145, 169; and Bolshevism, 33 ; boring from within policy, 156-159; Elbert H. Gary on, 33, 165; on immi- grants as trade unionists, 161- 164; on strike causes, 147-148; on strike support, 180 Freedom of speech, 173, 235 Gary, Elbert H., Bolshevism of strikers, 33; conferences with employees, 122; handles griev- ances, 23-26; Interchurch Com- mission interview, 28-29; job of steel worker, 63-64; John Fitz- patrick, 33; no-conference pol- icy, 23-26; quotes spy reports, 233-234; right to organize, 210; seven-day week, 68-69, 74, 75; spokesman of steel industry, 8-9, 47; testimony, 23-25, 43, 46-49, 78, 79, 87, 88, 123-124, 206-210; twelve-hour day, 47-51, 55, 56, 58, 59, 75, 76; wages, 86; Will- iam Z. Foster, 33, 165 Gary, Indiana, 38, 170, 240, 241, 242 General strike, 31 Gompers, Samuel, 156, 160, 161, 164; asks strike postponement. 174-175; defends strike at in- dustrial conference, 180; organ- ization policy, 160 Great Britain, see British experi- ence Haddock, William S., sheriff's proclamation, 237, 239 Herd-psychology, 154 Homestead, Pa., 49, 50, 60, 133, 148 Hours of labor, blast furnaces, 72; building trades, 268; coal min- ers, 268 ; continuous industries, 55; eight-hour day, 45, 57, 76, 79, 80, 81, 83; Elbert H. Gary on, 58; independent steel com- panies, 49 ; open-hearth fur- naces, 72; printers, 268; rail- road workers, 268; shipyard workers, 268; sources of data, 269; steel industry. Great Brit- ain, 56; steel workers compared with others, 264-268; twelve- hour day, 5, 12, 44, 47, 55, 57, 59-63, 71, 72, 78, 81, 84; eight- hour day recommended, 248 Housing of steel workers, 14, 103- 107, 249 Illinois Steel Co., 28, 33; use of labor detectives, 231 Immigrants, 246; as trade union- ists, 161-164; Bolshevism of, 150-155, 161-164; favored indus- trial unionism, 160; housing, 104-118; job discrimination, 14, 136-143; nationality of steel workers, 132-133; segregation, 30; twelve-hour day wanted by some, 78-79, 99 Independent steel companies, hours of labor, 49, 65; labor repre- sentation, 198 Industrial conference, Washington, 165, 180, 249 Industrial unionism, 37, 158, 159- 161, 182; favored by immi- grants, 161-164; of immigrants, 16; opposed by Wm. Z. Foster, 35 Interchurch World Movement, Commission of Inquiry, 6-11, 28, 29, 236; industrial relations de- partment, 250 INDEX 275 International Harvester Co., in- dustrial councils, 11 International unions in steel in- dustry, 145, 146, 168, 172, 174, 175 Intimidation, 43, 154, 178 I. W. W., 36, 155, 156, 158, 161; strikers' attitude towards, 244 Johnstown, Pa., 65, 164, 213, 236 Kazinci, Father A., on Sunday work, 70-71, 83, 84 Labor autocracy, 167 Labor contracts, 179-180 Labor file, 27-28, 222-229; black- lists in, 219-221 Labor press, 37, 151, 152 Labor representation, 10, 19; in independent steel mills, 198 Labor shortage, 76 Labor turnover, 148 Lackawanna Steel Co., on eeven- day week, 75 Mediation, 7-8, 28 Midvale-Cambria Co., 10, 46, 198 Ministers, see Pulpit Molnar, (Rev.) Charles V., on Sunday work, 70 Monotony, 134 National Association of Corpora- tion Schools, 82 National Civil Liberties Bureau, 233 National Committee for Organiz- ing Iron and Steel Workers, 36, 153, 159, 169, 170, 174, 175, 176; affiliated unions, 145-146; strike report, 188-196 National Red Cross Association, 100 Negroes, as strike breakers, 177, 178 New Majority, quoted on labor- detectives, 230-231 Newspapers, see Press N. Y. Board of Estimate family budget, 259-260 N. Y. Factory Commission family budget, 258 New York Sun, 88-89 New York Times, 31 Night schools, 82 Ogburn, W. F., on standards of living, 93, 255-263 One Big Union, 36, 160-161 Open-hearth furnaces, hours of la- bor, 52; job description, 61-62; wages of gang, 98 Organize, right to, see Right to organize Oursler, Sup't, 48 Overtime, 98 Packing industry, 157, 165-167 Palmer, Mitchell, 149; on agi- tators, 43 Parker, Carleton H., 95, 96, 125 Picketing, 240-241 Pittsburgh Survey, housing, 104 Polakov, W. N., on inefficient management of steel industry, 77-78 Postponement of strike, 171, 174, 175, 180 Press, see also Labor press, 182, 183, 199; as strike breaker, 242; ignorance concerning in- dustrial relations, 29, 30, 31; recommendations to, 250; sub- report cited, 199 Prices, effect on public opinion, 185-186 Production, 57, 77, 177; trade union responsibility for, 168, 185, 186, 249 Profits, 13, 14 Promotion, favoritism, 136; skilled workers, 129; semi-skilled workers, 132; unskilled workers, 136 Psychology of strikers, "bound to fail" idea, 155; eff"ect of charge of Bolshevism, 39-40; fear of discharge, 163; fear of strike breakers, 178; sense of labor's importance, 148-149; "some- thing doing " idea, 154 ; William Z. Foster on, 161-164 Public opinion, 206; Ignorance concerning industrial relations, 20-21 ; ignored by trade unions, 182-184, 187; influenced by high prices, 185-186; influence of U. S. Steel Corporation, 184-185; might aid collective bargaining, 183; on collective bargaining, 276 INDEX 167-168; and hours of labor, 46; roused by atrocities, 187 Pulpit, 243; sub-report cited, 199; recommendations, 250 Radicalism, see Bolshevism Rail mills, hours of labor, 53 Railroad Brotherhoods, 162 Rank and file, 170, 172, 174 Red Cross, see National Red Cross Association Red book (Foster's), 34 Right to organize, 249; denied by Corporation, 10, 29, 122, 123; Elbert H. Gary on, 210; on rail- roads, 163; recognized in Great Britain, 41; U. S. War Labor Board policy, 149; see also dis- charge for unionism Russia, 150, 152 Safety devices and measures, 66 Schiller, W. B., on twelve-hour day, 59, 68 Secret service men, see Detectives and spios Semi-skilled workers, classifica- tion, 270-271; distrust skilled, 179; housing, 104-118; increas- ing in steel industry, 134; pro- motion, 132; wages compared with family budget, 93-101 Seven-day week, 11-12, 68-75 Sherman Service, 230-232 Shop committees, 19, 198 Skilled workers, classification, 270-271 ; distrust semi-skilled, 179; favored by Corporation, 128; grievances, 129-132; wages, 13, 85, 91-92 Spies, see Detectives and spies Standard of living, 12, 13, 256; definition, 93; minimum com- fort level, 85; minimum sub- sistence level, 85; steel workers, 45, 79, 93-101; see also Family budgets State police, 240 Steel Workers' Council, 170, 176 Stewart, Ethelbert, Civil liberties report, 18 Strike-ballot, 154 Strike breakers, 197, 248; detec- tives, 29, 209, 226, 235; federal officials, 240-242; local magis- trates, 239; negroes, 177; press, 242; pulpit, 243; state police, 240; U. S. army, 241-242; U. S. department of justice, 240; U. S. Steel Corporation, 177; strike bulletin, 179 Sunday work, see Seven-day week Times, London, on steel strike, 41, 42 Trade unions, democratization, 249 ; Elbert H. Gary on, 208 ; ig- nore public opinion, 182-184, 187; in U. S. weak, 198; oppose twelve-hour day, 57; responsi- bility for production, 19, 168, 185-186, 249; see also American Federation of Labor, Company unions. Industrial imionism Under-cover men, 26, 27, 29, 38, 228; see also Detectives and spies Unemployment, 46 Union button, 171 Union fee, 170, 189, 194 U. S. Army, 240-242 U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics family budget, 262-263 U. S. Department of Justice, 18, 149; co-operation with indus- trial spies, 27, 221, 225, 226; as strike breaker, 240-242 U. S. government, civil rights in- quiry recommended, 17-18; steel commission recommended, 17 ; investigation of detective agen- cies recommended, 18 U. S. Senate Committee, 18; steel investigation, 29 U. S. Steel Corporation, division of wage budget, 91-92, 96, 98; dominates steel industry, 8-9, 13; financial control, 200-207; finance committee quoted, 201- 207 ; influence on public opinion, 184-185; labor policy, 5-6, 23-30, 51, 99, 197, 241; sub-report cited, 199 ; military organization, 128-129; minutes, 126, 200-207; rejects Interchurch mediation, 7-8; report of, 123; seven-day week, 68-75; shut down of union INDEX 377 mills, 204; size, 84; twelve-hour day, 44-84; use of spies, 26-30; wages, 85-118 U. S. War Labor Board, 149, 185, 248 Unskilled workers, backbone of strike, 8, 44; classification, 270- 271; mistrust skilled, 179; grievances, 135-143 ; housing, 104-118; job description, 132- 134; job discrimination, 128; promotion, 136; standard of living, 85; wages, 5, 12, 13, 90, 92, 93, 101 Violence, 30, 236, 241 Wages, annual average, 97; build- ing trades, 102; coal miners, 102; compared with family budgets, 93-101 ; compared with wages of other trades, 101-102, 264-268; metal trades, 103; printers, 103, 268; railroad workers, 103, 268; shipyard workers, 268; skilled workers, 12-13; sources of data, 269; un- skilled workers, 5, 12, 90 War aims (Labor's), 182-183 Welfare work, 22, 39, 120, 126, 127, 137 West, George F., steel strike re- port, 18 Williams, H. D., 49, 66, 76; on Bolshevism of strikers, 32; on twelve-hour day, 59 Wilson, Woodrow, 182; asks strike postponement, 174-175; attempts to mediate, 165, 166 Wood, Leonard, 240-242 Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co., hours of labor, 49 DATE DUE JUL 6 197| ) orvn It (M '^R 107^ ItUU Jl MAP . ^98b PFPn rr r KttL) FEE 1 8 '!jvS6 GAVLORD PR,NTED,«US. 3 ||-Bs3.«e