STACK 
 
 ANNEX 
 
 112 
 
 istakes of 
 573 Interchurch 
 A _ Steel Report . 
 
 8 | oAddress by 
 
 S| Rev. E. Victor Bigelow 
 ^^ Minister South Church 
 
 Andover, Mass. 
 November 22, 1920 
 
 Before the 
 
 Boston Ministers Meeting 
 Pilgrim Hall
 
 ELBERT H. GARY 
 
 71 BROADWAY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 December 1, 1920 
 My Dear Sir: 
 
 I have read your splendid address before the 
 Boston Ministers Meeting at Pilgrim Hall, November 
 22d ultimo, and have exhibited it to several of my associ- 
 ates, each of whom expressed admiration. We are sur- 
 prised that you, an entire stranger, should have taken the 
 trouble to present the Interchurch World report in its true 
 light. We are very appreciative and grateful. 
 
 Have you any objection to our having this address 
 printed and widely circulated? 
 
 Hoping for an early reply, and with high respect and 
 esteem, I am, 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Rev. E. Victor Bigelow, E. H. GARY. 
 
 7 Locke Street, 
 Andover, Mass. 
 
 SOUTH CHURCH 
 
 ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 Organized 1711 
 Rev. E. Victor Bigelow, Minister 
 
 December 2, 1920 
 My Dear Mr. Gary: 
 
 I appreciate more than I can tell you the complimentary 
 remarks which you and your friends have made about my 
 address to the Boston Ministers. You are very kind to 
 offer to have it printed and circulated; because there 
 must be a lot of abler men whom you might easily com- 
 mandeer to voice the truth that I have tried to express. 
 
 Indeed, I am quite nonplussed that no other churchman 
 should have spoken with a bigger voice than mine. 
 
 Yes, you may print and circulate the address at your 
 discretion. 
 
 Again thanking you for your generous appreciation, I 
 remain, 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 E. VICTOR BIGELOW.
 
 MISTAKES OF THE INTERCHURCH 
 STEEL REPORT 
 
 A DECENT Christian optimism will believe 
 /~V that good must come out of the labors of 
 such a group of devout and beneficent souls as 
 were appointed by the Interchurch Movement 
 to inquire into the famous Steel Strike of 
 September 22, 1919. If the wrath of men may 
 be made to praise God, then certainly the mis- 
 takes of good men will yield as much. 
 
 Nevertheless such mistakes are deplorable, 
 and if they bring shame and dishonor to us they 
 should be repudiated for the sake of fairness. 
 
 I assume that you are not influenced by the 
 advantage which might accrue to you for 
 espousing either the side of the strikers or that 
 of the corporation, and that your impartiality 
 is like that of Brutus "Set honor in one eye 
 and death in the other and I will look on both 
 indifferently." This impartiality, however, does 
 not require you to abandon the standpoint of 
 chivalry; for in the contests of life you are 
 obligated to be especially attentive to the cry 
 of the needy or the unprotected. But God never 
 abandons justice in order to be merciful, neither 
 should we. 
 
 1. The first mistake of the Interchurch Com- 
 mission was in its blind espousal of the principle 
 of "Collective Bargaining." It is a good 
 principle but there are limits to its realm and 
 there is serious danger of stepping over those 
 limits into the abyss of error. That labor has 
 the right to be represented by men of its own 
 choosing is ethically self evident and the Ameri- 
 can Federation of Labor has spread its applica- 
 tion over a tremendously wide area of industry 
 with its three million members. Men who can't 
 speak so well as they can toil may ask a profes- 
 sional labor leader to speak for them. 
 
 Men who can't think so clearly through the 
 confusion of industry may appoint others to 
 dictate the terms of their welfare and make 
 contracts for the-m. These functions are effec- 
 tively performed by labor unions of many kinds. 
 
 But the bright advantages of this collective 
 bargaining seem to have blinded the eyes of our 
 
 2216893
 
 commission of inquiry so that they failed to see 
 another principle equally important and more 
 fundamental. 
 
 This other principle is the "freedom of con- 
 tract" that a man is free to do business with 
 those of his own choosing. This is more funda- 
 mental than the other because freedom to act 
 directly is more basic than the freedom to be 
 represented. This principle is vital to all healthy 
 competition and our government has broken 
 into pieces huge corporations because they have 
 compelled men to do business with them instead 
 of honoring their freedom to do business with 
 whom they choose. Anyone who appreciates our 
 anti-trust laws must see the magnitude and the 
 value of this human right but our Commission 
 seemed to be strangely blind to it. 
 
 The Steel Corporation does not choose to do 
 business with the American Federation of 
 Labor. That Federation has an enormous in- 
 fluence among laborers such as the Corporation 
 needs to employ, and it conceivably might be 
 greatly to the advantage of the Corporation to 
 deal with the Federation; but the Corporation 
 claims that both its own interests and the wel- 
 fare of its employees are best served by refusing 
 to negotiate with the American Federation of 
 Labor. It claims that its steel products can be 
 and are sold at a much cheaper cost to the 
 public, that it can and does pay higher wages 
 and that it can and does afford vastly more 
 rewards for individual effort and industry than 
 would be possible if it should yield to the 
 appeals of the Federation of Labor to negotiate 
 with them. 
 
 Now we have to concede that the managers of 
 the Steel Corporation know their own business 
 and the capabilities of the American Federation 
 of Labor even better than our Interchurch 
 Commission know them; but even though the 
 Steel Corporation be in error, that error is not 
 to be punished by taking from it the freedom to 
 choose or to refuse to negotiate with the Feder- 
 ation. Any intimidation or compulsion in that 
 direction ought to be severely condemned by 
 churchmen; but our Commission utters not one 
 syllable in protest. 
 
 Indeed every effort of the Corporation to 
 preserve that fundamental human right is
 
 aspersed by the Commission as "wilful" or 
 "arbitrary" or "autocratic" or "uncom- 
 promising." Every display of the right of collec- 
 tive bargaining looks good and glorious to them; 
 but the display of the right to refuse to do busi- 
 ness with an undesirable party is deplored and 
 interpreted as malicious. 
 
 Suppose we apply this to affairs ecclesiastic. 
 Our Government refuses to deal with the Pope 
 at Rome even though he may have twenty 
 millions of devotees within our control. Do we 
 say that those people may exercise the right of 
 collective bargaining through their representa- 
 tive, the Pope, or that our Government must do 
 business with the Pope? Governments in 
 Europe have received and have negotiated with 
 papal ambassadors but we Americans affirm 
 that the millions of American citizens who obey 
 the Pope do not suffer any loss of their rights of 
 citizenship by the refusal of our Government to 
 do business with their church officials. 
 
 Or, shift the scene to the Boston police! 
 Those poor men who were deluded by the good 
 appearance of "Collective Bargaining" and 
 joined the Federation of Labor just as similar 
 deluded policemen in thirty-four American 
 cities joined the Federation they found that 
 the municipality of Boston would not negotiate 
 with that Federation in its dealings with its 
 police. Samuel Gompers and many others, who 
 love blindly the principle of collective bargain- 
 ing, are still blaming Governor Coolidge for 
 denying that principle. And this is the blame 
 which our Interchurch Commission heaps up in 
 heavy prejudice against the Steel Corporation 
 upon every page of its long report. Can we 
 approve our Commission for this while at the 
 same time we are proud of Governor Coolidge 
 for the opposite? If Governor Coolidge was 
 right, then our Interchurch Commission has 
 made a serious mistake. 
 
 2. The second serious blunder of our Com- 
 mission is vitally connected with the first; but 
 looks in another direction. It was their offer to 
 mediate the strike last December fifth when the 
 conflict was a little over two months old. Bless- 
 ed are the peacemakers; but beware the job. 
 
 Our Saviour when he was appealed to by two 
 brothers, who had a squabble over property
 
 rights, declined to mediate, saying, "Who made 
 me a judge and a divider over you?" 
 
 There are some tragic issues in which our 
 offer to make peace is sheer effrontery. When 
 some chivalrous minded congressmen at Wash- 
 ington last year tried to get the United States 
 Government to offer mediation between Great 
 Britain and Ireland, we were grateful for some 
 sober minds that restrained them, showing not 
 only our own unfitness but the sheer insult to 
 the English government that was involved. 
 
 I suspect that the men in charge of the U. S. 
 Steel Corporation are as anxious for the welfare 
 of its employees as are the members of our 
 Interchurch Commission and I believe that in 
 any instance where the Corporation may have 
 overlooked an employee's welfare the discovery 
 of it by our Commission would be no offense to 
 the Corporation even though its correction 
 might be difficult or impracticable. 
 
 Mediation of that kind has been done doubt- 
 less by the Commission in this famous report of 
 conditions in the Steel industry, and the correc- 
 tion of many injustices will doubtless follow in 
 cases where it is possible; but that is not the 
 kind of mediation which was offered on Decem- 
 ber 5th in Mr. Gary's New York office. They 
 offered to mediate between the head of the 
 Steel Corporation and the committee of the 
 American Federation of Labor. 
 
 It was a proposal simply absurd, in view of 
 the reiterated refusals of Mr. Gary to do busi- 
 ness with the Federation emphasized by more 
 than twenty years of conflict over the point 
 with various labor authorities. 
 
 Mr. W. Z. Foster, the Secretary of the Feder- 
 ation's Committee, tells us that six separate 
 and vastly more serious appeals had been made 
 to Mr. Gary to negotiate with the labor 
 unions. First, in a letter from Mr. Gompers; 
 second, by the National Committee equipped 
 with power to set a strike date; third, by the 
 appeal through President Wilson to arrange a 
 conference; fourth, by a resolution of the 
 National Industrial Conference; fifth, by the 
 Amalgamated Association of Steel Workers; 
 sixth, by John Fitzpatrick through the Senate 
 Committee. And now, with the innocence of 
 teasing childhood the Interchurch Commission
 
 comes to ask for the seventh time the same 
 question. 
 
 I am not surprised that Mr. Gary, in his 
 courteous way, diverted the conversation and 
 almost humorously toyed with them a man of 
 less grace would have shown his annoyance, for 
 this must have seemed to him a supremely stupid 
 performance on the part of our Commission. 
 
 But the effect was a serious one upon the 
 Commission; it gave them a stinging sense of the 
 refusal to negotiate just as the labor unions 
 had felt it. The Interchurch Commission feeling 
 itself snubbed by Mr. Gary's refusal to deal 
 with the A. F. of L. through them, commenced 
 its study of the steel business with a strong 
 prejudice against this aloofness, attributing to 
 it almost all of the mass of evils discovered in the 
 business and readily believing a lot of testimony 
 secured from other malcontents who were dis- 
 appointed in not having the unions recognized. 
 The various chapters of the report are named 
 with the patronymic "no-conference," as 
 follows: " The Twelve Hour Day in a No-Con- 
 ference Industry" "Wages in a No-Conference 
 Industry" "Grievances and Control in a No- 
 Conference Industry" "Social Consequences 
 of Arbitrary Control." 
 
 The Commission seized upon one of Mr. 
 Gary's words in his testimony before the Senate 
 Committee to characterize what they regard as- 
 the prevailing evil of the entire business. Mr. 
 Gary said "the Corporation during the war in- 
 creased the wages many times voluntarily, 
 arbitrarily." The word "arbitrarily" has a 
 sinister sound in the ears of Americans and Mr. 
 Gary qualified it by saying "but arbitrarily in 
 favor of the workmen intending to be fair and 
 reasonable and to treat the subject on the basis 
 of merit. The largest percentages of increases 
 have been made to those receiving the lowest 
 wages." " We have taken into consideration the 
 increases in our earnings and have intended to 
 more than keep pace with the increased cost of 
 living, which we have done, and during the war 
 we have increased the wages eight times always 
 voluntarily; there was never a single demand 
 made." "We were influenced by the fact that 
 our increased earnings permitted us to do it and 
 we did take into account also the idea of giving
 
 them what we conceived to be the employee's 
 share in the prosperity, which we always do." 
 (P. 171 Gary's testimony) Mr. Gary's formula 
 in matter of wages was clearly expressed in his 
 Trinity College address (June 23, 1919). "When 
 there is a well grounded doubt in regard to wage 
 rates, it should be resolved in favor of the em- 
 ployee." But Mr. Gary's "arbitrary" method in 
 favor of the employee is twisted by our Com- 
 mission report into "arbitrary" method against 
 the employee. 
 
 It is an unfortunate word to use but it need 
 not be soft-pedaled if the Commission cares to 
 set it forth. In that case we have merely to 
 estimate it in comparison with the other alter- 
 native, namely "Labor Union Conference." 
 Are there no arbitrary decrees in the labor 
 unions? Are there no cases where labor men are 
 told the number of hours they shall work, the 
 kind of trade they may learn, the particular 
 employer they may or may not engage with? 
 Wherever they decree a "Closed Shop" it 
 means that no man can obtain employment in 
 that shop except through and upon the terms 
 and conditions imposed by the labor unions. 
 He is compelled to join the union and to submit 
 to the dictation of its leader before he can enter 
 the place of business. If he joins the union he is 
 then restricted by its leader, as to place of work, 
 hours of work, and compensation, advancement 
 in position with no regard for his merit, and 
 sometimes by the decree of the union leader is 
 called out and prevented from work for days or 
 weeks when he has no real grievance, while he 
 and his family suffer for want of the necessities 
 of life. 
 
 The poor workman has no escape from 
 arbitrary treatment under the operation of 
 labor union conference, and the vast majority 
 of the two hundred thousand employees of the 
 U. S. Steel Corporation prefer the "arbitrary" 
 treatment by the Corporation rather than the 
 arbitrary treatment by labor unions. 
 
 But the Interchurch Report is quite unfair to 
 Mr. Gary in calling him arbitrary and it has 
 seriously misled so amiable a critic as the 
 editor of our Congregationalist who says "In- 
 dustrial justice and peace will be found only as 
 the Gary policy is supplanted by a more 
 
 8
 
 democratic, humane and righteous one. It may 
 be that another and greater struggle than the 
 1919 steel strike will come before reactionary 
 management will yield to right and reason." 
 I would say to this editor, that it is for the very 
 purpose of "right and reason" that Mr. Gary 
 refuses to permit the U. S. Steel Corporation to 
 be subjected to the control of an arbitrary 
 labor union. He refuses consultation with the 
 A. F. of L. because he is sure of a better con- 
 ference with the steel workers than he possibly 
 could get by means of that Federation. He 
 finds out from his fellow laborers in that vast 
 industry a great deal more accurately their 
 desires and capabilities, than the labor unions 
 could ascertain them. He has an army of men 
 whose business it is to report regularly upon 
 every phase of life that is concerned with the 
 production of steel. There is an open invitation 
 to any man or group of men from any depart- 
 ment to appeal to the management for adjust- 
 ment of any question. But the Corporation does 
 not wait for these appeals; it has hundreds of 
 employees whose entire work is to seek out and 
 to supply the needs of employees before they 
 are formulated. 
 
 The efficiency of these efforts on the part of 
 the Corporation, really to confer with its in- 
 dividual employees, brings only the greater 
 condemnation from our Interchurch Commis- 
 sion because when the need of complaints from 
 the men is removed by this careful supervision, 
 their failure to come up to the management is 
 reported as a proof that no conference is allowed. 
 
 The Interchurch complaint that only minor 
 questions and not wages and hours of employ- 
 ment were the substance of conference with the 
 steel management is only partly true. The 
 question of hours and wages has been made a 
 specialty by the American Federation of Labor; 
 but there is absolutely no proof that wages have 
 been made any higher in other industries by the 
 A. F. of L. than they are in the steel industry 
 where this question is determined by the Cor- 
 poration. In the steel works common labor got 
 46.2 cents per hour for the year 1919 while navy 
 yard common labor was paid 44.5, nearly 5% 
 less. Railroad section men got 37.2 cents and 
 other yard men 37.4 or 20% less than steel men.
 
 But the larger advantage of the steel men was 
 not in the greater amount per hour but in their 
 freedom to put in more time so that their 
 week's pay of $34.19 was far ahead of that of the 
 navy yard laborer's $21.36 or the R. R. laborer's 
 $18.00 per- week. Compared with the highly 
 unionized building trades of New York where 
 wages are the highest, the skilled and semi- 
 skilled steel workers stood well on a par, for 
 while their average of 78.4 cents per hour was a 
 bit under the New York builders 83.5 cents, yet 
 the total weekly earnings of the steel men were 
 $51.74 per week as compared with the builders 
 $36.74. 
 
 It is quite evident that the Gary method of 
 paying wages truly consults the interests of the 
 workmen not less but more than the labor 
 union method does it. 
 
 The fact is that the union method could not 
 come within reach of the Gary method in get- 
 ting wages for its men if it were not for the 
 raised prices of union-made goods that takes 
 the increase out of the public. The Gary method 
 enables the steel workers to get more pay with- 
 out increasing the costs of the public. This is the 
 great weakness of the union methods; they do 
 not take into consideration the interests of the 
 public, neither do they provide any impetus in 
 the movement for production. 
 
 By their fruits ye shall know them! 
 
 Senator Kenyon's committee reported from 
 their investigation of the Steel Strike (P. 10): 
 "Few of the witnesses examined made any com- 
 plaint as to wages * * * It is the opinion of the 
 Committee that, broadly speaking, the em- 
 ployees of the steel industry at the time of the 
 strike were fairly well satisfied with the wages 
 received and that such question was not persua- 
 sive at all in any consideration of a strike." 
 
 This Senate Committee was not looking for 
 any items favorable to the Steel Corporation 
 and their deliberate judgment of the remarkable 
 success of the Gary method of settling the ques- 
 tion of wages ought to have convinced the Inter- 
 church Commission if they had been fair minded. 
 
 It might readily happen that the fixing of 
 wages without conference with a labor union 
 would be tyrannically unfair to the men; but 
 according to the Senate Committee's report such 
 
 10
 
 was not the case in this instance and our Inter- 
 church Commission has been fooled by its own 
 over-estimate of the value of labor union 
 conference in fixing wages. 
 
 While labor unions can be of immense value 
 in some cases in gaining rights or privileges to 
 laboring men as against unfair or dull em- 
 ployers, they can be an unbearable nuisance to 
 a keen and fairminded employer who is eager to 
 do for his workmen vastly more than the 
 unions can do. The evident weakness of the 
 prevailing union methods is that they fight 
 against the employer and make exactions which 
 cramp him and reduce the productive efficiency 
 of the enterprise. While this often brings larger 
 pay to the workers immediately concerned, it 
 takes value out of the public and reduces the 
 common good. 
 
 When we can find a man like Mr. Gary who is 
 strong enough to resist all labor union com- 
 pulsions and can keep his Corporation free to 
 adjust wages and labor conditions to the highest 
 standard in the world while keeping down the 
 cost to the public, he is worth millions to us and 
 we ought to have had an Interchurch Com- 
 mission clear-eyed enough to see it. 
 
 One concrete instance of conference with 
 steel workers illustrated Mr. Gary's attitude. 
 The president of a subsidiary company reported 
 a strike of a thousand or more men and said to 
 Mr. Gary, " It is very easy for me to fill this mill 
 and I will proceed to do it. There was no reason 
 for their going out." But said Mr. Gary, "Have 
 you taken pains to find out; has anybody 
 spoken to you?" "No," he replied, "I have not 
 received any complaint whatever." "Are you 
 sure," said Mr. Gary, "that no complaint has 
 been made to anyone? You had better go and 
 find out before you decide what you are going 
 to do." He went back and found from the fore- 
 man that a committee had come and com- 
 plained about three things that they thought 
 were wrong. The subsidiary president said the 
 things were not very important. Mr. Gary 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 but not the third. 
 Now you go right back to your factory and just 
 put up a sign that with reference to those two 
 
 11
 
 particular things the practice will be changed." 
 (P. 36 Gary's testimony.) 
 
 Our Interchurch Commission makes nothing 
 of the stern insistence by Mr. Gary that the 
 steel officials shall yield any point of justice, 
 however slight, that is fairly claimed by the 
 men; but the Commission takes offense that a 
 sign should be put up instead of calling the 
 committee into the office to make the con- 
 cession. Such picayunish judgment by our 
 representatives ought to bring the blush of 
 shame to us all. They try to make it appear that 
 the use of a sign to give notice symbolizes a 
 universal autocracy; but it is just the common- 
 sense method that any factory employs. The 
 "collective-bargaining" bug seems to have 
 disordered their common-sense. 
 
 Now just what is the proper sphere of 
 "collective bargaining" in making any industry 
 successful, is worth a bit more of inquiry than 
 our Commission gives it. The great and central 
 object of an industry is to produce merchan- 
 dise; for that the capital is invested, for that the 
 laborers are assembled, and for that the 
 customers pay. But the problem of production 
 is not tackled by the American Federation of 
 Labor. They openly advocate a reduced pro- 
 duction. They pass decrees for the purpose of 
 hindering production. Why then, in the name of 
 common sense, should they be taken into part- 
 nership or consultation by an industry whose 
 chief aim is to produce? They might desire to 
 come in as a parasite to devour part of the pro- 
 duct or they might act as a hindrance or brake, 
 but this negative functioning is a very secon- 
 dary sort and one that may be abundantly 
 supplied by the natural laziness of men and by 
 the many hindrances that are inevitable in 
 getting anything out of Nature. 
 
 It is true that the A. F. of L. being interested 
 in the welfare of employees might have some 
 propaganda to urge upon the management of 
 any industry inasmuch as men are the means or 
 agents of production, but the management of 
 the men in the task of production must be in 
 the hands of those who have undertaken to 
 produce and not in the hands of those who 
 hinder production. Perhaps the A. F. of L. may 
 adopt a program to facilitate production, after 
 
 12
 
 its consultation during the past week with Mr. 
 Hoover and thus it might become a fair candi- 
 date for the councils of producing industries, but 
 that is a prospect for the future merely. 
 
 Much the same statements would apply to 
 the offer of the Interchurch Commission to 
 mediate or to give counsel in the steel industry. 
 The Commission is interested in the welfare of 
 men but it has given no hostages to the cause of 
 producing steel and its genius is therefore in- 
 applicable. The Steel Corporation is responsible 
 for its treatment of men engaged in its work of 
 production, and woe betide that corporation if it 
 harms them or withholds their rights during 
 the process of production; but its essential job 
 is to produce steel and for that end its own 
 management must be responsible. The advice 
 and good will and productive genius of all the 
 men employed are all necessary, but the 
 responsibility of using that advice, the methods 
 of gaining and keeping that good will, and the 
 success in utilizing their productive genius, 
 these are the cares of the managers of the Steel 
 Corporation. The chief burden of failure will 
 fall upon them and the chief reward of success 
 will accrue to them. It is plain to any practical 
 mind that the natural sort of control in this 
 kind of activity must be centralized control. 
 Our Commission is grievously at fault in stig- 
 matizing this control as "militarized." It is 
 indeed systematized to the high degree that 
 accounts for the supreme success of the greatest 
 producing organization in the world; but it is 
 not military in the sense that it is an engine of 
 destruction, neither is it military in the sense of 
 being a concatenated system of command and 
 obedience. That military organization is also 
 highly centralized does not justify our Com- 
 mission in calling the steel control by the 
 opprobrious epithet "militarized." The organi- 
 zation is not for the purpose of exercising 
 control but for the purpose of producing steel. 
 
 Inasmuch as the product is measured by 
 dollars, it is proper andfitthatthe Finance Com- 
 mittee should head up the producing control. 
 
 Prof. Carlton Parker in the January Atlantic 
 made some keen observations about the danger 
 of a finance committee being too far separated 
 from the individual human producer, leaving a 
 
 13
 
 wide seed-ground for sowing discontent in in- 
 dustry; but this danger is not to be overcome by 
 taking control out of the hands of the Finance 
 Committee, as our Commission would recom- 
 mend. 
 
 The best way is to humanize the finance com- 
 mittee as it has been done with remarkable suc- 
 cess in the personality of its Chairman, Mr. Gary. 
 
 There is no doubt that the Finance Committee 
 needs to know how the men feel in regard to 
 hours and wages and conditions of work and it 
 will fail in proportion as it ignores these facts. 
 Some such method of securing shop sentiment 
 as the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company has 
 adopted might aid them, or the American 
 Federation of Labor might aid them in finding 
 these facts, or the Steel Corporation might 
 spurn both of these methods and find a better 
 method for itself. The brutal necessity of meet- 
 ing the needs of the men is always there and un- 
 swerving financial penalties await upon any 
 failure to ascertain and to keep 1 the good will 
 of the men. Collective bargaining may or may 
 not be used, that is wholly secondary, the prime 
 necessity is that the Steel Corporation or any in- 
 dustry must be autonomous, it must run its own 
 affairs if it would reach the highest perfection. 
 
 In the task of meeting the needs of its em- 
 ployees the Steel Corporation has spent more 
 money and exercised a wider range of sym- 
 pathetic interest than any other corporation 
 and is out of sight beyond all the highly union- 
 ized industries like railroads, building trades 
 and mines. 
 
 Mr. Close, the Manager of the Bureau of 
 Safety, Sanitation and Welfare reports the 
 expenditure of nine million dollars a year for the 
 last eight years upon such substantial benefits as : 
 
 Dwellings at low rental . . . 27,553 
 
 Churches 
 
 Schools 45 
 
 Swimming pools 
 
 Playgrounds and fields .... 
 
 Drinking fountains 3,077 
 
 Emergency stations 286 
 
 Base hospitals 
 
 Surgeons and Physicians . . . 
 Teachers and Instructors ... 222 
 
 Pensions 2,940 
 
 and great quantities of other helps and con- 
 veniences. Now none of these things are pro- 
 
 14
 
 vided by "Collective bargaining" and our 
 Commission refers to them with the same slur 
 that many labor unions use in these words, 
 "The Corporation's executives, in order to meet 
 the Corporation policy, are forced to grind the 
 faces of the Hunkies and to trust to welfare to 
 salve the exacerbations." Even Prof. Graham 
 Taylor, who apparently doesn't see the root of 
 the Commission's bitterness, reproves them 
 squarely for this insult. 
 
 If the cost of all these conveniences were used 
 for extra wages as the sinister critics demand, 
 it would add a cent and a half an hour on the 
 average; which means practically nothing com- 
 pared with the vast utility of these common 
 conveniences that all may enjoy and that save 
 the lives of thousands every year. All these 
 things come from the "no-conference" policy 
 of the Corporation and they would be im- 
 possible to provide without raising the price of 
 steel if the A. F. of L. were consulted. 
 
 Whenever the management provides for the 
 welfare of the men or rewards any of them for 
 exceptional service such favors are readily 
 interpreted by its foes as a kind of bribery and 
 all forms of stock owning or insurance and other 
 privileges are condemned by those who want to 
 keep the ranks of labor solidly arrayed for battle 
 against the employer. It is plainly necessary in 
 case of war to keep your soldiers from hob- 
 nobbing with the enemy, and labor unions may 
 be wise in this policy for there seems to be a 
 fundamental antagonism between capital and 
 labor regarding what portion of the product 
 shall fall to each. But while we know that this 
 antagonism has made a state of industrial war 
 in which labor unions have developed into 
 armies, is it not possible to compose this antago- 
 nism without the necessity of war in special 
 instances? If the workers in the Steel Corpor- 
 ation can get their share of the product without 
 an industrial war, then an army or labor union 
 will not be needed, and it will be perfectly 
 appropriate for men to receive favors and for 
 the Corporation to extend welfare in a multitude 
 of forms without the charge of bribery. 
 
 In such a case the Corporation in binding to 
 its cause most of the skilled workers and in 
 offering to all of its employees many items of 
 
 15
 
 partnership such as stock ownership, is not 
 engaged in a selfish scheme but is doing more for 
 its employees than a war could do, successfully 
 fought by labor unions. 
 
 The Interchurch Commission is not justified 
 in its insinuations that the Steel Corporation by 
 all its safety, sanitation and welfare work is en- 
 gaged in undermining opposition for the pur- 
 pose of subjugating its employees. 
 
 3. The third mistake of vital import made by 
 our Commission was in assuming the functions 
 of a prosecuting attorney when they were only 
 a "commission of inquiry." They were granted 
 ten thousand dollars to ascertain facts of the 
 steel industry to lay before our churches so that 
 we might judge intelligently; but they decided 
 at once that the Corporation was guilty and 
 then proceeded to find facts that would prove it. 
 
 The result is a bookful of testimony that is 
 untrustworthy and lopsided. If you ask why 
 the Corporation can't present the other side, 
 the answer is the report is so manifestly unjust 
 that it will rot of its own corruption and no one 
 will believe it except those who desire to knock 
 the Steel Trust. Even Professor Graham Taylor 
 deplores the too free use of the committee's bias 
 in presenting their evidence. 
 
 Throughout the book it is their practice to 
 refute or to discount testimony from the Cor- 
 poration and to accept without question quanti- 
 ties of aspersion from disgruntled ones. 
 
 A salient case of this interesting perversion is 
 their report of discharges for unionism. (P. 
 208 ff.) Mr. Gary flatly denied to the Senate 
 Committee that workmen were discharged be- 
 cause they belonged to unions, saying; "If that 
 has been done in a single case or a few cases, it 
 has been contrary to our positive instructions 
 and the foreman would be disciplined if he dis- 
 obeyed these instructions a second time. * * * It 
 is possible, though I do not think probable, that 
 some foreman may in some instances have 
 shown some feeling against a union man when 
 he discovered it. I do not know of any such case. 
 It would be directly contrary to our orders, con- 
 trary to all our reports and contrary to the in- 
 formation I have. I have denied the proposition 
 emphatically. It is not true." 
 
 The Commission retorts in the next line "It 
 
 16
 
 is true," and they say they have "special evi- 
 dence consisting of hundreds of signed state- 
 ments by steel workers who were discharged." 
 
 Now isn't that simple! Do you suppose that a 
 labor agitator when discharged for agitating 
 would miss an opportunity of making a signed 
 statement that he was discharged for being a 
 member of a union. Out of the thousands of 
 union men in the employ of the Corporation is 
 it any wonder that hundreds of them might 
 become agitators when Mr. Foster started his 
 campaign of boring from within? Who knows 
 how many hundreds of rabid disturbers were 
 deliberately sent by Mr. Foster into the steel 
 industry to prepare for that campaign a year 
 before the strike was called. 
 
 For every one who said he was discharged for 
 belonging to a union there are hundreds of 
 union men still remaining in the steel industry 
 without any question whether they belong to a 
 union or not, whichis very good evidence that it is 
 agitation and trouble-making rather than union 
 membership that accounts for the discharge. 
 
 Another case of the Commission's serious un- 
 trust worthiness in regard to "facts" is in their 
 statement about wages. They say in the report 
 (P. 90), "Half of the strikers interviewed by the 
 Senate Committee talked about low wages." 
 
 But the Senate Committee says (P. 10 of 
 Senate Report 289), "The question of wages is 
 not involved in the controversy. Few of the 
 witnesses examined made any complaint as to 
 wages." Did I say that somebody lied? No, I 
 say simply that we cannot depend upon our 
 Commission for the facts even though we paid 
 them $10,000 to get the facts. 
 
 The squint of judgment that disabled the 
 commission of inquiry is illustrated clearly in 
 their diagnosis of the reasons for the strike. 
 They questioned some five hundred steel 
 workers carefully, besides talking with leaders 
 on both sides and report that "the causes of the 
 strike lay in the hours, wages and control of jobs 
 and in the manner in which all these were 
 fixed." (P. 11.) Their method of reaching this 
 conclusion is naively confessed but is truly 
 amusing. Suppose you had tried to find out the 
 causes of the recent world war by questioning 
 five hundred soldiers on both sides and their 
 
 17
 
 leaders, you would have found the true causes 
 about as well as they found the causes of the strike. 
 
 The Senate Committee says plainly that "the 
 question of wages is not involved in the contro- 
 versy" and the question of an eight-hour-day 
 was the least of four contributory causes. It 
 says (P. 11), "The underlying cause of the 
 strike is the determination of the American 
 Federation of Labor to organize the steel 
 workers in opposition to the known and long- 
 established policy of the steel industry against 
 unionization." 
 
 In substantial agreement with this is the 
 cause asserted by Mr. Fitzpatrick viz: Mr. 
 Gary's refusal to confer with the committee 
 claiming to represent the employees. 
 
 In similar fashion Mr. Gompers tells the 
 cause, " The denial of the right of the employees 
 to be heard by their own representatives," 
 meaning the American Federation of Labor. 
 
 But most illuminating of all is the disclosure 
 of Mr. Wm. Z. Foster in his own book on the 
 Great Strike. Let me quote him. (P. 17.) "But 
 as the war wore on and the United States 
 joined the general slaughter, the situation 
 changed rapidly in favor of unions. The demand 
 for soldiers and munitions had made labor 
 scarce; the Federal administration was friendly; 
 the right to organize was freely conceded by the 
 government and even insisted upon; the steel 
 industry was the master-clock of the whole war 
 program and had to be kept in operation at all 
 costs. The gods were indeed fighting on the side 
 of labor. It was an opportunity to organize the 
 industry such as might never again occur." 
 These words are plain and we know what Mr. 
 Foster meant by "organizing an industry;" it 
 meant, to secure for the A. F. of L. a controlling 
 power in the management of the Steel Corpor- 
 ation. Mr. Foster seizing this golden oppor- 
 tunity readily persuaded the officials of the 
 A. F. of L. to launch "one mighty drive to 
 organize the steel plants of America." June 
 10-20, 1918. 
 
 Now we know well enough that there are 
 always causes for complaint wages, hours, cus- 
 toms, management, personal grudges and espe- 
 cially at the close of our great war the spirit of 
 
 18
 
 violence and rebellion wasso abundant asto make 
 it easy for any disturber to raise a following. 
 
 All of these causes came trooping along to 
 support Mr. Foster's purpose of compelling the 
 Steel Corporation to submit to some require- 
 ments of the A. F. of L. It didn't need to be a 
 closed shop; it needed to be only some item of 
 conference between Mr. Gary and the officers of 
 the A. F. of L. that would prove to workmen 
 everywhere that the Steel Corporation would 
 mind the behests of the A. F. of L. It is strange 
 that our Commission could not discern this root 
 cause which the Senate Committee declares, 
 which Mr. Fitzpatrick, the chairman of the 
 strike and Mr. Foster the chief organizer of it 
 both confess, which Mr. Gompers on one side 
 and Mr. Gary on the other agree was the cause 
 of the strike. 
 
 It is in this particular that our Interchurch. 
 Commission resembled the Boston Commission 
 of Thirty which inquired into the police strike 
 and reported the causes of it to be bad station 
 houses, long hours, short wages, and a lot of 
 other wicked things; but our Governor with 
 simple Yankee candor passed by all these causes 
 and picked out this that the American Feder- 
 ation of Labor was being intruded as a factor in 
 the management of our police; and that he 
 called treason. 
 
 But our Interchurch Commission's failure to 
 see the true cause of the strike is followed by 
 misjudgments about hours and wages which 
 they mistook for the main cause. Somebody in 
 our Federal Council of Churches whether Mr. 
 Tippy, the Chairman of the Social Service Com- 
 mission I know not, but somebody is respon- 
 sible for an industrial heresy about hours of 
 work that may have poisoned the judgment of 
 our Interchurch Commission. It is the first 
 principle of their industrial creed and it ad- 
 vocates gradually and reasonably reducing "the 
 hours of labor to the lowest practicable point." 
 This is the hobo's doctrine. It glorifies leisure 
 and denounces toil. How could it ever be ad- 
 vocated by a confessed follower of the ceaseless 
 Toiler of Galilee who said in reply to his critics 
 that objected to his Sunday work, "My Father 
 worketh hitherto and I work!" The extent to 
 which this heresy has spread amazes us. It was 
 
 19
 
 adopted by our last Congregational Council in 
 its industrial platform and is published by our 
 social service department throughout the 
 country. It ought to bring the blush of shame to 
 every one of us that believes in work as the 
 greatest means of character building and as the 
 demonstrator of the highest manhood. How can 
 we advocate reducing work to its lowest prac- 
 ticable point if we have left in us any of the 
 spirit of him who said, "I must work the works 
 of him that sent me while it is day; for the night 
 cometh when no man can work." 
 
 Now what about the eight-hour-day which 
 seems to be so popular an ideal in these times 
 and is so glorified by our Interchurch Report ? 
 It may be that eight hours is a good standard 
 day for reckoning a unit of toil; but this world 
 would have empty larders and raw comforts if 
 men didn't work more than eight hours in 
 twenty-four. Nature is so obdurate and man's 
 needs are so many that it is physically impossible 
 to produce what we need in those hours. The 
 ordinary man who works eight hours in paid 
 employment puts in several more hours in mak- 
 ing his home. Men who succeed in reaching the 
 places of power and influence are usually those 
 who keep on working after their companions 
 have quit. 
 
 One of the good things in the steel industry 
 and in some others which have not been too 
 heavily unionized is the freedom afforded to 
 some strong and industrious men more nearly 
 to fill their capacity for work and to reap the 
 corresponding reward. Excessive toil is suicide; 
 but many generations of experience have 
 proved that men have healthy capacity for 
 more than eight hours toil and our Inter- 
 church Commission is far too easily captivated 
 by the labor union slogan of eight hours and far 
 too ready to condemn the Steel Corporation for 
 allowing more than half its men to work beyond 
 the eight and ten hour stint. It is clear that most 
 of the steel men who work the long hours for 
 extra pay prefer to do it even to the extent of 
 twelve hours which enables them to make an 
 even shift in processes that are continuous for 
 twenty-four hours. But it may be that the evils 
 connected with the twelve-hour shifts over- 
 balance the benefits; in which case a change of 
 
 20
 
 some sort will have to be made; but that change 
 will be safer in the hands of the men who are 
 running the steel business than it would be in 
 the hands of the Interchurch Commission or in 
 those of the A. F. of L., which is in bondage to 
 an eight-hour dogma. 
 
 In the Commission's condemnation of the low 
 wages paid to the unskilled steel workers there 
 is both tragedy and humor. They charge the 
 Corporation with cruelty for paying unskilled 
 workmen only $1,466 a year upon which to 
 support a family; claiming that it is less than 
 the minimum subsistence of a family of five. 
 
 Prof. W. F. Ogburn, employedbyour Govern- 
 ment as an expert, fixed the minimum subsis- 
 tence cost for an American family of five at 
 $1,575 for the year 1919; but there are 57,000 
 unskilled U. S. steel workers who are paid but 
 $1,466 a year. You might think a group of 
 churchmen like our Commission would feel the 
 tragedy of this deficient pay; but the tragedy is 
 turned to sardonic humor when we remember 
 that 90,000 preachers in our land who are skilled 
 workmen receive only $800, $700 or $600 a year. 
 They manage to subsist upon one half of what 
 Prof. Ogburn says is minimum subsistence. 
 
 Are the preachers' families any less worthy 
 than the Poles, the Serbs, and Syrians that work 
 for the steel trust? Is their crushed ambition 
 any less pitiable? And if we churchmen accept 
 this report we shall confirm the Commission's 
 judgment against the Steel company for treat- 
 ing their employees not one half so shabbily as 
 we treat the paid workmen of our churches. 
 I hear the words of the Carpenter of Nazareth 
 saying to us, "Ye hypocrits, first cast out the 
 beam out of your own eyes, then ye shall see 
 more clearly to cast out the mote out of your 
 brother's eye." 
 
 4. The fourth and last blemish upon the work 
 of our Commission to which I will call your 
 attention is their ignoring of the unjustifiable 
 buccaneering practised by the A. F. of L. in its 
 attack upon the Steel Corporation. It was 
 deliberately planned that twenty-four different 
 trade unions should join in the campaign and 
 share the booty in the many thousands of 
 members to be gained by unionizing the steel 
 works at $3 a member. They underwrote a fund 
 
 21
 
 of a quarter of a million dollars and set an army 
 of spies and borers at work in all the factories, 
 whose business it was to alienate as many 
 workers as possible, and to make such a stam- 
 pede of the mass of illiterate unskilled workmen 
 that the Steel Corporation would be made help- 
 less and ruined unless it yielded to the demands 
 of the Federation. 
 
 Now the A. F. of L. is somewhat aristocratic 
 as compared with the I. W. W. or the Workers 
 International Industrial Union, and it usually 
 seeks for members among the skilled workers. 
 But the treatment of skilled workers by the 
 Steel Corporation is so much better than they 
 could get from the A. F. of L. that they were a 
 poor quarry for the organizers, and Mr. Foster, 
 who was formerly an I. W. W., persuaded the 
 Federation to make overtures to the foreign, 
 illiterate and unskilled masses. 
 
 Mr. Foster's conception of the task was thor- 
 oughly military and his naive account of it 
 shows his complete confidence that the 
 guardians of peace and of citizens' rights would 
 permit all the ruthless ravages that he planned. 
 He speaks of his "policy of encirclement," 
 "taking up outposts," "flank attacks," "feints" 
 to cover "secret attacks," and many other items 
 of military strategy, indicating a clear purpose 
 of violence up to the limit permitted by law, and 
 then some. 
 
 Does any one doubt the wisdom, justice and 
 necessity of a spy system on the part of the U. S. 
 Steel Corporation in sheer self defense? How 
 could a victim of such attack do any less than to 
 use all legal means of resisting the violence with- 
 out, and the incendiary foes within? 
 
 Bear in mind that the source of all this was 
 the outside committee of the A. F. of L. and 
 their purpose was to compel the Steel Corpor- 
 ation to do business with them, and they were 
 spending over two hundred thousand dollars to 
 damage the Corporation to the extent of millions 
 of dollars or to render it helpless. 
 
 Now, such a purpose of buccaneering was 
 charged to the Standard Oil Company some 
 years ago, because they tried to compel certain 
 other oil companies to do business with them. 
 It was charged that they would do every 
 damage permitted by law, secretly, openly, by 
 
 22
 
 hired mercenaries a A 000 094 808 3 
 would readily forgive any henchmen lor doing 
 violence beyond the law in their determination 
 to do business with any obstinate oil company. 
 Now one of our famous churchmen, the late 
 Washington Gladden, even before these charges 
 were legally proved, stirred up thousands of our 
 fellow churchmen and social reformers to de- 
 nounce the Standard Oil Company. 
 
 Where are these altruistic champions of 
 human rights who condemn such buccaneering 
 within the limits of the law because it violates 
 fundamental. human rights? Indeed if I mistake 
 not every one of our Interchurch Commission 
 belonged to that select band of our sainted 
 Gladden; where are they standing in the 
 presence of this gigantic campaign of 
 buccaneering? 
 
 I charge them, everyone, with recreancy from 
 their high principle of defending the unwritten 
 rights of men because they have excused and 
 condoned the uncriminal violence of the 
 American F. of L. in their deliberate and un- 
 justifiable Steel strike. In the name of decency 
 the Interchurch Commission's report must be 
 repudiated ! 
 
 23