1 RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY FINDINGS IN SIX VOLUMES Editko by PAUL UNDERWOOD KELLOGG NEW YORK SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC. M CM XIVCopyright, 1914, by The Russell Sage Foundation PRESS OF WM. F. FELL CO. PHILADELPHIAINTRODUCTORY NOTE HE Pittsburgh District—companion volume to Wage-earn- ing Pittsburgh—opens with an interpretation of the genesis of the community by a native Pittsburgher, who has become one of the civic leaders of New England. Contributions by other writers bring out the slow yielding of old institutions conceived in the day of small towns, and devised before the epoch of applied science, to the demands of congregate growth;—the bitter human waste and rankling injustices of the period of transition; the slow unlimbering of the powers of democracy to put progress at the service of the whole people as well as of the few. Here the emphasis is transferred from civic to industrial forces, and we trace the reaction of these forces upon incoming peoples. We have estimates of the new immigration by a representative of the old—a Welshman from the anthracite region, and by a representative of the new—a Bohemian who has helped Slavs in their settlement from New York to Texas and the Northwest. We have the impressions made upon a Russian engineer by one of the oldest Christian sects of East Europe set down in the bituminous field of Western Pennsylvania. And we have a commentary on the influx of Negroes—north bound from plantation to industry along the route of the “underground railway” of sixty years ago,—written by a son of that post-bellum Negro leader whose faith in the freed slaves won for him the nickname In stark contrast to this flooding of the steel district by fresh immigration, we see its human seepage to the underworld, see it through the eyes of an explorer of those reverse currents which set toward degeneration and wrong-doing in congested Manhattan. Finally, we have the entrance of further recruits to industry in the growing generation of a glass town,—a faithful picture of the “We'se a Risin\” mINTRODUCTORY NOTE chalice which sheerly materialistic forces substitute for the brimming cup of childhood, as that has been painted by artist and poet since the world began. The beginnings of social control over economic forces beyond the grasp of individual men and women, are brought out in three inductive studies of organization by the workers, labor administration by the managers, and factory inspection by the public. Conditions in the city trades, in the machine shops and transportation —contrasting with or influenced by the anti-union régime in the steel industry—are analyzed by an economist identified with two country-wide labor investigations—the Federal Industrial Commission of 1900 and the Industrial Relations Commission of 1913-15. The human side of works management is shown in cross-section for 38 plants, by an industrial engineer, formerly a manager in the Pittsburgh District. A full decade of maladministration in the labor department of Pennsylvania (1903-12) is epitomized by a former factory inspector of Illinois, who was the pioneer in setting modern standards of public enforcement. These movements for social control have if anything been slower of evolution in the commonalty of livelihood than in that of citizenship. They have been fragmentary, inconclusive, often in conflict. They have been quicker to break down the sanctions and habits of the early days when those have stood in their way, but they themselves have been prone to revert to precursive forms of despotism. They not only have had to adjust themselves to stupendous changes in the world’s way of making things, but they must compass forces at once more desperate and more promising than any in the civic life or in mechanics—forces ingrained in a wage-earning people, resident or itinerant, possessed of the American spirit of “ getting on.” In these last volumes to go to press, the effort has been to preserve the validity of the reports as a transcript of conditions at the time of investigation ; but to bring out in text, footnote, and appendix, noteworthy changes for good, or the persistence of noteworthy evils. Paul U. Kellogg Director Pittsburgh Survey IVTABLE OF CONTENTS [The explanatory paragraphs, after each section of the contents, cover in turn the standing and equipment of the contributors to this volume at the time of the Pittsburgh Survey; their present standing, and analogous work since; their writings; and the dates and channels through which these contributions, if previously published, were brought out. The term “magazine publication” refers to the original publication of the findings in Charities and The Commons, then published under Charities Publication Committee, a national committee of the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York; since become The Survey, published by Survey Associates, a membership corporation.] I. COMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP COMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP.....................................3 By Paul U. Kellogg Managing editor Charities and The Commons; secretary Charities Publication Committee. Editor The Survey; member board of directors American Association for Labor Legislation, New York Committee on Congestion of Population; chairman Committee Occupational Standards, National Conference Charities and Corrections, St. Louis, 1911; secretary Committee to Secure Federal Commission on Industrial Relations, 1911-12; assistant director Committee on Social and Industrial Justice, Progressive Service, 1913. Magazine Publication. Civic Responsibilities of Democracy in an Industrial District, January, 1909; being in substance the first statement of the general findings of the Pittsburgh Survey, as set forth before the joint convention of the American Civic Association, and National Municipal League, Pittsburgh, November 16, 1908. Distributed as a pamphlet, Pittsburgh Civic Exhibit, 1908. II. RACE STUDIES IMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS.....................................33 By Peter Roberts Secretary for Immigration of the Industrial Department of the International Committee of the Young Men's Christian Association, 1907-; theretofore pastor and investigator of industrial conditions in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania. Special agent of committee of Pennsylvania state Young Men's Christian Association, reporting on needs of immigrants. Dr. Roberts' Pittsburgh inquiry was the first field work carried out by the international committee in its aid to immigrants which now extends from the point of embarkation to each of the industrial districts in this country where they are employed. His Method for Teaching Foreigners English, which has been adapted to all races and many occupations, is employed in safety campaigns, citizenship classes, and so forth. Author: Anthracite Coal Industry; Anthracite Coal Communities; Immigrant Races in North America; The New Immigration; English for Coming Americans. Magazine Publication. The New Pittsburghers, January 2, 1909. A SLAV'S A MAN FOR A’ THAT.................................61 By Alois B. Koukol Secretary Slavonic Immigrant Society, 1907-; investigator industrial accidents, Pittsburgh Survey. Pastor First Slavonic Presbyterian Church, Peckville, VTABLE OF CONTENTS Pa., 1895-1899; pastor Bohemian Brethren Church, Nelsonville, Texas, 1899-1904; assistant pastor, New York City, 1904-1907. Magazine Publication. A Slav's a Man for a’ Thaty January 2, igog. MEDIEVAL RUSSIA IN THE PITTSBURGH DISTRICT . 78 By Alexis Sokoloff Engineer: graduate University of Moscow; Academy of Mines, Vienna. Investigator (industrial accidents) and draughtsman, Pittsburgh Survey, 1907-08. Engineer, Tangier, Morocco. Magazine Publication. This article hitherto unpublished. ONE HUNDRED NEGRO STEEL WORKERS .... 97 By R. R. Wright, Jr. Research fellow sociology, University of Pennsylvania, 1905-07; former head of Trinity Mission, Chicago; investigator of the Negroes in business in Pennsylvania for the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1907-08; field secretary Armstrong Association of Philadelphia, 1908-09; director of Men's Work, Eighth Ward Social Settlement, Philadelphia, 1905-08. Editor Christian Recorder, official organ of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1909-. Dr. Wright is connected as a member of the board of managers or practical worker with numerous organizations for the benefit of Negroes. Author: The Negro in Pennsylvania; also the pamphlet, The Negro Problem, a Sociological Treatment. Also government and state reports including The Negroes of Xenia, Ohio—a social study, for the U. S. Bureau of Labor; Property Holding Among Negroes of Pennsylvania, for the Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics; Industrial Condition of Negroes in Pennsylvania, for same. Magazine Publication. This article hitherto unpublished. III. INDUSTRY WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH..................................113 By John R. Commons Professor political economy, University of Wisconsin, 1904-; secretary of the American Association for Labor Legislation, 1907-08; member Commission on Public Utilities, National Civic Federation, 1902; expert agent United States Industrial Commission, 1901; director American Bureau of Industrial Research, 1904; investigator labor conditions in stock yards, bituminous mines in Middle West, building trades, and so forth. In addition to his own field work, Professor Commons bore a general supervisory relation to the industrial inquiries of the Pittsburgh Survey. Director of Milwaukee Bureau of Economy and Efficiency, 191 o— 11 ; member Industrial Commission of Wisconsin, 1911-13. Member United States Industrial Relations Commission, 1913- Author: Races and Immigrants in America; Trade Unionism and Labor Problems; Labor and Administration, and so forth. Editor, with Richard T. Ely, Documentary History of American Industrial Society. and by William M. Leiserson Assistant Dept, of Political Economy, University of Wisconsin, 1908-09. viTABLE OF CONTENTS Deputy, Industrial Commission of Wisconsin, 1911-; investigator New York Commission on Employers’ Liability, 1909-11; secretary American Association of Public Employment offices, 1913-; expert on unemployment, United States Commission on Industrial Relations, 1913-. Author: Appendices on Unemployment, Third Report of New York Commission on Employers’ Liability and Unemployment, 1911. Magazine Publication (in brief). Wage-earners of Pittsburgh, March 6, igog; reprinted as a chapter in Commons’ Labor and Administration. FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH .... 189 (With special reference to working conditions of women and children) By Florence Kelley General secretary National Consumers’ League, 1899-*; chief state inspector of factories and workshops for Illinois, 1893-97; resident Hull House, Chicago, 1892-99; Henry Street (nurses’) Settlement, New York, 1899-; trustee New York State Child Labor Committee and National Child Labor Committee; in addition to her own field work, Mrs. Kelley bore an advisory relationship to the in lustrial inquiries of the Pittsburgh Survey, especially women’s labor. Author: Some Ethical Gains through Legislation; Modern Industry in Relation to the Family, Health, Education, Morality (1914). Magazine Publication. Factory Inspection in Pittsburgh, March 6, igog. INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE PITTSBURGH DISTRICT 217 By H. F. J. Porter Consulting industrial engineer. Mr. Porter’s practical experience included four years in the shops of the Delamater Iron Works, New York City; assistant engineer in the rolling mills of the New Jersey Steel and Iron Company, Trenton; assistant mechanical engineer World’s Columbian Exposition during the construction period; assistant chief machinery department, in charge of machinery hall at the Exposition; Bethlehem Steel Company, western sales manager, Chicago, eastern sales manager, New York City, 1894-1902; vice-president and manager of the Westinghouse-Nernst Lamp Company, Pittsburgh, 1902-06. Expert on fire prevention, New York State Factory Investigating Commission, 1911—12; founder and first secretary Efficiency Society, Inc., 1911-13; member Committee on Fire Prevention and Building Code, and Welfare Committee, Citizens’ Union, 1911-, Committee on Factory Laws and Regulations, Merchants’ Association, 1911-, Committee on Private Departments and Exit Drills, National Fire Protection Association, 1911-, Committee on Fire Prevention, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1911; lecturer on shop organization and management, New York University School of Commerce, Accounts, and Finance, and School of Business Administration of Harvard University. During his eight years’ work as consulting industrial engineer, Mr. Porter has introduced efficiency methods including cost systems of organization and management, committee and suggestion systems, lunch rooms, libraries, lecture rooms, schools, and so forth, and safety features, especially in the direction of fire prevention, in industrial plants in various parts of the country. Magazine Publication. This article hitherto unpublished. viiTABLE OF CONTENTS SHARPSBURG: A TYPICAL WASTE OF CHILDHOOD. . 279 By Elizabeth Beardsley Butler Assistant secretary Rand School of Social Science; assistant secretary Consumers’ League of New Jersey; Secretary of the New Jersey Child Labor Committee. Before her Pittsburgh field work Miss Butler had investigated the street trades and sweated work in artificial flowers on the lower East Side of New York. Taking up residence at Whittier House, Jersey City, she had brought out graphically the transfer of some of the worst forms of congregate industry to these New Jersey districts. In addition to her investigation of women’s work in Pittsburgh, embodied in Women and the Trades, the first of the series of six volumes of the Pittsburgh Survey to be completed, Miss Butler made this study of Sharpsburg a touchstone of what an industrial town may mean in terms of childhood in twentieth-century America. It was based on a house to house canvass of the children’s homes. The year following, Miss Butler undertook an investigation of the department stores in Baltimore, and in 1910 she became a member of the staff of the Bureau of Social Research of the New York School of Philanthropy, which was entering upon its series of investigations of the tenement region of the Middle West Side of New York. Venturesome, incisive, quick to pare away the husk of a thing and lay bare the truth back of it, as quick to feel the appeal and the striving beneath the dull round of a factory worker’s day and to make common cause with them,—American women of this generation and American workers generally have lost an interpreter of rare gifts in her death August 2, 1911, from tuberculosis. Yet to such indefatigable use had she put the twenty-six years which were hers that she left behind a remarkable store of quickening human evidence, gathered ready to the hands of those who would carry forward the causes she held dear. Author: Women and the Trades (1910); Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores (1912). Magazine Publication. This article hitherto unpublished. IV. THE REVERSE SIDE THE REVERSE SIDE.............................................307 I. The Police, an Organism . 308 II. The Underworld . . 313 III. Yeggs 326 IV. Beggars . 336 V. Lodging Houses • 339 VI. Prostitution .... 348 VII. Social Police .... . 363 By James Forbes Secretary Mendicancy Committee, Charity Organization Society, city of New York, 1900-09. With a squad of police officers assigned to him, Mr. Forbes practically freed New York of professional beggars during the Low administration, in rigorously repressing charitable imposture and at the same time rehabilitating individual lives, he made practical demonstration of his ideas as to social police. Secretary and director National Association for Prevention of Mendicancy, 1909-. Author of various writings on city and itinerant mendicants and the social aspects of police administration. Magazine Publication. This article hitherto unpublished. viiiTABLE OF CONTENTS APPENDICES I. Report on Labor Conditions, Stockholders' Committee United States Steel Corporation.................395 II. Community Contrasts of 1914 in Housing of Mill Workers: 1. A Soho Hillside. The Persistence of Sanitary Neglect in Central Pittsburgh. By Abraham Oseroff . 406 2. Midland. A Forerunner of Modern Housing Development for Industrial Sections. ByW. C. Rice . 410 III. Y. M. C. A. Work for Immigrants in the Pittsburgh Dis- trict. By H. A. McConnaughey....................414 IV. The Jewish Immigrants of Two Pittsburgh Blocks. By Anna Reed.......................................419 V. The Negroes of Pittsburgh. By Helen A. Tucker. . . 424 VI. The Cost of Living in Pittsburgh and in Other American Cities Compared, 1909...................................437 VII. Advance in the Cost of Living in Workingmen's Families 440 VIII. Statistics from Industrial Development Commission . 442 IX. Industrial Accidents in Pennsylvania......................443 X. Public Reply from the State Factory Inspector . . . 444 XI. An Act Creating a Department of Labor and I ndustry, 1913 446 XII. Occupational Diseases Act.................................451 XIII. Women Workers and Social Agencies........................453 XIV. Labor Union Hygiene for Brewery Workers .... 454 XV. Surgical Organization of the Carnegie Steel Company. By Wm. O’Neill Sherman, M.D................................455 XVI. Application Blanks and Forms, Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company...................................461 XVII. Relief Department, Westinghouse Airbrake Company . . 468 XVIII. Pension System, Westinghouse Airbrake Company . . 485 XIX. One Hundred and Twenty-five Working Girls. By Charles C. Cooper...............................................492 XX. Bureau of Safety, Sanitation, and Welfare, U. S. Steel Corporation. Statements by C. L. Close..........................494 XXL The Pittsburgh Morals Efficiency Commission. By Rudolph I. Coffee.......................................501 XXII. Statistical Excerpts from Report of the Pittsburgh Morals Efficiency Commission, 1913.............................507 XXIII. Records of Repeaters......................................510 XXIV. Excerpts from Report on Bureau of Police. Prepared by New York Bureau of Municipal Research, 1913 . . 516 Index.............................................................527 IXLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE River at night..................................Frontispiece More than a worker (In color). Drawn by Joseph Stella. . . i Congestion. Map.................................................io Growth. Map.....................................................io Pittsburgh's hospitals. Map.....................................11 Health maps..................................................12-14 Views of Vandergrift............................................15 Jefferson Avenue Adams Avenue Pittsburgh Tools. I. For pig iron. II. For home life . . 16-17 Blast furnace Equipment for home life Housing: a district problem .................................20-21 Willow Alley, Braddock Jerusalem Court or Bowery, McKeesport Jerusalem Court from Strawberry Alley Wash day in an inner court, Braddock Miller Street, Duquesne The rudiments of a home Offspring of the old-time wells Rear alley, Duquesne Hazel Alley, McKeesport Residence street, Pitcairn A street in Woodlawn Switchman's shanty.................................................28 Young steel worker.................................................29 As men see America (In color). Drawn by Joseph Stella . . . 31 Slovak.............................................................36 Lithuanian.........................................................37 Italian............................................................40 Croatian...........................................................41 New Pittsburghers and old..........................................44 Basin Alley...................................................... 45 Four beds in a room; two in a bed......................48 Night scene in a Slavic lodging house.....................48 Slavic lodging house on South Side . .....................49 Young Russian......................................................52 xLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Daughters of the new immigration....................................53 Servian mother and child.......................................... 54 Lithuanian women-folk...........................................55 Greek Orthodox priest from Croatia..................................56 Slavic churches.....................................................57 An old Slav (In color). Drawn by Joseph Stella . .61 Young Russian (In color). Drawn by Joseph Stella ... 68 Slav in bread line of 1908 (In color). Drawn by Joseph Stella 76 Russian miners......................................................84 Women and children..................................................85 The younger generation—and the old..................................92 A priest of the Dissenters: of peasant origin.......................93 Russian progressive labor circle....................................96 Negro steel workers ................................................97 At the base of a blast furnace (In color). Drawn by Joseph Stella. 111 Land way and water way..........................................114 One hundred years of river traffic..............................115 A floating coal vein............................................115 Coke ovens in Connellsville region..............................116 Coke workers.......................................................116 The Westinghouse properties........................................117 Prince or Pauper.............................................. 118-119 Skyline on the commercial center Bread line at Woods Run, April, 1908 Engineer and fireman...............................................128 A Pittsburgh train man.............................................129 Grinding castings on an emery wheel................................140 Filling molds...................................................141 Underground machine men............................................172 Mine workers of the Pittsburgh District............................173 Joseph H. Holmes...................................................176 Three first-aid men, Federal Bureau of Mines.......................176 After a mine disaster..............................................177 Underground fighters...............................................177 Steel worker. Homestead plate mill.................................180 Two types. Photos by Hine.......................................181 A glass-house boy..................................................188 Boy holding molds for blower in a South Side glass-house . . .189 The “white” blacksmith shop........................................224 Engineering for light and air......................................225 Cooling hot work...................................................226 xiLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Cooling drinking water for an entire plant...........................227 Fountain in machine shop................................................227 Girls' dining room......................................................228 Features of the Heinz factories.........................................229 Recreation room for employes Sewing class for employes Roof garden and greenhouse Stools are poor seats...........................................230 Chairs with backs are better....................................231 Washing up in the mill..........................................232 Inexpensive type of sanitary wash bowl..........................233 Swimming pool ..................................................233 Bath house and plunge...........................................236 Locker and lunch room...........................................236 Closet in Comfort building at Lucy Furnace......................237 Porcelain urinal................................................237 Conquering dust. View in carpenter shop.........................248 Exhaust tubings sucking dust from a circular saw .... 249 The outlet where the sawdust is bagged..........................249 River boat for Saturday afternoon outings.......................254 Minstrel show given by employes of H. J. Heinz Company . . 255 Auditorium for employes........................... . . .255 Welfare building, Westinghouse Airbrake Company .... 256 Gymnasium.......................................................257 Ball field, Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company . 258 College room, Westinghouse Club.................................258 Bridge workers' gardens.........................................259 Mining towns of Pittsburgh-Buffalo Company .... 260-261 Johnetta Marianna Panoramic views of Annabelle Miner's dwelling School at Marianna Woodlawn..............................................264-265 Double houses Houses from $1,750 to $4,500 High school Municipal building Department store Meat and fish market Pensioners: American Steel and Wire Company...............266 XllLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Stock-holding employes, United States Steel Corporation . . . 267 Housekeeping center...............................................272 Visiting nurses’ headquarters.....................................273 Cooking class Sewing class Reading and instruction room Sleeping room H. J. Heinz.......................................................276 Arthur A. Hammerschlag............................................276 Charles L. Taylor.................................................277 W. B. Dickson.....................................................277 Map of Sharpsburg.................................................278 “The great black mill dominates eye and ear”......................279 Back to back houses...............................................282 The way to work...................................................283 Holding molds.....................................................296 Boys in a Sharpsburg glass-house..................................297 Living conditions, Sharpsburg.....................................302 A glass-house boy’s home..........................................302 Relative values...................................................303 As the mill sees the town.........................................303 “ Making a pitch ”................................................336 “Throwing his hat ”...............................................336 Two types of blind mendicants.....................................337 A Second Avenue lodging house and mission......................344 Cheap lodging house, interior.....................................345 The Bridge of Sighs...............................................358 APPENDIX Wing of the largest tenement in the district......................406 General view of the Soho Hill District............................407 Clogged drain on Maurice Street...................................408 Hydrant adjacent to vault.........................................408 Rock Street. Showing the open drain...............................408 A hillside battery of disease.....................................409 Midland....................................................410-413 Town plan Stucco and frame buildings Low cost frame houses Poured concrete houses Tenanted by owners Toyland XlllLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Teaching English with a hatchet.............................414 Boys of a mill section......................................414 The community tent.............................................415 Croatian chorus Javor..........................................416 Swedish male chorus............................................416 Russian singing circle of Braddock.............................416 At the old city hall........................................417 Manufacturing a playground. Y. M. C. A., Wilmerding . . . 418 Y. M.C. A. community work at Wilmerding........................419 Emergency hospital equipment. Carnegie Steel Company . . 456 Emergency hospital. Clairton works Office and store room Redressing room Operating room Removing a foreign body from the eye. Edgar Thomson works . 457 Automobile ambulance. Carnegie Steel Company .... 457 Hospital ward. Carnegie Steel Company..........................457 First aid class. Carnegie Steel Company........................458 Stretcher drill................................................459 First aid crew letting a stretcher down from a crane runway in the yards of a steel works First aid crew applying dressings to fractured limb before carrying to the emergency hospital Visiting nurse. Homestead......................................460 West Penn gymnasium............................................460 Oxygen helmet..................................................461 Vanadium steel bone plate and screws...........................461 xivLIST OF TABLES IMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS Roberts TABLE PAGE 1. Foreign white stock of Pittsburgh in 1910, by mother tongue . . . 32 2. Population of Austrian, Hungarian, Italian, and Russian nativity, Pitts- burgh, 1900 and 1910.....................................35 3. Amounts deposited by 12 Slavs in a Pittsburgh bank. 1906-1907 . . 54 4. Postal savings deposits and depositors by race and country of birth of depositors, Pittsburgh, June 30, 1912.....................54 ONE HUNDRED NEGRO STEEL WORKERS Wright 1. Ages of 100 Negro steel workers....................................98 2. Years of employment in the Clark Mills of no Negro steel workers em- ployed March, 1907........................ . ... 98 3. Average daily earnings of 100 Negro steel workers...................102 4. Negro population of Pittsburgh, by age and sex. 1910 . . . . 103 FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH Kelley i. Industrial workers in Allegheny County in 1907 by industry, sex and age period. Facsimile report by Department of Factory Inspection of state of Pennsylvania ........................................194 2. Children at work in Pennsylvania....................................196 INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE PITTSBURGH DISTRICT Porter 1. Benefits and pensions paid by Carnegie Relief Fund. 1902-1910 inclusive 265 SHARPSBURG: A TYPICAL WASTE OF CHILDHOOD Butler 1. Ages of 806 children in Sharpsburg schools. 1908.....................286 2. Ages of 41 Sharpsburg children under fourteen found at work in 1908 . 288 3. Ages at time of beginning work of 177 Sharpsburg children under seventeen found at work in 1908....................................288 4. Status of fathers of 177 Sharpsburg children found at work in 1908 . . 289 5. Work place of 177 Sharpsburg children found at work in 1908 . . . 290 XVDrawn by Joseph Stella More Than a WorkerCOMMUNITY AND WORKSHOPPITTSBURGH COMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP Paul U. Kellogg IT WAS my good fortune, the summer following the field work of the Pittsburgh Survey, to visit Essen and the other industrial towns of Rhenish-Westphalia. If they shattered the presumption that when it comes to armor plate, I-beams, tubes, or rails, the Pittsburgh steel plants beat the world, I was not conscious of the fact. But a week's stay among the Krupp colonies at Essen brought with it the conviction that we in America have much to do before we match the Germans in the science of improved community conditions. Before me, in terms of the two great steel centers, lay evidences of that new world-competition which has crowded ever thicker upon us during the last five years. For, in the world's economy, Essen has stood for guns but also for a social program; its forges have not only rung with the “shining armor" of militarism but they have been lit by the fires of an unparalleled internal policy for the up-building of a people. With Germany thus arming with chemist tube and insurance fund, no less than with the weapons of the Krupps; with China in the throes of revolutions, economic and political, which may send the East after centuries of inaction down the “ringing grooves of change"; with the insurgents unsaddling the old order in Mexico; with British statesmanship shaking loose from tradition and enacting new social-economic schemes at each sitting of Parliament, we have been on the threshold of a contest among the developing nations more significant than that of western Europe in 1914, one which war will not settle, nor the United States escape. It sets the test of social excellence—social efficiency is too hard and cramped a term —of whether we can build ourselves up as a great body of Ameri- 3WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH cans who in trim of muscle and fresh vigor of mind, in leisure, health, and stability, in creative imagination and the joy of the game, can match the labor forces of the other great producing nations of the world,—match them not in any narrow sense, such as the loading of ships for the tropics, or the piling up of bank balances, but in laying hold for ourselves of those things which mean the fullness of living. For it is a competition not so much of industrial output as of social capital. By dint of black dirt, split fence rails, log cabins, and elbow room, the American pioneers developed a valor of everyday life and citizenship more precious than would have been crops surpassing those of the diked gardens of Holland or the terraced vineyards of the Moselle. The challenge to Pittsburgh, to Fall River and Cleveland and Newark and the rest of our work cities is this: Can we of this century repeat on the frontiers of industry what the settlers of the last century wrought for their generation? Can we show the world that it means something to have here in America a new continent to fashion life upon? Now, the physical conquest of the continent spread out our people, and made great draughts on individual initiative. I need not recapitulate the serviceable qualities which that process engendered; but we are beginning to find, in our scattered forces, in our inadequate social machinery and in our ineptness at team play, that we paid a price for those qualities. So untrained to act in unison, we are told, are the peasants of some Russian districts, that the recruiting officers tie a bunch of grass to the left foot of each man when he falls into line to get him to keep step. Perhaps our own English marching count— “hay foot—straw foot”—had a similar origin. The practice at least of instructing the unintelligent voter how to cast his ballot with the crowd by seeing that he has a piece of green paper or a coin in his trousers pocket, is a ripe American custom. In all seriousness, however, a graft-ridden municipality may be nothing more than a piece of governmental machinery built for a small town, —a new flywheel rigged up here, and a misfit set of gears clamped on there,—charged with the impracticable *task of serving one of these new, sudden, over-toppling aggregations of people which 4COMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP modern factories gather about them. With our native stock strong in individual initiative and jealous of personal rights, and with immigrant peoples pouring in to add differences of race, tradition, and religion to the social composition, our lack of habits and media for collective action is a serious handicap. America has yet to learn how to apply scientific discoveries and the economy of organization to the common uses of the people. Before the larger international competition which is upon us, every movement which wrings new utility out of our existing agencies of government, or brings men into co-operative action, is a gain. The Essen Way We are inclined to regard the cities of the old world as long established and to find justification for any lapses of our own in the newness of America. But the visitor to Essen soon learns that it is new as an industrial center. The chronology of the development of the steel industry there is not altogether different from that of the same industry in Pittsburgh; and one of the great problems of Fried. Krupp was to mobilize and hold within reach of his furnaces and rolls a large and efficient working population. Entering the industrial field generations later than England, German manufacturers did not have a trained working force ready to hand. Krupp had to draw his men from the country districts,— healthy, unskilled peasants, unused to the quick handling of their muscles, unused to working indoors, unused to machinery, unused to living in large communities. The wages offered, as against the wages of agricultural districts, drew them to Essen; he must keep them there out of reach of his competitors and he must see that they worked at the top notch of their efficiency. It was a loss to Herr Krupp when a man with five years' training in his works left Essen, or was sick, or was maimed. As a town, Essen was unprepared to absorb this great new industrial population. There were not enough houses; the newcomers were sheltered abominably and were charged exorbitant rents by the local landlords. There was not sufficient food supply within reach of the growing city, and the workers had to buy poor bread and bad meat, and to pay heavily for them. The town did not have sanitary facilities adequate to dispose of the waste which a 5WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH congregation of individuals sloughs off and which, if not properly disposed of, breeds disease. High rents and high prices for provisions pared away most of the incentive in wages which must be looked to, to attract this working force to Essen; poor houses and poor food made directly for stupid, half-roused workers and for poor work. Primarily as a business proposition, then, Herr Krupp started that notable group of social institutions which, from one motive or another, were to be expanded until they supplied an infinite variety of wants to the Essen workers. The firm bought up successive plots of land, laid them out, sewered them, parked them; and at the end of fifty years 30,000 persons were living in houses belonging to the Essen works. During that time, there had been a growth in quality as well as in the number of houses, the buildings of the first workmen's colony, West End, being rough, crude boxes, while the later colonies of Alfredshof and Friedrichshof were designed with red roofs and graceful lines, with lawns and modern housekeeping conveniences. Rents were fixed low. I found not less than 77 Krupp supply stores, operated on a profit-sharing basis, selling meat, bread, manufactured goods, and household furniture. One of the greatest bakeries in Germany was set up by the Krupps to be run on a cost basis, along with slaughter houses, flour mills, ice making plants, tailor shops, and other establishments supplying the needs of the community. Hospitals, convalescent homes, pensions, invalidity and accident funds were early instituted, and later fortified and expanded under the imperial scheme of industrial insurance promoted throughout all Germany. From the standpoint of the employer, this welfare work of the Krupps succeeded in keeping neither trade unionism nor socialism out of the ranks of the working force; from the standpoint of the workers, it tended to put them in a position of semi-feudal dependence for comforts and to sap their initiative in ways not in accord with American ideas; but it served to gather at Essen, to keep there, and to keep there at a high standard of working efficiency, one of the most remarkable labor forces in Germany. It was this last aspect of Essen which served us as a parallel in first laying the findings of the Pittsburgh Survey before Pitts- 6COMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP burgh. The question we held up was, how comparable results can be achieved in an American industrial district where one corporation does not wholly dominate; where we are dealing with a much greater aggregation of people spread over a much greater territory, and where we must work out our solution through the channels of popular government. American spread-eagleism has moulted considerably since the 90’s, but there is still sufficient youth and ginger in it—even in the introspective patriotism of an investigator—to make me set down the civic responsibility of democracy in an industrial district as nothing less than “to come abreast of and improve upon the community standards reached under any other system of government, and to do this in a democratic way as distinct from a despotic or paternalistic way.” Our inquiries in Pittsburgh dealt with the wage-earning population (a) in relation to the community life, and (b) in relation to industry. In summarizing the results before the national civic meetings in Pittsburgh in 1908,* I endeavored to group them so as to bring out the responsibility of democracy imbedded in both relationships. My summary may serve at this date as a binder in presenting the monographs brought together in the two concluding volumes of the Pittsburgh Survey, dealing as they do, in turn, with certain civic and industrial problems of the District. I need scarcely repeat that the tendencies observed in Pittsburgh are to be found in other of our industrial centers. Here, as Mr. Devine points out,f because of the extraordinary industrial development, these tendencies give "tangible proofs of their real character and their inevitable goal.” Our severest criticism of any one community comes not from comparing it with its fellows, but from comparing the haphazard development of its social institutions with the organic development of its business enterprises. And still more in the methods and scope of progressive industrial organizations should a responsible citizenship find some of its most suggestive clues as to ways for municipal progress. While, *The joint convention of the American Civic Association and the National Municipal League, Pittsburgh, November 16, 1908. This summary deals chiefly with factors in community and workshop environment subject to social control; and does not enter into wages and other questions of the distribution of wealth. f Devine, Edward T.: Pittsburgh the Year of the Survey. The Pittsburgh District, p. 1. 7WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH for example, distant ore strippings, coal pits, and coke ovens have been linked masterfully with the furnaces of the Pittsburgh District, and a chain of steel plants has been flung out across the country, the public service of the steel communities themselves has been cramped in the sheathings of earlier days. Administrative Areas The most effective city administration can not act to advantage unless the units through which it operates are workable and bear some relation to the functions they are designed to perform. The radius of the old-time city, as one English writer has pointed out, was the distance a man could walk from his work in its center to a home convenient in the outskirts. Today, for most purposes, a city is a rapid-transit proposition. For most purposes, a municipal area can be governed most effectively if it includes all such districts as can be reached by city workers, by subway, steam, or surface lines. The movement for a “Greater Pittsburgh,” which during the year of our inquiry was advanced by absorbing Allegheny City, and the movement for a “Greater Birmingham” which has been in progress in the analogous English industrial center, are recognitions of this fact.* Mr. Forbesf found the restricted bounds of the old city playing into the hands of yeggs and gamblers and hampering the police. Such bounds were and are a handicap to every other municipal department. But for certain functional activities of a great center, much wider areas must be reckoned with. In 1907 the sanitary force of Pittsburgh inspected food supplies only after they reached the city, and sources in the immediate neighborhood. Yet the 300,000 quarts of milk said to be consumed every twenty-four hours came from 8,000 dairies, some of them 200 miles to the west in Ohio. Today the Pittsburgh dairy inspectors cover the whole District. Again, the sewer and water problem of Pittsburgh is a watershed problem. Over one hundred towns and boroughs are dumping their sewage into the rivers which run past Pittsburgh and from * Woods, Robert A.: Pittsburgh. An Interpretation of its Growth. The Pittsburgh District, p. 20. j Forbes, James: The Reverse Side. P. 307 of this volume. 8COMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP which Pittsburgh must draw its water. No one of these governmental units can work out its sanitary problem alone. Close coordination is needed throughout the whole river district. Such considerations have given scope to the inquiries by public and private agencies in Pittsburgh during the last five years, which have supplied the community with large-scale plans for sewage disposal, traction, street development, and flood prevention.* There is necessity, then, for expanding our administrative areas and for relating each to its function; a process which brings into being a further civic problem,—how to create this enlarged municipal machinery without sacrificing that local loyalty and interest which in neighborhoods and small towns make for good government. In Pittsburgh we have a market and office center, with groups of outlying mill towns and half-agricultural districts lying between. The opponents of city congestion wish to break up all our big urban centers into such an openwork structure. If the citizens of Pittsburgh can create effective methods of government and high standards of community well-being for this ganglion of working communities, they will have made an original contribution to municipal science. But let us look more closely at this question of area as applied to particular social institutions. We have the theory in America that common school education should be supplied by the public, and that every child should be given equal opportunity to secure an elementary education. Until the end of 1911 the actual operation of the schools was conducted in Pittsburgh under an old vestry system of ward control—a system given up years before by Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Baltimore, and other cities of the same class, for the simple reason that the ward has proved to be an ineffective and unjust administrative unit in education. Each ward laid and collected a tax on property within its limits for the erection and maintenance of school buildings, f Thus, ward two (old numbering) in the business district, with a total of only 363 pupils, could draw on property that had an assessed valuation of $37,491,708; while * Burns, Allen T.: The Coalition of Pittsburgh’s Civic Forces. The Pittsburgh District, p. 49. f Harrison, Shelby M.: The Disproportion of Taxation in Pittsburgh, p. 156; also North, Lila Ver Planck: Pittsburgh Schools, p. 217. The Pittsburgh District. 9WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH ward fourteen, with 2,423 children, drew on property worth $34,264,077 (taxable property very nearly the same but the number of children seven times as great). Ward thirty-one had 1,173 children and only $3,074,085 in assessed property—or three times as many children as ward two and not one-tenth the taxable property. No wonder, then, that the valuation of school buildings and equipment ranged from approximately $41 per school child in the thirty-first ward to $1,033 Per school child in the second; the income for maintenance of buildings, from $6.00 per school child in the thirty-fifth ward to $84 per school child in the first. No wonder that our investigators found buildings in which children were obliged to sit on benches, or on chairs in the aisles; wards in which basement rooms were thrown into commission for school purposes without adequate heat, light, desks, or ventilation; schools unconnected with the sewer; schools without fireproofing, without fire-escapes, without fire drills. By its outworn system of ward control and taxation, the teaching force of Pittsburgh was supplied, in districts where the work was hardest, with school houses and other tools which were least effective. When the new central board came into control in the fall of 1911* it took over some ward schools which in plant and spirit ranked with any in the country; some whose equipment had practically to be scrapped offhand. In one year's time the new board remodeled 36 buildings; built 29 portable structures to relieve congestion; installed industrial training in 12 grade schools, seven high schools, and two industrial schools; regraded classes, limiting them to 50 each; opened 46 ungraded classes; checked much retardation; created a department of special schools and extension work, and one of vocational guidance; standardized the compulsory attendance system; threw open the school buildings for public meetings and social centers; and otherwise turned a less than half-used, disjointed, decentralized scheme of school-keeping into what promises to become, cumulatively, an effective instrument for education. Turn to another social institution—the hospitals. We may conceive that the first service of a hospital is to be a refuge for the sick and injured, and that an adequate hospital system should deploy its buildings so that they will be quickly accessible to the people who are likely to have use for them. We may compare such a system to a telephone company which through sub-ex-changes, centrals, and private connections, effectively reaches * Kennard, Beulah: The New Pittsburgh School System. The Pittsburgh District, p. 306. 10Congestion THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY 0.6 1 TO 1.9 * « 2.0 3 3.9 A « 4.0 6 «« 0.9 6 •>* 7.9 3 9.9 IO « 13.9 I-* ** 17.9 99 MAP SHOWING THE NUMBER OF BUILDINGS PER ACRE IN EACH WARD 1907 A city grows like a tree—on its outer rim. The upper map, illustrating the number of buildings per acre, shows where old evils are to be wrestled with, due to congestion and disrepair. The lower map, illustrating where present day building is going forward, shows where constructive plans are needed to meet developing needs for schools, play, sewers, and other forms of community service GrowthPittsburgh’s Hospitals Location of hospitals [Q] and dispensaries [XI in 1907; location of hospitals in 1910 [0]- Note the drift of hospitals eastward, and compare this with the preceding health maps, showing as they do the districts of greatest need, where hospital facilities were growing less rather than moreCOMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP every district; or, to cite a contemporary social institution in Pittsburgh, with the library system* which through eight branches and 44 sub-stations places books in easy reach of the entire city. How stood the case with the hospitals of Pittsburgh? The city was in 1908 served by a group of private institutions, many of them adequately equipped, progressively managed. There was, however, no system of coordination between them, either in the operation of their free wards or in the maintenance of an effective ambulance service. Sick and injured people were carried long, unnecessary distances at great risk. New hospitals were erected under the eaves of old hospitals. Seven new ones were going up in Pittsburgh the year of our inquiry, yet when they were all completed, they left a great belt of river wards, thickly populated, without a convenient hospital—wards in which disease was rife. This failure to think through the hospital needs of the city is more than a matter of geography. Motor vehicles have expanded the sphere which can be reached by a given hospital; a district ambulance service could bind the existing institutions together so as to cover fairly promptly the whole urban area. The need is organic and reaches deeper. The Western Pennsylvania Health Conference of 1910, which brought together representatives of no less than 75 agencies, laid it bare as never before,—the 14 dispensaries each working independently of the others, the 17 associations maintaining nurses with little or no reference to each other’s efforts or capabilities, and the 33 important hospitals in and about Pittsburgh, “every one of them going headlong about its business of lifesaving as if it were the one and only agency in the field.” In the last few years there have been marked gains in providing for the treatment of particular groups of casesf and in hospital social service work at the hands of progressive superintendents. Yet it remains true in 1914 that there has been no general municipal hospital created and no * Olcott, Frances J.: The Public Library. The Pittsburgh District, p. 325. f Perhaps 100 victims of tuberculosis could be cared for in proper institutions in Pittsburgh in 1907-08; whereas there were in the city fully 3,000 sufferers in a sufficiently advanced stage to be a peril to all with whom they came in contact, and at a moderate estimate three-fifths of this number were unable to provide proper home care. When a municipal sanatorium is opened in January, 1915, re-enforcing present provisions at the private hospital of the Pittsburgh Tuberculosis League, the almshouse pavilions, and the state sanatoria at Cresson and Mt. Alto, will have at least 600 beds at its disposal—over five times the number in 1907-08, but still a bed for but one in five of its white plague victims. A maternity hospital and a modern convalescent home are recent additions to the other specialized institutions, which include a municipal hospital for contagious diseases, besides private hospitals for eye and ear, for nervous diseases and for children, and homes for incurables and for crippled children.WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH adequate division and coordination of effort on the part of the private hospitals, no systematization of visiting nursing or of ambulance service [the police patrol wagons without medical attendants picking up many accident cases]; that with, if anything, a surfeit of general wards and beds, neighborhood workers complain now, as five years ago, of the difficulty experienced with certain subsidized hospitals in getting patients accepted who are not only sick but poor and without influence; that for some classes of cases—as children sick with a complication of measles and pneumonia—no provision at all exists, no matter how deplorable the home conditions of the little sufferers. Meanwhile, state, county, and city all continue to care each after its own fashion for the insane. Investigations made by the Public Charities Association in 1914 disclosed that at the city almshouse at Marshalsea two young physicians receiving less than $1,000 each were in charge of 702 insane patients; that there was no laboratory or department of hydrotherapy; that absolute authority in medical matters was in the hands of a former Pittsburgh policeman who had been appointed superintendent as reward for political services;* and that numbers of patients were kept constantly in restraint by the use of hand-muffs, strait-jackets, chains, and other physical devices. Contrast this general lack of unity and standardization with the centralized scheme of surgical organization instituted by the Carnegie Steel Company in 1909, which reaches from first aid box, through well placed emergency hospitals in each of the mill towns, to centralized hospital wards in Pittsburgh, where every recourse of science is available for the more serious cases—a system which has cut down infection to a fraction of one per cent, and has measurably reduced the period of convalescence.f Similarly, with 6,000 children of wage-earners going through the thirty or more children's institutions of Allegheny County, there is so little co-operation that brothers have been found in one institution and sisters in another, without an agreement on the part of the agencies caring for them as to a future plan.J A Town's Tools A second point of contrast between Pittsburgh, the industrial center, and Pittsburgh, the community, lies in the progressiveness and invention which have gone into the details of the one and not * Since superseded by a qualified alienist as the first step in a general reform. f Sherman, Wm. O'Neill: Surgical Organization of the Carnegie Steel Co. Appendix XV, p. 455 of this volume. t Lattimore, Florence L.: Pittsburgh as a Foster Mother. The Pittsburgh District, p. 337. 12HEALTH MAPS MTTSMM'm COMPARATIVE MORTALITY BY WARD «TROVPS FIVE YEARS PERIOD190.H907 FULM. TY/BFRCY/I OSIS COMPARATIVE MORTALITY BY WARD QROVFS FIVE YEARS PERIOD:1903-1907 PA4EYAAQ/\1A,HEALTH MAPS lPETTSMUIS®Sa, COMPARATIVE MORTALITY BY WARD QKOVPS FIVE YEARS PEKIOD.1903-1907 I>LVKIA./\OL\I . DISEASES ]MTTSMM>m COMPARATIVE MORTALITY WARD QROVPS FIVE YEARS PERIODt9O3t0O7 OTFVEK VIOLENCE (THftA SVTrC-.mT^R KEY KEYCOMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP of the other. This is illustrated by those children's institutions which fail to respond to modern movements in education, hygiene, and child-placing. It is illustrated by the aldermen's courts* which clutter up and befog the course of minor justice. Unsupervised and unshorn of their powers of petty persecution in city and mill town, they compare with the comprehensive municipal court system of Chicago about as the open forges of King John's time compare with a Bessemer converter. Again,—Pittsburgh is the second city in Pennsylvania in point of population; in some respects it is the center of the most marvelous industrial district in the world. Thousands of men and women are engaged in hundreds of processes. The state factory inspection department had up to the end of 1913 not so much as an office in this city.f There were inspectors, but for the workingmen laboring under insanitary conditions or handling unprotected machinery they were not easily get-at-able. The conception we advanced of an adequate labor department office in Pittsburgh is more than that of an industrial detective bureau. It is rather that of a headquarters, with an adequate force of technical experts and physicians who can study consecutively the work processes of the District with the idea of eliminating, wherever possible, those conditions which make for disease; with laboratory facilities for experiment and demonstration of protective devices, calculated to reduce accidents;—drawing, to this end, upon the industrial experience of the whole world. The factory inspector's office in Birmingham (England) is in close co-operation with courts, with employers, and with workmen. During the three years ending in 1908, its suggestions reduced the number of deaths due to one variety of crane from 21 in the first year to three in the last. In the twelve months studied by the Pittsburgh Survey, there were 42 deaths from crane accidents in Allegheny County steel mills and the public authorities did not even know their number. All of the great industries of the region stand in need of just such engineering headquarters as, since 1908, has served * Blaxter, H. V., and Kerr, Allen H.: The Aldermen and their Courts, p. 139; also Burns, op. cit., p. 56. The Pittsburgh District, and Forbes, James: The Reverse’Side, p. 377 of this volume. f Kelley, Florence: Factory Inspection in Pittsburgh. P. 189 of this volume. The State Department of Labor and Industry created in 1913 has the nucleus of a scientific staff; but under the first year’s appropriation the office of the supervising inspector’s staff in Pittsburgh has been some of the time without even a clerk. 13WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH one of them—the testing laboratories established at Pittsburgh by the Federal Bureau of Mines. These have not only demonstrated the relation of coal dust to the spectacular mine explosions, but have taken up the everyday safety problems of the pits. The old-time city built a wall about it to keep out invaders. The invaders of a modern city are infectious diseases. In the development of sanitary service the modern city is erecting its most effective wall. In Pittsburgh, the health authority was up to 1909 a subordinate bureau without that final authority which should go with its supreme responsibility toward the health of 500,000 people. Until the Guthrie administration there had seldom or never been a physician or sanitarian as head. For five years there had not been so much as an annual report. Two-thirds of the appropriations to the Pittsburgh health bureau were engrossed in a garbage removal contract; only one-third was free for general health purposes. With such an inadequate barricade, we may imagine that disease sacked Pittsburgh throughout the seasons and comparison with the death rates of four cities of corresponding size— Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, St. Louis—for five years [1902-06] showed that this had been the case. In her average death rate per 100,000 from typhoid fever, and from diarrhoea and enteritis, Pittsburgh was highest. Pittsburgh was next to lowest in the list in pulmonary tuberculosis; but the explanation probably lay in the tendency of local physicians to ascribe such deaths to pneumonia, bronchitis, or other diseases of the respiratory system, where Pittsburgh was again highest. So also was Pittsburgh highest in deaths from violence (other than suicide); which being interpreted meant accidents.* Summing up the health situation for the Pittsburgh Survey at the end of 1908, Mr. Adams said:f “ Between public indifference, private selfishness, and political inertia, the germ has pretty well had its own way with Pittsburgh, and the city's annual waste of life from absolutely preventable disease * For the succeeding five-year period, 1907-11 inclusive, not only was Pittsburgh’s typhoid rate cut, but also its rate in three of the remaining four divisions dealt with in the text. Nevertheless for typhoid, for diarrhoea and enteritis, for pneumonia, bronchitis, and other diseases of the respiratory tract, and for accidents, it still had the highest rates among the five cities compared! f Adams, Samuel Hopkins: Pittsburgh’s Foregone Asset, the Public Health, Charities and The Commons, February 6, 1909, p. 940. 14Compare with map showing congestion [facing page io]Jefferson Avenue Showing curving streets and lawns and trees VIEWS OF VANDERGRIFT THE pioneer model town of the Pennsylvania steel district, conceived by George G. McMurtry, president of the Apollo Iron and Steel Company, which has since become part of the U. S. Steel Corporation. Plant and town were laid out in 1895, the town being designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed the World’s Fair at Chicago. Sewered and piped for water, paved, curbed, sidewalks laid, and shade trees planted before any lots were sold, preference being then given to workmen. The company built no houses and set no restrictions other than that no intoxicating liquors can be sold for ninety-nine years. Vandergrift embodied many progressive ideas in town planning and community service; but in the succeeding ten years the standards worked out there for skilled employes were not applied to other industrial towns in western Pennsylvania, or to the housing of the unskilled. Gary even lacks some of the most important elements that went into the design of Vandergrift, but the towns the Steel Corporation is founding near Birmingham, Duluth, and Detroit will set new standards of excellence. Adams Avenue Homes of heaters and other skilled workmenCOMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP has been a thing to make humanity shudder, had it been expressed in the lurid terms of battle, holocaust, or flood, instead of in the dumbly accepted figures of tuberculosis, typhoid, and infant mortality. . . . “Starting at the lowest level, let us formulate our initial axiom in terms of dollars. A sound man can do more work than a sick man. Therefore he can make more money. A sound city can do more work than a sick city. Therefore, in the long run, it can accumulate more wealth. Public health is a public asset. This is a truth which in her single-minded purpose of commercial and industrial expansion, Pittsburgh long ago forgot,—if, indeed, she ever stopped to realize it. Consequently, at a time when all the other great American cities have organized their forces thoroughly and are waging battle, with greater or less scientific skill, against that most potent of all destroyers, the germ, this mighty aggregation of half a million human beings has only just declared war, and has barely established its outposts. Mr. Adams added, with a touch of prophecy: “The test is yet to come. . . . For when hygienic and sanitary reform impinges, in its advance, as it needs must, upon the private purse of some, the political purposes of others, and the industrial and commercial license of the whole, then will come the tug of war. Then, according as shortsighted selfishness shall prevail over, or succumb to, civic pride and patriotism, the victory will be to the germ or to the city.“ At the time this was written, Pittsburgh's inadequate health bureau, with inadequate legal authority, was for the first time in the hands of a skilled sanitarian. For the succeeding five years, the new department with augmented powers and resources was placed in the hands of a physician who was without training in public health work, who had been president of the notorious Councils of 1908.* Only during the current year (1914) has Pittsburgh attacked disease not only with an adequate departmental organization but with a trained sanitarian as chief of service. Such segments, drawn by way of illustration from different branches of the public service in Pittsburgh, make it clear that if * In June-July, 1913, the New York Bureau of Municipal Research made a report to the Pittsburgh City Council of the work of various public departments. Its report on the department of public health revealed large and apparently busy forces of inspectors, often overlapping each other—milk, meat, and food inspectors visiting the same stores, sanitary and tenement inspectors the same neighborhoods; but no sufficient check-up of inspectors, no system of filing complaints, and lax enforcement. For example, milk inspectors sedulously took the temperatures of every can coming from the same shipping point, although the milk had not been 15WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH democracy is to lift the common life to new levels it must overhaul the social machinery through which it operates and bring it to standards comparable to those set by banks, insurance companies, and industrial corporations. Social Tests There are at least two tests to which such social machinery can be put by the community. The first is that of operating efficiency. In hospitals, in schools, in municipal departments, units of labor and product can be worked out as definitely as are the tons of the steel workers, the voltage of the electricians, the dollars and cents of the banks. By vigorous systems of audit and long-headed systems of budget-making, intelligible to the ordinary citizen, the community can secure an output from these social institutions comparable with the investment it makes. The Bureau of Municipal Research in New York has been the pioneer exponent of this program ; and we have examples of its constructive influence in budgetary and administrative reforms set going by the Pittsburgh Civic Commission under the new Pittsburgh charter and small council.* There is another equally intensive test to which social machinery and conditions can be put. It is conceivable that the tax payer may get his money’s worth from the municipal government while wage-earners and householders generally may be suffering from another and irreparable form of taxation, which only increased municipal expenditure along certain lines can relieve. So it was that we projected our inductive research in Pittsburgh into such methods of social bookkeeping as would show something of the larger waste of human life and private means. Let me illustrate by the toll of misery and loss which preceded iced in transit and the massing of these readings was put to no practical use. Smoke inspectors made 293 hour-long observations of stacks and chimneys in 1912, the only value of which was to obtain legal evidence; but there were no prosecutions that year. The tenement division was the exception in the sanitary bureau in having a system of records well devised to keep staff and supervisor in touch with field conditions. The department followed an extreme go-as-you-please policy toward garbage and rubbish contractors. A distinctly forward step under this administration, however, was the institution of school medical inspection, the staff consisting of inspectors, diagnosticians, and nurses. Under the new Edwards administration this work has been expanded into a bureau of child welfare. * Following surveys made for the city by the New York Bureau of Municipal Research and the Emerson Company, in 1913, the county commissioners at the instigation of the Voters' League engaged the Bureau to make a survey of that much less developed but large spending unit of government, the county. 16PITTSBURGH TOOLS A CONTRAST I—A new one for Pig Iron 11—An old one for Home Life Blast Furnace Apparatus for producing pig iron in tonnage that beats the worldEquipment for Home Life Four houses, one behind another, climbing up hillside between streets. Under the porch to the left were two filthy closets without flushing apparatus. They were the only provision for five families in the first two housesCOMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP the erection in 1905-08 of the six-million-dollar filtration plant*— the city's most signal investment in health. For thirty-five years typhoid had been endemic. Computing death rates per 100,000 population for the larger cities the two cities which are today combined in greater Pittsburgh were the principals in a scourging rivalry. In 1901, Pittsburgh was first and highest, New Haven second, Allegheny third; in 1902, Pittsburgh was first, Allegheny second, Washington third; in 1903, Pittsburgh was first, Cleveland second, Allegheny third; in 1904, Columbus was first, Pittsburgh second, Allegheny third; in 1905, Allegheny was first, Pittsburgh second, and Columbus third; in 1906, Pittsburgh was first and Allegheny second. But this showing, startling as it is, fails to afford a grasp of what this scourge meant to the wage-earners of Pittsburgh, comparable to Mr. Wing's household studyf of 448 typhoid cases, with their 2,223 weeks of lost wages, their hospital charges, doctors' bills, nurses' fees, cost of ice, foods, and medicines, mounting up to a total loss of $56,253 for less than half the cases of but six city wards in but one year—wards in which lost earnings and sickness expense were at a minimum. There were other drains which did not admit of tabulation. It was impossible to compute in terms of dollars and cents what it meant to a family to have the father's health so broken that he could not work at his old job, but had to accept easier work at less pay. It was impossible to put in tabulated form the total value to a family of a mother's health, and strike a proper balance when typhoid had left her a physical or nervous wreck. It was impossible to estimate what was sacrificed by a boy or girl obliged to leave school in order to help support the family because typhoid had incapacitated the natural breadwinners. But such human facts bring home to a workingman his stake in government, his share in the civic responsibility of democracy. Household Needs The municipality is not alone in facing the demands of a new century. The household faces a shifting and socialization of * In October, 1907, there were 593 cases of typhoid in Greater Pittsburgh; for the same month the year following—the filtration plant having been set in operation—the number was 96. f Wing, Frank E.: Thirty-five Years of Typhoid. The Pittsburgh District, p. 63. 2 17WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH functions, and some of these have gone by default in the process of transition. Much of the sanitary quandary of the times has grown out of belated attempts on the part of families to supply themselves with water, keep a cow, or dispose of their own garbage and excreta in the midst of urban conditions. With these and even larger household problems, the American no less than the German industrial community is concerned if humanly it would prosper. 11 was beyond the compass of the Pittsburgh Survey to study in a comprehensive way what could be done to improve the quality and lessen the cost of food supplies. We ran upon suggestive clues. The new filtration plant was in itself a great common broaching of the sources of clear water, and the health authorities were for the first time seriously addressing themselves to cleaning up the equally contaminated channels through which the city is supplied with 40,000 gallons of milk per day. Before the Guthrie administration, this vitally important merchandising received, in Mr. Adams' phrase, rather less attention than the corner-stand “ vending of collar buttons. ” Yet to the supply of impure milk more than to any other one cause, was attributable one-fourth of all deaths in 1907; namely, those of children under one year of age. The ups and downs of dairy inspection in the years since can not be reviewed here—the elimination of formaldehyde, the enactment of a milk code setting a basis of bacterial count for the sale of milk, the establishment of municipal milk dispensaries, with physicians and nurses in attendance along lines pioneered by the Pittsburgh and Allegheny Milk and Ice Association. The zero point, from which the local advances in milk control can be measured, may well be the conditions of certain local dairies visited for us in the summer of 1907 by Dr. George W. Goler, health officer of Rochester, an international authority on milk. He wrote: “Go out to one of those dairies near the Country Club which supplies milk to some of the families living in the best localities and see the conditions under which milk is produced for the future citizens of the state and nation. A dirty one-room house that once did duty as an out-house, supplied with water by a hose, a few old tubs in which cans, bottles, and utensils are washed in cold water, and where all the waste flows into a vault beneath the foundation of the house. A damp, dark old stable festooned with cobwebs, without drainage, where all the liquid refuse finds its way through cracks in the floor to the space beneath the structure, and where, on filthy floors, in some cases raised but one poor plank above the common floor of the stable, the swill-fed cows stand and give milk for some of the babies of Pittsburgh aristocracy, whose parents are willing to pay the munificent sum of eight cents a quart for the product. “Visit cow stable after cow stable within easy motor ride from 18COMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP Pittsburgh, and the conditions of filthiness prevailing in the stables are exceeded only by the depth of manure and mud in the barnyards. “The conditions of the cows, cans, utensils, and barnyards, at the distant points from which the city draws its milk, may be judged by the fact that they pasteurize the milk before bringing it to the city, and pasteurize it again before it is sent out from the dairy.” On the basis of conditions found in 1913, the Bureau of Municipal Research recommended a “thorough reorganization of the food inspection service” of the Pittsburgh Department of Health. No records were found of the number of places inspected, nor was a record kept of individual stores. In all divisions, except milk inspection, numerous violations were recorded with few prosecutions. Important advances were noted in the service, yet a slaughter house with privy opening off the killing room, contemned carloads of vegetables dumped in the railroad yards to be picked over by children, loose milk sold in general supply stores, often with half closed cans and exposed dippers, were examples of weak links found in the chain of protection which tended to vitiate the whole service. It was reported that 90 per cent of the milk was brought in an average of 100 miles, that the railroads provided no refrigerator cars, that 60 per cent of the creamery milk was still heated to keep it from souring during the long un-iced haul and 25 per cent of this milk reheated after reaching town. One of the reforms early instituted by the new health administration in 1914 was the concentration of milk inspection at the dairies. No more loose milk is sold in stores, and but one pasteurization is permitted. Sanitary regulation is of course but one phase of the problem; the need is to promote the production of clean milk as a bountiful commodity. Miss Byington’s study* of the cost of living for Homestead householders, especially her favorable reports on the garden plots cultivated by a few of them, went to show that by utilizing unbuilt-up areas in the neighborhood of Pittsburgh, analyzing the soil and improving methods for facilitating the handling of. garden produce, the marketable supply of vegetables could be measurably increased and the cost of living of the Pittsburgh District lowered from what unbiased reports have shown it to be,—wellnigh the highest in the country.f The situation was later made the subject of a special inquiry by an economic survey instituted by Mayor Magee and carried forward by Prof. J. T. Holdsworth, dean of the School of Economics of the University of Pittsburgh. Recently, the Industrial Development Commission prompted the State Department of Agriculture to start a truck farm experiment station on the outskirts of the city. * Byington, Margaret F.: Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) New York, Charities Publication Committee, 1910. t See tabulations, British Board of Trade. Appendix VI, p. 437 of this volume. 19WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH The Housing Supply There is one necessity of life in Pittsburgh of which there was and is a paramount shortage and to which the Survey gave specific attention,—shelter. We could but compare the efficiency of the modern blast furnaces to perform their function and the efficiency of many of the houses to perform theirs. The output of the one is pig iron; the output of the other, home life and childhood. The tenement census carried on by the Pittsburgh Bureau of Health in 1908 showed that there were over 3,000 tenements in the Greater City. Nearly 50 per cent of these were old dwellings built and constructed to accommodate one family, and as a rule without conveniences for the multiple households crowding into them.* With these and with the one- and two-family dwellings, which continue as such to shelter the vast bulk of the wage-earning population in Pittsburgh, the primary governmental relationship is that of sanitary control. The forward movements of the last five years have resulted in adequate laws; sanitary improvements have been installed in many properties; but enforcement has been so sporadic as to amount to dallying with life and death. Four years of needless delay in building Pittsburgh's filtration plant and clearing the disease-laden water supply, sacrificed an easily calculable number of lives.f Less calculable, but charged with all manner of human miseries, has been the cost of more than as many years of needless delay in cleaning up Soho.f Under intermittent pressure from the health authorities thousands of privy vaults have been filled and abandoned, yet in 1914 eight to ten thousand still remain in use in Pittsburgh. Such vaults are an open menace to health because of the insects which carry disease from them to the tables and living rooms of the people. Consider the contrast,—these old, ramshackle, unwholesome, disease breeding appliances of the back country here in Pittsburgh, the city of great engineers, of mechanical invention, and of progress. There are three phases of this problem of shelter which have a special bearing upon my main thesis. The first is, that the * Dinwiddie, Emily W., and Crowell, F. Elisabeth: The Housing of Pittsburgh’s Workers. The Pittsburgh District, p. 87. f Wing, Frank E.: op. cit. The Pittsburgh District, p. 85. t See Appendix II, p. 406. 20Willow Alley, Braddock Rubbish in rear yard where children play. Two hydrants and two vaults for 30 apartments HOUSING A DISTRICT PROBLEM The first of a series of photographs showing that the need for sanitary regulation is not confined to the Greater City The photographs are of conditions in 1907-08; the need is currentJerusalem Court or Bowery, McKeesport Russians, Austrians, Poles, and Bohemians, Russian, Polish, and Galician Jews, Germans, Hungarians, and Negroes, were residents of Jerusalem. One Irish family for full measure Jerusalem Court from Strawberry Alley The hydrant at the right in close proximity to the octagonal privy structure, was the only water supply for the entire court. On the date the photograph was taken the hydrant had been out of use for two days and the tenants had had to carry water from across the streetWash Day in an Inner Court, Braddock Thirteen families used this court. In the octagonal building eight closets emptied into a sewer which was flushed only occasionallyMiller Street, Duquesne Open drain at side of streetThe Rudiments of a Home Cottage of a Birdville widow: one room wide, two deep; and a garden Offspring of the Old-time Wells Yard hydrant and filthy wooden drain. BraddockRear Alley, Duquesne A growing spot for weeds and rubbish piles and children Hazel Alley, McKeesport Vaults and living rooms in dose proximityResidence Street, Pitcairn Typical of neighborhoods where higher, paid employes live, to be found in most of the larger industrial towns of the Pittsburgh DistrictA Street in Woodlawn Scores of company houses—both detached and in rows—enter into this ambitious attempt at mill town construction of the Jones & Laughlin Steel Co., which in 1910 burst the bounds of its old site on the congested South Side, and erected a new plant on the Ohio River below PittsburghCOMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP health authority, however efficient in supervision, can not meet the quantitative demand for wholesome accommodations. Even though Tammany Hall, Yellow Row, Painter's Row, and other unnamed shells have been torn down; even though the owners of many buildings have been made to install sanitary appliances; the situation remains unmet unless new houses—new houses in quantity—are erected to care for the population which has flooded into Pittsburgh and which, there is every indication, will swell as greatly in the years ahead. It should be said that real estate dealers, builders and building and loan associations have not been inactive. Certain industrial corporations have shown initiative in developing outlying properties.* The situation is serious enough, however, to demand the formulation of a constructive public policy for the entire region. In the words of our original report :f '‘It demands for the Pittsburgh District such town planning and traction development as will open up wider suburban areas and relieve congestion. It demands such radical modification of the tax system as will put a premium, as in metropolitan Boston, on home building, rather than a premium, as in Pittsburgh, on the speculative holding of unimproved land. Pittsburgh might well be the first city to try out in America the co-operative building scheme which has gained so much momentum in England, and by which the shifting industrial worker owns not a house, but stock m a housing company, which builds wholesale. Such a plan would admirably supplement the operations of the realty companies and building and loan associations in housing the growing industrial force of the steel district, and would offer an opportunity for investment at 5 per cent and the public good such as opens in no other direction to the man of large means and large imagination who would leave his impress on the Pittsburgh District.” Legislation secured by Pittsburgh civic bodies in 1911 and 1913 has put in motion radical changes in the tax system; the town planning and traction reports of 1910-11 have set bench marks for community expansion. But movements for promoting building construction have failed as yet to lay hold upon the public imagi- * Note photographs of the satellite communities, Vandergrift, Woodlawn, Marianna and Midland illustrating this volume. See also Porter, H. F. J.: Industrial Hygiene in the Pittsburgh District, p. 217 of this volume; and Rice, W. C.: Midland. Appendix II, p. 410. t The Pittsburgh District and the Housing Situation. Charities and The Commons, February 6, 1909. 21WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH nation in any large way; and in contrast to Cleveland's low-fare service, Pittsburgh's street railway system obstructs the spreading out of homes by its lack of through routes and its niggardliness with transfers. This haphazard method of letting the housing supply take care of itself, and the consequent high cost of rents, cramps the general prosperity of the city only less than it cramps the standard of living of tenant wage-earners. Moreover, it puts a premium on single men, drifters, lodgers, as against the man with a family. Immigrant boarders who rent from a boarding boss, and sleep eight or ten in a room or sleep at night in the beds left vacant by the night workers who have occupied them throughout the day,— such transients can lay by money in the Pittsburgh District. But the immigrant who wants to make his stake here, bring his family over, and create a household, must pay $10 or $15 a month for rent; and must pay high prices for all the other necessities of life. If the merchants of Pittsburgh should set out to discover some one means for increasing the volume of purchases of the buying public, they could find no other which would affect it so impressively as the multiplication of households, through the multiplication of convenient, low cost, low rental, sanitary houses with which to meet the needs of stable family groups as against the needs of the lodgers. The need for more and better shelter is not merely a city problem. It is repeated in each of the mill towns where as a whole the movements for sanitary regulation have not made headway as they have in the greater city. Miss Butler* found breeding places of disease in Sharpsburg; back-to-back houses such as were condemned in England seventy-five years ago. Attractive homes are to be found there, in Braddock, Pitcairn, Duquesne, McKeesport, Homestead, and the other industrial suburbs, but the accompanying photographs tell the story also of old buildings, filthy, ill-equipped, and overcrowded; and of new buildings violating every canon of scientific housing. Homestead, for example, had in 1907-08 no ordinance against overcrowding, no ordinance requiring adequate water supply, nor one forbidding privy vaults in congested neighborhoods. Foreigners were crowded * Butler, Elizabeth B.: Sharpsburg: A Typical Waste of Childhood. P. 279 of this volume. 22COMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP thick in the second ward between the river and the railroads. In 21 courts studied by Miss Byington* in this neighborhood, only three houses had running water inside the house. One hundred and ten people were found using one yard hydrant. Out of 239 families, 51 families, including sometimes four or five people, lived in one room each. Even among the families which did not take lodgers, half averaged over two persons to the room. A crude reflection of the effect of these conditions was indicated by the death rate in this second ward. To every three children born there one died before it reached two years of age, as against one to every 7 or 8 in parts of Homestead where detached and livable dwellings prevail. This comparison of health and home conditions in a small town was true in a large, cruel way of Pittsburgh itself. In cooperation with the Typhoid Fever Commission we analyzed by wards the death certificates of people dying in Pittsburgh during a five-year period. We grouped these wards into districts the living conditions of which were more or less of a kind.f Let me compare the mortality figures of wards nine, ten, and twelve (old numbering)—a group of river wards in the old city, near the mills, peopled for the most part with a wage-earning population of small income—with ward twenty-two, a new residential district in the East End. What were the chances for life for the men, women, and children living in one district and in the other ? The chance of a man's dying of bronchitis in the river wards was two and a half as against one in the East End; the chance was four of his dying from pneumonia as against one in the East End, five of his dying of typhoid as against one in the East End. These are rough proportions, but they are of terrific significance. Our American boast that everybody has an equal chance falls flat before them. The dice were loaded in Pittsburgh when it came to a man's health. His health is the workingman's best asset; and the health and vigor of the working people are in the long run the vital and, once lost, the irrecoverable resources of an industrial center. We are come to a point where, without going into further phases of the municipal life, we can define the plain civic responsi- * Byington, op. cit., pp. 131 if. f See inserted health maps, facing pp. 12-14. 23WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH bility of democracy in an industrial district. That responsibility is so to contrive and operate the social machinery of the community, so to lift the neighborhood and household conditions that they will attract and hold a strong and vigorous labor force for the industries on which the prosperity of the district must depend. Here lies the responsibility of the community to the industries it fosters and the responsibility of the community to its own future:—lest the efficiency of its workers be mortgaged before they go to work in the morning. And this responsibility carries a counter one. Neither in the interests of the community as a whole, nor in the interests of all the industries as against those of any single industry, nor in their own interests, can the people afford to have their working strength impaired or wasted by insanitary or healthtaxing conditions during the working hours. The Social Challenge to Industry To begin with, Pittsburgh can not afford to have half a thousand workingmen killed in any year or a vastly larger, unknown number of men seriously injured. The Pittsburgh Survey made an intensive inquiry into the facts surrounding the deaths in industry during twelve months, and the injuries treated in the hospitals during three. The investigation was rarely opportune, for during the six years that have succeeded commissions in more than twenty states have taken up the problem of industrial injury and compensation. Miss Eastman's investigation* remains perhaps the most serviceable inductive study we possess of the workings of the old common law system of liability under which the United States entered the twentieth century. We found that of the 526 men killed in Allegheny County in the year studied, the accidents fell on Americans as well as foreigners; 228 were native born. There were 195 steel workers killed, 125 railroad men, 71 mine workers, and 135 in other occupations. We found that it was the young men of the District who went down in the course of industry. Eighty-two were under twenty-one years of age, 221 between twenty and thirty. Over half the men killed were earning less than $15 a week, a fact which challenged the fairness of the law in assuming, as it still does in Pennsylvania, that wages cover risk. In 63 per cent, whether in the case of married or unmarried, death by industrial accident meant the sudden cutting off of the sole or chief support of a family. * Eastman, Crystal: Work-Accidents and the Law. (Pittsburgh Survey.) 24COMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP These facts as to the native born, the competent, the young, the bread-winning who went down in the everyday operations of industry, were summed up in a great death calendar at the Pittsburgh civic exhibit in the fall of 1908—its 526 red crosses standing each for a man killed at work or who died as direct result of an injury received in the course of his work. The case was put thus: Pittsburgh has stamped out smallpox; its physicians are fighting tuberculosis; the municipality is checking typhoid. Cannot engineers, foremen, employers and workmen come together in a campaign to reduce accidents? Despite notable gains made by certain employers in the years since this exhibit of 1908, the red crosses in the death calendar for work-accidents in Allegheny County have run up every year into the hundreds, serious injuries into the thousands, many of them needless. No greater public service could be done by labor department, coroner's office, health department, union, or civic body than to make current public analyses of these accidents, such as would show what plants and employments still maim limbs and snuff out lives where others save them. The records kept by the state factory inspector's office up to the present year are worthless.* Neither the Allegheny County coroner's office nor the Pittsburgh Department of Health segregate deaths from work-accidents in a way that shows how far the gross number has been cut down. The coroner's office, however, gives the following figures for two trade groups, mines and mills, 1908-13 inclusive, which indicate that the twelve months studied by the Pittsburgh Survey—July 1, 1906, to June 30, 1907—were prophetic of the annual death toll exacted from 1908 on. M ines Mills 1908 • 73 96 1909 • 72 120 1910 . 96 *55 1911 . hi 102 1912 • 79 *3* *9*3 . 105 *73 Average six years . . 89 130 Pittsburgh Survey [12 months] • 71 *95 How a representative steel corporation plant has cut down its accident rate is charted in Appendix XV, p. 455. Yet for the mills of the county as a whole, electric shock killed ten in 1913 as against seven in 1906-07, operation of trains 24 as against 42, railroads 27 as against 31. * See Appendix X, p. 445. 25WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH From 1907 to 1913, inclusive, the department of health credits traumatism by machines with, respectively, 22, 15, 11, 30, 11, 21, and 20 deaths, by no means a descending scale. We put the work-accident cases studied to that same test of human measurement which I have shown was of such significance in gauging the losses due to typhoid fever. This steady march of injury and death means an enormous economic loss. Is the burden of this loss justly distributed? we asked. What takes the place of the wages of these breadwinners? What resources of their own have these families to fall back on? What share of the loss is shouldered by the employer? In the care of the sick and dependent, what share falls in the long run upon the community itself? The Pittsburgh District has still to make satisfactory answer to these questions; for while we tallied up the number of dead and showed the misery and injustice wrought in a way which helped spur other states to action, Pennsylvania itself remains in 1914 the only one of the great industrial commonwealths which has failed to enact a modern compensation law. The year of our investigation saw the beginnings of that system of accident prevention which has since lifted the United States Steel Corporation to the position of leadership in this field. In 1910 it adopted a relief plan anticipating compensation laws by making a greater share of the accident loss a fixed charge on the industry. The problem today is that of compelling the whole District to match standards in safety engineering and compensation set by its most far-sighted managers. Our analysis brought home to us that the permanent way to keep down the accident rate would be to make killing and injury come higher to the employer. For example, take six men who were totally disabled for life during the three months studied—one of whom lost an arm and a leg, one of whom is paralyzed, and four of whom will walk on crutches the rest of their lives. Our figures showed that, of these men, one received $365, one $125, one $30, and three no compensation. Bearing in mind the broad policy of the Carnegie Relief Fund, and of the standards of relief set by exceptional employers, the bald fact remained that in the case of both injuries and deaths, including both married and single men, no dollar of compensation was received from the employer to take the place of lost income in considerably over half the cases.* * This excludes hospital and funeral expense, often met by the employer. 26COMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP But this question of industrial injury is only part of another and larger question of the relation of industry to health. The workers of Pittsburgh are dealing not with simple ploughs and wash tubs and anvils, but with intricate machines, often in great workrooms where hundreds work side by side; dealing with poisons, with voltage, with heat, with a hundred new and but half mastered agents of production.* In the rapid development of factories in America, we have only begun to construct them with reference to the well-being as well as with reference to output. Let me illustrate from the women-employing trades as brought out by Miss Butler's investigations.! In two of the 28 commercial laundries in Pittsburgh the washroom was on the upper floor. In 26, rising steam and excessive heat not only caused discomfort in the departments above but tended to induce diseases of the respiratory organs. Tobacco dried in many of the stogy sweatshops made the air heavy with nicotine, filled the room with fine dust, and increased the danger, always present in the tobacco trades, from tuberculosis. In foundries and machine shops the custom of placing annealing ovens in the rooms where cores are made caused excessive heat in the workroom and filled the air with a black dust. Apart from dangers of accident, of speeding, and of injurious processes, the health of a working force bears a direct relation to the length of the working day. Mr. Fitch's analysis! of the time schedule of the various departments of the steel industry showed that in a majority of them the day of twenty-four hours is split between two shifts of workers who averaged twelve hours each. Up to 1910, a fifth of the men worked not six days but seven a week; and a very considerable share of them, once a fortnight in changing shifts, a long turn of twenty-four hours. The seven-day week has since been cut down but the iron rule of the twelve-hour day still governs.§ Employers may differ as to whether they can get the most work and the most effective work out of a man who labors twelve hours a day, or ten, or eight. But we hold that the community has something at stake here. How much citizenship does Pittsburgh get out of a man who works twelve hours a day? Paternalistic Essen might not fare badly by such a schedule; but it scotches our American mill * See Porter, op. cit. P. 217 of this volume. t Butler, Elizabeth B.: Women and the Trades. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) t Fitch, John A.: The Steel Workers. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) § For report of Stockholders Committee see Appendix I, p. 395. 27WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH towns. How much of a father can a man be who works twelve hours a day? Barracks life may not fare badly by such a schedule, but Miss Byington's study* showed how it bears down upon household life in Homestead. The community has a claim on the vigor and intelligence of its people, on their activity in civic affairs, which it is letting go by default. So long as Pittsburgh continues to tolerate the twelve-hour day in railroading and steel making, it will get only the tired-out leavings of some of its best men. My generalization, then, is that if the civic responsibility of democracy in an industrial district is to be met, the community should do what a first-rate industrial concern would do—figure out the ground it can cover effectively and gear its social machinery so to cover it. By social machinery I mean hospitals, schools, service to householders; all that wide range of activities that have a direct bearing on the living conditions of a people. It should hold these agencies accountable for results, as business enterprises are held accountable; and its touchstone should be the welfare of the average citizen. Unless a wage-earning population is so insured against disease, its vigor and effectiveness so conserved, the community is not meeting its responsibility toward the industries which depend upon these workers for output nor its responsibility toward the workers who depend upon these industries for livelihood. In turn, the democracy should see to it that the industries neither cripple nor exploit, but develop, the working force which constitutes the great human asset of the community—a communal resource worth conserving to the utmost of its potential good. Finally, if such a program is to be carried out in an American and democratic way, the workers themselves must have greater leeway in which to bear their share of the burdens and responsibility. In America For who, after all, is to carry out such a program for workshop and community? To go back to our original parallel, the Krupp name has stood not only for concern for human welfare, but for a scheme of autocratic control. More than one American visitor has drawn huge breaths of relief on getting away to Düsseldorf, or other of the German towns whose democratic achievement has fairly matched that of the industrial over-lords of Essen. As * Byington, Margaret F.: op. cit., pp. 145 if. 28Switchman’s Shanty There is a twelve-hour night in the freight yards as well as in the steel mills. It battens down citizenship and home life for the men who work in both" The public should see to it that the industries do not cripple nor exploit the working force which constitutes the great human asset of the community”COMMUNITY AND WORKSHOP this volume goes to press, all western Europe is wrestling to shake dynastic militarism from the shoulders of the common life. With us, the age long struggle for newer and more liberal equilibriums asserts itself in industry. In the days of its height, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers paid small heed to the needs of the day laborers in the mills. Today many a highly organized craft has little concern except for its own terms of work. The brewery workers and mine workers are exceptions and not only include all laborers in brew-house and mine in their scheme of organization, but stand for safety and sanitation along with hours and wages. But in general, in wage-earning Pittsburgh, these human considerations are being promoted from above. Not only has the Steel Corporation—the largest employer in the District and the largest in the United States—set about the rehabilitation of the housekeeping and healthfulness of its great plants, cut down accidents, eliminated infection, and created a compensation scheme in advance of state legislation, but the influence of these things is reacting favorably upon the mill towns. Sanitary committees of the mills ask the borough health officers how they are protecting the milk that goes to the families of the mill workers. Seven thousand men co-operated on these committees of the Steel Corporation last year. This has meant not only an advance in physical upkeep, but in human understanding between different grades of workmen, foremen and superintendents. Yet if the workers who are now asked to co-operate in locating washrooms and guarding flywheels set out to concern themselves with the hours they work, or the pay they get, the scheme of co-operation breaks down. Meetings are spied upon and halls closed. “Trouble breeders” lose their jobs. They are in a belated new-world Essen, more scientific in its welfare work, but as autocratic in its benevolent dictation. Profit sharing and pension schemes, however excellent in other ways, are in themselves so devised as to constrict self-assertion. Aroused stockholders have helped eliminate the seven-day week but have failed to dislodge the twelve-hour day. Yet if the workers themselves should organize to take up the agitation where these stockholders left off, they would meet not only with inertia but with reprisal. Meanwhile forces more powerful even than these policies of repression have banked workmen down upon one another. The 29WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH changes in machinery which have eliminated much craftsmanship and created a great mass of semi-skilled work, have as it were, shaken down intelligence like a quickening leaven into the body of insecure labor—and we find creedal and racial animosities, differences of language and grade of skill sunk in common protest like that which marked the mass strike of Westinghouse employes in Turtle Creek valley in this summer of 1914. Approaching the situation from three widely separate quarters, Prof. Commons, Mr. Woods and Dr. Roberts, all three, forecast five years ago this emergence of the under-men, the upward thrust of whose aspiration has yet to stagger the steel industry. In the community life, a situation not without its analogies presents itself. In the swelling Socialist vote and the spread of the single tax, in the movement for popular control over municipal affairs and in the collective action of small churches which have broken with the leadership of some of the largest and most established congregations, we have so many manifestations of fresh alignments, based on broader reaches of the social order, less patient with the forces which have dominated Pittsburgh's growth, far from united as to things to be done, but tractable through neither the old type of ward politics, nor the ordinary tuggings of financial leading strings. Both in industry and civic life, then, Pittsburgh in 1914—even more sharply than when the first investigators of the Pittsburgh Survey went into the field in 1907—presents the clash between the Old World and the New. It puts the question whether the dominating group thrown into power by the process of the last half century is to set the meets and bounds of life and labor, and, battened down by its policies, we shall have in Pittsburgh the great flaring up of a repressed and divided people; or whether in shop and borough, in trade group and city, through new contacts of understanding, new opportunities for growth and prosperity broad enough to embrace all men, democracy will yet merge the elements which make up congregate industry; and like the old time puddler's ball of raw metal, a new generation will “ come to nature." The five years since the first publication of the findings of the Pittsburgh Survey have brought marked gains in the fashioning of life in the Pittsburgh District and in the nation. Nonetheless, now as then, the challenge of social circumstance holds for both. 30M/k_ Drawn by Joseph Stella As Men See America IIII RACE STUDIESTABLE I.—FOREIGN WHITE STOCK OF PITTSBURGH IN 1910, BY MOTHER TONGUE Mother Tongue Foreign Born White Persons Native Born White Persons of Foreign or Mixed Parentage All Persons of Foreign White Stock Number Per cent Distribution Number Per cent Distribution Number Per cent Distribution Per cent of Total Population English and Celtic 35,452 25.3 73,388 38.4 108,840 32.8 20.4 Germanic German .... 30,346 21.6 7L705 37-4 102,051 30.7 19.1 Dutch and Frisian . 98 .1 189 .1 287 .1 .1 Flemish .... 27 a 6 a 33 a a Total .... 30,471 21.7 71,900 37.5 102,371 30.8 19.2 Scandinavian Swedish .... 1,370 .9 1,232 .6 2,602 .8 • 5 Norwegian 112 .1 81 a 193 .1 a Danish .... 121 .1 118 .1 239 .1 .1 Total .... 1,603 1.1 1,431 •7 3,034 1.0 .6 Latin and Greek Italian .... 14,158 io.I 8,289 4-3 22,447 6.7 4.2 French .... 1,012 .7 2,235 1.2 3,247 1.0 .6 Spanish .... 48 a 28 a 76 a a Portugese.... 4 a 3 a 7 a a Roumanian 382 •3 118 .1 500 .2 .1 Greek .... 816 .6 130 .1 946 .3 .2 Total .... 16,420 11.7 10,803 5-7 27,223 8.2 5.1 Slavic and Lettic Polish .... 20,606 14.7 14,246 7-5 34,852 10.5 6.5 Bohemian and Moravian 1,907 1.4 1,546 .8 3,453 1.0 .6 Slovak .... 2,780 2.0 2,316 1.2 5,096 1.6 1.0 Russian .... 1,046 • 7 427 .2 1,473 •4 •3 Ruthenian 586 •4 109 .1 695 .2 .1 Slovenian.... 2,721 1.9 1,040 •5 3,761 1.2 • 7 Servo-Croatian 6,147 4.4 i,79i •9 7,938 2.4 1.5 Bulgarian. 56 a 15 a 71 a a Slavic, not specified 678 .5 270 .1 948 .3 .2 Lithuanian and Lettish . 2,619 1.9 i,i34 .6 3,753 1.1 .7 Total .... 39,146 27.9 22,894 11.9 62,040 18.7 11.6 Unclassified Yiddish and Hebrew 12,808 9.2 8,028 4.2 20,836 6.3 3.9 Magyar .... 2,716 1.9 1,083 .6 3,799 1.1 .7 Finnish .... 65 a 14 a 79 a a Armenian.... 42 a 2 a 44 a a Syrian and Arabic . 463 .3 173 .1 636 .2 .1 T urkish .... 2 a 3 a 5 a a Albanian .... .. All other .... I a I a a Total .... 16,097 11.4 9,303 4.9 25,400 7.6 4-7 Unknown .... 1,247 .9 1,764 .9 3,011 .9 .6 Grand total. 140,436 100.0 191,483 100.0 331,919 100.0 62.2 »Less than .05 of one per cent. This table is compiled from statistics presented in Volume I of the reports of the Thirteenth Census. By “foreign white stock”, is meant all persons, whether native or foreign born, one or both of whose parents were born abroad. The right hand column of the table shows persons of each specified mother tongue as a proportion of the total population of Pittsburgh. That persons of Slavic and Lettic stock are present in large numbers is one of the significant facts revealed by the table. In the foreign born white population persons of Slavic or Lettic mother tongue outnumber persons in any other major group; in the native born population of foreign or mixed parentage, persons of Slavic or Lettic mother tongue are more numerous than persons in any major group save the groups composed, respectively, of persons of English or Celtic mother tongue and of persons of Germanic mother tongue.IMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS Peter Roberts THE day laborer of a generation ago is gone,—a change which has been swifter and more complete in Pittsburgh than in many other of our industrial centers. "Where are your Irish? your Welsh? your Germans? your Americans?” I asked an old mill hand. "Go to the city hall and the police station,” he said. "Some of them are still in the better paid jobs in the mills; but mostly you'll have to look for them among the doctors and lawyers, office holders, clerks, accountants, salesmen. You'll find them there.” The day laborer in the mills today is a Slav. The foreign born of the steel district include, it is true, representatives of every European nation, but I shall deal here only with the races from southeastern Europe, which for twenty-five years have been steadily displacing the Teutonic and Keltic peoples in the rough work of the industries. The tendency of the Italians is to go into construction, railroad work, and the mines, rather than into the plants and yards; and my group narrows itself down to the dominant Magyar, Slav, and Lithuanian. What I have to say of them in Pittsburgh and Allegheny City is in the main true of them in the manufacturing towns of the whole District. Roughly speaking, one-quarter of the population of Pittsburgh is foreign born.* The foreigner is nowhere more at home than here, and nowhere has he been more actively welcomed by employers. The conflict of customs and habits, varying standards of living, prejudices, antipathies, all due to the confluence of representatives of different races of men, may be witnessed here. The whole territory is thrown into a stern struggle for subsistence * In 1910 foreign-born whites comprised 26 per cent of the population and Negroes about 5 per cent. 3* 33WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH and wage standards by the displacements due to these resistless accretions to the ranks of the workers. The moral and religious life of the city is equally affected by this inflow of peoples. The most backward of them are superstitious and ignorant, victims of cunning knaves and unscrupulous parasites. Their religious training differs widely from that of peoples of Protestant antecedents, and institutions that were dear to the founders of the city are fast being undermined by the customs of immigrants from southeastern Europe. Yet as a whole, they bring with them physical and cultural resources which as yet, in any large sense, the English-speaking community fails to elicit or thoughtlessly wastes. An exhaustive study of the immigrant population of the steel district is outside the limits of this chapter. I shall set down only what a month brought me as I visited lodging houses, courts, and the mills of Greater Pittsburgh; as I talked with priest and leader, policeman and doctor, banker and labor boss; but I shall present the facts in the light of many years' residence in the anthracite coal communities, where, in another section of Pennsylvania, at Mahanoy City and Wilkesbarre and Scranton, I have known the Slav and the Lett and their efforts to gain a foothold in America. I shall deal with the situation not as it appeared on visits during the hard times of 1907-08, when the immigrants returned home by the thousands, nor in the recurrent depression of 1914; but as I came to know it in the heyday of prosperity, the early fall of 1907. This is the situation with which the intervening years have had much in common and with which we must reckon in a permanent way. In 1880 Slavs, Lithuanians, Hungarians, and Italians formed less than 1 per cent of the population in Pittsburgh [including Allegheny]. By 1890 these peoples, with the other immigrant elements from Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Russia, had reached 3 per cent; by 1900, 6 per cent; by 1910, 13 per cent. By 1900 over one-fourth of the foreign-born population of the two cities combined came from the four countries named. The movement of the Teutonic and Keltic races had practically ceased. The 1910 census* * The foreign-born whites in 1910 numbered 140,436, an increase in ten years of 25,591, or 22.2 per cent. In the same decade the total population of Greater Pittsburgh increased only 18 per cent (from 451,512 to 533,905). It should be noted that the increase in the total population of the entire county was over 30 per cent. 34IMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS shows an actual decrease of 1,514 (from 33,839 to 32,325) in the number of foreign-born whites from Great Britain and Ireland, while the number of whites born in Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Russia had increased from 29,875 in 1900 to 68,487 in 1910. They constituted practically one-half of the foreign born—49 per cent— a proportion all but twice as great as in 1900. Polish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants lead the list from these countries. Lithuanians, Croatians, Servians, Slovaks, and Ruthen-ians are numbered by the thousands, and Magyars, Greeks, Bohemians, and Roumanians are here in lesser groups. Detailed figures for immigrants from Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Russia follow in tabular form. TABLE 2.—POPULATION OF AUSTRIAN, HUNGARIAN, ITALIAN, AND RUSSIAN NATIVITY. PITTSBURGH, I9OO AND I9IOa Country of Birth Persons of Each Specified Nativity in Per Cent Increase 1900 1910 Austriab 9,411 21,400 127.4 Hungary 2,684 6,576 1450 Italy . 6,495 14,120 117.4 Russia0 11,285 26,391 133-9 Total 29,875 68,487 129.2 Persons born as specified as a percentage of the entire foreign-born white population of Pittsburgh . 26 49 # # a United States Census, 1900 and 1910. b Including Austrian Poland and Bohemia. c Including Russian Poland. It must not, however, be forgotten that Jews and Germans form a large proportion of the foreign born from Austria, Hungary, and Russia. The “mother tongue statistics'’ gathered in the last census are interesting in this connection. In Pittsburgh out of the total of foreign-born whites 27.9 per cent spoke “Slavic and Lettic” tongues, and of these more than half were Poles. Immigrants speaking “English and Celtic” tongues formed 25.2 per cent; German-speaking immigrants, 21.6 per cent; Italian-speaking immigrants, 10.1 per cent; and immigrants who spoke Yiddish or Hebrew, 9.1 per cent. See Table 1, page 32. 35WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH The representatives of these nations touch elbows in the streets, so that the languages heard on Saturday night when the people are marketing in the foreign quarters are as numerous as those in a seaport town. Twenty dialects are spoken. Yet the polyglot mass that confuses the visitor and induces pessimistic impressions as to the future of the city is each morning marshalled to work without tumult. The discipline of the industrial establishments converts this babel of tongues into one of the chief forces of production. Therein lies an appraisal not only of the American entrepreneur, but also of the adaptability of these men coming from nations of low efficiency, who are able so quickly to fall into line and keep step in an industrial army of remarkable discipline and output. In normal times every day brings its quota of immigrants; occasionally they come by carloads. The records of the ports of entry show that in 1907, 187,618 persons gave Pittsburgh as their destination, but many of these scattered to the neighboring Pennsylvania towns and many undoubtedly went to the mills and mines of eastern Ohio. The city is a distributing point and owing to this shifting of the newcomers the outflow may often equal the inflow. Conditions in local industries determine which of these two currents runs the swifter. Before taking up the living conditions in Pittsburgh as they especially affect these immigrant laborers, let us consider for a moment certain of their characteristics and their relation to the general economic situation. First, it is the wages that bring them here.* The workers on the hills of Galicia, in the vineyards of Italy, and the factories of Kiev, earn from 25 to 50 cents in a day. When the American immigrant writes home that he earns from $1.50 to $2.00, the ablebodied wage-earner in the fatherland who hears this will not be satisfied until he also stands where the higher *The Federal Immigration Commission, on the basis of its nation-wide inquiry in 1907, reached the same generalization as Dr. Roberts and Mr. Koukol (p. 80) as to the economic motive in present day immigration : “ While social conditions affect the situation in some countries, the present immigration from Europe to the United States is in the largest measure due to economic causes. It should be stated, however, that emigration from Europe is not now an absolute economic necessity, and as a rule those who emigrate to the United States are impelled by a desire for betterment rather than by the necessity for escaping intolerable conditions.” Abstracts of Reports of the Immigration Commission, p. 25. Washington, 1911. 36SlovakIMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS wages govern. It is these homegoing letters more than all else which recruit the labor force. They are efficient promoters of immigration. Said Big Sam to me, in his broken English, “There are no ablebodied men between the ages of sixteen and fifty years left in my native town in Servia; they have all come to America.” When prosperity is at flood, the men in charge of furnaces, foundries, forges, and mills in the Pittsburgh District, can not get the help they need. The cry everywhere is: “Give us men.” A foreman, therefore, will assure Pietro and Melukas that if brothers or cousins or friends are sent for, they will get work as soon as they arrive. More than that, the Slav and Italian are no longer dependent upon the English boss in the matter of finding work for their countrymen. The inflow from southeastern Europe has assumed such proportions in the industries of the cities that superintendents have, in some instances, appointed Italian and Polish and Lithuanian foremen; and with these, as with German and Irish, blood is thicker than water. They employ their fellow-countrymen. They know the condition of the labor market and can by suggestion stimulate or retard immigration. The tonnage industries of Pittsburgh have expanded tremendously in the last two decades. Such industries need strong manual laborers as do no others. The Slavs have brawn for sale. Herein, at bottom, is the drawing force which accounts for such a moving in of peoples and the readiness with which they find their places in the specialized industries of the District. Pittsburgh has clamorous need for these men. Take the average Lithuanian, Croatian, Ruthenian, or Slovak, and his physique compares favorably with that of any people. Most of the immigrants are from agricultural communities. Their food in the fatherland is coarse, their habits are simple, their cares few. They have an abundance of vegetable diet, pure water, pure air, and sunshine, and they develop strong physical organisms. Taking them as a whole, we get the best of the agricultural population. The day has not yet come when the weak emigrate and the strong stay at home. No ship agents, however active, can reverse the natural order of the tide of immigration, and natural selection supplemented by federal scrutiny gives us a body of men physically most fit for the heaviest demands made by our industries. Nowhere has this been better illustrated than in Pittsburgh. 37WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH These men come to be “ the hewers of wood and drawers of water/' There are representatives of each race far removed from the lowest industrial stratum; but taking these people as a whole, the bulk of the unskilled labor in the city—the digging and carrying in the street, the heavy labor in the mill, the loading and unloading of raw material on railroad and river, the rough work at forge and foundry, the coarse work around the factory, and the lifting necessary in the machine shop—is performed by them. This is the level at which they enter the economic order. What trade equipment do they bring into the work with them? Their industrial efficiency is low and I should estimate that 95 per cent have no knowledge of modern machinery or methods of modern production; they are children in factory training. Further, those who have trades find themselves in an industrial environment where their previous training is of little value. They are ignorant of the English language, and the few mechanics and tradesmen among them because of this ignorance can do no better than join the ranks of the common laborers. We must bear in mind, however, that those who know how to use tools, once they are put to work that requires some skill adapt themselves quickly to it. Hence we meet not a few Slavs and Lithuanians who do work of a semi-skilled nature; nor does the exceptional man stop there. Sons, also, of men of these nationalities who settled in the city a generation ago have risen to positions of standing in the industries. It is not unusual to hear of this man or that who has become a foreman in the mills or taken a place in business or in the professions. But on several counts the average Slav, Lithuanian, and Italian is not as acceptable a day laborer as was the immigrant from northwestern Europe. The common opinion of American employers is that the newer immigrants are stupid and that the supervisory force must be much larger than that required for English-speaking help. Many employers would no doubt prefer the latter; but for the wages they offer they must take the Slav or run short-handed. The United States immigration agent in Pittsburgh is constantly besieged by employers of labor who need help. Many stories are told of one firm stealing a group of laborers marshalled at the port of entry for another. The influence which letters and money sent home have 38IMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS in recruiting immigrant workmen has been spoken of. These people make little or no use of labor agencies, unless the saloon and the small bank may be so denominated. In each nationality there are acknowledged leaders who play the part of intermediaries between superintendents and their people. But such investigations as I have made at Ellis Island do not lead me to believe that the employers of labor in Pittsburgh violate the contract labor law.* Labor agencies in New York City make a specialty of distributing Slavs, Lithuanians, and Italians to firms in need of hands. The leader who supplies men to a mill or mining concern gets so much for each man supplied. Whatever contract there may be is executed this side of the water. For instance, 1 found a leading Croatian who had a specific understanding with one of the mills of Pittsburgh that all men he brought would find employment. No contract was executed and in the opinion of the local immigration agent there was in the proceeding no violation of the contract labor law. The drawbacks to the new day laborer as such have been stated. On the other hand, it is a common opinion in the District that some employers of labor give the Slavs and Italians preference over English-speaking applicants because of their docility, their habit of silent submission, their amenability to discipline, and their willingness to work long hours and overtime without a murmur. These foreigners as a rule earn the lowest wages and work the full stint of hours; in the machine shops they work sixty hours a week; at the blast furnaces twelve hours a day for seven days in the week with a twenty-four-hour turn every fortnight. The common laborer in and around the mills works nominally a ten-hour day, but overtime is the rule rather than the exception when trade is good. The unit of wages is an hour rate for day labor, and a Slav is willing to take the longer hours (twelve hours a day for men who may have worked fourteen and sixteen on the farms in the fatherland). In 1907 possibly 60 to 70 per cent of the laborers in the mills came out Sundays for the purpose * In the western district of Pennsylvania, there have been instituted by the United States attorney within ten years 23 suits for violation of the contract labor law, of which one was pending in June, 1913. Of the remaining 22, 21 were discontinued under direction of the attorney general and one was carried through with the result that a verdict of $2,000 and costs was secured. 39WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH of clearing the yards and repairing.* In one mill I found Russians (Greek Orthodox) in favor for the reason that they gladly worked on Sundays. My belief is that certain employers of labor have reaped advantage from racial antipathies. For instance, the Pole and the Lithuanian have nothing in common and each of them despises the Slovak. Superintendents know this and use their knowledge when foreigners are likely to reach a common understanding upon wages or conditions of labor. These considerations have helped make it less difficult for factory operators to keep open shop and nonunion shop in Pittsburgh. The constant influx of raw material from backward nations into the industries of the city has had somewhat the same effect as the flow of water in an estuary when the tide is rising. All is commotion. This condition will exist as long as the inflow of Slavs and Italians continues as it has in the last decade. But when they have become permanently placed and their workaday intelligence and grasp of American conditions rise, racial prejudices will give way to common interests. When this time comes, accustomed as they are to association for protection and to following directions, Pittsburgh will witness the rise of stronger labor organizations than were ever effected by Teuton and Kelt. We have seen, then, the Slavic day laborers coming into the steel district in vast numbers. Of their strength and their lack of skill at the outset there is no doubt. We have noted some of the snap judgments that are current about them; such as, that they are stupid and submissive. And we have noted also some of their potentialities which must be reckoned with en masse in the future. All this puts us in position to get the bearings of my first statement that it is the wages that bring them to Pittsburgh, and to see what advances they are able to make once they have gained a foothold. The Slav enters the field at a rate of pay for day labor which is higher than that which brought the Germans and the Kelts. The lowest wage I found Slavs working for was 13^ cents an hour. * It was not until 1910 that the Steel Corporation began to enforce its rule against unnecessary Sunday work. 40Photo by Hiñe ItalianIMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS The wage of common labor in a majority of the steel mills in 1907 was 15 or i6>£ cents for a ten- or a twelve-hour day.* But the newcomers know nothing of a standard wage, and when work is scarce they will offer to work for less than is paid for common labor. Such was the case with a band of Croatians who offered their services to a firm in Pittsburgh for $1.20 a. day. When the superintendent heard it he said, “ My God, what is the country coming to? How can a man live in Pittsburgh on $1.20 a day?” The foreman replied, “ Give them rye bread, a herring, and beer, and they are all right.” (1 have known a coal operator in the anthracite fields to pay Italians and Slovaks 90 cents a day, and ask neither what was the country coming to nor how they could subsist.) More, the Slavs will consciously cut wages in order to get work. A man who knows something about blacksmithing or carpentering will work at a trade for little more than half the standard wage of the District. They count their money in the denominations of the fatherland and estimate its value according to old country standards. Some foremen take advantage of this. Again, skilled men will at the command of the boss render menial services without a murmur. “These fellows have no pride,” said an American craftsman to me; “they are not ruled by custom. When the foreman demands it they will throw down the saw or hammer and take the wheelbarrow.” So the Slav gains his foothold in the Pittsburgh industries, and while gaining it he undermines the income of the next higher industrial group and incurs the enmity of the Americans. Shrewd superintendents are known not only to take advantage of the influx of unskilled labor to keep down day wages, but to reduce the pay of skilled men by a gradually enforced system of promoting the Slavs. In the place of six men at $10 a day, one will be employed at $15, with five others at half, or less than half, the old rate, who will work under the high-priced man. Inventions, changes in processes, new machines, a hundred elements tend to complicate the situation and render it difficult to disentangle the influence of any one element. But this much is clear: the new immigra- * For present rates, see Commons, John R.: Wage-earners of Pittsburgh. P. 119 of this volume. 41WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH tion is a factor which is influencing the economic status of the whole wage-earning population in Pittsburgh; it is bound to be a permanent factor; and its influence will be more and not less. It is a mistake to imagine that the Slav or Lithuanian can not adapt himself to modern industrial conditions. Possibly 20 per cent of these laborers from southeastern Europe now work at machines, the skill needed to operate which requires a week or two weeks to acquire. To be sure, they are machines “so simple that a child could operate them, and so strong that a fool can not break them.” Many Slovaks work for the Pressed Steel Car Company in Allegheny, as riveters, punchers, and pressmen, while others are fitters, carpenters, and blacksmiths. Some Croatians and Servians are rising and are found in the steel mills as roughers and catchers. I saw Ruthenians feeding machines with bars of white-hot steel. It was simple, mechanical work, but of a higher grade than that of scrap-carrier. The Poles who during recent years have emigrated from Russia and Austria-Hungary are as industrially efficient as any group of immigrants and work in both mills and foundries. A foreigner who has a chance to become a machine operator generally goes into piece work and in 1907 his earnings were likely to average from $2.00 to $2.50 a day. But all men at the machines are not on piece work. A foreman explained this to me as follows: “ If the machine depends upon the man for speed, we put him on piece work; if the machine drives the man, we pay him by the day.” The man operating a machine by the day got from $1.75 to $2.00. Many boys and young women of Slavic parentage work in the spike, nut and bolt, and steel wire factories. They sat before machines and pickling urns for ten hours and received from 75 cents to $1.00 a day. The Slovak riveters, punchers, shearsmen, and pressmen in the Pressed Steel Car Company's plant were paid by the piece and for the most part made from $35 to $50 in two weeks.* Fitters, carpenters, blacksmiths, and painters were getting from $2.00 to $2.50 by the day. A Slavic banker told me of Croatians and Ser- * A pooling system, accompanied by rate cuts, which was put in effect in 1909, led to a prolonged strike in which Slavs and Americans joined forces. See The Survey, XXII: 656-665 (August 7, 1909). 42IMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS vians who made as high as $70 in two weeks, and others who made between $3.00 and $4.00 a day—many of them in positions which once paid English-speaking workmen twice those sums. High and low are relative terms and they signify very different standards to a Slav and to an American. There is much that inspires to prophecy in the sight of the thousands of Slavs already doing efficient work in the mills. The sooner the English-speaking workers recognize this and make friends of these workers, the better. No class of work is now monopolized by Teuton and Kelt, and the service rendered by the Slav and Lithuanian will before many years equal that of the former in market value. With this rapid statement of the economic position of the Slavs, we can more intelligently approach the problem of their living conditions. But first let us bear sharply in mind that their work is often cast among dangers; is often inimical to health. Many work in intense heat, the din of machinery, and the noise of escaping steam. The congested condition of most of the plants in Pittsburgh adds to the physical discomforts for an out-of-doors people, while their ignorance of the language and of modern machinery increases the risk. How many of the Slavs, Lithuanians, and Italians were injured in Pittsburgh in one year no one could tell me in 1907. No reliable statistics were compiled. In their absence people guessed and the mischief wrought by contradictory and biased statements was met with on all hands. When I mentioned to a priest a plant that had a bad reputation he said, “Oh, that is the slaughter house; they kill them there every day.” I quote him not for his accuracy, but to show how rumors circulate and are real to the people themselves. Exaggerated though such hearsay was, the waste in life and limb has for years been great—and so continues—and if it had all fallen upon the native born a cry would have gone up long since which would have stayed the slaughter.* * Of the 500 industrial fatalities in one year in Allegheny County (July 1, 1906, to June 30, 1907), gathered by the Pittsburgh Survey from the coroner’s office, the employer, and the family, 293 were foreign born. See, in this volume, Kellogg, Paul U.: Community and Workshop, p. 24; Porter, op. cit., page 245; and Appendix XX, Bureau of Safety, Relief, Sanitation, and Welfare, U. S. Steel Corporation. See also Eastman, Crystal: Work-Accidents and the Law. (The 43WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH In the matter of compensation for injuries, the American workman has been and remains at sore disadvantage under Pennsylvania laws, but the foreign speaking has been subjected to additional injustice.* Up to 1911, if the widow of a man killed in a mine or mill of Pennsylvania lived in Europe she could not recover any damages,! even though the accident were entirely due to the neglect of the company. Because of this ruling, certain strong companies in the Pittsburgh District seldom paid a cent to the relatives of the deceased if they dwelt beyond the seas. I asked a leader among the Italians, “Why do you settle the serious cases for a few hundred dollars?” He replied: “We find it best after much bitter experience. The courts are against us; a jury will not mulct a corporation to send money to Europe; the relatives are not here to bewail their loss in court; the average American cares nothing for the foreigner. Every step of the way we meet with prejudices and find positive contempt, from those in highest authority in the courts down to the tipstaff. When I settle for $200, I can do nothing better.” The influence of the industries reaches still further into the lives of the immigrants. Each people has a tendency to colonize in one section of the city and to work in some one mill. The Bohemians are strong in Allegheny City, but few of them are found in Pittsburgh. The Slovaks predominate in McKees Rocks and Allegheny City, and many of them are found in the Soho district of Pittsburgh. The Poles are numerous in many parts of the Greater City. The Lithuanians live in large numbers on the South Side and near the National Tube Works and the American Steel and Wire Company. Many Ruthenians work in the Oliver Pittsburgh Survey.) An appendix therein presents the accident prevention work carried on by the constituent companies of the Steel Corporation—the largest employer of the District—under a central safety committee appointed April, 1908. Certain progressive employers, as the Pittsburgh Steel Company, had earlier addressed themselves to some phases of the problem; more have done so since. But there is no local or state compilation of accident statistics that amounts to anything, and the public remains in ignorance as to the current human loss in industry. * See p. 24, this volume. f This law of 1911 provides that when an alien dies from injuries the husband, widow, parents, or children of such alien, although residing abroad at the time of the injury, can recover damages. 44New Pittsburghers and Old Uniformed national societies in the sesqui-centennial parade in igoS. Two highlanders, representative of the older immigration, at the lower rightBasin Alluy In the Italian quarter on the Hill, PittsburghIMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS Steel Works, while the Croatians and Servians have worked for the most part in the Jones and Laughlin plants. My information is that other things being equal, foremen try to get one nationality in assigning work to a group of laborers, for they know that a homogeneous group will give them the best results. National pride also enters into selection. In talking to a Lithuanian of the serious loss of life which had occurred when a furnace blew up, 1 asked, “Were any of your people killed in that accident?” He answered quickly, “No; catch our people doing such work as that! There you find the Slovak.” Of the grades of unskilled labor, the Slovak, Croatian, Servian, and Russian (Greek Orthodox) may be said to perform tasks the roughest and most risky, and the most injurious to health. There is, then, a more or less natural selection of peoples in the neighborhood of the different great mills. The geographical contour of the region has also had its influence in keeping the foreign population within certain limited districts. The two rivers, the Allegheny and the Monongahela, have cut their beds into the Allegheny range, leaving a narrow strip of land on either side of their banks which offers limited sites for dwellings, mills, and factories. The lowlands were preempted long ago, and the contest for parts of them between the mills and the homes has been intense. There is an advantage to the employer, however, in having his crude labor force within easy call, and night work and the cost of carfare help keep the mass of men employed in common labor near the mills and on the congested lowlands. I visited homes of Slavs and Lithuanians which were clean, well furnished, and equal in comfort to those of Americans of the same economic level. These foreigners had been in the country many years and their children had become thoroughly assimilated. But our first concern is with the recent comers, who too often live in lodgings that are filthy; whose peasant habits seem to us uncouth; and whose practices are fatal to decency and morality in a thickly settled district. Yet the foreigner pays a higher rent than does the “white man.” In Bass Street, Allegheny City, English-speaking tenants were paying $15 a month for four rooms, but Slavs were charged 45WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH $20; others paid $10 and $12 a month for houses for which Slavs were charged $17 and $18. On Penn Avenue a Slav paid $17 for three rear rooms, while an English-speaking family renting eight rooms in the front of the building paid but $33. One family paid $9.50 for one large room in an old residence on the South Side; another paid $10 for two rooms, another $16 for three; and on Brandt Street a man was found who paid $22 a month for four. The rent is not always fixed by the landlord. Where lodgers are taken it is sometimes regulated by the number the “boarding boss” can crowd in, the landlord getting $1.00 a month extra for each boarder. Many houses of from eight to 12 rooms had in them anywhere from three to six families. They were built for one family, and until such time as the owners might be forced by the bureau of health to install sanitary appliances, there was every prospect that they would have equipment for but one. Too many landlords when they deal with foreigners have apparently one dominating passion—rent. They make no repairs, and with the crowded condition above described the houses soon bear marks of ill usage. Whenever foreigners invade a neighborhood occupied by English-speaking tenants, property depreciates. The former occupants get out, the invaders multiply, and often the properties pass into the hands of speculators. Houses once occupied by Slavs can seldom be rented again to Anglo-Saxons. It is in the immigrant lodging houses that conditions are the worst, though not always so with the choice of the men. The Croatians, Servians, Roumanians, and Greeks have only from 5 to 10 per cent of women among them; hence the men of these nationalities have but few boarding houses conducted by their own people to go to, and crowding is inevitable. English-speaking and German families will not open their doors to them. Single men in groups of from six to 20 go into one house in charge of a boarding boss and his wife. Each man pays from 75 cents to fi.ooa week for a place to sleep and the little cooking and washing that are to be done. Accounts of food for the company are kept in one book, and every two weeks the sum total is divided equally among the boarders, each man paying his pro rata share. The bill for two weeks will hardly amount to $3.00 a man, so that the average boarder will spend perhaps $10 a month on room rent 46IMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS and maintenance. When men pay $3.50 for room rent, soup is included in the contract.* The mania for saving results in many cases in skimping on the necessaries of life. A priest told me of a Lithuanian who spent 10 cents a day for food and by helping the landlady in her housework saved his room rent. A number of Russians on Tustine Street were paying $3.00 a month for room rent; they bought bread made by Russian Jews, got a herring and a pot of beer, and lived—not always—in peace. Domestic tragedies sometimes invade these communal households, such as a case of assault and battery which came up in an alderman's office. The complainant was a single man who appeared with a ghastly scalp wound. When his boarding boss had presented his bill at the end of two weeks, the charges were $5.00 more than the boarder thought they should be. He protested and the boarding boss took a hatchet to silence him. In these boarding establishments the kitchen is commonly used as a bedroom. When the boarding boss rents two rooms, he and his wife sleep in the kitchen, and the boarders take the other room. It is not altogether unusual for a boarding boss to rent but one room. He and his wife put their bed in one corner, the stove in another, and the boarders take the remaining corners. Sometimes the rooms are so crowded that the boss and his wife sleep on the floor; and cases were repeatedly to be found where beds were being worked double shift—night and day. The city bureau of health in 1907 endeavored to reduce the number of beds in a room, but it did not follow that the people occupying that room got out,—they slept on the floor minus the bed. The problem is one of the hardest that sanitary inspectors have to cope with. Sometimes four or six men rent a house and run it themselves, doing their own cooking and washing and occasionally bringing in a woman to clean a little. They may stand this for about six months and then leave when the rooms are past cleaning. Such crowding is very prevalent in the low-lying parts of the South Side, in the neighborhood of Penn Avenue in the city * For a more extended presentation of the boarding boss system, see Byington, Margaret F.: Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town, pp. 138-140. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) 47WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH proper, and in sections of Allegheny. On Tustine Street I found 33 Russians, composing three families, living in one house of six rooms and an attic. The Croatians also crowd badly. A milk dealer told me of 28 who lived in a small house in Carey Alley. When I asked, “ How do they live?'' his reply was, “ I don't know and don't care if I get my money for my milk." His reply summed up the attitude of many of the English-speaking people who have dealings with them. In Pork House Row and near Eckert Street in Allegheny, things were no better, and conditions in some blocks of houses under the California Avenue bridge were as bad as any seen. The Italians are close livers; but possibly the worst conditions I saw were among the Armenians in the neighborhood of Basin Alley. Before we condemn immigrants, however, for the filth of their lodgings, we must remember that they are largely rural people unused to such city barracks, and that they are frequent sufferers from our own municipal neglect. This fact is illustrated especially by their ignorance of the danger of typhoid fever. Dr. Leon Sadowski estimated that as high as 50 per cent of all young foreigners who had come to Pittsburgh up to 1907, contracted typhoid within two years of their coming.* Dr. Maracovick told me that in four years no less than 100 Croatians in the neighborhood of Smallman Street had come down with the fever, and that most of them had died. “You can not make the foreigner believe that Pittsburgh water is unwholesome," said another physician. “ He comes from rural communities where contamination of water is unknown." Other physicians told of men who had been warned, deliberately going to the river to quench their thirst. Where so many single men are huddled together the laws of decency and morality are hard to observe. The boarding boss seldom has a family and, in going the round of these houses, the absence of children is conspicuous. A physician who works among them said, “The average boarding boss's wife can not have any,—the moral conditions make it a physical impossibility." * The municipal filtration plant which has overcome this situation was first operated in 1908. See Wing, Frank E.: Thirty-five Years of Typhoid. The Pittsburgh District, p. 63. 48Four Beds in a Room; Two in a Bed The young fellow at the table was writing home. Before him were pictures of his mother and sisters in immaculate costumes Night Scene in a Slavic Lodging House Three men in the far bed, two in each of the others, twelve in the room. In some of these lodgings day workers sleep at night in the beds occupied by night workers in the daytimeSlavic Lodging House on South Side Bedroom and common kitchen where food for lodgers is preparedIMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS She stands in striking contrast to the average Slavic woman who in her natural environment is the mother of children. These mid-European peoples are not so passionate as the Italians, but many of the single men, as is the case in all barracks life, will fall into vice. A physician told me that gonorrhea is very prevalent among the Croatians and Servians; another said of the Slavs in general, “They frequent cheap bawdy houses and come out diseased and robbed/' Many brothels hereabouts are known as “Johnny Houses," for the reason that they are frequented by foreigners whose proper names are unpronounceable and who go by the name of “John." These were houses of the cheapest kind given over to prostitutes in the last stages.* The number entering them on a “wide-awake" (pay) Saturday night was large. A man who knew this section fairly well, said, “Sometimes these men have to wait their turn." The presence of young immigrant women in the lodging houses adds to the seriousness of the situation. Here again it is a question of wages that brings them to this country. They do the drudgery in the hotels and restaurants which English-speaking girls will not do; and they are to be found in factories working under conditions which their English-speaking sisters would resent.f If any persons need protection, these young women do. There was no adequate inspection of the labor employment agencies in Pittsburgh, which solicit patronage among them, often to wrong them. Not only did some of these agencies make a practice of taking their money but they sent girls to houses unfit for them. An innocent girl may learn the character of the house only when it is too late. And even if sent to the average immigrant lodging house her lot is a hard one, especially when the men of the place are on a carouse. Slavs and Lithuanians are fond of drink and spend their money freely on it. Some spend more money on beer than they do on food. The evidences of drink in the homes were apparent on all sides. Empty beer kegs and bottles were to be seen everywhere. In Latimore Alley on a September morning, 1 counted * See Forbes, James: The Reverse Side. P. 307 of this volume. t See Butler, Elizabeth B.* Women and the Trades, pp. 24-25. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) 4* 49WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH 20 empty kegs in one yard; and in another corner there was a pile of empty bottles. It is nothing unusual for a beer wagon on Saturday to deliver into one of these boarding houses from eight to 12 cases of beer. When a keg is opened the boarders feel that they must drain it. “ It won't keep," they say. Sunday is the day for drinking. One man often drinks from 15 to 20 bottles, while he who drinks from the keg consumes from two to three gallons. The appalling size of these draughts is of course influenced by customs in the old country where beers are many times lighter than our intoxicating American brews. No social gathering is complete without drink. Marriages, baptisms, social occasions, holidays are all celebrated with beer and liquor. There is no good time and no friendship without it. The Slavs usually rent a hall to celebrate their weddings. The scenes of debauchery with which such festivities sometimes end are discountenanced by the respectable element. Not only do national customs and national tastes and usages make for drunkenness, but also the undeniable fact that the liquor saloons are the only American institutions which effectively reach the great mass of the non-English-speaking immigrants. For the young men pool rooms afford loafing places of the worst sort. The cheap vaudeville shows, nickelodeons, and skating rinks are run for profit and not for the sake of clean recreation such as the community should provide. Where the environment of the home is insanitary and repulsive, and where opportunities for recreation are limited and sordid, crime is bound to flourish. Approximately one-fifth of the persons incarcerated in Allegheny County in recent years have been immigrants from southeastern Europe. A visit to the police stations of the South Side on Sunday morning when the police magistrate dispenses justice after a “wide-awake" Saturday night, is a thing never to be forgotten.* In such a section the foreigners form a majority of the offenders. On one of my visits to a South Side court a young Slav was brought in who had violated a city ordinance. He could not speak English. The magistrate asked him how long he had been in the country. “Four years," he replied. “And you can not talk English?" said * See Forbes, James: The Reverse Side. P. 378 of this volume. 50IMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS the judge. “ Don't you know that you ought to learn English that you may know we have laws and ordinances which must be obeyed?" In the judge's remark there was a deeper commentary on civic duties unfulfilled than he perhaps realized. Who was to blame? Was it the Slav boy? Or was it the community which had failed to meet him halfway? Here it is well to point out that the public school authorities had not made any strenuous effort to open evening schools for foreign adults in the city. The notable exception to this rule was the work conducted by Principal J. W. Anthony among the\Jewish people of the Hill District, which grew out of classes at Columbian Settlement. Another evening school, in the establishment of which a priest was the prime mover, met with fair success for a time, but the foreigners dropped out quickly. When asked why the school was given up, one of the school officials said that the pupils did not want it to continue. Their hours of work, however, their fatigue, and changing shifts probably were more important factors. Kingsley House, Woods Run, and Columbian Settlement were carrying on successful classes for foreigners, and the Young Men's Christian Associations of the districts were only entering the field of civic and language instruction.* The development of the evening courses of the Carnegie Technical Schools had been significant, but as yet they had not reached unskilled immigrants, who need a nearby elementary help. The camp school opened at Aspinwall in 1905 by Miss Sarah Moore for the Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants, was the first of its sort in the country. This school and the later one carried on at Ambridge illustrated what could be done, and what response could be looked for from the immigrants themselves. More important still, these schools were in 1907 the means of securing the passage in Pennsylvania of legislation en- * Dr. Roberts’ report in 1907 as a member of a committee of the Pennsylvania Young Men’s Christian Association led to a recognition of the importance of work for immigrants by both state and national bodies. He was made secretary for immigration of the new Industrial Department of the International Committee and this Pittsburgh investigation was his first field work as a basis for mapping out plans. In the years succeeding, there has been a remarkable expansion in the work among foreigners carried on by the Young Men’s Christian Association in the Pittsburgh District. See Appendix III, p. 414 of this volume.—Editor. 51WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH abling local school authorities to open classes for adults. But in Greater Pittsburgh it remained true that the educational authorities were not yet awake to the importance of opening schools for foreign-speaking people and inducing them to attend. Yet there could have been no greater service rendered these young foreigners (or the city that harbors them) than that of aiding them to form clubs, and of engaging competent men to teach them English and give them some idea of the history and laws of the country.* In police station No. 3 on Penn Avenue, the cases averaged 445 a month during the ten months covered by my study. Drunkenness and disorderly conduct predominated, and 27 per cent of the charges were brought against foreigners from southeastern Europe. Three-quarters of the accused were single men. The large number of single men among the foreigners who lack decent homes doubtless partly accounts for the frequency of their arrest. Similar proportions were found at station No. 7, Carson Street. The docket of an alderman's court on the South Side, in an area where Slavs and Lithuanians form a large part of the population, showed that 40 per cent of the accused were of these nationalities; but these cases varied greatly from those in the police stations. His list tended to confirm the general report that the aldermen were giving preference to cases where fees were sure. Immigrants, ofttimes innocent, were the special prey of such as were unscrupulous. Even so, profits were not what they once had been. "The foreigner knows too much now; old times are past," a constable said. In the old times he had made from $15 to $20 a day. But even if the most flagrant abuses are now infrequent and if some of the aldermen are of good character, the system of irresponsible petty judges, dependent along with their court attendants upon the fees that come in, is wrong, and the foreigner is the most grievous sufferer from it.f * See North, Lila Ver Planck: Pittsburgh Schools. The Pittsburgh District, p. 287. Also Kennard, Beulah: The New Pittsburgh School System. Ibid., p. 469. Action taken by the new central board of education in 1912, made night classes an integral part of the system of public education. For a description of the work of school and home libraries among foreigners see Olcott, Frances J.: The Public Library. The Pittsburgh District, p. 334. f In 1911 by act of legislature a county court with five judges was established. In Pittsburgh, it makes a resort to aldermanic courts in civil cases practically unnecessary. In spite of the feeling against aldermanic courts, it was found im- 52Photo by A. Sokoloff Young RussianSlovak Lithuanian Daughters of the new immigration ServianIMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS We must not, however, over-estimate the lawlessness among these people. We have seen the manner of life of the single men of the industrial army, and the dangers that beset them. What encouragement is there to the immigrant who seriously wants to get ahead in life? A priest estimated that one-tenth of the young men of his race who come to this District go to the bad; the other nine-tenths may drink more or less, but they manage to save money and in time acquire property. Of the Lithuanian families in Pittsburgh more than io per cent own their homes. Many Poles and Slovaks also have purchased homes. When an Italian resolves to stay in this country, he buys a house. But in 1907 few Croatians, Ruthenians, and Servians owned real estate. It must be remembered that there are influential Slavs and Lithuanians living in the better residential sections. Some Poles and Italians are in the professions, and some Lithuanians are prosperous business men. All these people, however, do business among their own countrymen, and as yet their influence is largely restricted to this circle. The leading banks of Pittsburgh have learned that immigrants save their money, and many of them have a foreign exchange department in charge of a foreignspeaking man who is a leader among his countrymen. A banker doing business among the Servians stated that each pay day he sent back between $20,000 and $25,000 to the old country. In September of 1907, one of the banks on the South Side where the foreigners do business had $600,000 on deposit. Such a showing had come only after a vigorous campaign on the part of the banks of Pittsburgh to overcome the distrust which foreigners felt toward private institutions. Individual small banks conducted by men of their own nationality were the rule for many years. The institutions were ephemeral and the impression prevailed among the laborers that they were schemes of sinister men to wheedle their money from them. Some men still secrete their savings, trusting no one. possible to abolish them immediately, both because of the strong political influence of the aldermen in their several wards and because a constitutional amendment is held to be necessary. So that in civil matters, wherever a litigant is so disposed, and in criminal matters, the aldermen ply their activities as of yore. The county court, which has proved eminently satisfactory to attorneys and the public, is regarded as an entering wedge which will ultimately result in the abolishment of aldermanic courts in Pittsburgh. They continue to be the petty custodians of law and rights in the minor industrial communities of the state. See Blaxter, H. V.: The Aldermen and their Courts. The Pittsburgh District, p. 139. Also Kellogg, op. cit., p. 13, and Forbes, op. cit., p. 376 of this volume. 53WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Through the courtesy of one of the Pittsburgh bankers, this table of 12 representative Slavic depositors is given: TABLE 3.—AMOUNTS DEPOSITED BY 12 SLAVS IN A PITTSBURGH BANK. I906-I907 Depositors Amounts Deposited During Total Deposited September, October, and November December, January, and February March, April, and May June, July, and August A $95 ins $20 $207 $437 B 103 63 93 76 335 C 45 25 25 105 200 D 35 135 95 73 338 E 110 60 60 50 280 F 100 100 100 , . 300 G 60 60 60 55 235 H 240 150 50 115 555 I 70 190 *45 120 525 j .. .. 100 200 300 K 100 • • 200 140 440 L 105 50 90 40 285 The extent to which the new postal savings system has been utilized in Pittsburgh is shown in the following table: TABLE 4.—POSTAL SAVINGS DEPOSITS AND DEPOSITORS BY RACE AND COUNTRY OF BIRTH OF DEPOSITORS, PITTSBURGH, JUNE 30, I912 Race and Country of Birth Deposits Depositors Average Amount per Depositor Total Amount Number Per Cent Native-born whites $67.98 $21,415 3*5 43-7 Foreign-born whites born in Austria-Hungary 124.41 I7,79i *43 19.9 Russia .... 105.66 6,234 59 8.2 Italy 140.93 6,624 47 6.5 Germany .... 100.98 4,140 4* 5-7 England .... 91-34 3>745 4* 5-7 Ireland .... 98.74 2,666 27 3-7 Other foreign countries a . 93.85 3,i9i 34 4-7 Total .... $113.24 $44,391 392 54-4 Negroes . . . 25.64 359 14 1.9 Grand total $91-77 $66,165 721 100.0 a Includes countries represented by less than 20 depositors. 54Servian Mother and Child Family of an orthodox priestLithuanian Women-folk A door-step group in BraddockIMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS In this connection it is interesting to examine once more what might be called the personal ledger of the Slavic day laborer in Pittsburgh. We had seen that more than half the Italians, Croatians, Servians, and Ruthenians are single men, and that a large proportion of the other races are similarly placed. Many are married but their wives are across the seas. Their policy is to make all they can and spend as little as possible. We saw that in 1907 the wages of common labor were from $1.35 to $1.65 a day and that those who had acquired a little skill earned from $1.75 to $2.25. The monthly expenditure for board and lodging of single men bent on saving did not exceed $10 a month. Some Russians complained when their monthly bill amounted to $8.00. The drinking bill did not exceed $5.00 a month; and the sum spent on clothing hardly equaled that. A common laborer easily saved from $10 to $15 a month; the semi-skilled workers from $20 to $25, boarding bosses were accumulating what was to them a competence. But while the wages of the day laborers in the District were high for the single man who lived in lodgings, the foreigner who brought his family here and paid American prices for the necessities of life, faced a different situation.* The father of a family could not hope to get accommodations for less than $12 or $15 a month, and then he would have only two or three rooms. The Slav, as we have seen, had to pay more than the English-speaking man for the same house. The man who earned less than $40 a month and paid even $12 in rent had not a large fund on which to raise a family. He belonged to one or two lodges, which meant an outlay of $1.00 to $\.50 each month. He usually paid 50 cents a month to his church, and as often sent his children to the parochial school at, say, another 50 cents for each, or $1.00 for three. He had to buy the school books needed by the child, which might amount yearly to from $3.00 to $4.00. Is it surprising then, that the children were sent to work at an early age and that many were reared in cramped and dirty quarters? When mills are running regularly and the father is able to work each day, such a family manages to get along. But when * For a statistical study of the budgets of unskilled laborers see Byington, Margaret F.: Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town, p. 138. As food prices have advanced more rapidly than wages of common labor, the predicament of the immigrant family is at least as serious today as in 1907. See Commons, op. cit., p. 119; also Appendix VII, Advance in Cost of Living in Workingmen's Families Since 1907, p. 440. 55WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH sickness comes or work ceases, then the pinch of hunger is felt. Miss Lippincott, for many years secretary of the Pittsburgh Association for Improvement of the Poor, stated that in good times but few Slavs or Lithuanians applied for aid; that only when the father was killed or injured was aid occasionally needed. The fraternal organizations among the Slavs, Lithuanians, and Italians both provoke thrift and provide various forms of insurance against mischance. They are the dominant form of social organization and afford opportunities for leadership to the stronger men. The National Slovak Society, for instance, had in 1908 a membership of 50,000, and the Polish National Alliance 75,000. Pittsburgh had some 30 locals of the latter society alone, each with a list of from 40 to 300 members. The lodge organizations of these people can not be discussed here in detail;* it is sufficient to note that in case of sickness and death they look after their members, that they provide social centers for the more thrifty of the people, and tend generally to raise the standard of life. Besides these lodges, the Slavs, Lithuanians, and Italians have organizations for enjoyment and amusement; the Poles have societies also for self-culture, such as dramatic clubs and singing societies. There is reason to believe that the home governments of these people foster the formation of organizations along racial lines; the church also fosters racial societies. In so far as such organizations perpetuate national customs and habits in America, they tend to make assimilation difficult. A strong people swayed by racial consciousness on foreign soil will either impose its own concepts and ideals upon the social life around it and modify it, or will build around itself a wall which the customs and habits of the country will find difficulty in penetrating. This is seen in Pittsburgh. The Poles and Italians form a city within a city, the customs and habits of which are distinctly Polish and Italian. When we come to political life, we must accord leadership to other than the Slavic groups—to the Italians. A political leader among them claimed that four-fifths of all Italians in Pittsburgh who had been in the country five years were naturalized. He held that the Italians of Pittsburgh polled about 5,000 votes which were scattered over 11 wards. Next to the Italians came the Poles. The Polish vote was set at 4,000. Many of these men * See Byington, op. cit., pp. 158-168. 56Photo by Hine Greek Orthodox Priest from Croatia “In trouble the priests are the people’s counselors; they sympathize with them in their struggles’’Slavic Churches " The people give freely of their hard earnings to erect costly churches”IMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS had been voters for years, but of the influx that had come to Pittsburgh within the ten years preceding 1907, not 20 per cent had been naturalized. The Poles had two or three political clubs, and such clubs were also found among the Lithuanians and Croatians. Too frequently the racial leaders—often saloon keepers—are the satellites of some English-speaking politician who through them controls the foreign vote. Some of the more intelligent foreigners are dissatisfied with this manipulation of their people. Among them young men are arising with political aspirations. It will not be long before the city will feel their presence. If in some 15 wards the Polish and Italian votes were to unite, their leaders would hold the balance of power.* Slavs, Lithuanians, and Italians have a strong religious element in their make-up which plays a never-ending part in such racial communities as are to be found in the Pittsburgh District. Unless this element is reckoned with these people are not to be understood. The great majority belong to the Roman Catholic church. Some Protestants are found among the Slovaks, Lithuanians, Magyars, and Italians, but they form only a small percentage.f Certain of the southern Slavs are subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Russians maintain a Greek Orthodox church. Religious ceremonies and observances have strongest hold upon Poles and Lithuanians, Croatians, and Servians. J We have seen that the number of men far exceeds that of women among these immigrants from southeastern Europe. This the church attendance corroborates. I have seen in Pittsburgh a congregation of 1,000 men, all in the prime of life, so intent upon the religious exercises that the least movement of the priest at the altar found immediate response in every member of the audience. The ritual * In 1910 the city was distributed into larger ward units than formerly. The 15 old wards specified in the text have now been included within the boundaries of six new wards. An indication of the truth of the power of a united foreign vote is found in the fact that Attorney Frank A. Piekarski, a Pole, was appointed assistant city solicitor in 1909. t The Protestant denominations in the city conduct mission work among the Slavs and Italians. Several missionaries, colporteurs, and Bible readers are employed. JThe Roman Catholic church has not the influence over the Bohemians and Italians that it has over the above mentioned people. Many of the Bohemians are free thinkers. The Italians are religious but for the most part lukewarm in their attitude toward the church, and their edifices do not compare with those of the Poles. 57WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH of the church has a deep hold upon Slav and Lithuanian; often the men go to confession at six in the morning in order that they may go to communion the day following. When men are so employed that they can not attend mass on Sundays, they will attend one on Saturdays. The home must be consecrated once a year; and hundreds take their baskets laden with provisions to church on Easter morning that the priest may bless the feast they hope to enjoy that day. If we measure the efficiency of the Roman Catholic church among the Slavs and Lithuanians in Pittsburgh by the money spent on buildings and maintenance, it can not be equaled by either American Catholicism or Protestantism. The people give freely of their hard earnings to erect costly church edifices and support the priesthood. The Slavs and Lithuanians have been on the South Side of Pittsburgh only for twenty years, but in 1907 they possessed church property valued at three-quarters of a million dollars, and most of it is paid for. They also erect parochial schools and maintain them.* The priests have great power over the lives of their people. Some are charged with accumulating riches, but taken as a whole, I view them as a body of men loyal to their vows and honoring the profession which they serve. These priests are busy men. A parish of two or three thousand means endless activities. With the influx of Slavs and Lithuanians into the country, and the necessity of organizing new parishes, the difficulty has been to secure properly qualified priests to take charge of them. Hence many of these clergy are overworked. Considering the great numbers of their countrymen constantly arriving from Europe, it is surprising how carefully the priests keep in touch with the newcomers. Some whose parishes are constantly changing take a census each year. They know the affairs of their people; their housing conditions, their hardships in mine and mill, the wrongs they suffer. In trouble, the priests are the counselors of their parishioners; sympathize with them in their struggles; institute and manage insurance societies against sickness and accident. Some found and control building and loan associations. Their influence lies * See North, Lila Ver Planck: Pittsburgh Schools. Part II, Roman Catholic Parish Schools in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh District, p. 228. 58IMMIGRANT WAGE-EARNERS primarily with the adults who come from the fatherland. The children are not so amenable to the discipline of the church; neither do they give their earnings as freely to its support. The forward problem of the church thus becomes one of meeting the religious needs of men and women of Slavic blood reared in a new country. In this sketch of the foreign-speaking peoples of Pittsburgh, brief though it be, we have seen how dependent the industries of the city have been upon the supply of ablebodied men from the agricultural communities of Europe that have freely given their strength to the expansion of these industries. Never was there an army of workers more docile or willing. That they undermine the income of the next higher industrial groups is clear, but once their foothold is secure, we may expect the rise of stronger labor organizations among them than those they have been used to displace.* For even more than English-speaking people they believe in mutual protection, organizing and conducting various societies for this purpose. The churches owned by them represent offerings made by men who literally earn their bread by the sweat of their brows; and while they find their pleasures in crude ways, many save money, and the number who own homes is increasing. It is also clear that there are imperative needs of these people which should be met if the cause of civilization is to be served. The fatal and non-fatal injuries of the mill fall heavily upon them. The value placed upon human life here will not bear comparison with that of older countries whose civilization we claim is lower than ours. Each week a tale of wrong and suffering, agony and death, is sent across the water, which seriously reflects upon the industrial life of America. We have seen that the housing conditions considered are a disgrace to civilization, and that the insufficiency of houses, the greed of landlords, the exigencies of some of the people and the penury of others, bring about this condition. There should be * Abundant proof has been given of the ability of foreign workmen to unite. A case in point was the strike in the Pressed Steel Car Works in 1909. Foreigners had displaced striking English-speaking workmen six years before; later, they themselves went on a prolonged and bloody strike. 59WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH stricter regulation of immigrant boarding houses alike in city and mill towns. Americans who coin money in shacks and those foreign born who are too greedy to pay for decent quarters, should feel the firm hand of the law. But negative work is not enough; positive and aggressive work must be done if these foreigners are to rise to the measure of their opportunity. Every nationality has its esthetic side. Other cities have fostered the national dance, have encouraged works of art, and have induced the foreigner to show the artistic side of his nature. This in far greater measure should be done in Pittsburgh.* If these people had incentive to develop their needlework, to show their artistic skill, to sing their national songs, and to dance their native dances, to contribute their culture to the common store, the life of the city would be richer and stronger. Then why should the descendants of those who gave Lafayette a welcome, and who championed the cause of Kossuth, not go forth in sympathy to these people of Slav and Iberic origin? The rich inheritance of our institutions we cherish; we believe them to be more excellent than any which the older countries of Europe can boast. Thousands of these people yearn for an insight into that form of democratic government that has made America great among the nations of the earth. But they are left in ignorance of our language, our laws, our government, and our history. We should be willing to meet them halfway. Public schools should enter into this work with greater zeal; and social agencies stretch the cords of their tents to take in these men who are anxious to learn. * The first public and official effort to recognize groups of foreigners was made in connection with the sesqui-centennial celebration of the founding of the city in September, 1908. Large delegations of more than a dozen nationalities paraded in their homeland costume. The Pittsburgh Playground Association has in recent years done much to bring out the artistic side of the foreign born through folk dances and participation in annual May festivals. See Kennard, Beulah: The Playgrounds of Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh District, p. 315. Leaders in the several foreign colonies have been eager to lend assistance. Pittsburgh Italians for several years have celebrated Columbus Day with a parade and ball. The Y. M. C. A. has carried on “all nations“ singing contests in recent years. See Appendix III, p. 417. 60Drawn by Joseph Stella An Old SlavA SLAV'S A MAN FOR A' THAT Alois B. Koukol ~>OVE one of the busiest corners in Pittsburgh, an immense side wall advertisement in Croatian solicits patronage for an American bank. In the railroad stations and on the principal thoroughfares you can see groups of people who bear unmistakably the Slavic physiognomy. But unlike the sign—itself an evidence of the new immigration from southeastern Europe— the Slav is slow and unspectacular in making an impress upon the imagination of the community. He is reserved, and even when he comes from southern districts lacks the animation so characteristic of the Italian. Though the Slavs are one of the three largest racial elements that immigration is adding to our population, though in the Pittsburgh District they constitute over one-half of the workers in the steel mills, yet in spite of their numbers and their importance as an industrial and business factor, there is, I believe, little actual understanding and appreciation of them on the part of Americans. The bosses know them chiefly as sturdy and submissive workmen; their American fellow-workmen look down upon them largely because of this patience and their willingness at the outset to work at any wages and under any conditions; the public at large knows the Slavs by their most obtrusive and objectionable traits,— especially through the newspaper stories of their rows and fights when they get drunk on pay day or when celebrating a wedding or a christening. Few people stop to think that in spite of his proclaimed stolidity the “Hunkie” brings with him aspirations the same in character, though as yet not so ambitious nor so definitely formulated as those of his American neighbor. It is my design to set down something of the spirit of the immigrant Slav, his character, his attitude toward America, and 61WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH the effect upon him of the conditions under which, as in Pittsburgh and the neighboring mill towns, he lives and works. In preparation for this task I visited some 200 families; moreover, I am a Slav by birth, and all my life 1 have lived and worked among the Slavic people. The natural question which rises in one's mind is, Why did these great hordes come to America and to Pittsburgh? Let me answer in terms of men. The main cause is economic.* On the one side there is the Old World surplus of labor accompanied by low wages, the barrenness of the land which every year becomes more insufficient to support increasing populations, and the economic disasters affecting sometimes individuals and sometimes whole communities; on the other side, tales of the wealth gained by some bold pioneer and of the great opportunities in this country, confirmed and exaggerated by the crafty agents of transportation companies. An illustration of this economic impetus is the simple story of Grigory Leshkoff. Grigory comes from a Russian peasant family in which there were seven sons and 20 poor acres of land. “What were we to do at home?" Grigory demanded of me with a shrug. “Just look at one another,—hey?" One by one these sons left the crowded farm and sought work in the few mines and factories located near them. Grigory's younger brother was the first man from the village to seek America, coming here in 1902. Others soon followed him, however. “And now," said Grigory, “there are in Homestead at least 50 young men from our village." Grigory, by the way, is a veteran of the Japanese war, having come to America immediately after its close. But he had little to say about this, one of the great conflicts of modern times; in fact, he looked upon his experience on the battlefields as quite commonplace compared with his experience in the steel mills. From the first he emerged without a scratch; in the second he lost a leg. When 1 saw him he was deeply concerned as to what a strong man of twenty-seven with only one leg was going to do with his future, —and the simple peasant saw little hope ahead. Grigory came from Chernigov. From this province and from Minsk and Grodno, where the soil is exhausted and where the * See Roberts, op cit. P. 33 of this volume. 62a slay's a man for a' that shares of the villagers in the communes grow less with each redistribution of the land, the Russians are setting out in increasing numbers. Not altogether dissimilar causes for emigration operate in certain districts of Austria-Hungary. The province of Pribich used to be one of the richest wine-growing regions in Croatia, but some twenty years ago the vines were devastated by a blight which necessitated replanting with American stock. Through this damage to the vines hundreds of once prosperous farmers were reduced to poverty. Many of them came to the United States in the hope of earning enough money to pay for the necessary replanting of their vineyards. Lazo Milutich, who gave me this information, was himself one of those affected by the calamity. He came first to Allegheny City, tried different jobs, and after two years' wandering landed at Wilmerding, where he had worked for ten years in the same foundry. Other causes than economic pressure have, of course, played their part in this great migration. Political oppression is one. I have known a number of political refugees among the older Slavs, many of whom are now persons of importance. And another is the blandishment and trickery of the steamship agent. John Godtis, a Slovak living in Braddock, was one of a group of 12 young men brought here in 1901. To their village came a man dressed as a common workingman. We can imagine him in high boots, wearing an embroidered shirt, and smoking a long-stemmed pipe. He was a steamship agent, thus disguised to escape the attention of the gendarmerie. He quietly found out what young men were at the age when one has to present himself for conscription in the army,—for such youths, he had discovered, were the easiest to induce to become customers; secretly argued with them that it would be foolishness to give three of their best years to the army, where they would be slapped, kicked, and cursed; and in the end sold them all tickets. It is perhaps but natural that Pittsburghers should believe that the fame of their industries draws these Slavs straight from their villages to the Union Station and the “Point." Yet this is true only in exceptional cases, such as that of Joseph Sabata, a Bohemian. He was an iron worker at home and was employed in a large rolling mill in Moravia. Its machinery was imported 63WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH mostly from the United States and he, noticing the name of an Allegheny firm on some of the pieces, thought that in that city he could learn more about his business; and so he decided to come over. After being landed at Ellis Island, he discovered while in line waiting to be questioned, that everybody was asked to show an address. Such an address he did not have, but being quick-witted he hastily scribbled on a piece of paper “Allegheny,” and the name of a cousin still in the old country who could scarcely have heard of Pittsburgh's North Side. He was readily admitted, went straight to Allegheny, and when I saw him was earning $2.75 a day in a machine shop. In another case, the coming to Pittsburgh was wholly accidental. Vaclav Malek, a Bohemian, who when I met him had been in this country eighteen years, came here with his parents when a lad of sixteen, intending to settle with the rest of the family on a farm in Wisconsin. But on the way across the ocean they became acquainted with another Bohemian family, bound for Pittsburgh, who had been robbed of their money, and to these people Malek's father loaned $80. In order not to lose this money he decided to keep near his debtors. Vaclav even to this day is sorry that his parents didn't go onto a farm,—and for a double reason: first, he has a natural preference for farm labor which is never to be gratified; second, in the course of his work for an Allegheny company, an accident crippled him for life. In the vast majority of cases the Slavs in Pittsburgh had not the slightest intention of settling here when they first came to America. Usually their settling was preceded by a period of a year or two or even longer during which they wandered hither and thither, from one employment to another, from town to town, looking for the right place in which to establish themselves. Large numbers of the Slovaks come to Pittsburgh by way of the anthracite fields. At the time of the strike of 1902, and for several years before, when conditions were bad in hard-coal mining, —half-time, and the like of that,—Slovak mine workers drifted west, across the state to the steel mill district. The experience of a Ruthenian named Koval is typical of a great number of men. He came to America in 1900, and was sent by an immigrant home in New York to work in the forests of West 64a slay's a man for a' that Virginia as a woodcutter. The wages there were only 50 cents a day, and in other ways conditions were so bad that he with three comrades ran away. They set out through the woods, finally coming to a little settlement with a saw mill. Here they were offered work and they stayed for about two months, earning $1.50 a day. Then a surveyor who spoke Polish came to the village, and he told them that in Allegheny they could earn a good deal more money than in the woods, so to Allegheny the men decided to go. There they obtained work as laborers in the locomotive works at $\ .50 for a day of ten hours. Such a wanderer also was Smulkstis, a Lithuanian who had started life as a messenger boy in the telegraph service in St. Petersburg. He came over to a friend in Wilmerding but, unable to get the kind of work he wanted, he sought out another friend in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he got a job in a woolen mill. The following spring found him back in Pittsburgh as a machine operator in an electrical plant. Four years after his arrival— he was still only twenty-two—he was a crane man in the Homestead steel mills. A Croatian who when 1 met him was spending the winter in Duquesne, was a type of the migratory railroad laborer who drifts from one contractor's gang to another. He had been all over Indiana, Ohio, and the Middle West, having taken his wife and children with him. They had made shift in cars and shanties and construction camps of all sorts. One fact that impressed me in Pittsburgh was the number of Slavs earning low wages who yet seemed to be fitting themselves permanently into their new environment. John Gerza, an engine cleaner in the Fort Wayne yards, and his family, had apparently, in their five years in this country, adapted themselves to the atmosphere and to the life of Pittsburgh. There were no regrets nor lookings backward, nothing to draw them away from their present life. The explanation for this adaptation is the explanation in so many other cases that it is worth setting down. Gerza lived in a Moravian village where till sixteen years before there had been no impulse to move away from the soil. The villagers were rooted to their ancient homes; they thought only of the land, and they tilled it in the same old primitive manner of their forefathers. Then a 5* 65WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH railroad was built through the country, and factories sprang up. These drew agricultural laborers from the villages, and thereby unsettled the population; unsettled the old conditions of life, practically destroying that love for, that almost physical kinship with, the soil and the old home which I found so strong among the Slavs in general. Gerza's wife used to work in a sugar factory at home; he himself used to be a brakeman on a freight train. With them it was not the severe and wrenching change from farm to factory, which involved the breaking away from loved surroundings; it was the comparatively simple change from one industrial pursuit to a comparatively similar industrial pursuit. Palinski, a Russian Pole of forty-five who had been in America eighteen years, was an excellent example of that really considerable class of low-paid workmen who have made a small success—if owning a home and having a happy family and feeling content be success. The highest pay that Palinski had ever received was $i .65 a day, and yet, though he had five children, he had managed to buy in conjunction with his brother the house in which they both lived. They paid $1,600 for the property, and when I called upon him Palinski told me that Jones and Laughlin wanted to buy it and he expected to sell for at least $3,000. The oldest child, a girl of fifteen, was in the public school, and his three other children of school age were being sent to the parochial school where tuition must be paid for. The house was strikingly clean and well arranged. Palinski seemed to be well satisfied with himself, his family, and his work. It was a marvel to me how a man with Palinski's wages could own such a pleasant home, raise so large a family of children, educate them, and keep them well dressed and healthy. The explanation lay in a great measure outside Palinski. He was a good man, but, as in many cases where Slavs have wrought pleasant homes out of little wages, the credit was largely due to the wife. Mrs. Palinski must have been a wonderful manager; even to the casual eye, she was neat, bright, and energetic. In estimating the worth to America of this pair, one must not consider alone the hardworking husband and the able wife; one must consider their contribution of healthy, educated children. Men like Palinski are fixtures; in a generation or two their 66a slay's a man for a' that children and children's children are likely to form an indistinguishable part of that conglomerate product, the American citizen. In contrast to these men are the great numbers who are not content, who are not fixtures, whose great dream it is some day to get back to their native village, live out their years there and, what is no small consideration with many, be laid at rest in friendly soil. Why these men, even when successful here, have this yearning and return home for this reason, presents a rather tough question to most persons. That question, I think, 1 can best answer by reciting the case of Mike Hudak. Hudak was a Slovak who came to this country when a youth of nineteen. He was a fine type of man in every way; physically he could almost be classed as a giant, for he stood six feet two, was deep of chest and broad of shoulders. He worked in the Pennsylvania railway repair shops at Oliver, earning $80 a month, which is good pay for a Slav when one considers that the work is regular and not dangerous. He seemed to be a figure in his neighborhood, for when I walked home with him one day he was addressed from all sides in tones that showed liking and respect. He dressed neatly and had a fluent command of English gained by seventeen years' residence in this country. If there is any type of immigrant that we need above all others it struck me then that Mike Hudak was that type. 1 first discovered his yearning by asking him why he was not a citizen. “ Why should I forswear myself?" said he. I did not understand. “As I am going back to my own country, it would not be right to give up my allegiance there and make myself a citizen here." I pressed him for his reasons for going back, and he gave them to me—reasons that fit thousands and thousands of cases. With him that preliminary process of being separated from the soil had not taken place, as with John Gerza. He was a farmer by age-old instinct; his love for the land was a part of his being, a yearning which would leave him only with death. Now, since over here he had been plunged straight into industry, the only land he had ever known in a way to become attached to it was that of the country in which he was born, and when the time came when he was able 67WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH to gratify his longing for land his thoughts went only to his old home. So, though socially as well off here as he would be there, and economically much better off, he was going back. Undoubtedly he, too, would have become a fixture in America could he have gone onto a farm immediately upon his arrival here, for then his instinctive land-love would have been weaned from the old country. The Slavs, as has been said, are strong, willing workers, and are generally considered by the steel mill officials the best laborers they get,—but now and then there is a man who is too slow for America. One of these was John Kroupa, a Bohemian, who had been here twenty-two years. Faithful, strong, willing, it wasn't in him to keep up the pace. In his earlier years here he was employed in a steel mill, but he had been dropped. As he frankly said to me, “You have to be pretty quick in those mills, and it isn't a job for a man like me." Later he got a job as watchman on a Pennsylvania Railroad crossing in Woods Run, and there he worked for sixteen years, his wages $40 a month (in the last two years, $44) for a twelve-hour day and a seven-day week. All this while he hoped for promotion, but it did not come and this nonrecognition rankled within him. “Other men, who were all sore from sitting down so much, were promoted," exclaimed he, “but I, who was always hustling, was never thought of, and 1 can tell you it wasn't an easy job to watch that no accident happened, as more than 300 trains passed that way every day and very often at full speed, with small heed to the city ordinances,—30 or 40 miles an hour." Finally, the crossing was abolished, the tracks having been elevated, and the job was done away with. The superintendent came to him at his watchman's shanty. “Well, John, I am sorry for you; going to lose your happy home. But you'll get another just as good." This was too much for John; his long smouldering disappointment burst out. “Go to hell!" said he. “Happy home? I could just as well have been in the penitentiary over there; I would have been much better off, without the worry I have had here. During sixteen years I haven't had a single day off. Sundays and weekdays both I've been here for twelve hours. Do you call that a happy home?" He refused a new watchman's job and opened a little store 68Drawn by Joseph Stella Young Russiana slay's a man for a' that in Woods Run, which he established out of his savings and with the help of his children—a store which might have served Dickens for one of his grotesque backgrounds, for here were on sale hardware, candy, crackers, bacon, eggs, molasses. Kroupa can not be classed as a failure, for he managed to buy a home and raise and educate a good-sized family, but his qualities of constancy, honesty, and sobriety do not come so high as some others in the American market. Among the Slavs, the Slovaks strike me as the most ambitious and pushing.* This is all the more surprising when one remembers that the conditions out of which they come are as bad as the conditions surrounding any of the Slavs, and worse than most. The Slovaks when they arrive are poor, illiterate, have no training, are inured to oppression; yet they have pluck, perseverance, enterprise, and courage. From their ranks are recruited many of the foremen in the mills and an ever increasing number of merchants. In the Woods Run district, with which 1 happen to be best acquainted, a low-lying mill neighborhood along the Ohio in Allegheny City, probably one-half of the stores and saloons are in the hands of Slovaks, or their close neighbors, the Hungarian Rusnaks. They began as common laborers. Most of the stores are well kept and, in general, prosperous looking, and among their customers are not only Slavs, but Americans as well. A type of this class of men, the men who succeed in the accepted American meaning of success, was John Mlinek. When 1 first saw him 1 had not the least thought that he was a Slav, so well dressed and thoroughly conventionalized did he seem, and such good English did he speak. He came to America when only fifteen years old and for thirteen years worked successfully as a breaker-boy and driver in the mines at Mahanoy City, in the iron works at Elizabeth, New Jersey, and as a riveter in the Pressed Steel Car Company at Allegheny. In this last place he was soon making from $3.00 to $4.00 a day. As he neither drank nor indulged in any other form of dissipation he saved considerable money. In 1905, he married a Slovak girl born and brought up * For an interesting account of the Slovaks, see Balch, Emily Greene: Our Slavic Fellow Citizens, pp. 85-119. New York, Charities Publication Committee, 1910. 69WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH in this country, who for several years before her marriage had been a clerk in a store where foreign customers traded. She was a little more refined than the average English-speaking girl of the working class, and held a high position in her own circle. She was ambitious and induced her husband to start a store in Woods Run for the sale of cigars and candy. From what I could gather he was doing very well, and they already must have saved several thousand dollars. These young people seemed to be much liked in the community; they were prominent both in their social circle and in their church, and Mlinek was an influential man among the Slovak societies, though he did not push himself to the front. He was, I should say, at the beginning of a considerable success; his prospects and his personality favored his achieving it; only some untoward set of circumstances could keep him down. A few paragraphs back, in speaking of Hudak, I drew attention to the powerful call their native bit of earth makes upon so many of the immigrants. But frequently when men go back, intending to stay, in response to this call, the old country is not strong enough to hold them. Such had been the case with this same John Mlinek. His ambition had been to be a well-to-do farmer in Hungary, and recently he and his wife had made a preliminary visit to his old home and bought a farm. They remained a few weeks,—but those few weeks were quite enough. He came back entirely cured. “ Every little clerk in the village looked down on me, because 1 didn’t speak the official language, Magyar,” Mlinek said to me. “They were officials while I was just a peasant. They didn’t earn a quarter of what I do, yet I had to bow to them. That made me sore. In America I’m a free man. Besides, I’ve got a better chance to do well here than in the old country. Yes, America is good enough for me.” Mike Mamaj was another successful man; he too returned to Hungary, expecting to live there, and he too turned his back on his native country and set out again for America, this time to stay. He had learned to speak, read, and write English, and was full of energy, though rather rude and domineering in manner. During the early part of his career in America (he had been here twenty years) he had had a hard time, but for the last seven years he had been a foreman in the car shops at Woods Run. He had 70 men 70A slay's a man for a' that working under him, and part of the time he had earned fioo a month. He owned the house in which he lived, worth about $2,500, had property in the old country to the value of $1,500, and had money in the bank. Mamaj was proud of his success, of his home, of his children. So proud that, on the occasion of our first meeting, though the bedtime hour of nine had come, he dragged me off to show me the evidence of what he had done in America. First, I had to inspect his home, which was neat and well furnished. Then he ordered his children (three daughters, aged eight, ten, and thirteen) who were going to bed, to dress and recite their lessons for the stranger. While the girls rather sleepily displayed some of their English learning, Mamaj stood by, hands in pockets, and nodded proudly. One deplorable condition that 1 frequently met with among the Slavs was contempt for American law.* This is largely due to the teaching of experience,—and experience of one particular sort. The story of Vilchinsky, a Ruthenian boarding boss, is a common one. On October 14, 1907, one of his boarders was celebrating a patron saint's day. This meant a lot of drinking by all, and during the festivities they got more or less under the influence of liquor, but they were in their own house, there was no public disturbance, and toward midnight they all went to bed. About two o'clock in the morning, however, when they were all asleep, officers came to the house, wakened everybody, and loading them into patrol wagons and buggies took them to a police station. The boarding boss, four girls, and three men were all taken before the alderman charged with disorderly conduct. Without any regular hearing,—none of them could speak English and there was no interpreter,—the squire demanded $20 apiece for the boarders and $50 for the boarding boss. All but two girls paid the fine immediately, and these two were then sentenced to the county jail. During the following day their friends succeeded in collecting enough money to pay their fines and the $1.50 extra for board in the jail. Abuses such as this were due to the fact that aldermen and constables obtained fees from the fines collected (in this case amounting to $240), which made it to their interest to get as many cases into court as possible. Many men with whom *See Roberts, pp. 50-52; Forbes, p. 378. 71WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH I talked stated that the constables often provoked disorder when none existed for the sake of the profit in the arrests. The Slavs knew that they were victimized, and at the same time they realized their helplessness; the natural result of this was a bitter contempt for law. “Huh!” sneered Vilchinsky, “the police are busy enough all right stopping disorder when the men have got money. But when there's hard times, like there is now, a man can make all the noise he pleases and the police won't arrest him. They know he hasn't money to pay a heavy fine and costs. It ain't law they think about. It's money.” There are plenty of quarrelsome Slavs just as there are quarrelsome men among other races; and when you have a combination of Slavic ill-temper and the above-mentioned judicial practice, then there is basis for trouble indeed. Zavatsky and Yeremin, Russians, and neighbors in a steel town, drank more than was good for them one Saturday afternoon in a saloon, and at last Zavatsky spoke his mind about Yeremin's wife, whom he did not consider as good-looking as she should be, and indulged in drunken threats against her if she did not stop throwing ashes on his side of the yard. Yeremin repeated to his wife these threats and remarks, and Mrs. Yeremin, being a choleric woman, went to the squire in spite of the fact that it was very late in the evening. But as it was pay day, he was in his office ready for business. A constable was sent to Zavatsky's house to arrest him. The constable went into the kitchen and, finding nobody there or in the next room, went on upstairs. Here there were a number of boarders talking, but they were not drunk. The constable, seeing these men, thought it would be wisest to have assistance, so he brought two policemen and then started for Zavatsky. They broke open the door of the room where Zavatsky was sleeping, dragged him out of bed, and told him to get up. He was in a drunken stupor and afterward claimed that he did not resist the constable; in fact, scarcely knew what was going on, but the constable felled him with so heavy a blow that it made a scalp wound and the blood rushed out and blinded him. While on the floor, Zavatsky remembered a revolver under his pillow, and raised his hand and got it. The constable wrested it from him and accord- 72a Slav’s a man for a’ that ing to Mrs. Zavatsky’s version, exclaimed, “ I’ll give you a revolver, you son of a gun,” and shot Zavatsky in the chest. Mrs. Zavatsky, catching up a hammer, rushed at the constable, but he knocked her unconscious by a blow on the head and she fell to the floor. Before that, however, she had screamed to the men, "Come down, boys, come down, they’re killing the gazda!” One of the first to come to Zavatsky’s assistance was his kum (a kum is one who is godfather to one’s children, or to whose children one is godfather; a very close relationship—generally a man’s dearest friend). As Zavatsky’s kum tried to rush into the room, the two officers gave him several violent blows on the head. The other men rushed down, but all were seized by the officers, with the exception of one man whose flight was suddenly stopped by a shot in the leg. As a result of the mêlée, the whole household of io men and one woman was taken in patrol wagons to the squire’s court and committed to jail, charged with disorderly conduct, felonious assault, and interference with an officer in performance of his duty. Zavatsky and the boarder who was shot in the leg were sent to the hospital for treatment. At first it looked as if Zavatsky were not going to live. After a hearing four days later the prisoners were all committed to the grand jury, and according to my information were all sentenced to jail for varying periods. None of the policemen nor the constable had even a scratch to show, although they charged these io men with felonious assault. The house, when I saw it just following the affair, looked as it might have looked the day after a battle. Not even so brief a sketch as this would be complete without an instance or two of the men who have been handicapped by industrial accident.* Such men are met everywhere in Pittsburgh,— they are so common as to excite no comment. In proportion to their numbers the Slavs are the greatest sufferers from accidents in the Pittsburgh region, for to their lot falls the heaviest and most dangerous work. The report of the National Croatian Society for 1905-06, to give a general example of what industrial accidents mean to the Slav, shows that out of a membership averaging about * See Eastman, Crystal: Work-Accidents and the Law. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) 73WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH 17,000 for that period, 95 men were killed by accident (almost a third of the deaths from all causes). Eighty-five other men were permanently disabled. In addition, 97 died from consumption, the inception of which is often traceable to the character of their work. Andrew Antonik's job was to run a “skull-cracker” in the Homestead Mill. This is a contrivance to break up scrap so that it can be more easily melted, and its main feature is a heavy pear-shaped iron ball which is hoisted into the air and then allowed to drop upon the scrap which has been heaped beneath it. The crash of this ball throws pieces of the scrap in all directions. The work is very dangerous, especially at night when it is hard to see and dodge the flying scrap. One Monday night (he had worked the day before on a twenty-four-hour shift) Antonik failed to see and dodge. A chunk of scrap weighing four or five hundred pounds struck his leg and crushed it so that it had to be amputated. Almost a year after the accident I went to visit Antonik, and found a mild-faced, kindly looking, not very intelligent man of forty, sitting in his landlady's kitchen rocking her baby. That was Antonik's job now, to take care of his landlady's children in part payment for his board; that was all he was good for yet, for he had only a leg and a stump. He had been paid $150 by the company; of this he had sent $50 to his wife in Hungary and had used the balance to pay his board during the seven months since he had left the hospital. Now nothing remained. The company had promised him an artificial leg and light work as soon as he was able to get around, but his stump was not yet entirely healed, and as he had not a cent and his wife was writing him letters begging for money for the children—there were five of them, the eldest a deaf and dumb girl of thirteen—Antonik was worried. He looked at the future blankly, helplessly. He had at first planned to bring his family here, but now he could not get the money for that. Nor could he go back to them. He would be more useless, more helpless, on a farm than here. The only solution Antonik could see to the lifelong problem suddenly thrust upon him by that flying piece of scrap, was for him and his family to remain indefinitely apart, he working at whatever poor job and at whatever low wage he could get, and sending a little to Hungary 74a slay's a man for a'that to help out, his wife to continue working on a farm at 12 or 15 cents a day. Often the handicapped man's problem is thrust directly upon the wife for solution, as it was upon the wife of John Hyrka. Hyrka was a Ruthenian of thirty; his wife was twenty-eight. He was making fair wages in the Duquesne Mills; they were both healthy and strong, and they had high hopes for the future. But May 26, 1907, John, who was working on a platform directly over a limestone mill, stepped upon a rotten plank and he shot down into the mill. Before he could be extricated the flesh had been torn from the soles of both feet. He was sent to the McKeesport hospital, where attempts were made to graft flesh upon his soles. Some months later his feet were still not healed, and it was practically certain that the grafting would be a failure and that he would be a cripple for life. When this tragedy descended upon Mrs. Hyrka she was within a month of confinement. Into this grim situation entered the baby, adding its cares. For months after the accident she was in no condition to work, and when she did regain her strength the demands of the infant would not permit her to take up regular employment. For six months she lived upon $30 a month paid her by the company; then the company cut off this allowance, and after she had felt the pinch of want for a time, she demanded a final settlement. They offered her $600, she to pay all further hospital bills, which up to then had been met by the company. She talked the matter over with John, and between them they decided that to have the flesh scraped from one's feet and to be a lifelong cripple ought to be worth as much as $1,000. But this seemed an exorbitant estimate to the company, and as Mrs. Hyrka held firm to her own figures, the matter was still unsettled when I left Pittsburgh. She was then living on what she could borrow; the high hopes of twenty-eight were all blasted; she knew that she had a cripple on her hands for all his life, thirty or forty years perhaps, and she was wondering, desperately wondering, how she was going to be able to support him. The burden of the home making may fall upon a child. In looking into an accident case I called at a home in Saw Mill Alley —a cheerless, dingy neighborhood that is flooded every year by the 75WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH high water. I was received in the kitchen by a slight Polish girl of fifteen, and soon discovered that she was the real head of the home. She had just finished the wash, and at such a time even the best of houses is liable to be in disorder. Here, however, everything was neat and clean. Annie told me her story willingly enough. Her father, who had been a laborer in one of the mills, had been killed by an engine while working in the yard at night. Her mother had remarried and soon after had been burned to death by the explosion of a kerosene lamp. Annie was now keeping house for her brother and her stepfather. As the seventeen-year-old brother was rather shy, and as the stepfather was a night watchman, by nature a man of no authority and allowed by his work little opportunity to exercise it even had he possessed it, the main control of the household had passed into Annie's hands. That authority she was using well, as was shown not only by the tidiness of the house, but by the fact that it was chiefly through her influence that her brother was attending night school. She had energy, determination, and character. She read and wrote both English and Polish. She said she liked to read books, history especially, but that she hadn't the time. A quality that 1 have noted again and again among the Slavs is their readiness to help their countrymen in distress,— already instanced by the case of Malek's father loaning money to a robbed fellow-immigrant. Sometimes this generosity shows itself amid the most adverse circumstances, as it did with Koval. Koval (the Ruthenian that I mentioned as having wandered about before settling in Pittsburgh) had himself had enough misfortune during three years in America to drive all unselfish feeling for others out of a man's heart. One year after coming to this country he sent for his family and his younger brother. Immediately upon their arrival his three children and his brother fell sick with typhoid fever. They were no sooner well than Koval himself contracted the fever. This illness drained their resources and forced them to fill their home with boarders—a hardship upon the slight wife, all the more keenly felt because keeping boarders had been no part of their original plan. Then all three of the children were taken ill with croup. The usual price for a doctor's call is $1.00, but the doctor charged $3.00 each visit inasmuch as he had 76Drawn by Joseph Stella Slav in Bread I,ine of 1908A slay's a man for a' that three patients; Koval protested but had to pay. Two of the children died, and Koval, by this time financially exhausted, had to go in debt to the undertaker for the funerals. And then amid these last disasters came the financial crash of 1907 with its misery of unemployment; certainly enough to sour the milk of human kindness in any man. But the penniless Koval did not drive out his penniless boarders, now only a burden. Instead, he gave them a sleeping place, divided with them the food he could get on credit from the grocery, for since he was a steady man and a householder Koval still had some credit; and for the food they still needed he and his boarders would go and stand in the bread line, which had been established in Woods Run. Not only did Koval not throw out the helpless boarders, who already encumbered him, but he took in seven additional people who were in distress. Two of these latter were young men from his native village who had landed in Pittsburgh in the midst of the depression; two were Russians who had been found wandering through the streets, nearly frozen, by a policeman, who brought them to Koval; the others were a countryman, his wife, and child of six, to accommodate whom Koval had to give up his own bed. During the period of my acquaintance with him Koval was supporting 12 boarders, only one of whom was paying him a cent. What he was doing seemed quite the natural thing to Koval; he hardly seemed conscious of his self-sacrificing generosity. "Why do you keep all these people?" I asked him. "Why, what else could 1 do?" he returned. “They have no work and no other place to go. 1 can not throw a man into the street. They will go themselves when they can." 77MEDI/EVAL RUSSIA IN THE PITTSBURGH DISTRICT Alexis Sokoloff THEY appeared in immense numbers with their hideous looks and ugly cries.”* So to the proud Romans looked the Cymbrians and Teutons, the forefathers of the advanced nations of the present middle Europe, in their first beaten-off invasion of Roman soil. So now to the prosperous and respectable people of America look the “ foreigners,” especially my kith and kin—the Slavs. So, in truth, after living over three years among Americans, away from the foreign quarters, did these immigrants appear to me, too, when work had given me a panoramic view of their life. Day after day, walking from house to house in an endeavor to gather information about men whose names had been distorted by their American transcription and whose nationality was but vaguely indicated, seeking addresses given only approximately, I caught glimpses of hundreds of living pictures—pictures not unlike vivid photographic snapshots. Here is one: You enter the kitchen of a dark tenement under the Tenth Street bridge. The dim light of an oil lamp on a long, dirty table shows a crowd of about 15 men sitting rather silently around the table and along the walls; in the foreground a dirty woman with a huge knife is busy over a large pan containing almost a whole fried calf; next is a young fellow, perhaps her son, chewing with smacking lips at a large piece of meat held in both hands, decidedly dirty hands. You can not help but notice the hungry, wolfish looks of the other fellows as they watch the lucky one. You ask your question and hurry on under the impression that you have seen a repast of the troglodytes; only afterward bring- * Quotation from a Roman historian in Guizot’s History of France, Vol. I, Chapter I. 78MEDIAEVAL RUSSIA IN PITTSBURGH ing a little correction to your impression—that it was not a dinner but the filling-up of the dinner pails for tomorrow that you saw. In photography, by some process, similar pictures can be combined into one which makes a composite of them all; so, too, my snapshots combined into one picture the life of these foreigners —a weird and ugly picture, whose gloom the few cheering impressions I received did not dispel. There were, however, some pleasant sights now and then; for instance, that of a newly wed Slovak couple, both hardly more than children, good-looking and contented; he a laborer in this country about three years, she here less than one. He had been slightly injured on his left arm and upper body by an explosion of a blast furnace, and received about $150 from the company at one time. Peasant girl though his wife was, yet their single room, serving as kitchen, living, and bedroom, showed that such a room could be remarkably attractive. New, shining kitchen utensils did not offend me beside a bright, clean bed. But everyone knows the effect of a snapshot; most of them show the creature they portray in a grotesque attitude. A painting or a drawing, product of patient work in which the artist can give the right perspective and select the essential from the superfluous, surpasses them in truthfulness. I should be willing to reproach the Americans for having merely what may be called snapshot knowledge about foreigners, if 1 could pretend in any way that what 1 am going to say about Russians is the result of a thorough investigation. But at least the lack of exhaustive inquiry is with me somewhat compensated for by foreknowledge of the subject: 1 am a Russian myself. I did not expect the Russian workingman's house to add any cheering color to the desolate impressions I had received of the foreigners' standard of living, although my first contact with it had been a pleasant one. This was in Essen, a small mining town not far from Carnegie, though very far from civilization. I was directed to the houses of the Russians by an Italian woman, who showed, to my amazement, that she had no small vocabulary of Russian words, evidently the fruit of good neighboring with these Slavs. In an orderly enough kitchen I came upon a group of genuine Russian “ muzhiks," some of them with long beards, looking grave and mighty venerable, their trousers tucked into high 79WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH boots and their blouses girdled with narrow bands. All, however, were clean and quiet. The mine in which they worked had been closed for a long while and few people had remained in the town, so that there was now no overcrowding. I was greeted with spontaneous kindness and goodwill, and treated to a glass of genuine “ kvas,” that healthy national beverage made of dry bread, with no alcohol in it. My ear was greeted with the Russian now spoken near Moscow and in the province of Tamboff, so musical to me, indeed, that 1 was jealous of it, after the characterless speech of the educated classes. 1 felt myself transplanted to a Russia more real even than the one I had known in the middle provinces of the empire. And to think that these fellows had never seen Russia proper, nor had their fathers or grandfathers! They were Old Believers from the province of Suvalki in Russian Poland, the northern part of that territory which, like an inland promontory, juts into Prussia and Austria. They belong to the second migration of Old Believers. About two hundred years ago their ancestors had fled from the persecution of the Moscow government to the republic of Poland, then still a force in Europe. After Poland's division, some became subjects of the Czar again, some of Austria, and a few of Prussia. Few Americans have ever heard of these Russian dissenters, although they number millions.* The sect is a product of the church reform of Patriarch Nicon (Patriarch, 1652-1666). However strange it now seems, in early times the Russian government marched ahead of the people; in fact, it began to lag behind only one hundred years ago. The monk Nicon, a simple peasant (who might have looked like one of the miners sitting before me in the house in Essen), had gained such a powerful influence over the Czar, Alexis Mikhailovich, that he could handle him as a puppet. He conceived the idea of purifying the Russian Bible and liturgy books from the mistakes of translators and transcriptors, and of eliminating some customs not agreeing with Greek Orthodox traditions. Hence the schism. The important questions whether in church processions one should walk “with the sun" or “against it,” whether one should administer * A. Prugavin, a well known investigator of religious sects in Russia, in the first chapter of a pamphlet on the Old Believers, tries to prove that the government’s estimate of 2,000,000 is incorrect and that 15,000,000 is but a conservative figure for the number of Old Believers. 80MEDIAEVAL RUSSIA IN PITTSBURGH the Lord's Supper from five or from seven "phosphors" (I do not know which number is holy to these dissenters and which to us orthodox), led to some fighting and much head cutting. But the causes of dissension were actually much deeper than questions of ritual; the revolt was one of the last unsuccessful protests against the steadily encroaching, centralizing dominance of Moscow. Therefore, we see exactly the most freedom-loving elements embracing that schism. If these people now form only a sprinkling of the population of Russian Poland they are very numerous in the northern Russian provinces of Arkhanguelsk and Vologda, in Ural and in Siberia. All the Cossacks* of Orenburg (the pet bodyguard of the present Czar), and many of Don and Terek are Old Believers. You smile. Cossacks and freedom! There was a time, however, when the name of Cossack was synonymous with freedom, association with which now remains only in a meaningless saying, "free as a Cossack." Moscow had known how to win the Cossacks to her cause by making them a little more free than the rest of the people. It is natural now that the Old Believers, almost untouched by the centuries of progress, should make a common cause with the present government—a government which would be glad to see Russia put back into the seventeenth century.f They now revere the Czar, who in times of persecution they actually called "anti-Christ." I was advised not to say anything offensive against that person in order to avoid a possible big unpleasantness. For good looks, the Russians are rather a disgrace to the Slavic race. One can see that they are not only disinherited sons of the Greek and Roman civilization to which the other members * A pastoral, warlike people of skilful horsemen, inhabiting different parts of Russia and drawn upon largely to furnish cavalrymen for the Russian army— hence the erroneous idea often entertained that the term Cossack means primarily a mounted soldier. f The year in which this was written, the Russian Douma took up the question of legalizing the Old Believers. This was the first of a series of measures designed to put into effect the principles of religious liberty enunciated in the emperor’s manifesto of May 13, 1905. A bill was introduced to grant this sect the free practice of their religion, together with certain special rites, but denying them the privilege of proselyting among the members of the Orthodox church, of preaching in public, or of using the title of priest. The bill was subjected to a two-sided attack. A representative of the holy synod denied the right of parliament to legislate in matters affecting the Orthodox church, while the Liberals proposed amendments removing the above restriction. 6* 8lWAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH of the Arian family belong, but that they committed a mesalliance, absorbing many Ugro-Finnish tribes. Out of a dozen Servians one can, in my opinion, find as many good-looking chaps, usually of a dark, energetic type, as among other men. Among Polish peasants, one often meets faces of a noble, almost womanish beauty. But the Russians too often show their high cheek bones and narrow eyes. Yet among these Old Believers 1 met fine faces under beards which with a little trimming and grooming would have made many a fellow look like a Tennyson or a Longfellow. The head of the house in the town of Essen was of this type. There was an almost “ noblesse d'allures” in the broad, quiet sweep of hand over his long beard, during the course of the argument which we had started about those same beards. “We do as our fathers did,” he said. He recalled the picture of the Russian peasant which had lingered in my memory since the days of my boyhood in Vologda in the north of Russia: [A sturdy villager coming into the room, taking off his cap, slowly and reverently crossing his brow before the holy images,—a whole gallery of them in the “red” corner,— and then bowing himself before our peasant host and each of my fellow-visitors.] The procedure impressed me as more dignified than the pompousness of any of the officials whom I saw, and I wondered that the custom was not followed now by their class. Yes, they might have come yesterday from the heart of Russia, so little could the influence of the New World be discovered upon them. Yet it appeared that some of my hosts had already been in America more than eight years. Kalamazoo stoves, however, seemed to be the only articles borrowed from progress. None knew more than a few words of English, with perhaps a few of Italian or Hungarian. One man had evidently seen the nickelodeon picture of Salome's dance, as the long beard and hair in the figure of St. John, current in the films of local instruments, fortified his argument for beards. While the argument was still unfinished, I found out that I was in Essen No. i, and that the Polish fellow I was in search of must be in Essen No. 2, over an hour's walk. During that hour's walk, elated by the sympathetic snapshot view 82MEDIAEVAL RUSSIA IN PITTSBURGH I had received of my countrymen, I scoffed at the term "nation of low efficiency,” which I had heard applied to Russians. Backward, yes, but not of low efficiency! It must have been men exactly like these I had seen a moment ago who, 800 in number, conquered Siberia, perishing, all of them, but not before they had “greeted” Ivan the Terrible with a “czardom.” Men like these had beaten and repulsed Tartars and Turks and challenged the dominion of Moscow. A mighty breed these men of the backwoods. They were our “frontiersmen.”* As I walked along I picked out, as a boy picks out the raisins from a cake, all the proud mottoes, all the glorious deeds of Russian history. That war-cry of the republic of Novgorod, “Who is against God and Great Novgorod !” Or that answer of the besieged Russians to the victorious Mongolians who promised the defeated ones grace on condition of their giving the tenth of all the people in slavery: “Go on with the fight! who will be left shall be yours”—and no one was left. I recalled this unconquerable spirit of Russia in rising from disaster ever since that eventful day when the Mongolians in 1224, after defeating the Russian army at Kalka, had eaten their supper sitting on the wounded Russian princes covered with boards and saddles—those princes who while their companions had been too busy with petty reckonings among themselves, had come out to meet the enemy. The spark of Promethean fire was not brought to Russia as to some happier nation by conquerors; her people have had to strike it out for themselves. By the time 1 found my Polander, 1 was almost full of the conceit of a “Slavophil” about Russia. I was soon punished for my fatuity, however, by another snapshot view. I had come with special purpose to make acquaintance with the Old Believers in Cokeburgh, a mining town to all purposes exactly like many others of the Pittsburgh District, but containing an especially large number of Russians. Out of *The Old Believers are strikingly described in a novel by “Pechersky,” pseudonym of P. I. Melnikoff (1821-1884), called In Forests and On Mountains, a quasi epopee classic in Russia not because of its literary merit, but on account of its remarkable delineation of character. Interesting is it to note that Pechersky himself was at the head of a department ruling over the destinies of these dissenters, which from olden times had been one of the most grafting of all the grafting departments of the government, and he was also reputed to be himself a grafter. 83WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH between 400 or 500 miners (almost all foreigners) 300 were my countrymen, about half of them Old Believers. 1 reached Cokeburgh on a beautiful early Sunday morning. I was disagreeably struck, on leaving the train, with the sound of what seemed to be drunken brawls sounding from many houses. Such indeed they were. Yesterday had been pay day and bearded men were drinking and drunk. Many houses were deserted, the revelers being grouped in a few. An ugly sight! Dirty, disheveled men in filthy kitchens filled with empty bottles, kegs, and barrels; everything helter-skelter. Worst of all was the foul language they were using, without any provocation, regardless of the presence of children. I knew they did not use those bad words in the north of Russia. This is the influence of soldiery, so numerous in Poland and on the borderline and so hateful everywhere. But when I rebuked them, in quite unrestrained expressions, for their foul language, nobody knocked me down; they were ashamed, for a while at least. They felt insulted only when I refused to drink a glass of beer with them, invariably offered without preliminaries. Many were sitting in the room with their hats on—a thing 1 would not have believed about a Russian peasant. Revolting as is this drunkenness, something like an unhappy historical tradition prevails among Russians, as in early times was the case in Merrie Old England and as is the case in Germany at the present day—not to count overindulgence in drink a sin. A totally indecent, drunken man in both Russia and Germany is more an object of solicitude and sympathy than of scorn. Saint Vladimir, the apostle of Russia, is credited with having said, when the choice of religion was proposed to him: “No Mohammedanism for us; Russia's joy is drinking." 1 am myself, however, enough of a German student to appreciate companionship around a nicely served table with beer and song. Possibly the complete lack of the esthetic in their drinking was what made it so revolting. Out in the open air beneath green branches these Slavs might not perhaps have looked so offensive. They may have had some such idea themselves, for during a walk 1 took in a little forest nearby 1 saw under almost every tree traces of successive festivities. Nobody was really senselessly drunk, however, not even late in the afternoon. The saying holds true of many a Russian, “ Drunk for a 84Russian Miners Old Believers—with exception of two beardless ones, who are from province of TchernigoffWomen and Children Of a community of Old Believers in the mining district of western PennsylvaniaMEDIEVAL RUSSIA IN PITTSBURGH dime; making fuss for a dollar/' If they fight, the essential weapon is the fist, never a knife or a pistol. In spite of the lack of police surveillance, or perhaps because of it, drinkers in these mining towns get into trouble less often than they do in the city. Yet it is decidedly for the worse that they drink in their homes, seldom going to the saloons. The children and women thus become used to the sight of debauchery, though 1 saw no women in the houses where drinking was going on. The women were by themselves elsewhere, untidy, some barefooted, and almost all in weekday clothes. "Why is this so here," 1 asked myself, "when I remember the streets of Russian villages on Sunday, bright with all the colors of the rainbow in the women's bands, frocks, and kerchiefs?" Possibly the answer was to be found in the fact that the nearest church of Old Believers was about forty miles from Cokeburgh,* and Russian Sunday adornment is inseparable from church-going. Only girls of marriageable age, or close to it, were displaying quite American apparel and hairdressing, and this without any connection with the length of time they had lived in America. A nice American lady to whom I showed the picture on the page opposite, when she saw the girl standing first from the left said that she must have been in this country most of her life. Yet she had been here only six months. I talked with her and found her fresh, with rustic, awkward bashfulness. The village "belle" was also a daughter of the Old Believers, but she had been brought up in this country. Refined in feature and of slender figure, she spoke perfect English, yet showed much of that defiant, overbearing lack of kindness one meets so often in the city shop girl, whose manners she was evidently imitating. I wished her to pose for a picture with her uncle, but she balked at the suggestion of being photographed with such an un-American object. She could not see as 1 did, what a majestic head of a boyar her uncle had,—so much like Boyar Morosoff, he who refused to sit "below" a man beneath him in rank at the Czar's table, and being ordered to don a buffoon's dress so taunted the Czar with bitter truth and insults that he was beheaded for dessert. The large woman in the middle of the group was possessor * Now nearer at hand, in Marianna. 85WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH of the sole abstinent husband among the Old Believers, a small taciturn man. “They do not like him; they don't like anybody who does not drink with them," explained the woman, “so he stays at home." He proved to have been in America about seventeen years (the longest term in America of any Russian that I met) and six years in Cokeburgh. Nothing in his manner or in the appearance of his house, though it was decent enough (his wife and he had no children, no boarders), showed particularly the influence of America. There was neither the quaintness of the Russian “izba" about their barren room, nor the comfort and neatness of the American home. 1 saw nothing encouraging about my countrymen that day. The charming strains of a violin being played with a clarinet, which I heard coming from a Hungarian house on my way to the station, filled me with deep sorrow because of the lack of anything beautiful in the lives of my people. If that music could but have been theirs! Later, in another mining town in the north of Allegheny County—Russeltown, called by Russians “Wet Mines"—I vainly tried to find shelter for the night in some Old Believer's house. My companion was a Russian, just beginning in the business of bookselling. Three men at that time were making their livings by selling books, holy images, and crosses, but mainly books, among Russians in and around Pittsburgh. Ready enough were the Old Believers to let us into their houses, but these were crowded beyond belief. The rumor that Wet Mines was about to start up had brought a multitude from other places. “ Say, Beard, do you have a room in your house for tonight?" This to a burly fellow hardly distinguishable for the darkness, yet unmistakably an Old Believer. “But, my ‘bratets' (my dear little brother)," he kindly responded (1 was ashamed at having apostrophized him so roughly), “ I have just moved to the town and have no furniture whatever in my house; it's on the way; if you don't care—welcome." And this welcome comes out of the darkness to a stranger, of whom the “ Beard" can see only that he is from the city (a bad recommendation indeed), and that he can talk Russian. No asking to which of the 66 nationalities in Russia and almost as many religions he belonged—but straight out, “ Wel- 86MEDIAEVAL RUSSIA IN PITTSBURGH come.” True, there was not very much to which the visitors were welcomed—a quite empty house, a bundle of shawls spread upon a pile of straw in one room all the furnishings they possessed, and nothing at all in the other. An attractive-looking woman was sitting on the floor, gazing dreamily into the blazing coals of the fireplace. In answer to my “God help,” she made place for me before the fire. In a moment I was sitting beside her, talking to her as though we were old acquaintances. Meanwhile, the man was grabbing a big armful of straw from his own pile, and preparing a bed for the bookseller and myself in the other room. 1 can not help remembering that bunch of straw. It makes the penny dole of a poor fellow equal to the gift of a Rockefeller. Christians those peasants are, by the strongest claim—natural disposition. That oft-repeated* cry, “ We must Christianize the foreigners,” is like breaking into an open door. To the woman I complained of the disorder and filth I saw everywhere among my people. “Why are all so dirty? Is it the same over in Russia?” She became animated. “Why! and boarders? How can you keep the house clean with 20 men to take care of, and children?” She had had four, one of whom had died, and she was not yet twenty-three. “ Who keeps boarders over in the old country? Not to think of such a thing!” It was too obvious to ask her why Russians do it here. It is the only chance they have to accomplish the main purpose of their coming, which is to save money; an amount insignificant in America, perhaps, but large in a Russian village. Boarders and keepers; and for both sides it is bitter. The “hazda” receives $3.00 per month from each man. For this sum the latter is entitled to a lodging together with some 15 other men. A neighbor had 28 at one time, said the woman, in four rooms—the half of a company house—for which she paid $8.00. Each room was about 20 feet square. The hazda attends to the washing of underwear and bedclothes, supplies cabbage for the soup, and does the cooking. She reaps some profit from butcher, baker, and grocer on the things she purchases for her boarders. Minor features in the unwritten constitution of keeping boarders are peculiar; the hazda herself, but not her man, has the right, free of charge, of taking part in the mess; so have her ungrown children. When the men wash after 87WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH coming from work, she is supposed to wash their backs. Arduous task, undoubtedly, that of boarder-keeping. At the highest estimate, it can bring about $60 per month, if based on 20 boarders. With the husband making a little over this sum, I heard of a couple who had managed to amass $6,000 in five years.* They had had exceptionally good fortune, no doubt, up to that point—no seasons of non-employment, sickness, or other losses. The husband then died, and although almost half of the money was spent on a tremendous drunken “pomin" (that heathenish survival of accompanying a burial with a carouse), and a gaudy monument in the cemetery, the wife returned to Russia a rich, envied widow, sure to find a husband. “Say, do you have Tanyas' (bath-houses) there in Suvalki as they do in Great Russia?" “Oh, certainly, my father had a nice banya." So it is; even the poor peasant in north and middle Russia has, besides his “izba," a bath-house, as an American has a bathroom. It is not a very elaborate affair; a room with a high bench built stepwise and a big water tub; hot stones from the fireplace in the anteroom are thrown into the tub to heat the water; others are besprinkled, producing an enormous amount of steam, which one can take in degrees of heat on the different steps of the bench, invariably the bath is accompanied by a “birch broom" beating all over the body, thus intensifying the heat. The bather especially likes that taking-the-breath-away sensation. The amount of heat a peasant can stand by being beaten with birch twigs would take the breath away forever from many a more highly organized being! Steam and birch twigs remove dirt very effectively, without the use of soap. It is not to be contended that the peasant loves his banya solely for the sake of cleanliness; it is a pleasure to him. The saying that it is only in the third generation that the foreigner in America takes to the bath, is reversed in the case of Great Russians at least. It is the first generation that changes its habits; it stops taking the bath when it comes to America. A Moscow merchant would not see the insulting point if I should read to him what I saw in a Sunday newspaper not long ago, that he goes to bath once a year; why, he might as well be accused of not liking his vodka as of not liking his bath! * In this case possibly a clandestine selling of liquor helped. 88MEDIEVAL RUSSIA IN PITTSBURGH “Why don't you make the bath-houses here?" I asked my hostess, and she explained how much of an undertaking it would be. “ Does your husband drink as much as the others?" I continued my inquiry. “Once in awhile; he does not spend much on drink." As a matter of fact, none spend much on drink. A keg of beer costs only $1.00 and is sufficient for a good spree for five men. Most know when to stop. The expense comes later at the adjustment of the result of drinking; payment for battery and arrests. “ Does your husband beat you?" “ Doesn't beat, doesn't love," she answers in Russian saying. I nearly failed to notice the woman's children—three of them, sitting quietly not far from us, seemingly possessed of that “contemplative spirit of the East." The oldest, about ten years old, attended school, and spoke English as well as Russian. His father had already taught him to read in Russian. 1 still had to provide a quilt and a bedcloth for the night on my straw bed. Again going from house to house, chance brought me first to an English-speaking family, where 1 was given to understand that I was crazy to ask such a thing—stranger as I was. 1 could not but agree with them, civilized as I had become, and would doubtless have acted as they did. But in an Old Believer's house, I got a quilt and a sheet just for the asking. The quilt was old and dirty, but the home-made linen cloth, fresh and clean, was exquisite. Searching for my companion, I came across a group of Old Believers outside a house. Through the light which streamed from an open door 1 discerned standing with them a tall man, not very well shaved, with drooping mustachios; certainly an American. He proved to be a former Texan cowboy, now a farmer living on 12 acres of land in the vicinity of Wet Mines. I wondered that he kept company with my Old Believers and told him so. “Oh, they are as good as gold to me," said he. As I engaged in conversation with him, not as a Russian but just as a “decent-like fur-riner," his opinion could not have lacked sincerity. 1 found him, later on, sitting in an Old Believer's house, among a bearded crowd, drinking and jollying with them. For him they embodied the essential traits of a “white man": no littleness, no stinginess; readiness to fight on provocation, redoubtable, too, in fight; the 89WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH good-natured, cheerful disposition; and last, but not least, the ability to drink like a fish without dying from it. Oh! if there were but common soil of intercourse with Americans for these Russians other than drinking! I finally found my companion in an empty house surrounded by a crowd of young fellows who were poring over his case of books. Among them were four American boys. Bottles strewn on the floor made it clear that drinking was going on in this.house, although with the exception of a red-headed fellow they called “ Dutchman/' who was rather piggish and obscene, I did not notice anybody behaving badly. All were busied with books. A nice-looking Russian youth was translating the inscriptions under the pictures in a book about the Russian-Japanese War to a refined, sympathetic American chap who might have been driven from a good position by bad times out of the city. The Russian youth talked to me with rapture about the joys of reading a book with the long title “ Story About How a Lioness Has Reared a King's Son." My wish to secure some photographs of Old Believers suffered defeat in Wet Mines. The investigating proclivities I had displayed gave ground to rumors that 1 was a detective. Russians hate nothing so much as a spy. Only two women, typical “babas" (peasant women) in the house from which I got my quilt and bedcloth, could be coaxed to pose; but I spoiled everything by my tactlessness. They wanted to put on their Sunday bravery, being indeed extremely dirty from the labors of the morning turnout of men to work. “You're good enough for me as you are," I insisted, “ 1 want you in everyday clothes." To my amazement the older woman turned on me in a fury. “Look here, sport (frant), I'll break this stick on your back. You want our pictures to laugh at!" Poor woman, certainly I did not. The memory of those howling, whistling, yelling crowds—Americans and near-Americans—jeering at her peasant dress when she first came to the mining town, had left too sore a spot to be touched. I had already seen bearded Old Believer men going on a long way round to the grocery store to avoid the “ba, ba" (imitation of a goat) of the boys and grown-up men. But for this incident, I found the Old Believers invariably the most kindhearted, goodnatured lot of people I had ever met, 90MEDIAEVAL RUSSIA IN PITTSBURGH almost childlike, despite their sometimes sullen looks, and I learned only to love them. Not much of an asset, is it?—this kindness and goodnature—as qualities for a man to depend upon in the struggle for life. Yet, if the golden age should come, more of these qualities will be needed. The Romans could not imagine that any force but brute force counted. Nowadays the world believes that “brains” alone count. 1 do not wish to say that every casual American observer will find these men of such kindly disposition as I describe. Ignorance is suspicious, stubbornness is difficult to handle. And he is difficult, the Old Believer. Maybe, too, those good qualities of heart belong alone to men who have had to struggle only with nature, not with men, for their existence. I am told that here, under the ground, it comes often to ugly fights for cars. Through faulty organization in some of the mines, cars are not furnished promptly nor in sufficient number for the coal loaders. And Old Believers, it is said, prove more savage than anybody else in the contest to secure them. In common with all Russians in America, these men are steady workers, despite their love of drink. “ Drunkard and wise —two virtues in him,” they are apt to say cynically about themselves. Their industry came rather as a surprise to me. We Russians of advanced thought often agree with the reactionaries in one thing; that the “muzhik” is lazy. “ If he would not be so lazy, there would not be famine; a big stick is good enough for him,” says the reactionary. “ If he were not so lazy, he could throw all that pile of corruption into Hades,” say we. Overworked, the Russian peasant of course is not. Can one imagine in America a scene like this: a huge fellow lying on the ground in the market-place waiting for an employer. He may be asleep; all his concern is to produce the sole of his bare foot, on which is chalked the price he expects for his labor. Woe to the man who shall arouse him for bargaining. Is there then real ability among them? you ask. Have any achieved success? To be sure, there is no railroad president among their number, but I know a heater-boss on the South Side, who is boss over five furnaces; he can make $130 to $150 per month. Now, to the ordinary reader this may seem of small account. But 1 know enough of steel making to assert that it is about as easy for 91WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH an ordinary American college graduate to become a railroad president as for a Russian peasant to become a boss heater. The work is skilled and the position is next to that of a roller-boss in responsibility. This man has been in America over fifteen years; he has left the " old belief" and embraced orthodoxy. He once came to our newly born Russian club and threatened us with all the terrors of the police for being supposedly enemies of the church. His conviction of finding protection against ideas in the police force showed that he did not know that he was in America, and not in Russia. 1 n Siberia, many Old Believers are rich gold miners and traders with China. In Russia, also, they are beginning to be successful in all walks of life. The leader of the now ruling conservative party, a certain Guchkoff (his brother is mayor of Moscow), is of this stock. Morosoff, the king of the cotton mills, belongs to it, too. In a recent conversation with a man from Riga, that thoroughly German city of the Baltic provinces, this man spoke of the Old Believers as “ those millionaires." Indeed, very many of their number there have achieved large fortunes. A sufficiently striking example is such a wellknown name as that of Kusnetsoff, which appears on each china plate made in Russia. The main thing, however, to record of them is that they are of that stock of Russian peasants who sit on a soil, barren and sterile, but which 1 never heard to be in famine. Famine in Russia is the product of a rich soil, which having been for centuries scratched only enough to yield a bare sustenance, refuses it now. Certainly, here in America, it is hard for these peasants to compete for success. Among other Russians one may find mechanicians even educated men. It is easy for a German to open a delicatessen store, for a Jew to open any kind of store (each may have been in business in the old country), thanks to the help and advice of their countrymen. Advice is so often much better than money. The best advice on business matters was given me always in the Russian tongue, and I do not forget that it was from Russian Jews. It is characteristic that I met so many Slavs in the heating processes of the steel mills. There they find the chance to start and to learn by themselves. The starting stages of a laborer around the furnace or of an assistant heater are very arduous. Naturally enough the Slavs get the job. Whatever their manner 92A Priest of the Dissenters: of Peasant OriginMEDIEVAL RUSSIA IN PITTSBURGH of life is, the Old Believers are the most self-dependent group of Slavs in America. Not having the help of the church, Old Believers are accustomed to stand much more alone than other Russians. 1, who have not a good word for the Russian official church at home, recognize the helpfulness of it here, where it gives some kind of organization to the amorphous mass of Russian peasants. The Old Believers show a remarkable weakness in their church organization, caused mainly by the ambiguous position of their priests. In the Greek church, ordination is a sacrament and can be performed only by a bishop. Now bishops can be appointed only by an assembly of bishops, and many Old Believers argue that the so-called “Austrian” bishops are not lawful and they recognize only the priests of the Orthodox church who come over to “old belief.” Others either wrangle about their priests, or do not recognize any. Out of the estimated 10,000 Russians in the state of Pennsylvania, in my opinion close to 3,000 are Old Believers. Of these over 1,000 live in Allegheny County and the vicinity. Yet scattered as they are these people have only one prayer house (in Essen), and one priest—a peasant, quite like any member of his flock, without education, although undeniably a good, sober man. He was born a Prussian citizen and served in the Prussian Guards, with whom he was at Sedan in 1870, as a non-commissioned officer. Afterward he became a Russian, and worked as a small boss on government railroads. Now here he is a primus inter pares with the Old Believers. His six foot three, or thereabout, looks extremely sound, and no one would think him to be sixty-seven years old. This priest, however, does not seem to be generally accepted, and many marriages await a blessing in the old country. Lack of organization is generally a weak point with Old Believers; indeed, the worst thing I know about them is that they are not strong union men and they are accused of having broken up the longshoremen's union in Erie. I do not know whether or not this charge be true, but I do know that the derisive “ba, ba's” hurled at them must have been no small factor in any estrangement of the Old Believers from the rest of the workingmen. If to me should be put the question that so persists in the discussion of any group of immigrants: Are they desirable, those long-bearded Russians? 1 am almost ready to say no. Not 93WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH because of their drunkenness; this can be cured, and must be cured. Sweden, thirty years ago, was a land of drunkards; not so today. Not because of their crowded, inhuman living. This can be remedied by regulations similar to those that in time of war are posted on every freight box-car in Russia—“ Eight horses or 40 men only/' But rather because of the fact that so few wish to become American citizens. I can not see how a group of men can be desirable in any country which they regard as a purgatory, be they ignorant Russian peasants in America, or highly skilled Belgian engineers in Russia. Together with the rest of the Russians—for the matter of that, with the rest of the Slavs—these Old Believers live as though yet on passage, in steerage, “temporarily,” without thought of adapting themselves to the conditions that surround them, still less of improving them. They expect to go back home. Patriotism has nothing to do with their return. It is a matter of personal expediency. A similar phenomenon exists in Russia. Our small industrial force there is more than half composed of such hybrid contingents—peasants coming to the industrial centers “to make money for taxes”; living in conditions as bad, though hardly worse than those in Pittsburgh. But here the parallel ceases, for though a Russian city is by no means a great center of culture, its civilizing influence on the hordes of peasants who flock to it is much more rapid and effective than is the case in America. Here in this great country of freedom and enlightenment the wall that encircles ignorance seems to be higher and more impregnable than that of China. Still, if I noticed among my people any inclination to stay here, it was among these same Old Believers. Many have made the journey here two, even three times, and have lost attachment to their native soil. Perhaps these would not now become farmers. If when Old Believers first arrive they could be helped to settle in their primordial capacity of husbandmen, the United States would have in them a good agricultural element. Not that 1 believe my long-bearded countrymen to be human material inferior for whatever purpose to any other people coming to the United States. But undoubtedly it would be a hard task and a long one to turn men who for two hundred years have preserved their Russian traits in Poland, into Americans. Possibly decent, 94MEDIAEVAL RUSSIA IN PITTSBURGH neighborly Americans—not merely reformers and social workers— could conquer Russian ignorance and superstition if they could overcome their own disgust at the “hideous looks and ugly cries” of the foreigners. So Marius conquered the Cymbrians and Teutons by making his soldiers first face the barbarians without fear. Yet, it can hardly be. It is up to the Russians themselves to convert their unenlightened compatriots to “Americanism,” not using the term in the European sense of shrewdness and agility, but as meaning what is good in civic life. There are already Russians in America fitted for such work. The revolution has sent over here many men who in their own country were ready to risk their lives to teach people how to live like human beings. Where are you? Some, as did Garibaldi, may be making candles for a miserable pittance, lost in dreams of returning home to fight. Others, indignant at themselves and at their countrymen for giving themselves up to selfish pursuits when they have known the service to principles, are denouncing America for all kinds of things. Here is a task for you, Gdevy? ot-sovis! 95MODERN RUSSIA IN THE PITTSBURGH DISTRICT Ellsworth, Pa. ETanaacci’s Hall BT» C7BB0TF 17 HOJIfl 1909-fl 0 IQ 3 0 M T> pycCKHTb PaEOTIIXT> Bt. nnTTcCypri AApecck! 2# Vine St., Pittsburg;, P». Ey^erb 4am. rPAH^I03HLIÔ CIÎEKTAKJIL ■ KOHREPTT» IIpB ynaoria apracra Mockobckoö Onepu M. E. CKOPHiIKOBA. B *b H0Æb3y C 0 10 3 A ---- HPOrPAMMA:-------- ''Ilo nyÖ.iHKauiii“, boaobimi», eoTOBenie Æ. H boh osa, ntyp» yripaBjeHieMb r. BÆA^HHO-OJbÆHA KouBwecKifi iiasopocciltCKÌft pa3CKB3.a pierai ipynnu Cyxo^osbcnaro r. A. BEPEMEHKO R3bìctbwA rapuoHBCTb b Tannopi r. HBAHT> TOPOHOBT» Xopi Coi03a Bb aai;ioaasi>Bux'b KocaiOMaxi h npo£ cents.* To railroads and contractors belonged the distinction of being the industrial employers who paid the lowest wages for day labor. Section hands, mostly Italians, in the Pittsburgh District, * Certain steel mills have paid as low as $1.25 per day in subsequent years; one establishment in 1910 paying but $1.06. This level is not one, however, set by the industry as a whole. The policy of the Steel Corporation has been to standardize pay for unskilled labor and hold to it in good times and bad, laying off men, and working the mills part time, but not cutting the day labor rate. In 1910, the United States Steel Corporation raised its rates to 17# cents an hour, Jones and Laughlin to 16. In 1913 the Steel Corporation raised to 20 cents an hour, Jones and Laughlin to 17^ cents. This represents an increase in hourly wages for common labor (from 1907 to 1913) of 21 per cent for the Steel Corporation, and of 17 per cent for Jones and Laughlin. Meanwhile, the cost of food in workingmen’s families for the North Atlantic states, as reflected by the best estimates available, that is, the index numbers of the United States Bureau of Labor statistics, has advanced 26 per cent. The advance for the country as a whole has been 30 per cent, while that for the North Central states with which Pittsburgh has more in common economically than the geographic area with which the census classifies it, has been 33 per cent. See Appendix VII, p. 441. Such a comparison of wages and prices from 1907 to 1914 does nothing to alter the sober finding of the Pittsburgh Survey in 1907-08 that common labor in the Pittsburgh District is paid less than the standard of family subsistence. For the meaning of this in the lives of the people, see Byington, Margaret F.: Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) 119WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH earned 133^ cents an hour, $1.33 a day, but the employment agents on special contracts seemed to be able to get 163^ cents. We struck up a bargain with one of these enterprising wholesale dealers in humanity as he was leading his gang to the depot. He claimed to have sold them at this rate of pay for work in Allegheny County, and offered to furnish us a hundred like them for a month, to lay natural gas pipe in Wisconsin at $2.00 a day, provided we paid their round trip traveling expenses back as far as Chicago and gave him exclusive contract, together with the sole privilege of running the commissary. Giving his name and number in the telephone book, he referred us to the Standard Oil Company, for whom he claimed to be sending men to Oklahoma for the same kind of work on the same terms, the company paying the round trip expenses back to Pittsburgh. Probably, however, the Italian section hands in the Pittsburgh District at $1.35 a day were getting as much, or more, out of the railway companies as they could have netted out of their fellow-countryman, this Americanized padrone. Eight to twelve dollars for a week of sixty hours has since 1907-08 been the gamut of wages* for the unskilled where competition is free and English unessential. Higher levels are reached even in unskilled work when trade unionism, municipal politics, or the English language become factors in the situation. The building laborers, for example, were getting $2.00 for a day of eight hours in 1907-08. This was 50 to 60 per cent more by the hour than was paid for a similar zero degree of mechanical skill in other jobs. In 1908 the hod-carriers and mortar mixers among them secured $3.00 a day, or a scale of 373^ cents. This rate was due to the institution of the Building Laborers’ and Hod Carriers’ Union, established by the American-born English-speaking common laborers, white and colored, to protect themselves against the “ green” Slavs and Italians. But this organization was weak. Only the aid of the organized skilled trades in building construction made it possible for them to launch their effort for short hours and high pay,f but these trades were as yet making no effort to protect the * In 1913 prevailing day rates ran from $1.65 to $2.25 and labor was hard to get at that. In 1914 before the outbreak of the European war, jobs were hard to get at $1.75. This was in the general labor market, including contract work, which reflected the ups and downs of demand. f On account of a comparatively dull season in 1910 in building operations, the day laborers were not steadily employed during that year. The large contractors took advantage of this fact and declared for the open shop, and a strike ensued 120WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH mass of excavators, chiefly immigrants. The state limits work on public jobs to eight hours, and municipal and state politics showed its hand also in the $2.00 paid by the municipality to the 200 day laborers it employed directly.* When labor is in heavy demand, the English language is worth 2 cents an hour. The non-English-speaking worker beginning at \6}4 cents can often get i8>£ cents by the time he becomes sufficiently Americanized to fill a job where a knowledge of English is needed. Additional fitness, adaptability, a political connection, or trade unionism, with no additional mechanical skill, brings him an additional 2 cents, 8 cents, or even 10 cents an hour. TRANSPORTATION WORK Teamsters. In the factories and on the railroads the Slav and the Italian fill the ranks of common labor; it is among the teamsters that the Negro finds his congenial job. The factory is too confined, the work too monotonous; but following his horses, he can see the sights and get paid for riding. Of 9,000 teamsters in the District in 1907-08, more than one-half were Negroes. A teamster reaches his stable between 6 and 6.30 a. m. and is supposed to quit at 5 p. m. He must clean and take care of his horses. Usually he gets an hour for dinner. On the average he works ten hours a day, but this is not fixed; he must get through with his route. If he has very much overtime he usually receives his regular rate per hour for it. Sunday and holiday work are paid for at the same rate. In the city the teamsters do not have much overtime, but in the mills overtime adds a considerable amount to the drivers' earnings. One man interviewed earned nineteen and one-half days' pay in two weeks. He averaged right along about eighteen days at every fortnightly pay day. which resulted in a partial victory for the employers. Since then, as part of the general trend in the building trades, the union has built up a membership of 1300. All big jobs, on skyscrapers and other buildings, where organized labor is in control, employ union building laborers. Union hod-carriers, scaffold builders, mortar mixers, and so forth, receive 37^ cents an hour. The common laborers who do the excavating work receive 25 cents. Men who begin work half an hour ahead of the mechanics and leave half an hour late, get time and a half; double time on Sundays. * Under the civil service rules, which apply to all city employes, day laborers have to pass a physical examination. A law of 1895 requiring contractors doing public work to work their men no more than eight hours, was declared unconstitutional by the supreme court in 1911. Prior to 1907 the city had paid $1.50 and $1.75 for ordinary day labor. 121WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH The usual wage in Pittsburgh in 1907-08 was $10 a week for the driver of a single horse, and $12 for two horses. In the suburban towns, $14 was usually paid for driving a two-horse team. Thus the predominant rate was 18 to 20 cents an hour. The steel companies paid their teamsters $2.00 for a ten-hour day, with overtime and Sunday work at the same rate. The express companies were paying $55 and $60 a month. There were no fixed hours and the men were obliged to keep at their work until all deliveries were made. They had every other Sunday off. Similarly, the cab drivers had to clean their own carriages and worked Sundays, holidays, and any hour of the day or night without extra pay. In 1904 the wages of these were $9.00 and $10 a week. A strike in 1905 raised wages to $14 a week on carriages and $15 on hearses. The bosses then signed an agreement with the cab drivers* union, renewed in 1906. The three locals of team drivers, cab drivers, and ice men at the height of their power numbered about 3,000 men. Only the cab drivers* organization survived the hard times. In 1913, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Stablemen, and Stablemen's Helpers organized a local which is still in a formative state. The garbage collectors employed by city contractors went on strike in the summer of 1913, organized, and secured a raise from $2.00 to $2.25 a day. Rivermen. A class of American workmen, akin to the teamsters in skill but not in color, are the river transport workers. The working day is twelve hours on the double crew boats and somewhat longer—as high as fifteen or eighteen hours—on boats with single crews. Double crews are six hours on and six hours off. The men eat and live on the boats and work seven days in the week. The effect is demoralizing. They work for a “stake” and then “ knock off ” until their money is gone. Drunkenness is the prevailing evil among them. Their wages per month in 1907-08, with board included, were: firemen and deckhands, $50; mates, $70; engineers, $100; captains, $125. About 500 rivermen, organized as a local branch of the International Longshoremen, Marine and Transport Workers* Association, called a strike in January, 1907, and demanded $60 a month for firemen and deckhands, and $80 for mates. The strike was lost, and after two months the men went back to work at the old rates. The marine engineers organized in the fall of 1913, and attempted to secure better terms in the spring of 1914. The companies refused the demands, the men went on strike, and outside engineers were brought in to take their places. 122WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH Street Railway Employes. So far we have been discussing the transportation men whose work is closely akin to primitive methods of haulage. These lead up to the employments which have come in with mechanical horse power. Motormen or conductors can be broken in almost as fast as teamsters. Yet the wages of the street railway men are 20 to 30 per cent higher by the hour and they work an hour or two less per day. They are today fitter and steadier men than the teamsters. They have more responsibility, and their organization, a branch of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employes, is a strong one and makes annual agreements with the Pittsburgh Railway Company. The union in 1907-08 had about 2,700 members and included, with the exception of about 100 men, all the motormen and conductors working in Pittsburgh. This was the third largest local union of street railway employes in the United States, and the wages it secured by joint agreement were the highest east of the Mississippi. Prior to the absorption of all the street railway lines by the Pittsburgh Railways Company and the adoption of the secret ballot in political elections, employment could be secured through political leaders. Since then the men have been hired as they come, according to fitness. Runs on the street cars are continuous and there is no time off for meals.* Unduly long runs may mean overwork and insufficient help; while short runs may mean low earnings for the crews who have them. Therefore, the schedule of hours and runs is an important matter to street railway operatives. In 1907 the Pittsburgh Railways Company revised its schedule so as to shorten the long runs and equalize the work. The longest run was brought down to ten hours and forty minutes as against eleven hours, and nine or ten hours became the day's work for most street railway employes. Extra pay for Sundays, holidays, or overtime was not allowed, but Sunday runs were arranged for somewhat shorter periods than on weekdays. These schedules represented a reduction of 30 to 40 per cent in the hours of labor since 1902. On June 26, 1909, all the motormen and conductors employed by the Pittsburgh Railways Company went out on strike. Their main grievance was that the company had promised to reduce the number of * The men must seize a few minutes between trips for their lunches. 123WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH “short runs” from 213 to half the number, but had not done so. Other grievances related to methods of discipline which the employes complained were too severe. Through the efforts of Mayor Magee the company agreed on June 29 to reduce the short runs to 106 and to leave the other matters to a board of arbitration. The men returned to work pending the arbitration. The report of the board, which was accepted by both sides, ordered the reinstatement of an employe who had been dismissed for drunkenness, and provided punishment less severe than discharge. Under an agreement made in 1910, either party was obliged to notify the other in writing thirty days before the expiration of the agreement, if they desired to make any changes in the contract. By this time, in contrast to the teamsters, all but 50 of the 3,000 street railway men in Pittsburgh wore the union button. The proportion still holds. The agreement in force in 1908 fixed the wages of first-year men, both motormen and conductors, at 24^ cents an hour, and the rate advanced by stages, so that three-year men got 26% cents. This scale represented a reduction in view of a loss in earnings by the company following the panic of 1907, of one-half cent per hour from that made in the preceding year by a board of arbitration. The agreement of 1910 restored the 1907 rate for the men then in the service and increased the wages of those who should remain with the company three years or more. The rates fixed were 25 cents an hour for the first six months of service, 2^yi for the second six months, 26^ for the second year, 27^ for the third year, and 28^ cents for those employed more than three years. After 1911 those who had been in the service of the company more than four years were to receive 29^ cents an hour, but all new men who should be employed after April, 1910, were to be started at 23 cents. The 1912 scale was as follows: first six months, 23^ cents; second six months, 25 cents; second year, 26}4 cents; third year, 28 cents; fourth year, 29 cents; and after four years, 30 cents. In 1914, the men asked for a 35-cent flat rate for all, and the demands are [July-Septem-ber] in process of arbitration. Railway Employes. To handle the enormous traffic of the Pittsburgh District, the various railways employ about 50,000 people. Of these the Pennsylvania lines have about 35,000. The men actually employed on the cars and engines are classed as switchmen (or yardmen) and roadmen. Yardmen do not go outside of the switching yards. They receive the trains, distribute them to the various tracks for unloading, and make up trains to be given to the roadmen. 124WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH About 3,600 men are employed in the switching service in and about Pittsburgh. A switching crew is composed of one conductor or foreman, three brakemen or helpers, an engineer, and a fireman. Considering the requirements of the railway service, its severity and danger, as well as the wages and hours, the condition of the yardmen is similar to that of the roughers and catchers in the rolling mills. They are much the same kind of men, largely American born, of strong physique and endurance, working long hours at the hardest work. Up to 1907 most of the yards guaranteed their switchmen a minimum half day of six hours. If they worked less than this they received a half day's pay. If they worked over six hours they received pay for the actual time employed. One yard guaranteed the men a full day's pay if they worked over six hours. In 1907 a minimum day of ten hours was established and the pay was arranged on the hourly basis. This change was the result of a threatened strike in the fall of 1906 for an eight-hour day and an increase of 6 cents an hour in the rate of wages. The rival unions in the yards, the Switchmen's Union of North America and the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, both presented these demands. To head off the proposed strike the Pennsylvania Railroad issued an order increasing by 10 per cent the wages of all employes receiving less than $200 a month. The move succeeded. The Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen immediately modified their demands, the Switchmen's Union held out for the original demands, the railway companies entered into conferences with the trainmen and a compromise was arranged, —the men to work in two “tricks" of twelve hours each, one coming on, the other off, at 6:30 a.m.; but to be paid for eleven hours—the dinner hour being deducted—and to be guaranteed a minimum day of ten hours. That is, if a man is out only two or three hours he still gets his guaranteed rate for the day. The rates were fixed at the scale given above for 1906, In 1910, and again in 1912-13, scales in the eastern territory affecting 52 lines have been fixed by a series of arbitration awards, the last being those of the engineers dating from May, 1912, the firemen from April, 1913, and the trainmen from November, 1913. For the most part, the rates paid on the Pennsylvania lines have been above these awards, the general level for all roads in the territory creeping up toward them, and, in some few instances, passing them. The rates per hour for yardmen on the Pennsylvania are from 50 per cent to nearly 95 per cent higher than those of twenty years ago. 125WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH 1894 Cents 1902 Cents 1906 Cents 1910 Cents 1912-18 Cents Engineer, Day or night . 29 31.0 34.2 43-5 43-5* Fireman, Day or night *5 18.0 22.1 28.1 28.1b Conductor, Day 24 29.7 35.0 37-5 38.0 Night 25 30.8 36.0 39.0 40.0 Brakeman, Day 18 23.1 30.0 34.0 35.0 Night 19 24.2 31.0 36.0 37.0 a In this item the Pennsylvania rate is above the general award, which was 41.0 cents, b Award, 26.0 cents. In some of the mill yards the night crew and the day crew change shifts every two weeks. Before the enforcement of the seven-day rule in 1910, these mill switchmen were once a month confined to their engines or cars for twenty-four hours. In the railroad yards in 1907-08 day crews usually got off every other Sunday. Night crews worked one Sunday and had two off. The present general practice of the Pennsylvania is to observe a Sunday shut down. In case of wrecks crews are out as long as twenty-five, thirty, and even forty-eight hours. Outside of emergencies, however, the hours of yardmen are regular; little overtime beyond twelve hours is required. The reverse was true of roadmen up to 1907. While the time tables were so arranged that the hours approximated twelve or thirteen per day, congestion of freight compelled men to work much longer. A man starting with a freight could not tell when he would get back. He might have to lie for hours at a siding. Prior to the enactment, in 1907, of the federal law restricting hours in inter-state commerce to sixteen, some men reported being out thirty, forty, and even sixty hours at a stretch. During the winter months eighteen to twenty hours was the regular thing for freight crews. The time record of an engineer for two months in 1907 was: August, twenty-six days, 391 hours; September, twenty-five days, 386 hours; average fifteen hours a day. Twice during September he worked forty hours at one turn. He began Saturday noon and quit Monday morning. The effect of the Federal law in correcting these excessive hours is shown in the percentage relation which overtime paid freight crewsWAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH and passenger crews bears to the total wages paid such crews during the years 1912 and 1913 for the Pennsylvania lines east of Pittsburgh: 1912 . . . Freight 5.1 percent Passenger 1.7 per cent 1913 ... “ 6.1 percent “ 2.1 percent Moreover, it would be extremely uneconomical for a company to operate with the old irregularity—since under the awards train employes are guaranteed a ten-hour day for time held away from home terminal after a given number of hours, ranging from eighteen to twenty-eight hours. To quote a Pennsylvania R. R. official as to present practice: “While the Federal Law places a time limit of 16 hours in which an employe may remain on duty, the percentage of men relieved in order to avoid this violation is comparatively small. This is due to the fact that the railroads have, during the past decade, expended large sums of money in yards and terminals as well as additional running tracks, which has resulted in permitting the men to make their runs in reasonable time. In fact the majority of freight runs on the Lines East of Pittsburgh are paid for on the basis of 11 hours, while the running time consumes 8, 9, and 10 hours, thereby giving the employes a bonus of the hours saved under the 11 hours paid for. Of course, under extraordinary circumstances, these crews are detained beyond the time limit placed on the run, in which case, however, they receive overtime on a minute basis.” The pay for the men on the road is fixed by a combination of hourly rate and mileage run. A minimum day of ten hours is guaranteed, on an assumed run of 100 miles in that period. If the employe is out longer than ten hours, or makes over 100 miles in that ten hours, he gets extra compensation on a pro rata basis* miles or hours, whichever is greater. The 1907, 1910, and 1912-13 scales per 100 miles or less or ten hours or less are shown on the following page. They indicate the general rise in pay throughout the period, and the last two columns show the relation of the Pennsylvania Railroad rates to the general award. Some of the railway brotherhoods have strong organizations in the Pittsburgh District, but their insurance features and the difficulty of calling a strike on a railroad system serve to make the men conservative and to delay improvements in their condition. It required federal legislation to set a limit of sixteen to their consecutive hours of labor. The switchmen's union, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor,—as the railway brotherhoods are not,—has shown a more aggressive spirit and has incurred the hostility of the railway managers, who are inclined to favor the 127WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH rival union, the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen.* This conflict of jurisdiction, especially in the switchyards, also tends to stand in the way of action for improvement. MINIMUM SCALE. 100 MILES OR LESS, 10 HOURS OR LESS 1907 Award 1910 Award 1912-13 Award 1912-13 P.R.R. Local Freight Trains: Engineer (lowest type engine) $3.60 $4-75 $5.00 $5-i° Fireman (lowest type engine) 2.30 3.00 3-35 3-35 Conductor .... 3.25 3-975 4.50 4.50 Brakeman .... 2.40 2.70 3.00 3.00 Flagman .... 2.50 2.80 3.00 3.00 Through Freight Trains: Engineer (highest type engine) 4.25 4-75 4-75 4.85 Fireman (highest type engine) 2.80 3.00 3.20 3.20 Note : The passenger scales and schedules are if anything more complicated than those of the freights. In general, the positions are preferred as they are more regular and give a man more time at home, even when they do not net more pay. It is evident that organization has made a decided difference in the condition of men engaged in the transportation trades. Teamsters and rivermen, whose unions are weak and unstable, have been checked in reducing their hours of labor or increasing wages. In contrast with these the street railway employes, whose organization by 1910 included all but 50 of the platform men in Pittsburgh, have greatly reduced their hours of labor since 1902, and in addition have secured many improvements in their conditions of employment together with substantial increases in wages. The organizations of the steam railroad employes have been strong in numbers but they have lacked aggressiveness. Their hours of labor are therefore comparatively long, and whatever reduction of hours they have secured has come through governmental action. Substantial increases in wages have come to them, however, partly from the desire of the companies to head off any militant organizations among their men. * The secretary of the switchmen's union gives this range of rates on the three lines in which they have a footing in the Pittsburgh District in 1914: yard crews,—conductors, day 38-39.5 cents per hour: night, 39-41.5; brakemen, day, 35-36.5; night, 36-38.5. 128Engineer and Fireman Top-notchers in the use of the big tools of transportationWAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH SUPPLY TRADES In juxtaposition to the transportation industries in Pittsburgh which employ teamsters, rivermen, and railway men, whose working hours are, for the most part, spent out of doors, may be placed a group of “indoor occupations,” which present locally even greater contrasts in the process of labor organization. The workers in these occupations include the mercantile employes in stores and printing plants, and the bakers and brewers—chief among the food producers of the city. All these industries are closely identified with city life, and in them we find the general sentiment of the community toward labor, often the result of union propaganda or union purchasing power, playing a part in determining the status of the workers. The difficulty of standardizing the multitude of retail stores made it impossible even for the strong union of “sales people” which once existed, to have any effect on wages. Yet this union was, during the big day of the Knights of Labor, when the general spirit of organization was strong in the land, able to shorten the hours of work and fix definite hours for opening and closing of shops. In this, to be sure, employers were willing to acquiesce in so far as competitors could be made to open and close at the same time, and the reduced hours continued long after the union dropped out. Among the bakers, shortage in the supply of workmen helped to fairly double their wages within a period of fifteen years and to cut down hours by one-third to one-half. But to the scarcity of workers must be added the ease with which the use of the union label can be enforced where consumers are mainly working people. This fact accounts for the strength of the Jewish bakers’ union. The effective use of the union label, and also of the boycott, in another industry where the consumers are very largely workingmen is illustrated by the brewery workmen. They have organized the entire industry, and by taking into their organization every workman, whatever his trade, who works for the brewery, they present a solid front to employers. The result is that brewery workmen enjoy an eight-hour day and their earnings approximate that of men with a much higher grade of skill. Similarly in the printing trades, those employed on newspapers have been in a strategic position from the fact that public pressure could 9* 129WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH be brought to bear on the publishers. It has given them an advantage, so that their earnings are greater and they work fewer hours per day than do men in the book and job offices. Retail Clerks. For a long time Pittsburgh had one of the strongest organizations of retail clerks in the country. Although the union Js now practically destroyed, the hours and conditions of labor which it first established by agreements with employers have tended to continue. Salespeople's Assembly No. 4907, Knights of Labor, of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, was organized about 1885. From the very beginning it proved successful and grew rapidly. In 1902 and 1903, at the height of its power, it had agreements with 2$ stores and counted 1,200 members. All but two of the largest stores were unionized. These two, Boggs and Buhl in Allegheny, and Joseph Horne and Company in Pittsburgh, by offering conditions just a little better than those provided in the agreements, were able to keep the union out. The union found it impossible, as has been said, to regulate wages, and consequently the agreements were concerned only with hours and conditions of work. Previously, clerks had worked an indefinite number of hours. They would arrive at the stores at 6 or 7 in the morning and remain until 9 or 10 at night. Saturday nights they worked much later. Having no fixed day there had been no pay for overtime, and often Sunday work was unpaid. The first agreements of the union fixed the hours definitely at 7.30 a. m. for the opening, and 6 p. m. for closing, except on Saturday, when the closing hour was 10 p. m. All work outside of these hours was overtime, for which time and one-half was to be paid. Work on Sundays or holidays was paid double the regular rates. These agreements were usually for periods of three or five years. The last of the series of city-wide agreements provided: 1. Store open not earlier than 8 a. m. the year round. 2. Store closed not later than 5130 p. m. during first five working days of the week, except from the first Monday after the Fourth of July until the first Tuesday after the first Monday in September, when the closing hour shall be 5 p. m. 3. Store closed not later than 9 p. m. Saturdays, except as hereafter provided for. 130WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH 4. Store closed all day Decoration Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's, as governed by state law. 5. The party of the second part shall have the privilege of keeping store open on the six (6) evenings preceding Christmas not later than 10 o'clock. 6. All services required before the time and after closing shall be paid for at the rate of time and half-time, pro rata to wages, provided that when stock needs attention at closing time, 30 minutes shall be allowed to place it in order, and further provided, that customers in the act of buying at closing time shall be served until purchase is concluded. All salespeople who are disengaged at closing time shall be promptly permitted to depart. 7. One hour shall be allowed for dinner and supper, and should this privilege be forfeited in the interest of business, 50 cents shall be paid for it. 8. Tardiness in the morning or at meal times shall be subject to the regulations of the firm (as per store rules) except that when penalties are imposed, they shall in no case exceed time and half-time, pro rata to wages. 9. No employe shall be continued in service who does not work in harmony with the Salespeople's Assembly, and in engaging help due preference shall at all times be given to its members. 10. No goods shall be sold by others than members of this assembly except they are only special or extra help, and all such shall, upon demand, become members........... [Other rules provided that all employes must be members of the union except proprietors' relatives, managers or buyers.] When in 1905 this agreement expired at the store of Eisner and Philips, that firm refused to renew it. The employes struck and were defeated. One by one the stores gave up the agreements. While the hours which had been agreed to were not immediately changed, the union was disrupted and it now maintains its existence on paper only. Several attempts of the Retail Clerks' International Protective Association, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, to reorganize the sales people, have proved unsuccessful.* The effect of the absence of a union soon became apparent. In 1908 Labor Day was not observed as a holiday by the retail stores; and some of the stores which had formerly closed at 5 p. m. during July and * An employes' association instituted since 1908 is not in any sense a union. 131WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH August during this year remained open till 5:30. The same year Miss Butler* found 14 stores working regularly from 8 a. m. to 5:30 p. m.—the schedule of the old union agreement. Eight stores, however, were working from 8 a. m. to 6 p. m. Two stores were open not only Saturday evenings but evenings during the week as well until 9 and 10 o'clock. One store had no Christmas overtime and its trade was apparently not lessened thereby; but the others had overtime amounting to from ten days to two weeks. Six of them had a double shift arrangement whereby employes were on holiday duty alternate evenings, coming later on the days following nights at work. Seventeen stores had no double shift during the holidays, requiring a working week of from 72 to 84 hours. Wages of retail clerks vary so greatly that it is impossible to give any general rates. In 1907-08 clothing salesmen began at $10 or $12 per week, and when experienced their wages rose to $18, $20, and $25. “Gents furnishing" salesmen, including hat salesmen, were usually started at $8.00 per week. Experienced men got from $ 12 to $ 18. In 1907-08 some department stores salesmen received as little as $6.00 per week and women less than this amount.f Sale people had thus been unable to better their own conditions since the union failed. They have gained since by movements among the purchasing public. In some of the large department stores conditions were above the average in 1907-08, and special consideration was shown the women employes. But up to 1910 only one store in Pittsburgh—McCreery's—met the “white-list" requirements of the Consumers' League. Three other department stores—Joseph Horne Company, Boggs and Buhl, and Meyer Jonasson & Company, were on the white list in 1913; 13 are listed in 19144 Printers. The printing trade is subdivided into several branches. The pressmen's and feeders' unions engaged in a country-wide strike beginning in 1907 and, as far as practical purposes were concerned, lost in Pittsburgh, and in many other places. * For detailed description of conditions among women workers in the mercantile houses see Chapter X of Butler, Elizabeth Beardsley: Women and the Trades. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) In November, 1913, a new law went into effect providing for a fifty-four-hour week and a ten-hour day for girl employes under twenty-one and excluding them from all night work after 9 p. m., making no exception for mercantile houses at Christmas time. For the 1913 law affecting women’s work, see Kelley, op. cit. P. 213 of this volume. t Wages of salesgirls among a group studied by Kingsley House in 1913 ranged from $3.00 to $7.00 for girls from fourteen to seventeen; $4.50 to $10 for girls over that age. See Appendix XIX, p. 492. A movement for a minimum wage law failed in 1913, and will be agitated again in 1915. J For white list, see Appendix XIII, p. 454. 132WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH In the commercial plants in Pittsburgh their strike gradually dissipated but was never formally called off. The way the matter was left was that where a shop worked longer than the eight-hour day, it paid time and a half for the ninth hour. The web-press men of the newspaper offices have fared better than the flat-bed men of the commercial shops, getting from $3.00 to $3.75 in 1914 as against $2.00 to $3.45 in 1907, and working an eight-hour day. Although the open shop movement in the printing trades lost the typographical union many places in Pittsburgh, this branch was more strongly entrenched than the others. In 1907-08 the union had 400 members, or less than one-half the compositors in Pittsburgh. All but one newspaper and about half the job offices were working under closed shop agreements. The depression threw half the men out of work and many of the job offices closed down. In the years since, the largest job offices have remained open shops but all the dailies belong to the Pittsburgh Newspaper Publishers' Association and are parties to joint agreements with local No. 7 which have raised standards. Under the agreement governing morning and evening newspapers in 1907-08 piece work was forbidden, all work was on a time basis and the test of competency of employes on machines was 4,000 ems per hour. This was raised to 5,000 per hour by agreement in January, 1909. The minimum wage of all employes in the composing rooms of the morning newspapers, except proofreaders, machine tenders, and machine tenders* assistants, was 60 cents per hour.* After eight hours the rate was 70 cents. On evening newspapers the minimum rate was 55 cents, and for all work over eight hours it was 65 cents. For all work over ten hours, the rate was price and one-half. Proofreaders on both morning and evening papers were paid $22 per week, and 55 cents an hour for overtime. The minimum wage for machinists was $5.00 per day and their assistants got $2.50. In January, 1914, a five-year agreement was entered upon, setting, for the morning newspapers, 65 cents per hour during the first three years, 66 cents during the last two years, seven and one-half or eight continuous hours at the employers* option to constitute a day*s work, exclusive of half an hour for luncheon; proofreaders to receive not less than $25.50 per week for an eight-hour day with overtime at 65 cents; machinists to receive not less than $5.00 per day, and machine tenders not less than $3.25. On evening newspapers the rate is 60 cents per hour for com-*The Pittsburgh Dispatch paid 61 cents an hour. 133WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH positors during the first three years, 61 cents the last two, hours identical, proofreaders to receive not less than $23.50 with overtime at 60 cents, machinists and machine tenders the same as above. For all work over eight hours in any one day, the rate is price and a half. The work is on a time basis exclusively, and bonuses are prohibited. In book and job offices printers and proofreaders received in 1907-08 a minimum of $ 16 a week for day work, and $ 19 for night work. This had been the rate in Pittsburgh for ten or fifteen years, and in the opinion of the officials of the union it was ridiculously small. Where plants were run in three shifts, one received the day scale and two the night scale. Piece work (hand setting) was at the rate of 38 cents per thousand ems for day, and 40 cents for night work. Overtime by day or piece was at the rate of price and one-half. Operators on monotype or linotype machines received a minimum rate of $21 per week for day work, and $25 for night work. The minimum rate for casters was $18 by day and $22 by night. Where two casting machines were employed the rate was $21.50 for day and $22.50 for night work. During the current five years the union has stood for a scale of prices ranging from $17 for proofreaders and journeymen in 1909 to $20 in 1915, night work at $3.00 per week above the day scale, and overtime at the old rates. Machine and casting scales have remained about stationary except that monotype operators who take charge of casting machines and linotype operators call for a scale of $24. Piece work has been abolished in union shops. Where these agreements are in effect apprentices are limited to one to five journeymen in the jobbing offices, one to eight on the newspapers; while practical printers who want to learn to operate the machine must be paid the regular scale after a twelve weeks' probationary period. The agreement between the union and newspaper publishers' association provides that neither party shall enter into a sympathetic strike or lockout, and that matters of dispute be submitted to a committee of arbitration selected two by the publishers, two by the union and these four to select a fifth; decision to be final and binding on both parties. A similar arbitration scheme is provided in the jobbing agreement. Bakers. Among bakery workmen, unionism is yet weak. Hardly 20 per cent were organized in 1907-08. In the preceding period of prosperity the supply of bakers had not been up to the demand, due to the fact that the long hours and Sunday work had tended to keep boys out of the trade. Because of this shortage of bakers conditions had improved considerably, but when the financial panic with its consequent unemployment came, the 134WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH men were not able to stave off a general reduction in wages of $2.00 per week. The 200 union bakers were organized in three local unions of the Bakery and Confectionery Workers' International Union of America. There are few American bakers in Pittsburgh. Germans, Austrians, and Slavs predominate. There are also some Italians, who in 1907-08 were entirely unorganized, and worked under the worst conditions. One of the locals was composed entirely of Yiddish-speaking bakers, and these had the only union bakeshops in the District. This Jewish local union made agreements with two boss bakers by which the latter accepted the union scale of wages and hours, and in return were empowered to place the union label on all their products. Bakery workmen are divided according to their work into three classes. The “first hand” is one who attends the oven. “Second hands” work at the bench and are sometimes called “bench hands.” The “third hand” is the helper. The improvement in the bakers' condition during the fourteen years prior to the panic of 1907 can be seen in the course of their wages per week: Class 1894 1896 1900 1907 i st hand . ■ ■ $ 9~ $15—$16 $18 2d hand . 4-6* 6- 8* 10- I I* 15t 3d hand . 2.50- 5* 4- 5* <1 1 00 * I3t During the period referred to the hours of labor steadily decreased. In 1894 bakeries operated fourteen and sixteen hours every day, while on Friday twenty hours was the rule. By 1900 the hours had fallen to about eleven per day. In the two union shops in 1908, the men worked regularly a ten-hour day,—one shift from 5 p. m. to 3 a. m. and the other from 2 a. m. to 12 m. These were the only shops where the hours were fixed, with the exception of the large bakeries, like those of the National Biscuit Company, where the men who worked at the ovens worked the same number of hours and got from 18 to 20 cents an hour. Most bakers had a working day of ten or eleven hours, except on Friday when the usual time was thirteen hours. The longer time on Friday was due to the fact that no work is done Saturday night. The agreements in the two label shops in 1907-08 provided for the minimum scale shown in the first column on page 136, although the actual wages were found to be higher. *With board, lodging, and laundry. f$io-$n with board, lodging, and laundry. t$7.oo-$8.oo with board, lodging, and laundry. 135WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH SCALE OF WAGES PER WEEK IN JEWISH LABEL SHOPS 1907-8 1914 First hand, at oven $20 $27 Second hand, foreman of bench work 16 23 Second hand, bench worker . 15 20 Third hand, helper 12 18 Following the financial depression the bakers’ unions more than regained their ground. The general rates in the trade have advanced to the standard set by the label shops in 1907-08, while the Jewish unions have brought the scale in the small shops up to the figures given at the right. In 1910 when they presented their scale, there was a strike that lasted only four hours. The men won, receiving an increase in wages and a reduction in the number of working hours. In 1913 the Polish bakers organized, securing a six-day week, a nine-hour day and $20 a week for first hands, $ 17 for second; in 1914, the bakery salesmen of the Hill District organized, getting a six-day week and an all-round increase of $1.00 a week; and in 1914, also, the Jewish cake bakers got six days, nine hours, and a $1.00 a week raise. The unions have failed to get any permanent footing in the largest establishments, where in 1907-08 laborers got from 15 to 20 cents an hour, and oven and bench hands, 20 to 30 cents. Brewery Workers. The brewery workers are the only workmen in the Pittsburgh District whose entire industry is thoroughly organized, and this favored position they owe to the union label and the boycott. Every brewery in the Pittsburgh District works under a signed agreement with the brewery workers' union, and every agreement provides for the closed shop. These establishments employed about 2,000 people in 1907. As has been stated, every employe in and about a brewery is admitted to the union, regardless of his occupation. The type of organization is thus different from any thus far described. Incidentally, this has brought the organization into conflict with the engineers' and coopers' unions. In these jurisdictional disputes the principal point at issue has been whether members of these two crafts who work in breweries shall belong to their respective unions or whether they shall remain in the brewery workers' union. It is the old question of trade autonomy versus the industrial group. The effectiveness of the latter form of organization in such an industry as brewing is seen in the wages, hours, and condi- 136WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH tions of labor laid down in the contracts. In that signed in April, 1907, it was agreed between the employers and the union that in case of dull business the workingmen without exception should be laid off in rotation, and no one was to be laid off for more than one week at a time. In case of sickness the employe had to be restored to his position on recovery. Disputes were to be settled by means of a conference committee composed of three members of the union and three men appointed by the employers. If no decision were reached an outside party was to be chosen as arbitrator. Other points in this three-year agreement—which except for the increases in wages has been renewed in practically identical form in 1911 and 1914—are as follows: Beer might be given free to all employes during working hours at option of employer. The term of apprenticeship in the wash-house, cellar, and brew-house was set at “not less nor more than two years, and each firm was required to have its apprentices instructed in all the different branches of the trade during that time. ” Apprentices were not to be under eighteen or over twenty-one years of age at the time of beginning their apprenticeship. They had to become members of the union within two months after their engagement. One apprentice was permitted to every wash-house, cellar, or brew-house employing less than 10 men; to 10 men, two apprentices; to 20 men three; and for every additional 10 men one more apprentice might be employed. In the bottling-house one apprentice was allowed for every five men or fraction employed. Eight hours constituted a day's work for all men within the breweries. Nine hours were required of brewery drivers and stablemen in contrast to the ten-hour day of the unorganized stablemen and drivers employed by wholesale liquor dealers. Seven days constituted a week's work for engineers, engineers' helpers, wipers, oilers, firemen, and firemen's helpers. All other employes, except drivers, who on Sunday were to give not more than one hour to cleaning their teams, worked six days a week. Drivers and bottling-house employes were paid time and one-half for Sundays and holidays,* but regular rates for ordinary overtime. All other employes were to get time and one-half for overtime as well as for work on Sundays and holidays. Previous to 1907 bottling-house employes had worked eight and one-half hours per day, and the men in the breweries nine hours. Engineers and firemen reduced their hours from twelve to eight the same year. * Since raised for drivers to double time for extra work on these days. 137WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH The following table shows the scales of wages signed in 1907 and 1911 : Wash-house employes and coopers in the wash-house or pitch-yard Men in the cellars and brew-house . First man in the wash-house, brew-house, and fermenting cellar First cellar boss................... Chief engineers..................... All other engineers .... Firemen, pipe-fitters, and repair workers.......................... Pipe-fitters' helpers, firemen's helpers, wipers, oilers, malt-dryers, and ice-pullers...................... Route drivers....................... Shipping or private trade drivers Bottled beer drivers .... Stablemen . . . . . Wholesale dealers' drivers . Helpers............................. Bottling-house employes . Minimum Wage 1907 1911 1914 >16.00 (week) $17.50 $19.00 17.00 < t 18.00 19.50 18.00 it 19.00 20.50 20.00 it 21.00 22.50 : 10.00 (month) 110.00 25.00 20.00 (week) 21.00 22.50 17.00 it 18.00 *9-5° 15.00 a 16.00 17.50 19.21 4 € 20.00 21.50 16.50 it 17.50 19.00 18.00 i € 19.00 20.50 15.00 it 16.00 17.50 16-20 it 16-21 16-21 14.00 it 14.00 16- 2.50 (day) 2.50 (week) 17.50 It will be seen that the earnings of the men who worked in the brewery proper ranged in 1907 from $16 to ^20 per week, while all bottling-house employes got $2.50 per day. Work was steady, and though it required but half the time to learn the brewer's trade, the journeyman had an annual income equal to, if not greater than, that of the ordinary building trade mechanic. Again, the wages of stablemen were $15 per week, while drivers received from $16 to $21. Considering the reduction of hours, the union had therefore increased the wages of its teamsters over those of unorganized teamsters 50 to 60 per cent by the hour. In 1909 and 1911 the men in the breweries entered into agreements* with the owners, which still further increased wages, and again in 1914.+ * In 1912 the United States Brewers’ Association and the brewery workers negotiated through their representatives a co-operative plan of accident and sickness insurance, old age pension, and so forth, remarkable for its comprehensiveness. It was voted down by union referendum. fThe 1914 agreements contain, along with the wage scales, a scheme of sanitary standards. See Appendix XIV, p. 454. 138WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH METAL TRADES Next to the steel mills the manufacture of machinery, machine parts, and appliances occupies the greatest number of workers in the Pittsburgh District. These “ metal trades/' as they are commonly called, are as closely related to steel, the major industry of Pittsburgh, as that is dependent upon the vast stores of coal in the surrounding country. They are the subsidiary industries which use the iron and the steel from rolls and furnaces and make it up into finished products. In these industries thousands of mechanics, machinists, molders, blacksmiths, and boiler makers, mainly Americans, are doing the skilled work, while immigrants find occupation as foundry laborers. Both American boys and immigrant men work as machine hands and helpers in an endless variety of jobs. Plants which fabricate the structural parts for bridges, buildings, viaducts, and so forth, are characteristic of the region. Their operations lie midway between the heavy work of the tonnage industries and the highly skilled work of such establishments as the New England tool factories and the automobile works of the Middle West. The development of machinery with its ever increasing specialization has played havoc with the organizations of workers in these midway groups. Moreover, employers have combined to prevent the men's organizations from dictating terms of employment. The result has been that nine hours has constituted the prevailing day's work for many years. All attempts to reduce the hours to eight have failed, except in the case of a comparatively small number of blacksmiths and boiler makers. Instead of having a minimum rate set by what the men determine to be a fair day's pay, wages are determined by what the employer considers a man to be worth to him. Increases of wages have accrued mainly to the men of higher skill among the pattern makers, iron molders, and blacksmiths. Their unions have not had enough coherence one with another to secure advantages for the whole industrial group, such as the brewery men have won for their calling. Not until we reach the building trades do we again find solidarity and cooperation among a group of allied crafts. Machinists. Probably 15,000 men were employed in the machine shops of Allegheny County in 1907-08. The highest skill was found among 139WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH the 5,000 in contract or jobbing shops. These are all-round mechanics; they may have a different kind of work to do each day and are able to work from blue prints. About one-fourth of these belonged to the union in 1907, and the same proportion is reported to hold in 1914. The remaining 10,000 were chiefly "machine hands” working in "specialized shops,” in which a particular product is constantly duplicated and each workman is confined to operating a single machine. The specialized shops, of which the Westinghouse plants are examples, are run "open shop.” This specialization in the machine industry has been one of the causes which has weakened the machinists' union throughout the country. In the 8o's the Pittsburgh branch of the International Association of Machinists controlled nearly all the machinists in the District. It was able to establish the nine-hour day (1890) several years before the general agitation for nine hours began in other parts of the country. Now the union confines its efforts entirely to the contract shops, and in these also it has lost ground. The largest employers of machinists were in 1907-08 united in the Manufacturers' Association of Pittsburgh, affiliated with the National Metal Trades' Association. The latter association is composed of persons, firms, or corporations, owning or controlling plants in which are employed not only machinists, but molders, core makers, pattern makers, blacksmiths, brass workers, electrical workers, pipe-fitters, and members of kindred trades handling iron, steel, brass, or other metals. Members pay 1 cents per month for each operative earning $2.00 and over per day. Two men earning less than $2.00 each count as one operative. The National Metal Trades' Association insures all its members against strikes. When a strike occurs, the national association supplies strikebreakers free of cost. The employer, however, must pay for their board, lodging, and protection where these are necessary. In times of peace the national association employs "special operatives,” hired usually at $100 a month, whose business it is to make a daily report to the employer regarding everything that goes on in the shop. These men are employed by members of the association at about 35 cents an hour, the difference between this rate and the $100 being paid by the national office. For several years prior to 1904 the machinists' union of Pittsburgh made verbal agreements with the Manufacturers' Association. The scale was 30 cents per hour as a minimum, with a fifty-four-hour week. Many machinists were paid more than 40 cents. In 1904 the employers' organization wrote to the union asking for a conference to discuss wages, but the union refused. Times were bad and the machinists feared wages might be reduced. The old scale, therefore, remained in force. On April 1, 1907, the union presented a demand for a minimum of 40 cents per hour, a fifty-hour week, and a 10 per cent increase for those 140Grinding Castings on an Emery Wheel Pittsburgh is a center for all manner of plants which turn iron and steel into manufactured forms—foundries, fabricating plants, electrical works, car shops, locomotive works. In them there is a greater call for mechanics than in the master industry: yet the tendency is toward specialization, speed, and semi-skilled laborFilling Molds The corner of a Pittsburgh foundry Photo by HttieWAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH who were already getting more than 40 cents an hour. The employers offered a 7yi per cent increase for all men, in order not to establish any fixed minimum. The union refused this offer and ordered a strike. About 1,800 men, including 200 apprentice boys, were involved. The National Metal Trades Association supplied the firms in the Manufacturers' Association with strikebreakers. At first the employers were seriously crippled. A member of the Manufacturers' Association said that the strikebreakers who were sent in were a “bad lot''; they were inefficient and they refused to work long in one place. But the employers managed to keep the shops going, and as the strike dragged on some of the old men went back and the better strikebreakers developed into good workmen. A number of the smaller firms conceded the demands of the union. Many of them had in fact been paying 40 cents an hour before the strike, and the union waived its demand for a fifty-hour week. The larger shops, however, continued to run with non-union men. The strike was still in progress when the panic came. Fully* half of the machinists were thrown out of work, and remained out for a whole year. In the scramble for what work there was, union demands were forgotten. The men began to leave their organizations; of the 20 machinists' lodges in the District 10 only remained intact. Lack of work turned the balance so far in favor of the employers that the union was defeated. Thereafter, the fifty-four hour week has continued to prevail in most shops, the working day running from 7 a. m. to 5 p. m., with time out for lunch, and from 6 p. m. to 6 a. m. five nights a week where night shifts were employed. Many firms allow a Saturday half holiday, making up the time by operating 9^ hours on five days, and 5^ hours on Saturday. Time and one-half for overtime, and double time for Sundays, is paid in union and in “open" shops. The ten-hour day governs in the machine shops of the steel companies; in these and other non-union establishments only straight time is paid for overtime. The strike put an end to the old fixed minimum wage for machinists. Few skilled men, however, get less than the 30 cents per hour which had prevailed theretofore. The practice in 1908 was to start a man usually at about 33 cents an hour, but sometimes as low as 25 cents, rates running up as high as 45 and 50 cents, with perhaps 40 cents as the average. The Westinghouse Company in 1914 are paying machinists 28 to 35 cents an hour, approximately market rates for the District. Following the strike of 1907 the employers have determined the ratio of apprentices to journeymen as they see fit. What union officials termed an “ill-advised strike of newly organized men" broke out in the machine shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad between Pittsburgh and Altoona in the summer of 1910. Union officials did their utmost to avoid this strike, but the men had suffered 141WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH so long under real or fancied grievances relating to the method of pay for piece work and to an alleged black list, that they could not be restrained from walking out. The company imported strikebreakers and the strikers were beaten. The men were organized into the Pennsylvania Shop Employes' Association, and receive some recognition. In May, 1911, the machinists and blacksmiths in the Baltimore and Ohio shops struck. Wages, hours, and the system of piece work were the points of contention. Here the strike was more successful. In the summer of 1914 came a spirited but unsuccessful mass strike in the Westinghouse plants in East Pittsburgh under the guidance of leaders of the Detroit Branch of the I. W. W. Seventeen nationalities were fused and held together for three weeks before the break in the ranks came. Five thousand out of a payroll of 14,000 had been laid off due to the depression and the working time cut down to stave laying off others. Efficiency system abuses and discrimination against socialist leaders who had organized the Allegheny Congenial Industrial Union were charges brought against the company, which President Herr agreed to take up if the men returned to work. This they refused to do as a body, the strike from the beginning being less for specific demands than an appeal to solidarity among the workers, coupled with revolutionary propaganda. The company then advertised for men and the strike petered out. It was marked by restraint on both sides. Molders. About 4,000 wage-earners were employed at molding in the Pittsburgh District in 1907-08, less than half of whom were members of the International Molders' Union. The six locals had together some 1,900 members, including 300, or about three-fourths, of the core makers employed in the District. Of the skilled molders only about 300 were outside the unions, while in the malleable iron works, employing about 1,000 men of less skill, there were no union men whatever. To be eligible to the union, a molder must have served an apprenticeship of four years, or worked four years at the trade. The union has held its own. The employers are organized in a branch of the National Founders' Association. Earlier, this association controlled 26 of the 68 foundries in the District, and these 26 employed a majority of the molders. In 1907-08, however, only six companies belonged to the association. While the molders' union had been able to get but one employer to sign an agreement, the skilled employes in most shops were union men. A majority of the molders employed by the Westinghouse Machine Company, for example, belonged to the union. In prosperous times the molders have been well able to maintain the union scale of wages, but when a depression comes employers usually manage to reduce wages. Thus in 1908, when about two-thirds of the skilled molders were out of work, employers reduced the daily rate from $3.50 to $3.25. 142WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH After a strike in 1899, $3.00 was established as the minimum wage. In 1903 a 10 per cent increase was secured, making the daily rate $3.30. Following a reduction in 1904, which the employers voluntarily restored, the union in 1906 secured an increase of 20 cents per day, and $3.50 remained the minimum daily wage until the hard times. By 1910, the molders had so far recovered their strength that in unionizing one of the largest shops in this District, a scale was secured providing for $3.75 for a nine-hour day, and by 1913 this had risen to $4.00, the present scale. The molders' union is opposed to the piece-rate system. This system has prevailed in the malleable iron works, which are entirely unorganized and in which in 1907-08 the men earned about $3.00 per day. Nine hours has been the molders' working day since 1902. Some shops have been working nine hours per day for thirty years. Time and one-half for overtime; double time for Sundays and holidays is paid both molders and pattern makers. Pattern Makers. As early as 1878, pattern makers in Pittsburgh formed a union under the Knights of Labor. Now, however, they are part of the Pattern Makers' League. There has been little trouble between employers and men and from the labor standpoint this trade continues one of the best in the vicinity. In 1907-08, 300 men out of about 450 working at the trade in the District were organized. Four dollars for a nine-hour day was the prevailing rate. This wage was the union minimum and the nine-hour day had prevailed since 1891. Many union men, however, got $4.25 per day and a few made as much as $5.00. The Westinghouse plants employed some union men, but they were a minority. Wages in these latter plants were 40 and 42 cents per hour. The men were started at the former figure. The difference in money between the union scale and the Westinghouse rates was therefore small, a difference made up to the men by the steadier work which the big company afforded. In 1914, the rate in the Westinghouse plant at Trafford City is from 40 to 45 cents, while the union minimum was 45 cents an hour in manufacturing shops, 50 cents in jobbing shops. The course of wages per day for pattern makers for thirty years in the Pittsburgh District has been as follows: 1880- $2.25; 1884- $2*50; 1887- $2.75; 1890-92, $3.00; 1892-96 about $2.75; 1897, $3.00; 1900 13.50; 1905-10, $4.00; 1913-14, i4.05-i4.50. Boiler Makers. The boiler makers might be classed among the metal, building, or even the transportation trades. They work in shops, work outside on buildings, and for the railroads. Less than half of the 1,500 boiler makers in the District were organized in 1907-08. When employed outside they had the wages, hours, and conditions general in the building trades. Their scale then was $3.60 per day of eight hours, or 45 cents an hour. Inside men had the nine-hour day, like the machinists M3WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH and the molders, and their pay was about the same—$3.15 a day or 35 cents an hour. In the railroad shops, boiler makers, like all other employes, had less favorable conditions. The hours were ten and wages $3.30 a day. The 400 to 600 men who worked in the steel mills repairing boilers and doing similar work were all non-union, and theirs was the poorest rate in this trade—$3.00 for a day of ten hours. Employment was very steady for boiler makers during 1906-07. The panic, however, caused many to leave town, and about a third of those remaining were out of work during 1908. No attempt was made on the part of employers to reduce wages on account of hard times, and with the return of prosperity the union made great strides in membership. By 1910 about two-thirds of all the men in the District had become organized. They had also secured an increase in wages by that date and had reduced the number of working hours for many inside men to eight. By 1913 outside workers secured a rate of 50 cents per hour for an eight-hour day, inside workers 40 cents an hour for a nine-hour day. Railroad boiler makers secured 38 cents per hour for a nine-hour day, and boiler makers in the mills receive $4.00 for a ten-hour day. Moreover, men in this union have gotten the highest overtime rate in the District. On some classes of repair work on Sundays the pay has been three or four times the ordinary rate per hour. Boiler makers, also, are allowed the so-called “dirty dollar” given to them by the employer to cover the cost of laundering and the destruction of their clothes when engaged in some particularly difficult and dirty work. Blacksmiths. The union blacksmiths of the District comprise about one-third of the total number engaged in this work. In 1907-08 the union numbered about 600 men, divided as follows: 100 wagon and carriage men, and 500 men in miscellaneous shops. Experienced men got 50 cents per hour for an eight-hour day, and time and one-half for overtime, with double time rate on Sundays and holidays. Non-union men got anywhere from 20 to 40 cents per hour and worked nine and ten hours per day with straight time for overtime work. In 1913 and 1914, the union agreements have called for a minimum for helpers of 283^ cents, maximum 333^ cents; minimum for blacksmiths (new men) 373^ cents; experienced men, 47>^“53 cents. BUILDING TRADES Turning to the building trades we find a set of workmen who have forced their daily rates of wages higher than those of any other men in the District. At least four things have helped them do this: First, the skill required in the trades; second, the closely 144WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH allied unions; third, the seasonal character of the work; and fourth, the fact that the work has to be performed by local employers at a particular place, at a particular and usually limited time, under constant pressure from the purchaser. Among the building trades rates of wages are highest in those which require the longest period of apprenticeship, and which have the longest periods of seasonal unemployment. In 1907-08 wages ran from 42yi cents an hour for painters, up to 65 cents for bricklayers.* Most of the trades received 50 cents an hour. All men who earned 45 cents an hour or more, with the exception of roofers, had spent at least a probationary four years before they had been admitted to their trade. Slate and tile roofers had an apprenticeship period of only three years. Steam-fitters and plumbers required five years, while structural iron workers required eighteen months of actual work at the “ construction of bridges, viaducts, buildings, or other constructional work either of wood or iron.” The tile layers' apprenticeship period was only two years, but apprentices were taken only from among the helpers, who often worked a good many years at not much over half the journeymen's pay. Hoisting engineers, who got 50 cents an hour, had no specified apprenticeship rules, but the state required these men to be licensed, and a license was issued only after an examination and two years' work around the engine. Bricklayers were getting the highest wages per hour in the building trade. They have a longer period of unemployment than do any other group, seldom working more than seven months in the year. Their yearly earnings at 65 cents an hour in 1907 averaged not much over $800. Next to bricklayers, plasterers lose the most time; they work perhaps seven or eight months in the year. Their hourly rate was 52^ to 56yi cents; yet the annual earnings of the ordinary plasterer were only about $700. In fact, whatever the rate per hour might be, it worked out that the annual earnings in most of the building trades ran from about $700 to $800. In those trades which had a high daily wage and steady work the year round, such as that of elevator constructors and electricians, there was a scarcity of workmen. * In 1914 the painters’ scale is 563^ cents, the bricklayers’, 70 cents, advances fairly representative of the building trades group. See pages 147-166. IO* 145WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Altogether, about 15,000 workingmen were organized in the building trades unions. They represented perhaps 75 per cent of all the men working at these trades. In the separate trades, the proportion of organized to unorganized workmen varied greatly. Plumbers, bricklayers, and elevator constructors had over 90 per cent; other trades ran from 50 per cent upward. There was seldom much difference between the wages of union and non-union mechanics. In most cases the union rate was also paid to non-union men. Where there was a difference the union rate was usually paid to some men in the shop; that is, the wages were not depressed in all the occupations, owing to lack of organization. In a union shop there was usually a flat rate for all; for, although the union fixed only the minimum wage, employers were not inclined to go above that. In all building trades the hours of labor were eight per day. In most of the trades this period had been established during the years 1900-02. Bricklayers and masons won their eight-hour day in 1896 and plumbers in 1898. Many of the trades have since secured a four-hour day on Saturday during the summer months and some the year round. While most of the building trades were well organized in 1907-08, some organizations seemed to be losing ground. Within a few years preceding, employers in at least three trades had established the open shop, and in each case this was followed by a reduction in wages. The Pittsburgh Local of the Bridge and Structural Iron Workers' Union had been almost disrupted in the struggle with employers organized as the National Erectors' Association. The latter refused to pay the union scale of 56yi cents an hour, would not recognize the union, and paid 50 cents per hour to skilled mechanics and a lower rate to the less skilled. Almost all master plasterers were running open shops and had reduced wages from $4.50 to $4.20 a day. The carpenters' union was unable to maintain its scale of 50 cents an hour, and the master builders paid anywhere from 43% to 50 cents. In several other trades employers and unions had been fighting over the closed shop and the scales of wages. In the struggle of these trades, as in those of others reviewed, employers were aided by the financial depression of 1907-08, which threw many men out of work. 146WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH In the period of their greatest strength the workmen's organizations had secured signed agreements from the employers, but in 1907-08 most of the trades were working without agreements, and union officials claimed to be opposed to making them. It was noticeable, however, that unions without agreements were with difficulty maintaining their wage scales, while plumbers and elevator constructors who had signed agreements were secure in their union wages even through the panic. In this experience, we may have a clue to the spread of agreements and “sympathetic” action throughout the building trades in the years since. Not only have the wage cuts of 1907-08 been made good, but there have been marked general advances in pay;* in some crafts made secure against such a financial depression as that of 1914 by three and five-year compacts. Detailed Description by Trades Bricklayers and Masons. Practically all the bricklayers and masons who work for building contractors in the Pittsburgh District are organized in trade unions. The membership of these unions in 1907-08 included about 1,500 bricklayers and 500 masons. The non-union men of this trade, who numbered about 600, found employment mainly in the mills, where pay was 37K cents per hour and ten hours constituted the working day. Up to the year previous the pay of non-union men had been only 30 cents per hour. These men were thus averaging about one-half the sum the union bricklayers in the building trades could make, but their work is comparatively steady the year round. In 1914, non-union men are getting from 40 to 60 cents. During the period from 1888 to 1895, 40 cents was the minimum rate per hour and nine hours constituted the day among organized Pittsburgh bricklayers. From 1896 to 1905 wages were raised from 45 to 50 * Increases have ranged from 8 to 30 per cent. Whereas in 1907 only two of the 15 building trades unions listed in this study were getting 60 cents an hour or more we find the scales of 11 of them calling for that standard or above in 1914. The prevailing rate may be said to have shifted from 50 to 62^ cents an hour, or, putting it in terms of dollars and days, from $4.00 to $5.00. Fifty-six and a quarter cents is the lowest hourly rate set by a building trade’s union today in Pittsburgh— that of the painters, whereas they got 423^ cents in 1907, and the hoisting engineers as low as 37^. The bricklayers continue at the top of the list in 1914 with 70 cents as their present hourly rate, but the tile layers and plasterers have 68^4 cents. The plumbers will have the same in 1915 and the electrical workers in 1918; while the long term agreement of the plasterers calls for 72 cents in 1915, 75 cents in 1916; and that of the plumbers for 75 cents, a year later [$6.00 a day]. For changes in collective organization in building trades see p. 183. M7WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH cents; to 60 cents in 1906; 65 in 1907; and 70 in 1913. The wages of the masons similarly rose from 35 cents in 1888 to 55 cents in 1907, with prospect of 60 in 1914. Many workmen, of course, make more than the minimum. The eight-hour day has prevailed in both trades since 1896. Despite their high hourly rate of pay, the bricklayers were averaging in earnings in 1907-08 no more than $2.50 per day. They work perhaps half the working days of the year. The masons were averaging even less—about $2.25; but by the use of fires, tents, canvas, and other means, interference with their work by inclement weather has become steadily less, so that it may be said to be no longer seasonal. The union bricklayers and masons of Allegheny County were in 1907-08 organized in six locals of the Bricklayers' and Masons' International Union of America. Three locals were composed of bricklayers and three of masons. These locals elected a committee of 12 members, six from each trade, which was known as the executive committee of the International Union, Allegheny County. All executive and judiciary powers covering Allegheny County were vested in this committee. “It shall be the tribunal to which all matters of general importance to the welfare of the several unions, or any of their members shall be referred. . . . cases of unions against unions and individuals, after action has been taken by subordinate unions." No agreements had been made between the Bricklayers' and Masons' Union and the Master Brick Contractors' Association for five or six years. But the executive committee referred to issued a working code which the union was powerful enough to enforce. The code stated that “any person coming on any job who is not a member of the Bricklayers' and Masons' International Union, and who does not appear to be a practical bricklayer or stone mason must be examined at once, by a committee appointed by the steward, which committee must report on the day of its appointment, if possible, and in no case later than the next succeeding day, as to whether the applicant be a practical bricklayer or stonemason or not, and if the report be unfavorable, he must immediately cease work." Further, “no member or members of a stone masons' union shall be allowed to cut or lay stone for any person or contractor, or company who employs non-union bricklayers, and no member or members of a bricklayers' union shall be allowed to lay brick for any person, contractor or company who employs non-union stone masons." The code laid down the other conditions under which the men might work. The day's work of eight hours was to be performed between 8 a. m. and 5 p. m., except Saturday, when work must end at 12 o'clock 148WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH noon. Time taken for lunch might be thirty or sixty minutes as the men elected. Piece work was prohibited. No work was to be done on Labor Day. Any member working on the other legal holidays or on Sunday must be paid double time. Overtime was permitted in cases of extreme emergency, on condition that time and one-half be paid. The employer had to pay carfare unless the men's place of work could be reached by payment of one five-cent fare. Any time lost in waiting for pay, or in going from job to job, or while waiting for or building scaffolds, was paid for at the regular hourly rates. The bricklayers and masons, when structural iron workers or others were on a job, demanded that they be provided with proper covering at the expense of the contractor, to protect them from danger. No member or members or local union could call a strike. All grievances had to be submitted to the executive committee of Allegheny County. Strikes were illegal unless sanctioned by this committee. Foremen were obliged to be members of the union, and no foreman or apprentice could lay brick or stone before or after regular working hours except as overtime. The first man on any job was designated as steward. He was the guardian of the interests of the others, and had to be respected as such. This working code was strictly enforced. It was required that the authorized business agent be recognized and permitted to inspect the men's cards; and that whenever the rate of wages was in dispute, the pay envelope should be submitted to him on request. Article 13 read: "No member of any union in this jurisdiction shall work on any job where the men have quit work on a question involving this working code, under such penalty as the union may determine." The initiation fee of the Bricklayers' and Masons' Union was $25. Dues were 50 cents per month, and it was provided that: "In case of a strike for wages each and every member who may obtain the established rate of wages shall be assessed not less than fifty cents nor more than one dollar per day, as the union may agree, to establish a fund for the relief of those on strike." In 1913 dues were set at $1.00 per month. Unlike some of the other building trades, the bricklayers and masons have not slumped in hard times, holding almost every man in the District with the exception of the men who work in the mills. Bridge and Structural Iron Workers. Men who put up the iron and steel framework for the great skyscrapers and bridges are in a much less favorable position than bricklayers and stone masons. Their trade is newer, less secure, and has run afoul of the great manufacturing interests which supply the erectors with steel shapes. The local of the Bridge and Structural Iron Workers' Union was organized during the summer of 1900. By January, 1901, it had 700 members. A year later 149WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH this number had doubled, and in 1903 the membership was 1,800. Thereafter for several years the union grew steadily weaker, due first to a struggle with the employers' association [which culminated in the country-wide dynamiting conspiracy of the national officials of the union and their convictions at Los Angeles and Indianapolis]; and secondly, to the decline in building operations following the financial depression of 1907. The union now seems to be on the upgrade again in Pittsburgh. To be eligible to the union a man must have worked at least eighteen months at the “ construction of bridges, viaducts, buildings, or other con-structural work either of wood or iron. " After this period of apprenticeship he must pass an examination both as to health and ability to do the work. No man over fifty years of age is eligible to membership. Foremen may or may not be members of the union, as they see fit. The employers are organized as a branch of the National Erectors' Association. Members of this association are firms which do iron and steel construction work throughout the country. The American Bridge Company, a constituent company of the United States Steel Corporation, is the most influential member of this association. Other important firms with headquarters in Pittsburgh are the Riter-Conley Manufacturing Company, McClintic-Marshall Construction Company, Pittsburgh Construction Company, Pittsburgh Steel Construction Company, Fort Pitt Bridge Company, and Heyl-Patterson Company. This association in 1906 broke off all relations with the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers and entered upon the policy of maintaining open shops, making no agreements and dealing with the men individually. In 1907 on every job a card (see opposite page) was tacked up stating the conditions under which all men, union or non-union, must work. Before the structural iron workers were organized in 1900 skilled men among them earned only 27^ cents an hour. In January, 1901, the union demanded $3.00 per day. This sum was won after a strike lasting five days. In May of the same year the union entered into an agreement with employers by which wages were raised to $3.60 per day. A three weeks' strike established the rate of 50 cents per hour as a minimum. It was in 1906, when the union demanded 56^ cents per hour, that the employers organized, established the open shop, and thus were able to hold to the old rate of wages. Some union men continued to work for the companies in the association, but they had to abide by the working rules of the employers; among them, that grading as to “skill and fitness" should be by the employer and not by the union card. Only such bridge-men as were accounted “skilled" were paid 50 cents per hour. The wages of the others varied from $2.00 per day upward. But the hours which the union had reduced from ten in 1900 to nine in 1901 and eight 150WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH PRINCIPLES AND WORKING RULES of NATIONAL ERECTORS' ASSOCIATION Date....................Place . . i st. Work will be conducted on the Open Shop plan. 2nd. The right to work will be accorded to every man irrespective of his membership in any organization. 3rd. Eight hours shall constitute a day's work. 4th. The minimum rate of wages to be paid to skilled bridgemen shall be 50 cents per hour. Skilled bridgemen shall be competent to perform such work as the erection, rigging and handling of travelers and other important mechanical appliances used in the erection of work, the erecting in place and connecting of members entering permanently into a structure, and the driving of field rivets. 5th. When one shift only is worked, time-and-one-half will be paid for overtime. When two or more shifts are worked, the men in each shift will be paid the regular rate of wages per hour. Double time will be paid for work performed on Sundays and the following holidays: Decoration Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day, or the days observed as these holidays. 6th. Workmen will be paid every two weeks upon pay days to be fixed by the employer, except in localities where it is required by law, or where it is the prevailing custom to pay weekly. 7th. It will be the general custom to withhold not more than one week's time to enable the employer to prepare the payrolls, etc. 8th. When a workman is discharged or laid off, he shall be paid in full within 24 hours. 9th. When a workman leaves the service of the employer of his own accord, he will receive the pay due him on the next regular pay day. 10th. No persons other than those authorized by the employer shall have access to the work during working hours. Card Posted on All Jobs in the Pittsburgh District in 1907-08 in 1902, the employers found it inexpedient to increase. In 1913, as part of a general revision of rates, the association raised its Pittsburgh rate from 50 to 56% cents—the figure demanded by the unions in 1906. It should be borne in mind that in prosperous times the working season lasts but eight or nine months. During the hard times from October, 1907, to June, 1908, three-fourths of the Pittsburgh structural iron 151WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH workers could find no employment. During this period the union was practically out of existence and contained but a handful of members. These few men were able to get 56% cents per hour by working on small jobs scattered over the District. Corresponding to the employers' opposition to agreements, we found the union opposed to them as a result of their experience. The charge was that contracts were not kept. Furthermore, as stated by the president of the Pittsburgh local, the union wanted to take advantage of improved trade conditions and not be bound by any agreement. By 1910, the union had built up a membership of 500, and about 95 per cent of the members were steadily employed, although the strike against the Erectors, begun in 1906, nominally continued. In 1914, the union reports a membership of 1,200 in Pittsburgh. In 1911 the housesmiths consolidated with the structural iron workers and they have so strengthened their joint position by making common cause with the other crafts in the building trades that since 1913 local office building construction has been closed shop.* Their present scale is 623^ cents an hour or $5.00 for eight hours, time and one-half for overtime, and double for Sundays and holidays. Housesmiths. Housesmiths and structural iron workers were affiliated in the same international union long before the consolidation of their Pittsburgh locals. The housesmiths do the ornamental iron setting in the interior of buildings. There was hardly a score of non-union men in the District in 1907-08, and the union had much more effective control of the trade than had the structural iron workers of theirs. The stronger position of the housesmiths was due to the fact that they worked chiefly for small competing contractors to whom the work of setting up the ornamental iron work was let. On January 1, 1906, the Master Housesmiths' Association entered into a three-year contract with the housesmiths' local union, in which they agreed to employ none but union men. Where union men could not be had non-union men might be employed, providing the men were satisfied to become members of the union. The union agreed not to permit its members to work for any contractor who failed to comply with the terms of the agreement, and to use all lawful methods in furthering the ends it was desired to achieve by the agreement. According to this agreement not more than one helper was allowed to each fitter or journeyman, and each firm could have one apprentice. Apprentices had to begin * The fabricating plants continue non-union: and only a share of the bridge workers are organized. The bulk of the open shop work consists of bridges, viaducts, and mill buildings; in 1914, also, the steel for the Pennsylvania freight sheds in Pittsburgh is being erected by a member of the National Erectors Association, open shop. 152WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH under the age of nineteen, had to register in the union, and if they could command the union wages for helpers they might act as such. A foreman if he used tools must become a member of the union. Misunderstandings, whenever they arose, were arbitrated by three disinterested parties and work was to continue pending the arbitration. Sympathetic strikes, however, were not to be considered violations of the agreement. The wages fixed by the agreement provided that for the years 1906 and 1907, 50 cents per hour should be paid for fitters (skilled house-smiths) and 35 cents for helpers. On January 1, 1908, the fitters were to receive an increase to 5cents or $4.50 per day. This had been the wages in the trade in many cities during 1907. Pittsburgh housesmiths remained behind because of their three-year agreement. During the depression, moreover, many employers were able to cut the rate to 50 and even to 47^ cents per hour; but later the fitters secured an advance to 56% cents per hour; and, with the structural iron workers, today get 62>£ cents as against 33^ cents in 1900. In demanding these increases the housesmiths have argued that their trade is extra hazardous. They claim that a man has been killed or several badly injured on every skyscraper erected in the Pittsburgh District*; on one large building alone two men were killed and two crippled for life, while six more were injured. The eight-hour day was secured by the housesmiths in 1900. Working hours have since been from 8 a. m. to 5 p. m., all work performed before or after these hours being paid at the rate of time and one-half; Sundays and holidays at double time. Hoisting Engineers. The hoisting engineers send the materials up to the bridges and buildings in process of erection. They are employed mainly by the construction companies which belong to the National Erectors' Association, and in 1906 they met the same fate that befell the bridge and structural iron workers at the hands of that association. The power of the union was broken and the open shop generally established. The union of Hoisting and Portable Engineers which was organized in 1901 and grew steadily until 1905, had in 1907-08 a membership of but 100 out of 1,000 hoisting engineers in the District. Later they added to their strength by taking in the Afro-American Engineers' Union and became able to control work done outside of the National Erectors' Association, In 1914, the union split temporarily, one faction joining forces with the bricklayers and one with the building trades council. No apprenticeship system exists in this trade beyond what the law requires for securing a license as a steam engineer. To secure such a license the applicant must have worked on an engine for at least two years, * In 1909, nine men were so killed. 153WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH and he must pass an examination conducted by two competent engineers. It is unlawful to operate an engine without a license. Eight hours, which was secured by the union in 1901, is the working day for all hoisting engineers, except those employed in the steel mills. In 1907-08 the latter usually worked twelve hours at 25 cents an hour. The rate of wages generally paid in 1907-08 was 37>i cents an hour. Some of the smaller building contractors employing union men paid 50 cents. By 1913 the hoisting engineers had shared in the general advance in the building trades, the union rate for broken time being 62yi cents an hour. For work by the week $27 was paid. In January, 1914, the union raised to 65 cents. Carpenters. The carpenters of the Pittsburgh District in 1907-08 mustered a total of 26 locals of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. These had an aggregate membership of nearly 4,000 which was a majority of the carpenters in the District. The local unions elect delegates to a carpenters’ district council of Pittsburgh and vicinity, which looks after the general interests of all carpenters in the District. For many years the union made agreements regularly with the employers. But in 1905 the Master Builders’ Association declared for the open shop and locked out all union men. Two years later not only master builders but workmen said they were opposed to agreements. The officers of the union contended that agreements prevented them from taking advantage of improved conditions to increase their wages. They complained, however, that under the open shop the unorganized men were benefited by their union, and that for this reason it was hard to get new members. With the establishment of the open shop, moreover, the union was unable to enforce the rules of its apprenticeship system by which any person under twenty-five years of age might engage himself to learn the trade of carpenter and joiner, and after three years, if competent, enter the union as a journeyman, and receive not less than the union’s minimum rate of wages. [Since changed to: age, twenty-two; apprenticeship, four years.] The contractors, moreover, graded the carpenters in the open shops as to their “ability and competence” and paid them accordingly. Their rate of wages for skilled men in 1907-08 was 43^ cents per hour, while the union rate was 50 cents. Those who were less skilled were paid less, some receiving only 20 cents per hour. Radical changes have come since. The union is today working under a three-year agreement signed in May, 1914, with the builders composing the Builders’ Exchange League, on a closed shop basis, calling for 56)4 cents the first half year, 60 the second, and 62^2 the last two years. Eight hours is the general working day in the trade, although some 154WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH non-union men work ten. For all work over eight hours, time and one-half was paid in 1907-08; holidays double. The new agreements call for a forty-four hour week, a Saturday half-holiday, and double time for Saturday afternoons, as well as Sundays. Electrical Workers. The electrical workers, also, were in 1907 struggling against the open-shop movement and more recently against a split in their own ranks.* In 1905 the electrical contractors tried to establish the open shop, but after a strike lasting about a month they signed a two-year closed-shop agreement. When this agreement expired the struggle began again, and was still in progress in 1907-08. No agreements were being made, but the union tried to enforce its closed shop rule, and in many cases was successful. Here, as with the carpenters, there has since been a change of front. There are two classes of electrical workers: "inside wiremen” who do the wiring in buildings, and “linemen” who work on the streets and underground. Together they numbered about 800 in the Pittsburgh District, and the local unions of the two trades had about 600 of these men enrolled. Today 90 per cent of the men are reported as union members. To become an inside wireman a boy has to serve an apprenticeship of four years. The ratio of apprentices to journeymen permitted by the union where it is in control, is not more than one to three. There is considerable division of labor in this trade, but the union has tried to prevent any permanent classification of men. It has insisted that every apprentice shall be taught to become an all-round electrician. The lowest point in the wages of wiremen was reached in 1899 when the rate was $2.25 per day of ten hours. The next year this was increased to $2.50. In 1901 the union secured $2.70 per day, and reduced the hours to eight. From 1902 on, the wages of inside wiremen were $4.00 per day, and in 1913 those working for contractors were able to secure $4.60. Time and one-half for overtime, and double time for Sundays and holidays, are paid as in other building trades. Practically all these gains were made by means of strikes. In June, 1914, without a strike, but through negotiation, nothing less than a five-year agreement was entered upon calling for 57^ cents an hour for the first year ($4.60), 62^ cents the second, third, and fourth, and 68 $4 cents, the fifth year. Steady employment is the rule for most wiremen. Those who work for amusement places and private persons do not have steady work, but their rate of pay per hour is from \2}4 to 25 per cent higher than that of other wiremen. * A second international union has been organized following trouble over the disposal of certain funds in the old organization. 155WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Although linemen do not belong to the building trades, they will be treated here, as they are directly connected with other electrical workers. Their local union includes linemen, trimmers, underground cablemen, cable-splicers, trouble-men working for distributing companies, telephone switchboard men, attendants, repair and station construction men in central lighting and power stations. In all there were 350 members in 1907-08, while about 100 competent mechanics and about 100 of less skill remained outside the union. The union itself has been torn by fighting. The apprenticeship regulations of linemen differ considerably from those of the inside wiremen. The apprentice must be over eighteen years, whereas the inside wiremen require him to be under eighteen. The period of service is three instead of four years, and at the end of the period the apprentice is initiated into the union without an examination. Of the employers of electrical workers the Bell Telephone Company was least controlled by the union during the year studied. It employed 225 men and had an open shop. The company had been able to reduce the minimum wages by subdividing the work and grading the pay according to the skill required. This practice was prohibited by the union wherever it was in control. It permitted no specialization on such work as installing telephones, for example, and required a skilled mechanic to do this. Union men were employed almost exclusively by the police and fire departments for their wiring, and by the city lighting plant in Allegheny. The same was true to a slightly lesser extent of the street car and lighting companies. No political pull, union men said, was necessary for an electrician to get a job from the municipality. Incidentally, the workmen favored municipal ownership and operation because the city lighting plant, the police and fire departments, offered better conditions of employment than they had been able to win from the private companies. The wages of linemen varied with different employers. The city of Pittsburgh paid the men who took care of its police and fire wires $90 a month, while Allegheny paid $3.25 per day. In 1913 Greater Pittsburgh was paying its linemen $3.50 a day. Cable splicers in 1907-08 got $3.50 a day from the telephone companies and $110 a month from the Allegheny County Lighting Company. Installers working for the Bell Company were paid from $1.50 to $2.75 per day. This was the work which the union required to be done by skilled electricians at journeymen’s wages. The union rate for skilled mechanics was $3.25 per day, a rate generally established during 1907 after a strike lasting twelve hours. In 1908, however, the employers took advantage of the depression to reduce wages 25 cents per day. The linemen struck and remained out for five months, but to no effect. Three dollars per day, which had been paid for five 156WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH years preceding 1907, was the rate which was again established. By 1910, the rate for outside men had risen again, this time to $3.75. The hours of work for linemen are nine per day except on public work, where by statute they are fixed at eight. Elevator Constructors. One of the strongest unions in Pittsburgh is that of the elevator constructors. In 1907 it had 150 members and controlled the trade absolutely. There were not a dozen non-union men in the District and most of these were “knockabouts.” There are said to be less than the dozen today. The work of an elevator constructor requires considerable skill, and the supply of skilled mechanics who could do the work has not kept up to the constantly increasing demand. Some helpers become journeymen elevator constructors, but the business agent of the union had never heard of a case of an apprentice becoming a journeyman, although, as will be seen, apprentices were provided for in the agreements between employers and the union. This was one source of the union's power. The recruits were all skilled mechanics. To become a member of the union a man was required to be a citizen of the United States or Canada, or he must have declared his intention of becoming such. The initiation fee was $50, half of which must be paid upon application. Then the applicant was submitted to an examination by a board of examiners consisting of five members. This examination cost him $2.00. If he passed he had to pay the rest of his initiation fee before he could become a member. Workmen of other crafts could become members after they had been employed at elevator work for three months on a “permit "card issued by the elevator constructors' union. The union classified workmen into mechanics and helpers. A mechanic was one who had successfully passed the examination provided by the union and who received the regular rate of mechanic's wages required by the union and agreed to by employers. Helpers were men registered by the union to help mechanics. A helper had to furnish suitable tools and provide a box for them, and was not allowed to do mechanic's work unless under the immediate personal direction of a mechanic. No mechanic was permitted to go on jobs unaccompanied by a helper, nor a helper unaccompanied by a mechanic—except to inspect elevators. The employers had come to meet annually or semi-annually, as the Elevator Manufacturers' and Builders' Association, to make trade agreements with the union. These agreements laid down the conditions under which work should be carried on. In case of trouble or misunderstanding between an employer and his workmen, provision was made for arbitration of the difference. A conference committee of five members, 157WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH two from each side and the four electing another, was permanently established to consider all difficulties. Work must go on pending the decision of the conference, except in cases where the international union ordered a strike. It was provided, however, that no strike ordered by the International Union of Elevator Constructors should be considered a breach of the arbitration clauses in the agreement. Employers further agreed to employ only union men, and the union bound itself not to let any of its members enter into competition with employers or permit them to take contracts on their own account to do elevator work. Under the agreement in force in 1907-08, one apprentice was allowed to each shop where there were less than 10 mechanics. Where there were more than 10, employers might have one apprentice to every 10 mechanics. A preference for apprentices between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one was expressed, and apprentices had to join the union and pay an initiation fee of $10. Piece work of any kind was prohibited and the union imposed a fine of $25 on its members for a first offense and $100 for every offense thereafter, for any violation of this rule. In order to avoid jurisdictional disputes with other unions the agreement enumerated the kinds of work on which the contractors should employ only members of the union. This agreement, however, did not entirely prevent trouble with other trades, particularly with the carpenters and housesmiths. The work of the elevator constructor partakes so largely of a combination of that of other trades that these jurisdictional disputes have aroused considerable animosity. The working day specified for elevator constructors was eight hours, except oh Saturdays during June, July, and August, when it was four hours. “Regular time” was between 8 a. m. and 5 p. m. Where work was done in two shifts, the night shift was paid at the rate of time and one-half. For all other overtime the men got double pay. Wages were fixed at 50 cents per hour or $4.00 per day for mechanics, and 35cents per hour or $2.85 per day for helpers. “Permit” helpers received 3 \}i cents per hour, or $2.50 per day. It was agreed, all men working outside of Pittsburgh and within a radius of 25 miles of the city hall, should receive traveling expenses; leaving for their work on the train nearest 8 a. m., the time spent in traveling being at the expense of the employer. Apprentices were paid $1.50 per day during the first year, and 50 cents per day additional each succeeding year. During the depression in 1907-08 nearly one-half of the men of this trade in the District were out of work; but in good times they are employed practically the year round. By the end of 1909, the union had organized practically all .58WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH elevator constructors in the District, and in the spring of 1910 secured employers' signatures to a scale of 56^4 cents per hour for mechanics and 37yi cents for helpers. Under this agreement the summer Saturday afternoons off became a part of the regular schedule, and men in the trade worked a forty-four-hour week. In May, 1913, a new three-year agreement was entered into, fixing 62yi cents for mechanics, 40 cents for helpers, Saturday half holiday, and overtime paid double. In the twelve-year period since 1902, the mechanics have lifted the wages of their helpers to a point higher than their own were at the beginning of the period. They themselves are getting twice what they had at the start. The course of wages since the organization of the union in 1901, up to 1913, has been as follows: 1902 1908 1904-06 1906-09 1910-18 1918-16 Helpers . . . $1.80 $2.50 $2.50 $2.85 $3.00 $3.20 Mechanics . . . 2.50 3.50 3.75 4.00 4.50 5.00 Painters, Decorators, and Paperhangers. The union of painters, decorators, and paperhangers in Pittsburgh has been in continuous existence since 1886. Until a few years ago it regularly entered into agreements with the Master House Painters' and Decorators' Association. In 1907-08 there were no agreements, but the union was strong enough to enforce its conditions in most shops. There were from 1,600 to 1,800 union men in the District, all being employed in house painting and decorating. Car painting for the railroads and street car companies was done by non-union men. There were also 500 or 600 painters in the county not belonging to the union, a good many of these working in the steel mills. The union men were distributed among 16 local unions, each of which sent two delegates to a council known as District Council No. 1, Brotherhood of Painters, Decorators, and Paperhangers of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The objects of this council are: “the establishment of a central representative body having jurisdiction over all matters relating to the trade and general interest of the organized painters, decorators and paperhangers of Pittsburgh, Allegheny, and vicinity; to bring about harmony and unity between all local unions for the common interest of all; to establish an eight-hour workday; to establish a minimum rate of wages for all journeymen; and issue annually a code of working rules relating to change of wages, etc." This district council has centrally located headquarters which are open from 8 a. m. to 5 p. m. It exercises “legislative and executive power on all matters relating to the common interest and welfare of the local unions and their members.'' 159WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH It establishes “a minimum rate of dues of fifty cents per month, and initiation fee for all locals in this district. ” The district council has power “to frame all working or trade rules (subject to referendum of the local unions) and enforce the same, collect all fines for the violation of trade rules, issue a quarterly working card, order all strikes and decide all disputes between locals or members.” It also has power to make trade agreements with employers. The union rules require that the shop chairman shall see that each man employed is a member of the union in good standing. Apprentices are allowed in the ratio of one to every io journeymen. All apprentices must be registered with the district council, and fresco apprentices must be indentured to the local union of fresco painters. The regular workday is eight hours, from 8 a. m. to 12 noon, and from 12:30 to 4:30 p. m. For all work done outside of these regular working hours the rate of time and one-half must be paid, and double pay is required for Sunday and holiday work. The non-union car painters and those who work in the mills are employed regularly ten hours per day. House painters received in 1907-08 42^ cents an hour, or $3.40 per day, while the rate for fresco painters and decorators was 50 cents an hour, or $4.00 per day. Paperhangers worked by the piece and their usual earnings were from $5.00 to $7.00 per day. If an employer preferred to employ them by the hour he had to pay 62cents an hour. Gar painters employed by the railroads earned from $60 to $85 per month; those working for the street railway company were paid $2.50 to $3.00 per day. In the mills the wages of painters were $2.75 and $3.00 per day; but these non-union men were employed regularly through the entire year, while the union men in the building trades had work only about eight months in the year. In 1909, the union was able to secure the adoption of a new agreement; and in 1914 is working under a 56^ cent scale. Plasterers. Plastering is still another trade in which there has been a struggle in Pittsburgh over the open shop, the employers having the upper hand in 1907-08, the unions in 1913-14. In 1907-08 there were perhaps 700 plasterers in the District; only about half that number were in the union and no agreements were in effect between the employers and the union. Some 40 Negro plasterers, working for Negro contractors, were all non-union. The union had a set of working rules which it tried to enforce when it got control of a shop. Under them no one was permitted to take charge of a job as a foreman unless he had been a member of the union for one year. These rules also made definite provisions for keeping 160WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH up the efficiency of the members. It was the duty of the foreman when starting a job to examine the specifications and see that all work was done as specified. A penalty was imposed for working without specifications. Further, “any workman doing a piece of work not according to specifications, if found guilty [was] subject to a minimum fine of $1.00 for first offense and for second offense the fine [was] not less than $5.00 and as much more as the executive board [might] decide.” Provisions for apprenticeship were very minutely worked out. The employer was required to make application to the union for permission to employ an apprentice. In the application the employer was to state the name and age of the boy wishing to serve his trade, and the wages that he would pay in each year of the boy's apprenticeship. He was furthermore required to pledge himself not to discharge the apprentice without good and sufficient reasons. Grievances on the part of either employer or apprentice were to be submitted to the executive board of the union for investigation and imposition of penalties. An employer who had been in business for at least one year was entitled to one apprentice, and two years after the indenture of the first apprentice he could take another. The union attempted also to limit each employer to two apprentices. Plasterers in Pittsburgh have been working eight hours per day since 1898. From 1896 to 1898 the hours were nine, and prior to that time ten hours was the rule. Plasterers lose much time from seasonal causes, working for only seven or eight months a year. The union rate of wages in 1907 was 56X cents, or $4.50 per day. By establishing open shops employers were able to reduce this rate to $4.20 per day, the rate generally paid from 1900 to 1905. The non-union Negro plasterers earned about $3.00 a day. In March, 1910, the plasterers secured a new agreement with the big contractors. It was a closed-shop agreement; closed at both ends, the men binding themselves not to work for other contractors and employers binding themselves to hire no men but those belonging to the union. Wages under this agreement were fixed at $5.00 for an eight-hour day (62^ cents). In contrast to the carpenters' union at this period the plasterers’ union was adding to its membership daily, attributing the increase to its closed-shop agreement. In the spring of 1914 they entered upon a three-year compact at $5.50 (68^4 cents) the first year, $5.75 the second, and $6.00 the third; an eight-hour day, forty-four-hour week, one and one-half time for overtime, and double time, legal holidays and Sundays. * 11 161WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Plumbers. Practically all plumbers in Pittsburgh are American born and practically all are members of the union. They work under signed agreements with the master plumbers and make one of the strongest labor bodies in the city. The 5 per cent of Pittsburgh plumbers who are unorganized find work in small shops not parties to the agreement, or in the mills. Plumbers' apprentices serve five years. They are registered in the union and pay 25 cents per quarter for their working cards. When they are ready to come into the union, their initiation fee is put down to one-half the regular amount. The minimum initiation fee, according to the constitution, is $50. The union sometimes charges more than this. There were in 1907-08 about 400 master plumbers in the Pittsburgh District and they employed from 700 to 800 plumbers. Local plumbers were first organized in 1879 under the Knights of Labor. Wages were then $3.00 for a ten-hour day. In 1884 they gained a nine-hour day with a minimum rate of $3.50 for journeymen and $3.00 for apprentices who had just served their time. During the crisis of 1892 the union disappeared, but by 1894 it had regained the scale of $3.50 for nine hours. In 1898 the eight-hour day was won. Four dollars a day was secured as a minimum in 1901. Two years later the union struck for $4.50, and the men were out over four months, but they lost the strike. In May, 1905, the Master Plumbers' Association signed a closed-shop agreement with the union on the basis of $4.00 for an eight-hour day, the agreement to last for three years. [The rate of wages for plumbers in the nearby open shop town in Pennsylvania was from $3.00 to $3.75 for a nine-hour day.] A supplement was added to this agreement in 1907, which gave first class journeymen $4.50 per day and second class (apprentices just out of their time) $4.00; no member allowed in second class over two years. It also provided for a Saturday half holiday, from June 1st to September 30th, to be paid for at double time if worked. Under a renewal agreement signed in 1910, first class plumbers were to receive $5.00 after January 1, 1912, and second class plumbers $4.50 per day. The plumbers are now working under a five-year agreement which calls for a raise to $5.50 for first class and $5.00 for second class plumbers January 1, 1915; and $6.00 and $5.50 respectively January 1, 1917; the eight-hour day, forty-fpur hour week, time and one-half for overtime, and double time for holidays and Sundays. Steamfitters. Practically every steamfitter who works in the Pittsburgh building trades is a union man. In 1907 they were members of Local No. 218, International Association of Steamfitters and Steamfitters' Helpers of America, which had 400 members in Pittsburgh. 162WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH In 1913, the steamfitters’ national was taken into the United Association of Plumbers, Gas and Steamfitters. The Pittsburgh steamfitters are, however, organized in a separate local [449] and claim that there are not more than 2 per cent non-union men in the District, and that those work on jobs away from Pittsburgh. About 200 non-union men work in the mills of the District, most of which employ a dozen or 15 steamfitters the year round. There were also in 1907 in the city four or five non-union shops which bid on mill work. These employed from 150 to 200 steamfitters. For some reason the union had never been able to organize the men in these shops. It was not that their employers were opposed to an organization, for the same employers recognized the union of machinists and paid their scale. The men simply refused to join. The steamfitters in the building trade were organized in the late 90’s. Trade agreements were made from the very beginning, and they have been well kept, employers and workingmen being strongly in favor of them. The agreement which went into effect in January, 1907, did not stipulate that there should be a closed shop, but the scale was maintained by requiring that if a non-union man were employed, he must become a party to the agreement. Further provisions required that there should be no limitation to the amount of work a man might perform during the working day; nor must there be any restriction on the use of machinery or tools. Steamfitters were required to work with any manufactured material, except prison made, furnished by the employer, a proviso which would compel the men to use materials made by nonunion men. Strikes were to be avoided by means of a board of arbitration. This board was made up of four members from the employers' association and four members from the union. Parties to a particular dispute were made ineligible to the board. In case of a dispute, work was to go on as usual, the board meeting within two working days after it had been notified of the trouble. In cases where the board could not decide, an umpire was to be selected by the board, both sides were to make their argument before the umpire, and the latter was obliged to render decision within twenty-four hours. Should either employer or union wish to terminate the agreement, notice must be given three months in advance. The men of this trade are divided into four classes: steamfitters, junior steamfitters or second men, experienced helpers, and inexperienced helpers. All but the steamfitters rank as apprentices. Inexperienced helpers are apprentices. When they have worked at the trade three months they may become experienced helpers. Junior steamfitters or second men are those in the last years of their apprenticeship. The 163WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH apprentice usually serves five years, but he may become a journeyman sooner if he passes the examination given by the union. Each employer may work one second man if he has one steamfitter. If he has six steam-fitters he may have two second men and one extra second man for each additional three fitters. The regular working hours for all steamfitters in the building trades were from 8 a. m. to 12 noon and from 12:30 to 4:30 p. m. For work before and after these hours, time and one-half must be paid, while double time was paid for Saturday night, Sunday, and legal holidays. In the mills, however, pipe-fitters were working ten hours, while the men referred to who worked for contractors that bid on mill work had a nine-hour day and were paid $3.00. The rate for the steam pipe-fitters had for years been 26^ cents an hour or $2.65 a day; 16 cents an hour for helpers. For union men, the scale of wages agreed upon in 1907 was as follows: Steamfitters, 50 cents per hour; junior steamfitters (or second men), 34^; experienced helpers, 28^; and inexperienced helpers, i8j^ cents. The men presented new agreements in 1908 and again in 1909, proposing increased wages. Both years, employers refused to sign, and work continued under the 1907 compact. Gains had come by 1913, the second men being cut out entirely and a flat hourly rate of 56}i cents for steamfitters and 31X cents for helpers paid union men. The long term agreement now in force gives the steamfitters 62^ cents per hour to December 31, 1915, and 68^4 cents to December 31, 1916. Sheet Metal Workers. A sheet metal worker, as defined in the constitution of the Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers' International Alliance, is any one of the following mechanics: '‘Tin and Sheet Metal Workers, Metal Roofers, Cornice and Skylight Workers, Metal Furniture Workers, Furnace and Range Workers, those making, setting, and finishing Metal Sash and Frames, Jobbers, Assortment Workers and Coppersmiths, and those who put on Iron Ceilings and Sidings (both interior and exterior), as well as all who do sheet metal work made of No. 10 gauge and lighter." Excluding those who work in mills and railroad shops, there were in 1907-08 about 500 sheet metal workers in the Pittsburgh District. These were employed in the building trades and in the job shops. Three hundred and fifty of them belonged to the local union of the American Sheet Metal Workers' International Association, which had fair control of the trade. It made agreements with some of the largest as well as with the smallest employers, with those belonging to the employers' association and with those who were independent. Sheet metal apprentices must register in the union and pay $5.00 164WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH registration fee. They serve four years and are then examined. If they prove their ability to command the minimum rate of wages of the union, they are then initiated free of charge. The regular initiation fee is $45. An apprentice who neglects to register must pay the entire initiation fee. Not more than one apprentice for every four journeymen is permitted by the union, where it can control. It also strictly prohibits sub-contracting and piece work in the building trades. The union in Pittsburgh dates back to 1880. Before the time of the organization wages were $ 1.75 per day of ten hours. Since then the movement of wages has been gradually upward, successive steps being $1.75, $2.00, $2.25, $2.50, $2.68, $3.00, $3.40, and $3.60 per day—the rate in 1907-08; at the same time the hours going down from ten to nine and then to eight. Non-union men were paid various rates from $3.00 to $3.40 in 1907-08. For ten months in the year there is enough work for all sheet metal workers. About three-fourths have work the year round. With the depression, a number left the District, but the union's control was again in evidence in May, 1910, when a circular letter declared the rate at which the men should work: 50 cents per hour for an eight-hour day [$4.00]. A two-year agreement in 1913 set the rate at 55 cents [$4.40]. Slate and Tile Roofers. Throughout the Pittsburgh District there were in the year studied about 60 slate and tile roofers' shops, employing in all about 125 men. Of these shops, 36 employed none but union men, although the largest shop was “open." The membership of the union was only 63, although it had had as many as 117 members. The employers of the trade are organized nationally as the Slate Roofers' Association. Members owned six of the union shops, including the four largest in Pittsburgh. One of these later became an open shop. The apprenticeship requirements of the union were three years' service, one apprentice to each shop if it had at least two men working all the year round, and registration of the apprentice in the union. The registration fee was $5.00. When a registered apprentice was initiated into the union he paid only half the initiation fee, which was $25. No agreements were made in this trade for a decade following 1903 when the union broke the last one with a sympathetic strike. Wages were then 40 cents an hour. From 1903 to 1907 the scale paid in the union shops was $4.00 per day of eight hours, with the usual provisions of time and one-half and double time for overtime and holiday work respectively. Wages in the open shops varied from 30 to 50 cents per hour. Although the panic of 1907 threw many roofers out of work, wages were not reduced. Ordinarily, steady work at this trade lasts about seven or eight months in the year. By 1913 the union had become strong enough to secureWAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH another agreement, securing 55 cents an hour for that year and 60 cents an hour for 1914. Tile Layers and Helpers. Pittsburgh is considered by the tile layers as the best place for steady work in America. Ninety per cent of the men work the year round. There had not been a slack period for five years prior to the panic in 1907. Yet that was the unfortunate season hit upon by the men for a try-out of strength with their employers. Up to January 1, 1908, the Tile Layers’ and Helpers’ Union made biennial closed-shop agreements with the Tile Dealers’ Association. In October, 1907, the union gave notice that at the expiration of the agreement they would want $5.00 per day, instead of the $4.40 which they were getting. The employers took this opportunity to declare for the open shop. A year later two-thirds of the tile layers were working in closed shops, but the rest were open. In January, 1910, however, with 75 per cent of the men organized, and steady work for six months previous, the men were able to make a five-year agreement with a majority of the employers. The total number of tile layers and helpers in the District in 1907-08 was about 200. There were two locals, one composed of tile layers and the other of helpers, each of which had about 65 members. Apprentices were usually taken from the helpers, and were required to serve two years. One apprentice was allowed in each shop. The union established eight hours as the working day in this trade in 1900. At that time wages were $4.00 per day for tile layers and $1.90 for helpers. From 1902 to 1907 the journeymen’s scale was 55 cents per hour, or $4.40 per day, and helpers received $2.25. Following the strike of 1907, wages in the union shops became $5.00 a day, while open shops were paying the old rate of $4.40. Helpers usually got $2.50 a day. Apprentices were paid $3.25 per day during the first six months, and thereafter during apprenticeship they received an increase of 25 cents per day every six months. The agreement of 1910 called for 60 cents per hour for a journeyman’s eight-hour day, and $3.00 per day for apprentices, the pay of the latter to be increased at the rate of 50 cents per day every six months until they become journeymen. By 1913, journeymen’s wages had risen to $5.50 per day. The union does not allow piece work, but in some open shops non-union men are compelled to work by the piece. Note.—In addition to agreements and advances noted under the above headings, the following additions to the building trades scales are illustrative both of the development of new forms of construction and of the general standards of the group which are applied to them: asbestos workers $4.25 per day, eight-hour day, forty-four-hour week; cement workers—who, with a membership of 550, are becoming an important group—$3.50 per day, eight-hour day, forty-four-hour week; composition roofers, $4.00 per day, who are yet to be recognized by the Master Roofers. 166WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH MINE WORKERS Engaged in the mining operations of the nine counties in Western Pennsylvania claimed as the jurisdiction of District No. 5, United Mine Workers of America were, in 1907-08, about 80,000 men. About 30,000 were organized under the United Mine Workers. By 1914 this number has increased to over 40,000. The relatively small number of men in the union gives a false impression of its power. It exercises an influence greater than its numbers. The organized men are grouped solidly in the counties nearest to Pittsburgh. Here they have increased their wages, reduced their hours, and improved the conditions of labor. All around this organized field non-union men are found, but it is in the Connellsville region to the south that the greater number of non-union mine workers are concentrated. There, as well as in Westmoreland County, the miners have for twenty-five years been unorganized. Sometimes a rise in the union scale of wages has compelled the Connellsville operators to increase wages in order to prevent their men from forming a union. The higher wages and shorter hours in the union have thus been influential in improving conditions among the non-union miners; the latter, on the other hand, have been a constant menace to the organized mine workers. Outside the fields referred to, the union has been making steady progress in the Pittsburgh District. During the five years from 1903 to 1909 its membership almost doubled. In 1903 the average monthly membership was 17,591; in 1907, 30,587; in 1914, 42,000. In the year 1907 there was an increase of over 7,000, or about 30 per cent. This growth was principally in what is known as the District proper, along the Monongahela River and its tributary, the Youghiogheny. In 1907-08 the union gave its attention to completing the organization of the miners in the Allegheny Valley. In 1910 and 1911 its efforts were spent in an unequal struggle to organize the mines at Irwin, Latrobe, and Greensburg, and other points in Westmoreland County. In 1912-13 the resources of the national body were poured into the neighboring West Virginia fields—newer and equally unorganized, where, as result of the contracts secured, the union now claims a membership of 40,000. In 1913-14 the fight shifted to the Colorado field. 167WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH The strike of the Slavs in Westmoreland County was in some ways even more significant than the struggle of the native mountaineers to the south which took on almost the aspect of civil war. For Westmoreland County is the very gate of the coke region, which has been unorganized since H. C. Frick broke the union in the 8o's. In the early spring of 1910 the men, largely immigrants, struck for the union scale of wages, for a reduction in the number of working hours for check-weighmen, and for other arrangements which would put them on a par with the organized miners about Pittsburgh. Processions of miners went from one mine to the next, calling the men out; labor organizers speaking the different tongues formed them into locals. Recognition of the union finally became the underlying issue. Strikebreakers and guards were imported by the companies, clashes followed, and several men were killed. The strikers' families were ejected from the company houses and lived in tents throughout the entire winter of 1910-11. Thousands of dollars were spent by the employers and by the United Mine Workers in their efforts to control the situation. With the summer of 1911, a slack season of coal mining throughout the country made the drain on union resources too heavy to continue, and sixteen months after its inauguration the strike was declared off, the men returning to work on such terms as they could make individually. Little union growth has followed there in the years succeeding. Various personal and corporation policies were involved in this struggle. The fact that some Westmoreland coal is made into coke makes the ultimate outcome significant with respect to the coke region proper. If the union succeeds here, it feels that it will have prestige in the Connellsville and Uniontown districts where it must deal with the most powerful business corporation in the United States committed to an anti-union policy—the United States Steel Corporation. Meanwhile, the fact that immigrant miners could be held together by union leaders through a summer and winter of great privation is significant. They showed dogged persistence in keeping up the fight to an even greater degree than they did in the mass strike at the Pressed Steel Car Works at McKees Rocks, in 1909, or the Westinghouse strike of 1914. These three strikes give appraisal of the Slav as a force in the 168WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH economic struggles of the next decade in the Pittsburgh District. And it is to be borne in mind that today the mine workers in the Pittsburgh District are overwhelmingly Slav. During the last fifteen years there has been a marked falling off in the number of English-speaking men in the mines. Operators state that in most mines barely 25 per cent of the men can speak English, while in a large number the percentage is much smaller. This influx of immigrants from southeastern Europe has had two important effects: First, it has prevented the mine workers' union from improving labor conditions in the Pittsburgh District as fast as it has improved them in Indiana, Illinois, and farther west. Each newly arrived immigrant thinks of a job in Pittsburgh. Here he must be taught his unionism. His ignorance of industrial conditions and his unfamiliar tongue make him difficult to reach. The union translates its constitution and other literature into the Italian and Slavic tongues, it employs organizers who speak the languages, and it lowers initiation fees from $10 to $5.00 and $2.50 to attract the newcomer. When he has learned his lesson he hears of better conditions in other districts, goes west, and becomes a strong union man. This process is constantly being repeated. It could be seen plainly in the mine employing 1,000 men which had to hire, according to its superintendent, in 1907, 5,000 men a year to keep up its force. As a general rule throughout the District, 2,000 men have to be hired during the year to keep 1,000 going. The second effect of the influx of Slavs is that their lack of intelligence makes improved machinery and a perfected organization of the mining processes absolutely essential. There is a direct connection between the increasing number of unintelligent mining laborers and the increased use of mining machinery during the last ten or fifteen years. Which is cause and which is effect is difficult to determine. In a dispute over the introduction of a new appliance for dumping coal at the tipple, the operators contended that the scarcity of intelligent labor compelled them to adopt some mechanical means to dump and handle coal at the surface. While constant immigration has kept the mine worker of the Pittsburgh District somewhat behind his brother workmen 169WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH farther west in securing better working conditions, the union has forced up wages in the District so that the Slav in the organized mines is paid from 50 to 90 per cent more per hour than his countrymen working in the mills and factories of Pittsburgh at jobs requiring the same amount of skill and strength. The hours, wages, and rules under which coal is mined in the Pittsburgh District are fixed at biennial conventions of workmen and employers. First, the operators of a competitive area covering several states meet with representatives of the union and lay down the conditions under which the men are to work within their territory. After these conventions, district conferences are held to settle all local matters, and agreements are signed by both parties, to hold until the next convention. Agreements between miners and operators were first made in 1886, but were discontinued until the system of interstate conventions began in 1898. By means of these agreements the union in the first ten years cut down the hours of work about 20 per cent, while earnings increased almost 100 per cent. Ten hours was the working day at the outset of the decade; eight at the end. Many kinds of work, such as entry cutting, room turning, and removing clay, which are incidental to the regular work of the miner, but for which formerly nothing was paid, now have a regular scale. This “ dead work” in a mine employing 150 men adds about $1.50 per week to the wages of each of them. It has meant an addition of about 10 per cent to a miner's pay. A company with a payroll of $8,000 now pays $800 for dead work, where formerly it paid nothing. Another way in which wages have been increased is by establishing the system of check-weighing. In the Pittsburgh District the practice of having a check-weighman was established in 1898 without a strike. The Pittsburgh Coal Company, which was formed by a consolidation of smaller companies in 1901, agreed at the first convention thereafter to put in check-weigh-men, if the men would agree to sign a contract not to sue for wages. It was common for men to claim a greater tonnage than the company allowed them. Legally the company could not force the men to make such a contract, but most of them signed. An idea of the general movement of wages from 1898 onWAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH may be had from the following table. The complete scale for each two-year period now contains nearly 200 items, and provides a price for each kind of work that may appear. When agreements were first made only two sentences were needed. A CALENDAR OF RISING PAY Scale—Thin vein iyi in. Screened Coala 1898-1900 1900- 1902 1902- 1904 1904- 1906 1906 b-1910 mou- rns 1912c-1916 Pick-mining, per ton Air Machines Undercutting in $.66 $.80 $9° $.85 $.90 $■95 $1.00 rooms, per ton Loading in rooms, .125 •15 .1708 .1604 .I708 .1812 .1916 per ton . Electric Machines Undercutting in •36 .4268 .4560 .4264 .4560 .4856 .5452 rooms, per ton Loading in rooms, .08 .1030 .1100 .1025 .1 IOO .II72 .1244 per ton .36 .4268 .4700 •4375 .4700 .5028 .5656 Inside Day Wage Scale 1898- 1900 1900- 1902 1902- 1904 1904- 1906 1906 b-1910 mo- 1912 1912 c-1916 Track layers . $1.90 $2.28 $2.5 6 $2.42 fc.56 $2.70 $2.84 Tracklayers’ helpers i 75 2.10 2.36 2.23 2.36 2.49 2.62 T rappers d •75 i.00 1.13 1.65 I.I3 1.19 1.25 Cagers 1.75 2.10 2.56 2.42 2.56 2.70 2.84 Drivers 1-75 2.10 2.56 2.42 2.56 2.70 2.84 Trip riders 1-75 2.10 2.56 2.42 2.56 2.70 2.84 Water haulers Timbermen, when 1 -75 2.10 2.56 2.42 2.56 2.70 2.84 employed . Pipe men for com- 1.90 2.28 2.56 2.42 2.56 2.70 2.84 pressed air plants 1.85 2.22 2.50 2.36 2.50 2.64 2.78 Other inside labor 1-75 2.10 2.36 2.23 2.36 2.49 2.62 a Thin vein is the most common in Allegheny County. b The 1906-08 scale was renewed for 1908-10. cThe 1912— 14 scale was renewed for 1914-16. Motormen were added at $2.95 per day to the inside scale in 1912. d These are the boys who take care of the trap doors.WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Day laborers outside of the mines received in 1906-08 from $1.50 to $2.25 per day. For a number of years the miners’ officials tried to secure a fixed scale of wages for outside day labor but without success until 1914.* On the basis of the union scale, employes of the National Mining Company were able to earn during 1907 an average of $2.90 to $3.00 per day. They worked about 225 days out of the year. That was an exceptionally prosperous year, however; ordinarily the number of working days run about 200. But to average the wages of all the men working in the mines hardly gives an adequate idea of their earnings; the men must be considered in groups. Wages of inside day labor were fixed by the scale of 1906-08 at $2.36 to $2.56 per day. Counting 225 working days as average for 1907 the earnings of an underground day laborer were from $531 to $576. It must be remembered, however, that in ordinary years he gets less than 200 days’ pay. A pick-miner can mine about three tons of coal a day. At the 1906-10 scale of 90 cents a ton he could make $2.70 a day and $607.50 for a year of 225 days. Men who do the undercutting with machines are exceptionally skilled. Two men usually work together with one machine. They go from room to room and cut a slot about six feet deep under the coal at the bottom of the bench. They were making $40, $60, $80, sometimes even $90 in two weeks in 1906-08. To make the last, however, they often worked over eight hours. The majority of the cutters made from $3.00 to $4.00 per day; some as low as $2.50. The annual income of the average undercutter was from $700 to $800. In this it was about on a par with the skilled men in the building trades. Both were working eight hours per day, but the undercutter probably had a somewhat smaller rent to pay, for he usually lived in a company house. Behind the cutters come the loaders. They shoot the coal which has been undercut, and load it on three-ton cars to be taken out by mules, electricity, or gravity to the tipple and dumped into boats or railroad cars. The loader works by the ton. Under the 1906-08 scale, he averaged about $2.35 per day and $500 per year. * Minimums now set for outside day men are as follows: dumpers, $2.30; ram-operators, §2.48; pushers, $2.08; trimmers, $2.25; car cleaners, $2.00. This is about 10 per cent over the rates paid before the outside men came under the agreement. 172Underground Machine Men Electric drills and chain saws have revolutionized coal digging in the bituminous field since the days of the pit minersMine Workers of the Pittsburgh DistrictWAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH The highest earnings in the District were made in the great mine, Vesta No. 4, owned by the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company, which employed about 1,000 men and had an average output of almost 6,000 tons a day. In this mine, which had a thick vein and paid according to the mine run, two average men with an electric machine could undercut five rooms of 40 tons each, or 200 tons per day. At the price paid, 5.65 cents per ton, these men together made $11.30 a day, or each of them $5.65. Some cutters in this mine drew regularly $80 and $90 every two weeks. An ordinary cutter working every day that Vesta No. 4 was in operation in 1907 could have earned over $1,500. Loaders in this mine averaged almost $3.00 per day, which for the year would be $900. Aside from the most modern methods employed, the advantage to the men of Vesta No. 4 was the great number of days which it operated. During 1907 it worked 306 days. Even if the Vesta mine worker could make no more by the hour than the man in the other pits, his annual earnings were greater by almost a third. It is difficult to compare wages in union mines with those in non-union, for men are not paid on the same basis. Connellsville miners were working ten hours; they had no check-weighman to tally their tonnage and they got no extra pay for “ dead work.” The rate for day laborers was in 1907-8 $2.35 per day. This was about 20 per cent less per hour than was paid to the union day laborer. Very few miners who work by the piece supplement their regular earnings by working overtime. The union discourages it. Day laborers do most of the overtime work. Experienced men are needed, however, to fix up the mine after the day's work is over. In Vesta No. 4, a regular night force of repair men was employed, thus doing away with overtime work. But in most mines all repairs, changes, and the like, are done at night by day men working overtime. Cases are cited where the same man made 15 to 18 shifts in two weeks, instead of 12. The union has tried to do away with this extra work, but has found it impossible. In each union mine there is a mine committee whose business it is to look after the interests of the union. The men report grievances to this committee and it takes them up with the superintendent. It also sees that none of the union rules or the rules 173WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH of the signed agreement are violated. While it is understood between the operators and the union that there shall be no discrimination as to the men to be employed in the mines, the practice of signing scales for all occupations and making deductions from the men's pay for check-weighman and union dues, brings practically all the men into the union, and they have at least a union shop, if not strictly a closed shop. Under this so-called “checkoff” system, the wages of the check-weighman and the expenses of his office are collected semi-monthly through the pay office upon a statement of time made by the check-weighman. The amount so collected is deducted on a percentage basis from the earnings of all those actually engaged in mining coal. Deductions for union dues are also made through the pay office. The amount of such deduction is stated by the mine committee subject to the instructions of the men. The agreement provides that when union dues are thus paid they shall follow deductions for check-weighman, accident and death benefit, rent, and smithing. At nearly every mine in Allegheny County there are company houses for the miners. Up to 1910 the operators would not let the union interfere with the rents, which went up and down with changes in the wage scales. They rose $1.00 a month with the new scale in 1906. A four-room house with a lot measuring up to 100 feet rented in 1908 for from $6.00 to $10 per month. Large houses cost more in proportion. Rents of these houses were only about half what laborers paid for similar quarters in the city of Pittsburgh, and the companies as a rule kept the buildings in fair repair.* While there was wide disparity to be found between sanitary and housing conditions in the dwellings of different mining villages, the mine workers themselves expressed very little dissatisfaction with the company houses. On the contrary, these seemed to be in great demand. Complaints were sometimes made that certain companies would not give a man a house unless he bought at the company stores. Most of these stores near Pittsburgh were in 1907 managed by two companies which have since been merged in the Federal Supply Company conducted by the Pittsburgh Coal Company. * In the last three agreements, a clause has provided against any increase in price for house rent and house, and these have remained stationary since 1908. 174WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH Unlike the company houses, these stores have been at times sources of bitter discontent, the usual charge being that men who did not deal with them were discriminated against. The union has several times appointed committees to make investigations of these charges, but nothing has come of them. Prices charged at the stores in 1907 were usually those generally prevailing in the community. Fully two-thirds of the company stores had competitors, and this kept the prices down. In isolated communities where a company had a monopoly, prices were higher. To trade on credit the men got checks with small amounts printed on them. The amounts of their purchases were punched on these checks, and deducted from the wages. Some miners paid cash for all they bought; others, in contrast, cashed their credit checks at a discount. This practice, however, was no longer common in 1907, the companies discharging men who discounted their credits. The question of mine accidents long since became a bitter one at the conventions of District No. 5. Both everyday risks and the enormous loss of life from explosions were subjects of complaints. In Miss Eastman's report for the Pittsburgh Survey an analysis of mining fatalities in Allegheny County during twelve months showed that one-fourth of them were humanly preventable,* and that the problems presented by the remainder had not been grappled with from the standpoint of prevention in the way in which European countries have addressed themselves to the same problem. During ordinary years in the Pittsburgh District, about 15 miners are injured and three killed for every 1,000 men employed in and about the mines. From July, 1906, through June, 1907, there were, for example, 71 fatal accidents among the mine workers of Allegheny County.t Three were due to explosions of powder at miners' homes. In the county there were not quite 20,000 mine workers employed. If we count the underground fatalities as 68, the death rate was 3.4 per thousand. This rate is greater than that of any country in Europe, and about equal to the average for the United States.t The succeeding years, 1907 * Eastman, Crystal: op. cit., pp. 84if. f Ibid., pp. 34if. The succeeding years have averaged more than this. See Kellogg, op. cit., p. 25. t Number of men killed for each 1,000 men employed—average for five years: France (1901-05), 0.91; Belgium (1902-06), 1.00; Great Britain (1902-06), 1.28; United States (1902-06), 3.39. 175WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH and 1908, were marked by a number of horrible mine disasters in the bituminous field of Pennsylvania. In December, 1907, there were gas explosions in two mines of the Pittsburgh District in which 274 men were killed.* The general opinion among the men in the pits was that the slaughter might have been prevented. The Pennsylvania employers' liability law of 1907 (known as the Casey Act) was urged by miners throughout the state. This statute removed managers, superintendents, and foremen from the class of fellow-servants, and made them vice-principals for whose acts the employers were responsible. As a result, operators began to take greater precautions to prevent the occurrence of accidents. The 1907 session created also a commission to revise the bituminous mining laws of the state. The following amendments were advocated by the officers of the miners' union, not only to lessen the danger of disasters but to prevent some of the ordinary accidents which in the long run result in greater human loss: 1. That all miners employed in gaseous mines be required to pass an examination, have two years' experience, and hold a certificate. 2. That the company employ certificate fire bosses to charge and fire all shot in gaseous mines after all other men are out of the mine. 3. That it be compulsory to use safety lamps in mines having dangerous quantities of gas and where there is danger of an explosion. 4. That all mines that are dry or dusty be sprinkled daily. 5. That the ventilation be increased to 300 cubic feet for each miner. 6. That an extra fan be kept for use in case of emergency. 7. That openings be made to the surface from the inner workings of every mine. 8. That use of electricity be discontinued in mines generating gas. 9. That all trappers be at least sixteen years of age, and trap doors abolished wherever possible. 10. Superintendents to hold managers' certificates. While some of the features suggested were incorporated in the commission's report in 1909, certain measures of safety suggested by the union were wholly disregarded. Four of the five members agreed to the report. The fifth member, however, Francis Feehan, president of the Pittsburgh * Darr Mine, Pittsburgh Coal Co., and Naomi, of the United Coal Co. Later, 157 men were killed by an explosion in the Marianna mine of the Pittsburgh-Buffalo Coal Co., and in 1913, 97 at the Cincinnati mine of the Pittsburgh Coal Co.Joseph H. Holmes Director of the United States Bureau of Mines, who made “Safety First” the slogan of the experimental work carried on hy his staff of engineers in the Pittsburgh District Three First-aid Men of the Federal Bureau of Mines The picture shows the bandaging and splinting necessary in taking a seriously injured man out of a mine. First aid is taught by these men to the miners throughout the countryAkter a Mine Disaster Miners’ wives and children waiting for news from the entombed men. The nature of mine explosions, the explosibility of coal dust, and the technique of prevention have been three lines of emphasis in the work ot the Federal Bureau Underground Fighters One of the rescue crews of the Bureau of Mines wearing oxygen helmets which admit of breathing poisonous gases for two hours. Not a few mining corporations have such apparatus and rescue men, in addition to the federal crews, which act as instructors, and emergency men dispatched to the scene when the first word comes of a disaster. Curiously enough, the Pittsburgh Experiment Station of the Bureau of Mines was located in the old arsenal buildings of Civ il War daysWAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH District No. 5, U. M. W. of A., refused to sign it. The recommendations made by the commission were defeated and no changes in the bituminous mining laws were made by the legislature of 1909. In 1911, James Roderick, chief of the Pennsylvania state department of mines, prepared a revision of laws relating to bituminous mining, and succeeded in having his recommendations passed by the legislative session of that year in spite of opposition by Mr. Feehan and his district. Mr. Roderick's revision embodied features of the report of the commission of 1909, to which objection was made by the unions. The 1911 statute permits open lamps to be carried in some parts of mines, in other parts of which only safety lamps are allowed, and also permits the use of electricity in gaseous mines. A state commission was created by the legislature of 1911, to investigate the general subject of industrial accidents and workingmen's compensation. This commission drafted a bill which was supported by labor unions and public bodies alike, but which was defeated in the legislature of 1913. Further inquiry was authorized and another Commission report will come before the legislature of 1915. In May, 1908, Congress authorized the establishment, under the technological branch of the United States Geological Survey, of a station for the investigation of mine explosions, and Pittsburgh was chosen as the location for the first station. This was opened in December, 1908. Two years later Congress definitely established a bureau of mines under the Department of the Interior, which has developed an engineering laboratory at Pittsburgh and a system of mine rescue cars and safety demonstrators throughout the bituminous field. In October, 1911, this bureau held a miners' life-saving demonstration in Pittsburgh which was a signal step forward by the federal government in its program to raise the standards of state mining laws and enforcement and to carry out an educational propaganda among employers and unions. The part which the unions have thus played in the cumulative movement for safety in the mining industry is in contrast to the corresponding movement in the steel industry where the hazards are equally great and for long were equally neglected, and where, in the absence of any chance for collective action or expression of opinion on the part of the men, the movement for safety has come from the top.* These two employments offer further points for comparison and contrast. *This has been true also of the Connellsville region, where in recent years the H. C. Frick Company has applied the general safety program of the Steel Corporation to the coal pits, with marked results. i2* 177WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH MINE WORKERS AND STEEL WORKERS—A COMPARISON The two industries employing the largest number of men in Allegheny County are the coal mines and the steel mills.* There are probably 20,000 mine workers in the county and 70,000 to 80,000 steel workers. In some cases the mines are owned by the steel corporations.f The nationalities of the two sets of men are similar, with a large proportion of unskilled and semiskilled Slavs in each industry. The hours of labor in the mines are eight with no Sunday work as against ten and twelve in the mills with (up to 1910) much seven-day work. In 1907-08 the wages paid to the common laborer underground at the coal mines were $2.36 per eight-hour day, while the wages paid to the same class of Slavs at the Pittsburgh mills were $1.50 for ten hours or $1.80 for twelve, and in the mill towns $1.65 and $i.98.t Measured by the hour, the Slavs employed by the same company were paid 90 to 100 per cent more as mine workers than as steel workers. Again, “ loaders,” who follow the undercutting machines in the mines, and who were practically common laborers paid by the ton instead of by the day, earned about $2.3$ to $2.80 for eight hours, while metal-wheelers and cinder-pitmen, doing similar heavy work in the mills and paid by the ton, earned $2.28 to $2.41 for twelve hours. The miner earned 29 to 35 cents an hour and the steel worker 19 to 20 cents. When we come to the highest paid jobs, there is no position in the mine to be compared with the roller on a bar and guide mill or on a plate or structural mill. Some bar and guide mill rollers earned $10 to $16 per twelve-hour day, and plate and structural mill rollers $7.00 to $8.00 a day. But these men, though usually spoken of as workmen, are really foremen, overseeing the work * For a detailed statement of labor conditions in the Pittsburgh steel industry, see Fitch, John A.: The Steel Workers. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) t True of Vesta mines of Jones and Laughlin Steel Co., and the National mines of the United States Steel Corporation. X In 1910 the rates paid mine laborers rose 5.5 per cent, while an increase of 6 per cent for unskilled labor was announced by the U. S. Steel Corporation. These bases for comparisons had not, therefore, been materially changed. In 1913 a further increase of 14.3 per cent was made by the U. S. Steel Corporation, while laborers* wages in the mines increased 5.26 per cent in 1912. The contrast in 1914 is therefore less unfavorable to the mills than in 1907-08, but now, as then, taking unskilled labor, which is the basic rate, the mine laborer still works shorter hours for higher pay. Day: Mill—$2.00 [ten hrs.]—$2.40 [twelve hrs.]; Mine— $2.62 [eight hrs.]. Hour: Mill—20 cents; Mine—32K cents. 178WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH rather than doing it; and the company hires and discharges the crew on their recommendation. The blooming mill roller is different. He actually works the levers himself, and to him may be compared the electrical undercutter, who operates the machine that undercuts the coal. The undercutter earned $3.35 to $5.00 per eight-hour day in 1907-08, and the blooming mill roller an average of $6.25 for twelve hours. The miner earned 40 to 65 cents an hour and the blooming mill roller about 50 cents. In another respect the mine worker's position is superior. The houses in which he lives, many of them belonging to the company, are quite convenient, with open spaces between them, and the rentals in 1907-08 were about $2.00 per room against $4.00 paid by the mill worker. Taking everything into account—wages, hours, leisure, cost of living, conditions of work—it appears that common laborers employed by the steel companies in their mines were 50 to 90 per cent better off than the same grade of laborers employed at their mills and furnaces; that semi-skilled laborers employed at piece rates were 40 to 50 per cent better off in the mines; and that the highest paid laborers, the steel roller and the mine worker, were on about the same footing. In 1897 conditions in the mines were similar to those in the mills in 1907. The day laborer received $1.35 to $1.50 for ten hours. It was in that year that the long strike of coal miners throughout the interstate field took place, with the result that for the ten years succeeding, wages, hours, and conditions were established by agreement between the United Mine Workers of America and the coal operators' associations. Under these agreements, the conditions of the poorest paid laborers improved perhaps 20 per cent. The fate of unionism in the two industries is interesting and enlightening. Consider first the bearing of organized capital on the outcome. Since there have been many mine operators competing in the various markets, the coal miners' union has been able to take advantage of this competition by playing off competitors against each other. It became a direct benefit to the operators to have wages fixed by agreements which could make the labor cost the same for all competitors. The steel workers have no such competing employers, and they do not possess this advantage. Especially since the great consolidation of the United States Steel Corporation, employers have been secure in fixing 179WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH labor costs in other ways than by agreements with their employes. Consider the outcome from the standpoint of effective labor organization. Prior to the Homestead strike of 1892, the steel industry was dominated by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers. There were two defects in this organization. It included only the skilled or semi-skilled and high-priced workers, and it had no effective discipline over its local unions. The situation was such that the manufacturer was handicapped by arbitrary restrictions which the national officers of the union deprecated but could not correct, while common labor did not benefit. For the sake of both the manufacturer and the laborer, the union, which had overreached itself and was headstrong in its power, had to be disciplined and was finally thrown out. Since that time the manufacturers have gone to as mad an extreme in bearing down on their employes as employes had previously gone in throttling manufacturers. Contrast with this history that of the mine workers, a body of men of the same general intelligence as the steel workers, but whose national union is both able and willing to discipline its local unions. Leading coal operators assert that they can carry on their business to better advantage with the union than without. If there were no union, they would be menaced by petty strikes whenever a few hotheads stirred up trouble, and at times when the operator might be tied up with contracts to deliver coal. But under the annual agreements with the union, operators are safe in making long contracts, and they can conduct their business on even closer calculation for labor than for materials whose prices fluctuate. Furthermore, this union, taking into its membership the entire body of workers, has been a greater benefit to the mass of unskilled labor than to the few who are highly skilled. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION A comparison of the conditions in the numerous other industries which we have considered does not show such striking contrasts as does this comparison between mine workers and steel workers; and in a local study such as this, it would be going too far to generalize as to the forces which have pushed the workers in some trades steadily upward, giving them more pay and more leisure, while other trades have remained nearer the level of 180TWO TYPES Of non-union workmen in the master industry of the Pittsburgh District Photos by HineWAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH common labor. A recapitulation of working conditions and forms of organization in the different industries, however, does bring to light certain tendencies and developments which we believe to be characteristic not only of the Pittsburgh District, but of industrial conditions everywhere. The combined membership of the various unions in the Pittsburgh District in 1907-08 was about 50,000.* Approximately one out of every four or five workers belonged to a union, but the proportions varied greatly in the different industries. The simplest form of organization is the local union. This is usually a branch of some national union composed of workers following the same craft. Thus Pittsburgh blacksmiths, whether working in wagon, carriage, or machine shops, or in foundries, all belong to the same local union of the International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths. When the membership is large and there are many local unions of the same trade the practice is to organize a district council. Thus the 26 local unions of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America elected delegates to a Carpenters' District Council of Pittsburgh and Vicinity. It was the district councils which usually employed “business agents" to look after the interests of all the workers in the trade. To unite all the unions of all crafts in the district there is a central body known as the Iron City Central Trades Council.f Each union is entitled to two delegates for the first 100 members or majority fraction. At the time of this investigation there * This was exclusive of the 30,000 mine workers in unions whose membership included men from nine counties in western Pennsylvania. t An earlier central body has persisted, although its influence was practically gone in 1907. The United Labor League was organized in 1895 as part of the Knights of Labor movement, admitting to membership all local unions whether belonging to the American Federation of Labor or the Knights of Labor, or unaffiliated with either. In 1901, unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor broke away from the United Labor League and organized the Iron City Trades Council. This grew rapidly. The League was accused of admitting “scab” or bogus unions. The American Federation of Labor ordered all its locals to join the new organization, and the United Labor League was practically destroyed. The constitution of the league had prohibited it from endorsing any political candidates. Not so the Iron City Council, and soon it was discovered that some labor leaders were getting pay for these endorsements. Charges of blackmailing employers and misappropriating funds cropped out. In fact, developments have been very similar in character to those going forward in kindred municipal circles. Various “shake-ups” have occurred in which officials have been thrown out of the organization and reform leaders have endeavored to restore confidence in the central body, among the rank and file of the unions. l8lWAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH were 94 delegates to the council, representing 34 unions. The council bears the same relation to the local unions of the city as the American Federation of Labor does to the national unions of the country. It is a general legislative body concerning itself with matters of common interest and leaving matters affecting particular crafts in their own hands. In order to secure action by certain closely related trades, there are affiliated with this city body trade sections, such as the Building Trades Council, the Metal Trades Section, and the Allied Printing Trades Council. A further stage in united action is represented by the organizations of the mine workers and the brewery workmen. These are “industrial” unions. Instead of organizing by crafts, all men in the mines, whatever their trade, join one union; and all employes in or about the breweries, whether brewers, teamsters, or engineers, belong to the union of brewery workmen. Turning to the conditions in the various trades, wages are lowest in those occupations in which organization is most difficult, and in which the workers are compelled to make individual bargains with their employers. Year after year the wages of common laborers have fluctuated from $8.00 to $12 per week; only here and there groups have gained better rates. Some strong union has given them a boost; or they have worked under the public eye where popular sentiment favored them. In the transportation trades teamsters and rivermen had in 1907-08 for years been working for little above what common laborers earned; but the street railway employes' union had secured increases of from 20 to 30 per cent, and the union of brewery workmen had raised the wages of brewery wagon drivers 50 and 60 per cent above what other teamsters earned. [Both since increased.] Retail clerks, as a class, gained little increase in their wages during the five years preceding 1908; but bakery workmen gained 20 per cent in the same period and more than 50 per cent from 1894 to 1908. It was not so much their union as a shortage in the supply of bakers that made their wages rise. For more than ten years printers and proofreaders in the job offices of Pittsburgh had been getting $16 a week. In the newspaper composing rooms, however, there was constant advance through the strategic advantage the typographical union had, not only because it was 182WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH necessary for the papers to appear every day, but because of their desire to build up large circulation among the working people of the District. The brewing industry even more directly appealed to the same mass of consumers, and, while it requires but half the time to learn the brewers' trade that it does to learn that of a carpenter, bricklayer, or electrician, the brewery journeyman's union had been able to secure for him an annual income equal to that of the building trade mechanic. Turning to the great industries subsidiary to the steel mills we see the workers with difficulty maintaining their scales of wages. Skilled machinists and molders are advanced as individuals, but metal trades workers as a class have gained little in wages in recent years, and increases have been secured not so much by reason of their unions as because specialization has left a lack of first class mechanics. Whenever a depression has come with many mechanics out of work, wages have been reduced. The mass of semi-skilled machine workers, drill press hands, milling machine operators, lathe hands, and others are unorganized and easily replaceable and they have had no regularly increasing scales of wages during a decade of rising cost of living. They are paid in accordance with the employers' estimate of each man's worth. In the building trades, on the other hand, there have been, on the whole, strong unions and steady progress with increasing wages. At the time of our inquiry, indications of a movement similar to that in the metal trades were observable. Some unions were weakening, as specialization, new inventions, and organizations of employers were removing the favorable circumstances which had built up strong building trades unions. The unusually extensive building operations in the past few years have more or less stayed or cloaked this trend, and concert of action among the trades themselves—where single unions failed—has strengthened the hold of the entire group.* * The crafts which lacked strength in themselves have more and more come to act through the Building Trades Council—quitting work in unison to redress the grievances of any one group, and bringing pressure to bear on any one group which needlessly threw allied trades out of employment. The smaller employers, for their part, have turned for protection against sympathetic strikes and juridic-tional disputes to a builders’ exchange or league. In the summer of 1913, a dispute over the unskilled labor used in erecting a new department store threatened to spread to all crafts and operations throughout the city, and to stave this off, an agreement was entered into between the Building Trades Council and the 183WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH In general, the same causes which have enabled the workers to force up wages have enabled them to reduce working hours. Common laborers have worked for many years from ten to twelve hours a day. Ten hours was in* 1907 the prevailing day's work for most laborers in the city except where unionism, as in the case of the building laborers, or politics, as in the case of city employes, fixed the hours at eight. A strong organization gave the retail clerks a regular workday, first of eleven and later of ten hours. But after their organization disbanded, the state legislature had to step in to prevent excessive hours for young girls in some establishments. Among the organized trade groups the movement toward an eight-hour day has been only in part successful. Some unions, though able to secure advances in wages, have not been able to shorten the workday. Thus, although railroad employes are unionized, freight crews have had little success in cutting down hours. In contrast, the strong union enabled street railway employes to bring hours down 30 to 40 per cent from 1902 to 1907. In the metal trades the powerful unions of the 90's enabled mechanics to establish a nine-hour day, but they have never since succeeded in reducing hours below that figure. Open book and job printing offices continue to work nine hours while the better organized newspaper workers enjoy a seven and one-half and eight-hour day. Up to 1907 men in the breweries were working nine hours a day, and bottling house employes eight and a half hours. Since then the union has secured eight hours, not only for all bottling and brew-house men, but also for engineers and firemen who, outside of breweries, work twelve hours per day. All the building trades have been working eight hours a day for more than ten years; and the more strongly organized trades now have a Saturday half-holiday at least during the summer months. Pittsburgh Builders’ Exchange, prohibiting any union to go on strike, or any employer to lock out men, while the dispute was being adjusted. This worked so well that without any formal compact between the two associations, committees from the two bodies settled perhaps one hundred clashes in the following year. Steam-fitters, lathers, painters, and hoisting engineers were at different times ordered back to work; and on the side of the employers, certain general contractors and planing mill operators, who had ordered lockouts, were obliged to put their men back. The painters’ union was expelled from the Building Trades Council because of its refusal to keep the agreement; and the hoisting engineers split into two sections, one abiding by the decision; the other rejecting it, the latter making common cause with the bricklayers, plasterers and stone masons who are outside the council. This led (summer of 1914) to the breaking up of the arrangement. 184WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH Practically all the building trades pay regularly time and one-half for all overtime and double time for all Sunday and holiday work. For some classes of repair work on Sundays, boiler makers get three and four times the regular rate. Outside of the building trades only blacksmiths, molders, pattern makers, and printers are paid both time and one-half and double time. Such a recapitulation makes it evident that the trades which have come to pay the highest wages in the Pittsburgh District and in which working hours have been most reduced are those which have had the strongest labor organizations. The increased earnings which the workers have secured have depended not so much on their skill or intelligence or on increased output, as on the strength of their organizations. In the years under review, unorganized workers made little progress in getting better terms of labor. Employers when free of the power of unions were often willing enough to raise individual workmen, but they were not willing to keep on raising the minimum standard for all employes. When a union was destroyed lower wages and increased hours did not always follow, but invariably the progressive improvement in the conditions of employment which characterized the well organized trades was stopped. Moreover, as our inquiry covered the period of depression, it brought out the fact that the influence of the unions in hard times in preventing or lessening wage-cuts is as noteworthy as their influence in securing advances in good times. Usually it required a union to hold the advances gained, if not actually to get them in the first place. Those workers who had secured advances through fortunate circumstances without strong organizations, were quick to lose in the bad years what they had gained. But those who maintained their organizations held their ground, and subsequently were able to secure even higher rates. There was unmistakable evidence also that labor organizations exercise an influence far greater than their proportion of numbers. They set standards which employers of non-union labor found themselves obliged to approach in order to ward off organization among their own men. The results of a strike were found to be shared often by many outside the ranks who took part. Here we have reached a point where a second generalization can be drawn from our city-wide study of employments. We have .85WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH seen that in the years under review, taking the whole expanse of labor conditions, there was little progress, as far as the workers were concerned, in the vital matters of hours and wages, without organization on their part. In reviewing the careers of the organizations, comparing one with another, it seems equally clear that it was not superior skill or intelligence that enabled some wage-earners to build up strong unions while others failed, although skill and intelligence have helped. Usually it was some strategic advantage possessed by the working people. Thus we have pointed out how competition among the coal operators played into the hands of the mine workers and enabled them to build up a strong union, how the necessity of issuing a newspaper every morning gave the printers an advantage, and how brewery workmen built up a strong organization by union label and boycott. The greatest advantage, however, was to have employers small and many and competition keen. This was the case in the building trades, and here were the strongest unions at the time of our inquiry. Building trade workers have other advantages. The location of their work is fixed and usually it has to be finished at a specified time. The employer can not have it done at another place, and he suffers if it is not done in the given time. In general, the stronger the union the more nearly the industry in which it existed approached the local and comparatively small-scale production of the building trades. Trade agreements between employers and workers by which both sides were given a voice in determining conditions of employment were found mainly where competing employers had to unite against a labor organization. Such agreements equalized labor cost and other competitive conditions for the employers. It was in no small part because a union scale was able to accomplish this that the workers were able to force recognition for their unions from employers and to compel collective dealing. When, however, an industry passed under the control of a great national corporation or a trust, competition was eliminated or competitive conditions could be equalized by the dominant employer without the aid of a labor organization; and most of the other strategic advantages held by the workers were removed. The unions therefore went down before the growing aggregations of capital. Typical of the city trades in general is the fate of the 186WAGE-EARNERS OF PITTSBURGH unions of bakery workmen. In the small German and Jewish bakeshops they exercise an influence, but they can not maintain a foothold in the shops of the National Biscuit Company. Even in the building trades, the National Erectors’ Association, led by the American Bridge Company, has been able to block the structural iron workers. The machinists’ union was strong when employers were represented by many small contract shops. Its power was broken by the appearance of large specialized shops manufacturing standard products that could be duplicated in branch factories outside of Pittsburgh. Iron and steel workers wielded a great power over their industry as long as there were many competing mills. Broken in the days of the great steel companies, their union was buried when the Steel Corporation absorbed plant after plant. And masons, carpenters, and steamfitters employed in the corporation mills long since suffered the fate of the blast furnace men and roll-hands.* There were many signs in 1907-08 that the more intelligent workers in Pittsburgh were taking to heart in their own way the points made in the generalizations just given. They had seen wages increase, the working day shorten, and conditions of employment generally improve because of the unions’ stronger bargaining power. They had come to believe that their welfare depended not upon skill, or output, or upon the good intentions of their employers, but upon their own organizations. They directed their main efforts, therefore, to building up their unions and to keeping them intact. Trade union policies were developed to these ends. The closed shop, the limit on apprentices, the use of the union label, the trade federations and their sympathetic strikes—were all intended to secure advantages which would strengthen the unions. These had in turn become points of irritation to employers. Such policies the latter considered attempts to interfere with the business of the owners and not legitimate purposes of labor organizations. They were the first points of attack in most disputes; and, as we have seen, when employers began to combine on a * At its Toronto convention, the American Federation of Labor "declared war” on the United States Steel Corporation, called on the allied trades to put organizers in the district, and attempted to unionize the mills. These tactics were fruitless. The unions claim to have enlisted 10,000 men, but the move was met by espionage, "immediate discharge,” and other forms of coercion, and the membership dissipated. 187WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH national scale and to eliminate competition, they usually found themselves able to overcome those disadvantages which had formerly permitted the workers to build up strong organizations. The pendulum has swung the other way, and in more than one line—the great fabricating plants following the lead of the mills—the corporations have made their control absolute by hiring immigrants and stamping out organization wherever it showed among the men. As a reaction against this manifest trend there are indications in Pittsburgh of labor activity designed to contest with the great national corporations their control over the terms of work. It is significant that in the steel district where the workers in the major industries have been defeated in the economic struggle, the socialist vote has greatly increased in the last few elections. Wage-earners instinctively assert a property right in their jobs. They want a voice in the management of industry for the same reason that in the range of history, wider and wider groups of the common people have wanted a voice in the government. They have come to believe that their lives and their welfare depend upon it; that they can not trust these to any class of employers, however benevolent. Their unions defeated, they turn to the government to help them control the conditions of employment. But relief from this direction is slow in coming and new forms of self-protection in the economic field are taking head. Thus has come the spontaneous strike—the McKees Rocks strike of 1909, in which unskilled and semi-skilled men of seven races participated; and again, in 1914, the strike of over 10,000 men and women of all races and all grades of skill employed in the Westinghouse plants at East Pittsburgh, in which the mass strength of machine hands, themselves the product of open shop specialization, was tested out on a larger scale. It is significant that in these strikes a bid for control was made by the Industrial Workers of the World, an organization which proposes to substitute for the old craft organizations “industrial unions/' to include all the employes of an industry, whatever their occupation or wherever they may be located. By such an organization it is proposed to present a solid front to the great national corporations, while coupled with it will go political activity along class lines to gain control of the government. 188A Glass-house BoyChautauqua Photographic Co.. Pittsburgh Boy Holding Molds fok Blower in a South Side Glass-houseFACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE CONDITIONS OF WORKING WOMEN AND CHILDREN Florence Kelley HE factory inspector has seemed to most Pennsylvania em- ployers and to all working children a remote and inaccessible dignitary. In Pittsburgh, center of thousands of industrial establishments, there was during the year of the Survey no office of the state government charged with the supervision of these industries, and the number of inspectors was sadly insufficient. It was difficult to find inspectors. Had the Pennsylvania statutes been as effectual as the best laws of any state and had the chief inspector been inspired by modern ideas of labor legislation, it would still be true that his staff of five officers assigned to the Pittsburgh District could not by reason of insufficient numbers cover the ground.* There was in the city no local collection of records, of certificates of inspection, suits pending, work done by individual deputies, or other current material of interest to citizens whose work closely interlocks with that of the department of factory inspection, such as local boards of health and education, and co-operating voluntary agencies which have to do with working people— settlements, trade unions, consumers' leagues. Pittsburgh was entitled to a factory inspection headquarters and it was obvious that the work in the District could never be satisfactorily done until one was established. The Civil War may be said to have given Pittsburgh its great impetus as a producing center. For fifty years thereafter, during which it rapidly became an industrial district of the first * An important part of Allegheny County was for years entrusted to the inspection of a man who lived in Altoona, many miles distant. His territory included Braddock, Homestead, and McKeesport with their highly developed and unusually dangerous industries. 189WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH magnitude, its scheme of government for industry remained abortive until with the legislature of 1913, new machinery for the public control and supervision of labor conditions was created for the whole of Pennsylvania. Two methods have been resorted to in the United States by powerful employing interests of the type that brook no interference between them and their workers. One method, as in Massachusetts, where enforcement can be looked for from the high type of public administrator, is to block the passage of protective laws. The other, as in Illinois, where the public has been quick to support labor legislation, is to cripple and undermine enforcement. In Pennsylvania, both methods singly and in unison have been employed with a success unapproached in any state in the Union. This article as published in 1909* dealt with enforcement in Pittsburgh from 1903 to 1908,—and as it, in fact, remained until 1913. During these ten years Pennsylvania afforded the low water mark of public efficiency in law enforcement—a danger signal warning us against those forces which strive to sap whatever reservoirs of public control may be contrived. For while my criticism was directed at the chief official (since removed) of the existing system (since changed), his inertia and maladministration were the chosen instruments of industrial interests which in other relations have found no difficulty in getting what they wanted at the state capital. These interests did not have to be told that the central point in any system of factory inspection is the factory inspector. When this officer is able and devoted, in command of deputies secure like himself in their tenure of office under civil service laws, the development of effective legislation follows as surely as the vigorous enforcement of the existing statute. This generalization was especially applicable to Pennsylvania where the entire administrative system of the factory inspection department was embraced in one paragraph of an act of 1905 which placed the enforcement of the factory laws in the hands of a chief factory inspector and 39 non-expert deputy factory inspectors receiving salaries of $1,200 per annum. To them was entrusted the task of enforcing restrictions upon working hours, and safeguarding * Kelley, Florence: Factory Inspection in Pittsburgh. Charities and The Commons, XXI: 1105-1116 (March 6, 1909). I90FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH machinery, all their functions being described in the vaguest and most general language. What was ordered in a given case depended in the first instance upon the point of view of the particular inspectors serving, like their chief, without protection of a civil service law. These deputies were in 1907-08 and always had been, purely political appointees. Theirs were not even “ labor ” appointments. Faithful inspectors who insisted that the law should be obeyed, might be removed at will in the interests of powerful employers. Such insecurity places a premium upon making friends with powerful interests throughout the state, winking at violations of law, avoiding prosecution, publicity, and anything that may provoke hostility either to the department or to the individual deputy. Voting fathers who wish to have their children go early to work, and employers who desire to be let alone, count heavily against officials who may desire to be faithful in the performance of an unpopular task. Women and children, however subject to the factory law, do not count in behalf of such officials. Lacking the protection of a civil service law, the state factory inspectors in Pennsylvania were therefore at a serious disadvantage compared with their colleagues in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. To countervail this pressure after appointment as well as to obtain appointment in the first place, inspectors had need of influential connections. Thus in 1907 one deputy inspector assigned to the Pittsburgh District was a cousin of a leading politician; another was a sister-in-law of an ex-governor of Pennsylvania; one found his backing among the German voters; a second, among the Irish.* THE REPORT TO THE PUBLIC The effectiveness of a department may be justly inferred from the degree of enlightening publicity which it achieves. Under the conditions described above, therefore, a statesmanlike chief might seek strength in the goodwill of the public, informing it of * The power of incompetent subordinates under this system of appointment is shown in the following naive statement made by Chief Delaney in his report for the year ending December 31, 1908, regarding an inspector who was removed in Luzerne County: “ During the five years his reports were compiled by me, he had machinery guarded in only eleven establishments as against seventeen establishments in which machinery was guarded by his successor in twelve months from the time of his appointment,, an improved system of inspection that has materially lessened the number of accidents in that county.” It was a scourge for the workers and a disgrace to Pennsylvania that under the system of appointment by political influence, an inspector of such ascertained and culpable disqualifications should have held office five years! 19IWAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH his work, interpreting the laws, appealing to the courts and if these failed him, appealing from the courts to public opinion. To every citizen interested in the problem of labor, his official report is of profound interest, for it is the revelation of the character and methods of the officer entrusted by the state with the important duty of safeguarding the life, limbs, health, and intelligence of future wage-earners. In a series of 10 reports J. C. Delaney, the state factory inspector of Pennsylvania from 1903 to 1913, exhibited the work of the department of factory inspection during a period of great industrial activity. Official reports are in themselves tests of efficiency. If they are full and clear, promptly published and distributed, the work of the department is self-evidently efficient. If, however, they are meager or muddled, the public is forced to infer that they are a faithful interpretation of the work of the department. These reports of the department of factory inspection of the state of Pennsylvania were meager and muddled. This department cost the state of Pennsylvania many tens of thousands of dollars every year. Yet in Pennsylvania, alone among the states, five succeeding reports of the factory inspection department, 1903 to 1907 inclusive, had with one exception shrunk from year to year.* Such was the contempt of its chief officer for the people whose servant he was, that each was briefer and less valuable than the preceding. The report for 1907 was the most recent one available at the time the findings of the Pittsburgh Survey were published, and it was used to illustrate the points made. As an official document issued midway of the ten years of the Delaney administration, it may well stand as an exhibit of the caliber thereof. It contains no index and no table of contents for its 57 pages, nor is the text of the labor law to be found in it. It is interesting chiefly for its omissions. *The following list shows the number of pages in the reports for the years from 1903 to 1912 inclusive: For 1903, 190 pages For 1904, 78 pages For 1905, 58 pages For 1906, 64 pages For 1907, 57 pages For 1908, 76 pages For 1909, 58 pages For 1910, 68 pages For 1911, 66 pages For 1912, 48 pages 192FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH A thoroughly competent report must answer fully and clearly at least the following questions: 1. How many persons were found at work? 2. How many men were found at work? 3. How many women were found at work? 4. How many boys and how many girls? 5. In what specific industries and in what processes employed? 6. At what ages? 7. In what localities? 8. Between what hours? 9. How many at night? 10. If illegally, how many? 11. In what form of illegality? 12. How many prosecutions were instituted? 13. How many were successful? 14. Who were punished for the illegalities? 15. What was the punishment? (a) Fines? If so, what amount? (b) Imprisonment? If so, to what extent? 16. What are the details of the unsuccessful suits? 17. What accidents occurred? (a) How many of them fatal? (b) How many befell children? (c) Proportion of accidents to children to accidents to adults? (d) Relation of accidents to number of hours since beginning work? 18. In what (a) industries were these accidents? (b) processes were these accidents? Counting the subdivisions, here are 29 questions. The report gives some answer to 11 of these; in regard to the remaining 18 we are left in the dark. It shows the employment throughout the state by counties, but nothing more definite than that. Except Philadelphia, which is identical with Philadelphia County, not a city is given separately. No statistics show the number of* women or children at work in each of the important industries— much less the number engaged in each process. Not a figure appears as to employment at night or as to hours of work. A tally, it is true, is given as to the number of children found illegally at * The number of women and children at work (for the state as a whole) classified according to the same trade groupings as the table for Allegheny County on p. 194 was included in the 1903 report, not given in 1904 or 1905, given in 1906, supplanted by percentages in 1907, given in 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911 and 1912. The report for 1908, issued in May, 1909, following the original publication of this review, gave supplementary tables for textile branches and sixteen selected industries theretofore lumped under " miscellaneous/’ Omitted in 1909, 1910 and 1911 (certain industries given in the text in 1911) and given for textiles and twelve women-employing trades in 1912. 13* 193WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH work who were dismissed, and the number of factory inspection orders complied with; but not a word as to prosecutions; not a figure to show in what industries the accidents which are reported occurred, or whether the injured were men, women, or children. There is in the report much unprofitable muddling with percentages. The people of this country can do their own examples in percentage. What they ask of inspection departments is a full and clear statement of women and children found at work in clearly specified industries. Turning to the Pittsburgh District, the following table is all that is given specifically as to the employment of women or children in Allegheny County in 1907: TABLE I.—INDUSTRIAL WORKERS IN ALLEGHENY COUNTY IN I907 BY INDUSTRY, SEX, AND AGE PERIOD [Reproduced from the report of the Department of Factory Inspection of the State of Pennsylvania] Males Females Males between 14 and 16 years Females between 14 and 16 years Iron and products . 114,890 L7I5 1,688 113 Leather and products . 695 7 11 Lumber and products . 4*050 245 170 21 Mercantile industries . 12,173 11,051 1,114 722 Miscellaneous manufactures . 45*975 11,094 1,768 832 Textiles, mills, and clothing . 578 1,094 27 33 Bakeshops .... 2,402 841 94 167 Workshops .... 147 71 3 Total .... 180,910 26,118 4.875 1,988* This table throws no light on the employment of women in the vast industries related to electricity or to any metal trade except iron. Glass manufacture does not appear nor does any form of food production, save only bakeshops. Yet the Pittsburgh Survey found over 800 women in the packing and other departments of the glass factories of the city, and the metal trades calling for 2,000 women in increasing varieties of work.j *This total is 100 out of the way. All the figures are, however, exact copies of those in the report. f Butler, Elizabeth Beardsley: Women and the Trades. 194FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH The numbers of women and girls in foundries, and in nut and bolt works, toiling in soot and grime, were well known to be growing steadily. One particularly glaring omission is that of the laundresses, of whom in 1900 the United States Census reported 1,006 in Pittsburgh alone, not including Allegheny City. In 1908, Miss Butler found more than twice that number in the Greater City, for the industry had grown by leaps and bounds during the intervening years. Presumably all these branches presented themselves to the mind of the state factory inspector as “ miscellaneous manufactures” employing together about 11,000 women. Equally meager and muddled are the data concerning the nature of the industries in which the 4,875 boys and 1,988 girls in Allegheny County from fourteen to sixteen years of age were employed. These 6,863 children comprised more than one-seventh of the working children of the state. In the itemized list, as shown, glass manufacture does not appear.* This industry, in which there is greater popular interest than in any other manufacturing industry employing children in Pennsylvania, is lumped with “miscellaneous manufactures.” Under this comprehensive title 1,768 boys and 832 girls, 2,600 children, appear to have been found at work between their fourteenth and sixteenth birthdays. It would seem well worth while to itemize somewhat specifically the occupation of so large a number of children, more than one-third of the whole. The glass industry is sufficiently powerful to obtain year after year exemption from the requirement that children shall not work at night. Boys on reaching their fourteenth birthday were in 1907 permitted to work at night in making glass “ if the usual process of manufacture . . . is of a kind that customarily necessitates a continuous day and night employment.” The exemption still holds in 1914. Some glass works it is true never employ children at night. In others, no child can find work who fails to be on hand for the night shifts which occur in alternate working weeks. In still others, while night labor is not compulsory, boys are preferred who report for it regularly with the men with whom they work.f It would be of vital interest to citizens of Pennsylvania,— * The 1903 report gave statistics by counties and by trades in detail, showing 400 boys and 76 girls from thirteen to sixteen years of age employed in the glass industry in Allegheny County. Thereafter these comprehensive analyses were abandoned. fSee Butler, Elizabeth Beardsley: Sharpsburg: A Typical Waste of Childhood. P. 279 of this volume. 195WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH this exemption of the glass industry having been vainly assailed by the friends of children, during the legislative sessions of 1909, 1911, and 1913,—to know authoritatively how many boys and girls in Allegheny County, an important center of the industry, were employed in glass works, and how many of these worked at night. These things can not be learned authoritatively by unofficial investigators. Why, then, were they not for these crucial years a part of the reports of the officials who had the power and duty to make continuous investigations? Meager and unintelligent though these annual reports are, they nevertheless, more urgently than those of any other state factory inspector, demanded the scrutiny of the public. For they recorded a larger number of children found at work than were recorded for any other state. TABLE 2.—CHILDREN AT WORK IN PENNSYLVANIA [Drawn from the Reports of the State Factory Inspector, 1903-12] Year Boys Girls Total 1903 16,494 15.448 31,942 1904 21,117 20,023 41,140 1905 24,766 23>753 48,519a 1906 ..... 21 >473 18,898 40,371 1907 22,636 *9>7i7 42>353 1908 16,361 16,758 33,H9 1909 15,991 17,498 33.489 1910 I7>033 17,279 34,3i2 1911 16,994 17,481 34>475 1912 ..... 18,438 18,765 37>203 a Includes places of employment other than industrial establishments. The Pittsburgh District itself is primarily given over to men's industries. The significant point of the table published for Allegheny County in 1907 is the immense preponderance of men over sixteen years of age (176,035) as compared with women (24,130) and children (6,863). Here, if anywhere, had statesmanship ever had anything to do with factory inspection for the Pittsburgh District, effort should have been directed toward safeguarding adult males in those employments which involve special stress and hazard and make extraordinary demands upon strength and life. There should have been adequate reporting 196FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH and registration of the nature, occurrence, and preventability of accidents. There should have been studies, in a local office of factory inspection, of the difficult conditions peculiar to Pittsburgh industries and of the experience of other communities and other nations which might throw light upon them. Many hundreds of lives would have been saved and many thousands of minor accidents prevented, if, since the beginning of factory inspection in Pennsylvania in 1889, experts from the inspectors' office had promptly visited the scene of every important accident to study it for the purpose of preventing a recurrence and forestalling similar injuries elsewhere. But statesmanship never in all these years had anything to do with factory inspection in Pennsylvania, and the consequences thereof were written large in the tabulations of death and injury made by Miss Eastman for the Pittsburgh Survey.* It is impossible for the reader of the report under consideration to guess how many of the 295 fatal work-accidents (mentioned as reported to the factory inspector in 1907)! occurred in the Pittsburgh District. As a tally for the entire state this is ridiculous. In the twelve months studied by the Survey, the coroner's records of Allegheny County alone showed 260 fatalities from work-accidents in and around industrial establishments. Mining, railroading, teaming, and so forth, brought the aggregate for the one county up to 526. In reporting industrial accidents, all American states have been remiss, when compared with European countries where accurate records are demanded. Minnesota in 1909 adopted the first effective state-wide system of accident reporting. But in New York, in preparation for the workmen's compensation act of 1910, the labor department had for several years done yeoman service by publishing in detail the facts as to accidents in the light of foreign experience and legislation. The chapters on accidents in the series of five Pennsylvania reports discussed end in 1907 with the characteristic statement that : “Ninety per cent of the total and serious accidents occur in or about rolling mills and blast furnaces. The overhead cranes and hoisting chains, the hasty and necessary (sic) unskilful piling up of steel rails, * Eastman, Crystal: Work-Accidents and the Law. f The chief factory inspector’s report for 1907 states that of the 295 fatal accidents reported to him, only 59 fell within the jurisdiction of his department, and that of the 2,364 non-fatal accidents reported only 689 fell within his jurisdiction. For tabulation of accidents recorded 1903-11, see Appendix IX, p. 443. 197WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH billets, etc., the spilling of molten metal from conveyors, buggies, the scurry of locomotives and cars through the yards adjacent to the inner works of the mills are death dealing agencies at all times.* As the law for safeguarding machinery can not be applied to prevent accidents of the above and foregoing nature, and as it is practically impossible to have the causes of such accidents properly investigated, the necessity for a little more brotherly love and for the elimination of much of the hurry and scurry in our iron mills is the more apparent.”f INSPECTION AND PREVENTION Industries may be injurious by reason of the nature of the machinery or of the material used (lead, sulphur, acid) or because of dust produced in the process (steel, brass, cork) or of strain due to heat, cold, glare, darkness, or speed. Finally, an industry not intrinsically injurious may become so in a high degree by sheer lengthening of working hours, particularly when the workers are required to stand. The wording of the Pennsylvania statute was so vague and broad that under its provisions intelligent and zealous inspectors might greatly have reduced all forms of danger except those arising from cold, glare, darkness, and speed. Visits to Pittsburgh factories in 1907 and 1908 confirmed the impression gained from the official reports that there was no comprehensive attempt to do this. The factory inspector stated that 53 orders issued to Allegheny County employers to guard machinery were complied with in 1907. The safety inspector of one Pittsburgh company made 2,000 recommendations in seven months of the same year.f During the twelve months studied by the Pittsburgh Survey, our investigators found that 11 men were caught in belts and killed, one was struck and killed by the belt of a fly-wheel, one killed by a bursting grindstone, although the factory law specifically demanded that this class of machinery should be properly guarded. These figures took no account of the many serious injuries (short of death) due to non-enforcement of the same section of the statute. Where a machine was properly guarded the circumstance seemed to be due to a previous accident in the same plant. In a cork factory which I visited with a deputy inspector, I saw scores of insufficiently guarded saws of a highly dangerous type. The * Of 526 wage-earners killed in work-accidents in the year covered by the Pittsburgh Survey—July 1, 1906, to June 30, 1907—195, only ^7 per cent, were employed in the manufacture of steel. fThe italics are the writer's. J Eastman, op. cit., p. 111. 198FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH deputy inspector had no eyes for these sinister objects, but confined his observation to children and their certificates. We passed a boy working at an insufficiently guarded saw. His hand was bandaged after having been hurt at that same saw. When I called attention to it, the deputy said that there was a specialist on the staff who devoted himself to machinery and safeguards. Persistent inquiry covering a month failed to identify the specialist. He appears never to have existed.* It is necessary to know in which industries children are exposed to special danger in order that they may be forbidden to work in those industries. An increasing number of states prohibit outright the employment of children in a lengthening list of occupations; and no other basis for framing such a list, attainable in this country at this time, compares in value with an accurate, minute, specific account of injuries to children in industry, kept from year to year by the state factory inspectors. The reports of the Pennsylvania state factory inspector shed no light upon this highly important subject, although Miss Eastman's comprehensive study revealed the occurrence in a single year in the Pittsburgh region of several fatal accidents of which the victims were boys: A fourteen-year-old assistant chemist who was run over in the yards of the steel mill. A thirteen-year-old boy killed on a freight elevator. A fifteen-year-old pull-up killed by a blow from a ladle arm while sleeping in a wheelbarrow (he was working on a thirteen-hour shift). A fourteen-year-old brewery boy caught in a pulley belt. A thirteen-year-old brick yard boy who slipped and fell into a tempering machine. In the United States—as shown particularly in Pennsylvania —there has been greater need than in other industrial countries for effective factory inspection, because the courts deprived employers of the usual business incentives to caution and efficiency in the saving of life.f Under the protection of the fellow-servant * In 1908, the United States Steel Corporation appointed a central safety committee to promote a concerted campaign against accidents in its constituent companies, and great strides in improvements have been made in its mills as a result. [See Porter, H. F. J., op. cit. P. 245 of this volume.] But this revolutionary change was not due to the factory inspection department of Pennsylvania, nor did the latter attempt seriously to make the standards set by these and other progressive employers general. In 1910 a deputy state inspector complained to a company safety expert that he lacked the power which the other possessed to get action upon his recommendations! t See Eastman, op. cit., Chapter XII, which gives an analysis of Master and Servant decisions by the Pennsylvania courts. I99WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH and assumption of risk decisions, and casualty insurance, employers became so largely absolved from paying damages that unparalleled indifference to the safety of employes developed.* The waste of life, limb, health, and nervous energy of workingmen in the prime of life was so conspicuous in factory work in Pittsburgh in 1907-08 that for one with technical, professional acquaintance with the processes of industry, the abiding impression following visits to Pittsburgh was one of horror and depression. Relatively little of this waste was inevitable. Shafting can be sheathed, saws can be guarded, grinding wheels can be hooded and their dust exhausted, injury arising from excessive heat can be mitigated by piping air near the head of the individual worker, danger spots can be indicated for illiterate foreign employes by the use of red lights by night, such as railway usage has made a common language throughout civilization, and vermilion paint by day. One of the surest incentives to such protection is to make injuries “come higher” to the employer. Pennsylvania remains in 1914 the last of the great industrial states without a workmen's compensation system.! There was nothing to indicate that the improvements installed to effect good atmospheric conditions in work places in Allegheny County were due to the requirements of the factory inspection department. Thus in the works of a sanitary appliance company the writer saw 18 wheels in one room so hooded as to exhaust brass, steel, and nickel filings. The metal dust saved by these devices paid the interest on the money invested in the exhaust system. In other parts of the building, however, where a single wheel was isolated and the saving in metal dust would presumably not pay interest on the investment, the law was * For relief policies of certain companies in 1907-08 see Eastman, op. cit., p. 153; for advances since, see Appendix VI, Eastman. See also Porter, op. cit., p. 263; and Appendices I, XVII, and XX, this volume. f At its session of 1911, the Pennsylvania legislature killed in committee a compensation bill, but appointed a commission to investigate the subject. The legislature of 1913 again failed to pass a law. It is to be said for Captain Delaney that beginning in 1905 he urged the reform of the employers’ liability law, and in 1911 argued at length for the New Jersey compensation system. In the report for 1907 he said: “Were the great body of employes engaged in dangerous or hazardous work a race of criminal serfs, the non-action of legislative bodies and the almost brutal but necessary frankness of judicial decisions directed against the appeal of the injured for legal redress, could not have been surpassed.” 200FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH not enforced. The exhaust system was not used, and workers suffered. The appointments of the Reymer Company's candy factory in Pittsburgh were better than the law required. In one room in which particularly expensive chocolates were dipped, fresh air was artificially supplied, avowedly, however, for the good of the chocolates. It was pumped through flowing water. A similar provision will undoubtedly be required for the health of employes in the factories of all cities in which, as in Pittsburgh and Chicago, the atmosphere may be said to be “ normally foul.” This company set a standard which should be incorporated in law. In the Heinz bottle works in Sharpsburg, where air had to be pumped into each machine for blowing bottles, additional air was so tubed as to form a fresh current over the head of each worker. This was a lifesaving, health prolonging boon, voluntary in its inception, but sure to become a statutory requirement.* Similarly, fans and tubes have been installed next their “hot jobs” by the National Tube Company. How remote the requiring of any such provision was from the plans of the existing department of factory inspection may be seen from the following: 1 found Jennie O'Hara, living in Wood's Run, Allegheny, working in a stogy factory. Jennie, who was sixteen years of age, had begun to work before her thirteenth birthday, even at that time the lowest legal limit. She had never been employed elsewhere. She was conspicuously sallow and nervous. Her day was from 7 a. m. to 6 p. m., with a scant half hour for luncheon. During the Christmas rush she worked overtime until 8 p. m. three days in the week, for several consecutive weeks. Said Jennie: “Some girls have to stop in three months, just when they are learning. The stuff makes 'em sick. The girls often faint. In the winter when the windows are shut it's bad when you go in. It smells so bad. But then you get used to it.” There appeared to be no blowers or fans in this stogy factory, which employs girls varying in number from 100 to 150, and in the winter the windows are said to have been kept shut regularly. Yet neither the Allegheny health officials nor the state factory inspectors interfered even by way of criticism in their official reports. On still, muggy, autumn days the smell of tobacco from the factory was observable in passing along the sidewalk, and the girls' clothes and hair became so saturated with the smell that when they had a meeting on the ground floor of a building, the rooms upstairs were filled with the odor. Interesting sidelights upon the remoter effects of this complicated * See Porter, H. F. J., op. cit. Pp. 225 and 249 of this volume. A detailed act passed in 1913 calls for blowers or similar apparatus in all grinding rooms. 201WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH law-breaking came from the almoner of the district in which this factory stands. The almoner's observations were that the tobacco dust is excessively irritating to the nose, throat, and lungs; that girls become accustomed to this irritation as they do to nicotine poison and continue to work while unconsciously developing incipient tuberculosis; that they work up to the time of leaving the factory to be married, after which they rapidly develop tuberculosis and become recipients of benefits from the almoner. Because they are not disabled while on the payroll, and sometimes do not develop the symptoms of advanced tuberculosis until after the birth of the first child, the factory does not get the discredit due to it as a center for production and dissemination of infection. A physician who practiced in the neighborhood described being called to the homes of a number of the girls who had suffered acute attacks of “tobacco-heart." None had died during an attack but their vitality was being progressively diminished. Young girls like those described are benefited by the Wisconsin statute which forbids children to work in the manufacturing of tobacco before their sixteenth birthday.* The Ohio law, too, which restricts the work in all trades of girls below the age of eighteen years to eight hours in one day and forty-eight hours in one week, and sets 7 p. m. as their closing hour, is an even greater boon to girls in the tobacco trade than to those in most industries. One of the most important of the factory inspectors' duties is to enforce the laws reducing the hours of labor for women and children. Overtime and night work, where practiced, add to the seriousness of the drains which establishments like this tobacco factory make upon physical vitality. The reports of the department, however, showed no record of night inspections made in Allegheny County. Yet without such inspections, of what avail was the provision that women and children shall not work more than twelve hours in twenty-four, and that a boy between the ages of fourteen and sixteen years who had worked by day should not work after 9 p. m.P Once a fortnight the water boys in the steel mills were working twenty-four consecutive hours and every day they worked twelve hours. Both working periods were * At the instance of Chief Factory Inspector Delaney an amendment was enacted in Pennsylvania in 1909 providing that no minors under sixteen years might be employed in or about establishments for the manufacture or stripping of tobacco “unless it is proved to the satisfaction of the Department that the danger to the health of the child has been removed ” Such provisions open wide the doors for blackmail and defeat the intent of the law. 202FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH illegal, but it would have required inspections after the close of the ordinary hours of a factory inspector's day to reveal this illegality. Moreover, when the glass blowers go home at midnight, or at i a. m., the boys who work with them must also go out into the early morning, no matter what the winter weather or what the heat of the furnace. With the increasing use of glass-blowing machines, the continuous tank system has replaced the smaller pot furnaces, and work at night has become the rule more than ever for men and boys alike. It was matter of common knowledge in Allegheny County in 1907-08 that boys who worked with men thus kept the same hours as men. Yet, as we have seen, the factory inspector of Pennsylvania did not oppose the exception which the glass manufacturers have kept in the body of the law throughout all these years and which has made this practice legal for glass-house boys between fourteen and sixteen years of age. Under the constitution of the United States, as interpreted by the supreme court, even the working hours of adult men can be restricted by statute when these hours can be shown to impair the health. Thus the daily hours of labor of men in mines and smelters are in many states restricted to eight. But in Pennsylvania there was and is no restriction whatever for men, and their regular working day may be twelve or twenty-four hours without violation of any statute. For women the labor law was until 1913 unique in authorizing a regular working day of twelve hours in a week ostensibly limited to sixty hours. The restriction was illusory. It was not enforceable and it was not meant to be enforced. For example, in a prosperous drug store in Pittsburgh, women clerks were found working from 8 a. m. to 10 p. m. one day out of every week, with a half-hour each for luncheon and supper, a total of thirteen hours. The legal daily maximum, as has been said, was twelve hours. In a candy store very young girls were seen at work after 11 p. m. Their regular working time was from 11 a. m. to 11 :30 p. m. and they reached home at midnight and after. They worked sixty-nine hours plus per week. In another candy store, from 8 a. m. to 6 p. m. was the nominal regular period. In reality, on three days out of the week a girl worked from 8 a. m. to 11 p. m. Each of these long days was followed by a so-called “ short day,” when she worked from 12 noon to 11 p. m. with half an hour for supper, a total of ten and a half hours in twenty-four hours. 203WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Although these were all flagrant violations of the law, conviction was impossible, because the defense could be made that on any particular day selected by the inspector for making a charge of violation, a rest period had been allowed. Or the inspector would have had to be present to prove that the girls found working at night were really the same girls who had worked throughout the time alleged. If, however, an inspector attempted to look into a factory often enough in a day to prove the identity of a girl who worked throughout the thirteen hours, that girl was sent home for that day. Such a sham law* was demoralizing to every official charged with its enforcement.! Incident to the long hours to which young girls were illegally subjected^ was cruelly prolonged daily standing. This injury is no longer open to discussion; it is universally admitted. In several factories girls just fourteen years old—if indeed they were really so old as that—regularly stood ten hours a day, and often longer on five days a week, under the pretense of making a short day on Saturday. Even where the children's work was as simple as wrapping caramels or packing crackers, the long hours combined with enforced standing made a harmless process highly injurious. “Suitable seats" were required for women workers by the Pennsylvania law. But in no case during any of the visits that I paid with a deputy inspector did the inspector in my presence make an inquiry about seats. The mercantile houses were the greatest offenders. One Pittsburgh store in 1907 supplied four seats to every counter. In contrast, the provision for seats on the first floors of three equally wellknown Pittsburgh stores, each employing several hundred girls, was as follows: § (1) 16 seats to 400 girls, or 1 seat to 25 girls, (2) 19 seats to 500 girls, or 1 seat to 26 girls, (3) 32 seats to 600 girls, or 1 seat to 19 girls. * Compare this Pennsylvania law with the New York child labor statute which, as experience shows, can be enforced. A child may not work before 8 a. m. or after 5 p. m., and must have a full hour free at noon. These provisions cannot be evaded, except that law-breaking employers can nibble a few minutes at the beginning and end of the noon hour. f For statements of working girls as to hours actually worked in 1913, see Appendix XIX, p. 492. t For statements as to overtime in Pittsburgh employments, see Butler, Elizabeth Beardsley: Women and the Trades, pp. 3 51 ff. Friday, to cite an extreme example, she found to be a fifteen-hour day in most Pittsburgh laundries, and cases were found where the work began at 7 a. m. and lasted throughout the night (p. 352). § Butler, op. cit., pp. 300-301. Thirteen stores met the Consumer’s League requirements in 1914, including the standard of one seat for every three women. 204FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH ENFORCEMENT AND PROSECUTION IN PITTSBURGH Record keeping and inspections alone do not enforce factory laws. They may secure compliance in some instances; but unless violations are prosecuted, the laws become dead letters in those establishments in which enforcement is most needed. On this subject the state factory inspector gave the following data for Allegheny County for 1907 under his “exhibit by grand divisions of industries of industrial establishments inspected” : Children dismissed Compliance with orders issued to For want of affidavits, 98 Guard machinery, 53 For illiteracy, 0 Guard elevator, 8 For being under age, 11 Erect fire-escapes, 3 Provide water-closets, 3 Provide dressing rooms, 0 For better sanitation, 22 The cases of neglect brought out by Mr. Porter's subsequent investigations of fire-escapes, dressing rooms, and toilets;* the 14 deaths due to elevator accidents, tabulated by Miss Eastman; and the facts already cited in this paper as to non-enforcement of safety laws, all indicate the trivial value to the state and its workers of orders issued by the department of factory inspection. Conspicuous is the absence of a heading “ Prosecutions and Convictions” in the “exhibit by grand divisions of industries of industrial establishments inspected.”! Current publication of the exact details of all prosecutions begun for violation of labor laws has a twofold value. It is the best deterrent, for employers dislike to have the community know that they are accused of breaking the law. Full publicity in this respect is also the best assurance of the integrity of the inspection staff. Every prosecution of an employer is incidentally a trial of the inspection force. For when inspectors must constantly appear as witnesses in court and * Porter, H. F. J., op. cit. P. 217 of this volume. fThe report for 1908 (issued May 3, 1909) stated that there were three prosecutions in 1907 that resulted in penalties imposed—one for employing a child illegally, and two for maintaining insanitary bakeshops! $25 penalty collected in each case. For the ten-year period the reports give the following numbers of prosecutions brought: 1903 (number not given); 1904, 66; 1905, 77; 1906, 100; 1907 (number not given); 1908, 32; 1909 (number not given); 1910,26; 1911, 11; 1912, 25. 205WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH endure cross-examination by able lawyers, such as employers commonly retain, this in itself is a permanent stimulus to careful, accurate work and a safeguard against temptation to blackmail or to accept bribes. Where, however, mystery enshrouds the procedure of a department in relation to violations of the labor law, an inquiring public is liable to make sinister inferences. We asked these questions in our published review of the service: Why is there no record of prosecutions in the report of the factory inspectors of Pennsylvania in 1907? Were there no prosecutions? Or was none of them successful? Are the courts so clogged that suits are brought with difficulty? If so, why had not the department made known this extenuating circumstance?* What, if any, is the relation between the great number of working children in Pennsylvania and this secrecy maintained by the department as to the identity of the violators of the law? I f malefactors are protected, if neither publicity nor penalty followed law-breaking, why should any one respect an inconvenient restriction ? How far are the general distrust and suspicion which attach to the department of factory inspection in Pennsylvania due to this secrecy? These questions were never satisfactorily answered.f This concealment of violations of the factory laws is fortunately unique in the practice of state departments of factory inspection. Where bona fide enforcement of the laws is achieved, the particulars are published, and publicity helps to deter other potential offenders. The omission of information about prosecutions was perhaps the most self-condemnatory item in the whole disgraceful report of the Pennsylvania state department of factory inspection for 1907. * With these questions in mind, the assistant director of the Pittsburgh Survey on April 23, 1908, wrote to the chief factory inspector for information as to the number of prosecutions and the amount collected in fines. Mr. Delaney replied as follows: “The report of this department for 1907 covers the year’s work. It was made to the governor, and should he desire a supplement report, one will be prepared. We cannot discuss the contents or omissions of the published report with the many persons who seek to open correspondence thereon with us.” t For a letter published as a reply to Mrs. Kelley’s review, see Appendix X, p. 444. The following was offered in explanation in a subsequent state factory inspector’s report: “The laws prior to those recently enacted, so far as they apply to the employment of children, are so meaningless in part and so unconstitutional in part as to have induced Mr. Carson, then attorney general, to advise me in writing to withhold further prosecution.” 206FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH LAWS, LOCAL AGENCIES, AND LAX ENFORCEMENT In the enforcement of a factory law there are at least three elements: the law itself, as interpreted by the courts; the enforcing authority representing the state; and, finally, and far more important than at first appears, local authorities whose work interlocks with that of state officers. How indispensable are all three elements is illustrated by the insufficient protection which has been afforded the working children of the Pittsburgh District. In the matter of child labor and compulsory education laws Pennsylvania has always been a laggard. The fourteen-year age limit was adopted in New York in 1887, in Massachusetts in 1894, in Pennsylvania not until 1905 for factories and stores, and not until 1909 for soft coal mines. Compulsory education laws were passed in Massachusetts in 1852, in New York in 1874, but the first compulsory education bill in Pennsylvania was passed in 1895. Even then the governor who signed that bill—after having vetoed a similar bill two years before—stated in his memorandum of approval that he doubted its wisdom because it violated the private rights of citizens! At the time of the Pittsburgh Survey the child labor law of 1905 was in force, but in its most important feature, the issuance of certificates, that law in a test case had been held unconstitutional on a technicality, and a previous law, passed in 1901, had been declared by the attorney general to have been revived. Though the fourteen-year age limit was set up for work in factories and stores in 1905 this protection was rendered illusory by the provision that parents' affidavits were the sole proof of age needed.* Moreover, though children were required to be able to read and write the English language intelligently before beginning to work, the test in this important matter was to be given by those who issued the affidavits; namely, notaries public, aldermen, and similar minor magistrates. Naturally the law broke down at both these points. The affidavit, whether true or false, protected the employer absolutely, and an inspector's work was exceedingly difficult, for on him was placed the burden of proof to show that * The following illuminating figures were gathered by the federal government’s agents in two boroughs in eastern Pennsylvania—Hazelton'and Plymouth. (Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-earners in the United States, 207WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH an affidavit was false. The employment of an illiterate child, though illegal, was very common, many if not most of the “ squires” or notaries either giving the children no test whatever or requiring only that they sign their names. For part of the year 1907, the situation was made still more chaotic by the arbitrary decision of the chief factory inspector that no reading and writing test was required by the law.* In this matter he was overruled by the attorney general, but affidavit blanks minus the reading and writing requirement had been distributed and the evil could not be undone. Until 1909—long after the other great industrial states had limited the working day of children under the age of sixteen years to ten or eight hours—Pennsylvania permitted a twelve-hour working day for such children. The child labor law being a state law, and the factory inspectors state officials, the Pittsburgh District shared its disadvantages with the rest of the state. But under amendments to the compulsory education law, passed in 1907, had the school Volume VII, Children Leaving School for Work, p. 131. United States Senate Document No. 645.) The ages of the children who had left school for work during the year 1907 were as follows: Age at Leaving School Children Leaving School at Ages Specified Haceitón Plymouth 8 i 9 ......... . . . 3 10 6 11 .. 13 12 2 20 13 15 18 14 35 16 15 11 7 * In his report for 1906 this official argued against any educational test as follows: “ But this aside, why should boys and girls fourteen years of age and in good physical condition be withheld from learning a useful trade or from earning a necessary livelihood simply because they cannot read and write, or cannot explain sums in arithmetic, or tell the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb? Though I am a warm champion of school education, I fail to see the connection between the ‘three RV and the necessity for seeking employment and the ability to do the work.” 208FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH principals, attendance officers, assessors, and squires in the Pittsburgh District all been animated by well directed zeal for the children, the factory inspectors need have spent virtually no time or strength upon those below the age of fourteen except during school vacations. By their joint action the local authorities could have determined the career of all children below the age of fourteen and all illiterate children below the age of sixteen years. The amended compulsory education law fixed the age of compulsory school attendance at fourteen years, and thus made the period uniform with that of the child labor law of 1905. Power was also conferred upon local attendance officers to perform tasks formerly left chiefly to state officers to enter stores, factories, and other places where children work, and to return to school those found working in defiance of the law. Moreover, under this law there was a method of restraining parents from perjury, which while principals could not unaided have availed themselves of it, they might have employed with the help of the boards of education. Had these local city departments cared to keep the foreign-born children in school to the legal age of fourteen years, they could in nearly all cases have secured from abroad official transcripts of the children's ages or their religious records, and checkmated the false oaths in the squires' offices. The practicability of this plan is proved conclusively by the experience of the New York City department of health, which regularly gets transcripts of birth certificates from every European country, including Turkey. Of Catholic children born in this country it is not difficult to prove the age, because church records are complete and correct. Of Catholic children born abroad it was formerly thought to be difficult to obtain the civil or religious record, but the experience of New York City shows this to be an imaginary difficulty. Except in the case of Russia, virtually complete success attends the effort to obtain a transcript of the birth or religious record when the letter of inquiry is written according to instructions from the consul of the child's native country. Native American non-Catholic children born outside of the registration area and children born in Russia are the only ones whose proof of age presents grave difficulty. In 1907, therefore, the children's laws of Pennsylvania should 14* 209WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH have been obeyed to a degree wholly new. No concerted zeal for enforcement, however, on the part of the local authorities was discernible at the time of my inquiries. Local pressure seemed all in the direction of inaction. This absence of zeal to enforce the new provisions of the compulsory education law was perhaps explained by the experience of one school principal in dealing with the earlier law. His school was the nearest to the Hamilton glass factory on the South Side, Pittsburgh. One day he found an agent of the glass works in the school yard soliciting boys to work at night in the glass works. He reported that fact to the deputy factory inspector who asked a colleague for assistance in the case, and the principal with the two deputies visited the factory together. They found children at work in violation of the law, and a fine of $350 was imposed upon the firm. This sum was afterward reduced by Chief Factory Inspector Delaney to $275. Two months later the principal was dismissed. An illustration of the breakdown in the work of both local authorities and state inspectors was afforded by a seventeen-year-old Wood's Run boy who, when the writer met him, was working for the Pressed Steel Car Company. While still at school he had worked as a caddy and had thus become irregular in his school attendance. Before his thirteenth birthday he had obtained an employment certificate and was employed as a grocer's boy, a year before he could legally be at work. “ The squire was a friend of my mother," said the boy, “and he didn't ask for pay. He just wrote it." On reaching his thirteenth birthday (then the legal minimum age) he began to work in a box factory. By the time he was seventeen he had already worked two years in the car works, exposed to excessive heat and to incessant danger from burns due to the dropping of red hot rivets. At our last meeting he was lame from such a burn. This boy was undersized, with big hands and feet, pinched features, and the carriage of a little old man. If he had not incipient tuberculosis his appearance belied him. He was a pitiful example of the effects of the failure of everybody concerned to obey and enforce the factory inspection, child labor, and compulsory education laws. It was part of Miss Butler's field work for the Pittsburgh Survey to make a study of this all-round failure of local authorities to safeguard the child, evidences of which were to be found on every hand. Her analysis of the hodge-podge scheme of school census taking which left the truancy departments ignorant of the 210FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH names and the number of children to look for; of the lack of detention rooms to hold children if found by the truant officers; of the inadequacy of the truancy staff; of the unconcern of many school authorities whether children were at school or at work; and of conditions resulting from this combination of lax law and lax enforcement, was brought out locally* by the Allegheny child labor committee during the child labor campaign of 1909. The legislature of that year amended the child labor law in important particulars. The issuance of employment certificates (involving the application of the educational test) was placed entirely in the hands of school officials, and proof of age was required before a certificate should be issued. When the law took effect, in 1910, hundreds of children who would have been able to get affidavits under the old law were unable to qualify under the new, either because of their illiteracy, or because the records of age required proved them to be under the age of fourteen years. This inability to get certificates was incontestable evidence of the worthlessness of the old law. The child labor and compulsory education laws can not be broken without the intelligent co-operation of the children. They know perfectly why they dodge truant officers and factory inspectors when in danger of being found illegally at work. An unobserved product, therefore, of the failure of state factory inspectors throughout these years to prosecute law-breaking employers, and of local citizens and municipal authorities to hold children in school, was the resultant moral harm to the latter. In the Pittsburgh District were growing up boys and girls who had been trained to break the law in the full knowledge that their employers, whom in theory they should respect and imitate, profited by their law-breaking and wished them to deceive the authorities. Every time a child was ordered by a state factory inspector to be dismissed for want of a certificate filed with the employer, yet was not summoned into court as a witness, he learned that his employer was above the law and did not need to obey it. Otherwise the employer would have been tried and fined for each offense. The former manager of a pickle factory stated that for thirteen years he had, as a matter of course, hired school children as * The Pittsburgh Post.WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH soon as the berry season began, regardless of the child labor law. The letter of this law was perhaps observed—though this is a disputed point, no suit having been brought to test it—by keeping the little children in sheds adjacent to the factory and calling the work “farm labor,” a form of work which the law did not cover. Unfortunately, also, there was a provision in the school law that the local board might in its discretion accept attendance at school for 70 per cent of the school year in lieu of the full school year.* These hair splitting distinctions were clear neither to the children nor to the parents, who were permanently confused by their experiences. In a self-governing community such practices are suicidal. A democratic republic composed of law breakers is unthinkable, and scarcely more workable is a democracy composed of people hopelessly confused as to the meaning of laws and their own relation to them. RECOMMENDATIONS In order to afford to working people in Pittsburgh conditions as good as were then required in the most enlightened states, the following changes were recommended in this report when brought out early in 1909: 1. The head of the department of factory inspection should be superseded by a chief inspector of proved integrity and administrative ability. 2. Tenure of office should be assured to the deputy inspectors under civil service laws. 3. Local headquarters should be established in Pittsburgh. 4. The present requirements with regard to safeguarding machinery should be rigidly enforced and extended to give the inspectors control of temperature, glare, darkness, and speed. 5. Wherever a process unavoidably produces extremes of temperature, the factory inspection departments should be empowered to require that air of healthful temperature be piped directly to the place where it is most needed. Tobacco workrooms should be treated as nuisances and summarily closed when unsupplied with forced ventilation. 6. The working day should be fixed at nine hours for women and girls over the age of eighteen years with 6 p. m. as closing hour. For boys * Under the new school code, passed in 1911, this abridging of time is allowed only in places with a population of less than 5,000. 212FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH below the age of sixteen and girls under eighteen years the closing hour should be 5 p. m. with a maximum of eight hours of work in twenty-four hours; six days should constitute the working week. 7. Physicians and engineers should be added to the factory inspection staff to study injurious occupations. 8. The list of prohibited occupations for children below the age of fifteen years now in force in Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Wisconsin should be adopted. 9. The proof of age for children about to leave school should be made uniform with that now required in New York, and penalties prescribed for officials who vary from the methods prescribed for obtaining it. 10. The English labor laws as the highest and most applicable type of labor laws should be made the basis of a code adapted to the present industrial development of Pennsylvania. CHANGES IN FACTORY LEGISLATION From 1908 to 1913, advance came slowly in the directions indicated. The legislature of 1909 reformed the system of issuing certificates, placing it in the hands of the school authorities. The passage of the school code* of 1911 carried this reform further, abolishing the old method of census taking by assessors. Except for gaining a higher age under which boys may not work in coal mines—the minimum was raised from fourteen to sixteen years— the child labor campaign of 1911 was itself unsuccessful. As already noted, glass manufacturers from the Pittsburgh District, for the fourth successive session of the legislature, defeated the bill to abolish the "glass exception ” which permits employment of boys under sixteen at night in •“continuous” industries. An unknown political influence caused the defeat also of the bill to restrict messenger work at night to boys of eighteen years and older. This, in spite of the fact that a comprehensive study of the Pittsburgh messenger service made for the National Child Labor Committee, revealed all those temptations to immorality which accompany messengers' work at night which have been found in other cities. In 1913 the law applying to women was amended, the new provisions including every woman and girl in Pennsylvania who works for wages in every kind of establishment (except hospitals, private homes, and on farms) subject to certain partial exemptions. Under the law as amended no woman or girl may be employed * See North, Lila Ver Planck: Pittsburgh Schools. The Pittsburgh District, p. 217. 213WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH more than fifty-four hours in a week, or more than six days in a week, in any establishments, except fruit and vegetable canneries. No woman or girl may be employed more than ten hours in one day except (i) in weeks in which a legal holiday occurs [two additional hours of work may be required on three of the remaining days]; (2) when machinery breaks down for more than thirty minutes [extra work to make up lost time may be required never exceeding two hours in one day]; (3) in fruit and vegetable canneries. These exceptions, however, do not permit more than fifty-four hours in one week, or work after the legal closing hour. Work at night for girls under twenty-one years of age, after 9 p. m. or before 6 a. m., is prohibited in any establishment except in the case of telephone operators between eighteen and twenty-one years old. For purposes of enforcement a telephone girl working after 9 p. m. who appears to be less than twenty-one years old must produce proof of her age. For women of all ages a closing hour is provided.* They may not work in any manufacturing establishment after 10 p. m. or before 6 a. m. except as managers, superintendents, clerks and stenographers. Intermissions of forty-five minutes for rest and food must be given at noon or after six hours’ work unless the working day is less than eight hours, when the pause may be reduced to a half hour. If the work being done gives rise to dust, lint, gases or fumes, a separate lunch room must be provided, and no woman permitted to eat in the workroom. Clean, pure drinking water must be furnished, and free ice. For every three women or girls one seat must be furnished and kept where it can be easily used. Wash and dressing rooms must be available for all women and girls. These legislative changes of 1913 alter materially the position-of Pennsylvania in the scale of the states when measured by its care of the health of women wage-earners. So long as it retained the twelve-hour day and sixty-four hour week it stood twenty-sixth in the list. Now it is excelled only by four states and the District of Columbia which have established by law the eight-hour day for women. It ranks with Massachusetts and New York in having a working week of fifty-four hours and a fixed closing hour for women of all ages. In the range of employments included it excels both these neighbor states.f * This is true elsewhere only of Massachusetts, New York, Indiana, and Nebraska. t The amendments adopted in 1913 were drafted in part, and their enactment was almost wholly accomplished by the efforts of the Consumers’ League. 214FACTORY INSPECTION IN PITTSBURGH CHANGES IN ADMINISTRATION Slowly, therefore, the ponderous machinery of the state was brought to the service of its wage-earning women and children. But the enforcing state authority remained the same that had blocked these gains, aggravated these deficiencies, and served these interests. Governor Stuart in 1909 reappointed J. C. Delaney as chief factory inspector over protests from the Pennsylvania Child Labor Association and many citizens. There was no alternative authority who could make good the loss when the factory inspection department fell below the highest standard of efficiency. Had Pennsylvania adopted an effective workmen's compensation law and had this proved directly and indirectly a stimulus to employers to make safe the conditions surrounding working people, there would still have been need of the highest efficiency on the part of the state officials in bringing up to the statutory minimum the least intelligent, prudent, and humane employers. Of such efficiency there was no more evidence in the reports published subsequent to 1907 than in their predecessors. Belated in coming, the administrative changes of 1913 were sweeping. At one stroke, Captain Delaney was removed as head of the factory inspection department by Governor Tener; at another, a law was passed which incidentally established local headquarters at Pittsburgh with a supervising inspector in charge. The entire administrative service of the state was reorganized as a department of labor and industries, and an industrial board was created empowered to fix standards for particular industries within the broad limits set by the law.* This means that Pennsylvania has revolutionized her whole theory of both labor laws and enforcement, just as Wisconsin, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and California have changed theirs in the interval since the field work for this investigation was performed. Where there had been two wholly unrelated bureaus, one of industrial statistics and the other of factory inspection, both weak and inefficient, there was created a well rounded department including bureaus of statistics, factory inspection, and arbitration; and in the bureau of inspection a division of industrial hygiene. The bureau of statistics, enlarged and strengthened, became the * For text of law and appointments see Appendix XI, p. 446. 215WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH bureau of statistics and information, designed not merely to compile tables of figures, but to bring out the facts of industrial conditions, methods of improving them, and the experience of other states and countries which may be made the basis for regulation. Committed to the same end of expert investigation a division of industrial hygiene was created consisting of a physician, as chief medical inspector, with two assistant physicians, a mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer, and a civil engineer. The duties of this division involve "constructive investigation of the widest possible scope, and the ascertainment, as far as possible, of all the more important risks of industry and the means and devices whereby these risks may be practically eliminated, to the mutual advantage of employer and employe/' More important even than the establishment of the division of hygiene was the creation of an industrial board of five members, including the commissioner of labor and industries. To quote Jasper Y. Brinton, of Philadelphia, assistant United States district attorney and president of the Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee which, with the Consumers' League, was instrumental in drafting the legislation. “The duty of this board is twofold: to make investigations into all matters touching the enforcement of the labor laws of the commonwealth, and to establish rules and regulations necessary for carrying out the declared policy of the state, requiring reasonable and adequate protection of the health and safety of employes. The widest powers of investigations are afforded to the board, with further power to subpoena witnesses. . . . This board is not, of course, in any way a law-making body, but merely an administrative body charged with the duty of giving voice to the expressed declarations of the legislature in the light of its expert investigation into the necessarily changing and frequently intricate conditions of different industries." Industrial board and department are in the midst of their first year as this volume is issued. It is too early to mix judgment with hope. The system is changed, but the forces that warped to their ends the old inspection service are still as active as ever, succeeding in 1913 in killing the child labor bill and the compensation measures that would have brought Pennsylvania to the standard of the other great manufacturing states. The outcome of the new machinery is yet to be seen. 216INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE PITTSBURGH DISTRICT H. F. J. Porter TH ER things being equal, the success of an enterprise is in direct proportion to its operating efficiency. That is a well established principle of industrial management. It is equally demonstrable that this standard of efficiency depends more upon the character of the working force and the system of its management than upon the type of mechanical equipment. A competent organization can produce good results in spite of a poor equipment, whereas an incompetent organization will not only fail to make good equipment produce good work but will, in a comparatively short time, destroy the equipment itself. The first requisite then on the part of a modern and progressive manager is to obtain the proper type of administrative organization; the next, so to equip and manage it that its original efficiency will be maintained and increased. The way to begin is obviously to select the best men available. Next, the very best mechanical devices should be supplied them and a physical environment provided which will enable the individual workman to operate those devices efficiently and which will protect him also from vocational wear and tear. Finally, methods should be employed to develop his capacity and to correlate the independent units into harmonious team play. These general principles afforded me a basis of analysis and comparison in approaching representative manufacturing establishments in the Pittsburgh District in 1910. With the assistance of an official of the Chamber of Commerce, 38 companies were selected as reflecting the general range of working conditions, and the managers of many others were conferred with. The tour of inspection included 13 machine shops and foundries, seven rolling mills, four food products factories, two laundries, two glass works, one printing establishment, one clothing factory, one cigar factory, 217WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH one white lead works, and one cork factory. Miscellaneous employments included a street railway, a telephone exchange, a department store, and a coal mine. Certain developments are entered in footnotes, but the chief significance of the report is that it gives a cross-section of shop practice in one American industrial center in a given year. The investigation covered: (i) the recruiting of employes; (2) the physical environment of the plant in and through which their efficiency must produce results; (3) safeguards against accidents, ill health, and other drains upon that efficiency; and (4) the development of the working force as a whole. I RECRUITING OF EMPLOYES There are certain attributes the possession of which determines a man's excellence as a producer. These can be classified as physical, moral, and mental, and must be considered in the order named. First in importance is the physical, for no matter how moral or intellectual a man may be, if he is a weakling, if he has not health, he can not be regular in attendance, capable of giving a normal amount of strength to his duties, or permanent in service. Second, he must be of good moral character, or his habits outside of working hours will unfit him for work. And third, he must, in order to think and work right, be of good mental caliber and have had training and possess the desired skill. Selection. One would naturally suppose that in the effort to obtain an efficient working force special endeavors would be made to attract the best material obtainable in the market from which to make selections; but among the 38 plants visited I found very few were making such an effort. Although all of them either were closed to the union or were open shops (except in the pattern and foundry departments, which, generally speaking, were unionized), most were hiring their help indiscriminately, through their foreman, and had always done so. These were taking chances on finding, after spending considerable time and money in training men for some required service, that many were either physically unfit, were loafers, were addicted to drink and therefore frequently in poor condition for work, 218INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT or were stupid, slovenly, or clumsy in their methods—all traits resulting in inability to do the specific work which had to be performed. In any one of these cases the cost of supervision would be too high to admit of its being maintained continuously, and the unsatisfactory candidate would either lekve voluntarily on account of low wages or be dropped for incompetence. Then the process of hiring a successor would have to be repeated, perhaps many times, before in the hit-or-miss process a really satisfactory employe would be obtained. Or, more probably, the foreman wearying in the hope of obtaining a satisfactory employe would retain one he thought “good enough/' and so a working force of a low standard of efficiency would be established. Now, although the foreman is the man who must ultimately be responsible for the quality and quantity of work performed by the men under him and should therefore be the judge of their skill when they are hired, there are, as has been pointed out, other characteristics besides skill which an employe should possess. These characteristics foremen are not in a position to pass upon offhand, nor have they the time to investigate them. To this duty in a large plant some one person should give his time and attention.* Among Pittsburgh employers the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company had established such an employment department under the direct charge of an assistant superintendent. This company had in 1910 about 10,000 employes, 1,000 being women, and in order to maintain this number it hired through the employment department about 12,000 new operatives each year. The blanks used showed the effective detail with which the “ human resources" were made the subject of bookkeeping.f It is of primary importance that a working organization be composed of men in fit condition, and to insure this each applicant should receive a physical examination before being engaged. The plan is not uncommon in industrial establishments elsewhere in this country, and in Europe, but in none of the 38 establishments visited in the Pittsburgh District, was it carried out as a fixed policy, prerequisite to employment. The H. J. Heinz Company alone provided examination of employes by doctors of their own sex, and it was not obligatory. * The abuse of immigrants by grafting foremen was one of the causes of the Pressed Steel Car Strike at McKees Rocks in 1909. The company has since established an employment bureau, with an intelligent head, and interpreters, f See Appendix XVI, p. 461, for facsimiles. 219WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH A physical examination was at one time required by the Westing-house Company but was afterward given up; first, because men objected to being subjected to the unusual proceeding, and second, because the supply of skilled labor was customarily low in the Pittsburgh District and all applicants were engaged except those who had a disease of an objectionable or dangerous character. Some effort has been made to ascertain in a general way whether a man was physically fit, but the only physical examination takes place after the employment agreement is made, and is an entirely voluntary matter on the part of the employe for the purpose of securing sick benefits in the “relief departments” (Appendix XVII, p. 468). It has no bearing upon his continued employment. I found no instance where special efforts were made to detect tuberculosis, such as have been inaugurated in New England shops in connection with the national campaign against this disease; nor to provide against the possibility of a contagious disease being brought into an establishment by any employe; nor to determine whether an applicant was an alcoholic; nor to determine at the time of hiring him whether a man was subject to epileptic fits, fainting spells, heart failure, or any other organic weakness which would make him physically unfit for work in high temperatures or near rapidly moving or otherwise dangerous machinery.* Training. The rapid growth of industry has for many years caused a constantly increasing demand for competent workers which has kept far ahead of the supply. In certain lines, like that of steam railways, where the work is considerably diversified, the old apprenticeship system, somewhat revised, is still employed to recruit the working force, but in factory work it has been pretty generally given up. In its stead, with the development of machinery and specialization, the unskilled immigrants have been taught to perform repeatedly and continuously simple machine processes, thus becoming gradually efficient at their assignment. Time studies and bonus systems have further developed routine speed. This change in the character of the work performed by the rank and file has * The surgical organization of the Carnegie Steel Company has in 1914 entered upon the experiment of physically examining not only all applicants, but all employes. In the last four months 25,000 have been so examined, and periodic examinations are planned for the future. Epileptics, nearsighted men, and the like, are to be kept from positions where they are a danger to themselves and their fellows. The Carnegie Company is the first among the great industrial establishments employing men to attempt the plan. The lead, however, was taken by a women-employing industry. The Central District Telephone Company has for some time required a physical examination of all applicants, covering eyes, lungs, heart, skin, and so forth, which is so thorough that only 15 per cent are accepted. 220INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT caused the all-round mechanic to disappear and has evoked a body of operatives who are in no sense mechanics but who are proficient in the one task to which they have been trained. The monotony of the repetition of one process, however, wears upon the mind, and as there is little opportunity for shop advancement employes are inclined to give up one position in the hope of securing a better one elsewhere. This resulting change in the ranks of employes, necessitating as it does the constant hiring and educating of new ones, entails great waste, not only on account of the break in the routine of shop operations but because the imparting of knowledge, particularly to the uneducated, is an art, and the employment of one set of men to do the teaching and of another set to supervise the subsequent routine operations is expensive. The problem of securing a more permanent working organization is, therefore, one of the most serious before the manufacturers of the country for solution. The Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company had devised a new form of apprenticeship in an effort to meet this situation. Their plan consisted of two courses: one, “ordinary apprenticeship/' open to non-technical men, and the other, “engineering apprenticeship," open only to graduates of technical schools, preference and precedence being given to the sons of employes. An applicant for entrance to either of these courses filled out a blank in his own handwriting, giving his name and address and those of his father and mother, or, if they were dead, of his guardian; also the date of his birth and the names of the schools he had attended, with a statement about the nature of his education. The latter course was very complete both in curriculum and in practical tasks, students being advanced from one department of the works to another so that they eventually obtained experience in every branch. When they had completed the course some of the graduates became connected with the plant as subordinate officials, others went out into the commercial offices of the company or into the field engineering corps, or left to be employed by manufacturers who used the company's products. Somewhat similar methods of apprenticeship were also found to exist in the only railroad shops in the District that I visited; namely, those of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, a subsidiary of the New York 221WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Central lines, and in the locomotive shops of the H. K. Porter Company. Apprenticeship in this latter company lasted four years. The Mesta Machine Company, a large machine shop turning out engines of all kinds as well as large mill and other machinery, sent its apprentices to the Carnegie technical schools, where practical courses in the school of applied industry fitted men to be foremen in shops and the like.* All these companies took in boys from seventeen to twenty-one years of age, required a medical examination, and a probationary period of six months during which time the candidate's general fitness and bent were studied. A weak feature in these apprenticeship systems was the absence of effort to retain the employe in servicef after he had been trained for it with much expenditure of time and money. The result was the annual loss and hiring of over ioo per cent of the total working organization. This constant change did not apply to the higher officials and their immediate office force, which was fairly permanent; but farther down the line where the principles of efficiency had not been instilled in the minds of foremen and lesser subordinates, changes were made on very slight provocation. The percentage of change was about the same that exists in shops that have no apprentices. An entire organization did not change completely each year, for a very considerable nucleus of permanent men remained; but people to the number of those in the organization, each of whom received a greater or less amount of personal attention, supervision, and training, entered and left it during the course of a year. Professor Commons describes the situation as it affects labor.J Failure to sift the raw labor material that came to them, failure to develop * This plan has been pursued in recent years both by employers and labor unions. More generally, companies co-operate by taking students into their shops. Industrial training and vocational guidance are being rapidly developed by the centralized board of education, since its creation in 1911. (See Kennard, Beulah: The New Pittsburgh School System. The Pittsburgh District, p. 476.) Beginnings have been made in the direction of part time work, the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, for example, giving four hours’ class work a week on pay time to boys in training. f The engineers who have been trained as apprentices of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company and who leave its employ often perform a valuable function through their ability to install its products in different parts of the country and the world. t Commons, John R.: Wage-earners of Pittsburgh. P. 113 of this volume. 222INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT its proficiency, and failure to hold it when trained, were from the managerial standpoint its great leakages. II PHYSICAL EQUIPMENT OF PLANT AS IT AFFECTS THE COMFORT AND CONVENIENCE OF EMPLOYES It seems a commonplace to say that more and better work can be done in the light than in the dark; that when people are comfortable they can give more efficient service than when they feel hot or cold or stupid from bad air; yet few industrial managers with whom I talked in Pittsburgh in 1910 had grasped these self-evident facts. Light. Many of the newer Pittsburgh plants, especially those built in the suburbs, have adopted a type of construction in which the framework is of steel and the sides are composed largely of glass. The roofs are either of the saw-tooth, depressed bay, or lantern type which are effective in making the shop light, especially if the plant is of the one-story type prevalent in the outlying suburbs. Light, in old plants and in the many-storied buildings found in congested districts, becomes a matter of upkeep as well as of structure. The results in Pittsburgh were far from satisfactory. My visits were made in June and July, when the weather was very warm. As a rule, under these conditions all windows and doors in foundries, mills, and blacksmith shops were open; in some cases even the sides of the buildings had been removed to allow the heat from the furnaces and other processes to escape. The shops were therefore fairly light. But the glass on the unopened sashes of the windows was black with soot, and in what state of light or darkness the shops would be in the winter I was able only to surmise. In towns where little soft coal is burned and the atmosphere is clear, dirty windows are considered prima facie evidence of poor management, as some means of artificial lighting is necessitated by such a condition. In Pittsburgh, however, as the smoky atmosphere outside and the dirt from the operations conducted inside very quickly blacken the windows, the cost of keeping them clean may approximate that of burning electric light. Many factories and machine shops have special gangs who clean windows and whitewash interior walls, but not nearly enough effort is made in this direction. The result is that since illumination by electricity is costly, very little general lighting is attempted. Instead, in- 223WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH dividual lamps with opaque reflectors are placed close to the place where the light is needed. Workrooms consequently are as a rule gloomy and depressing. The contrast between the intense brilliancy of light focused upon the work and the darkness of the shop causes frequent contraction and dilation of the pupils of the eyes, inducing eyestrain with accompanying headache and other ills. The preparation of foods requires good light in order that dirt which would attract flies or other vermin may be detected, all operations facilitated, and cuts and scratches on the hands of the operatives from which infection might result prevented. At the factory of the H. J. Heinz Company both the natural and the artificial light were found to be excellent, while in an adjoining factory of similar character they were not so good, and in a large milk and ice cream depot nearby both were very poor. Incidentally, the nails and hands of the Heinz operatives were kept in order by a manicure, each receiving treatment at least twice a week. One exceptionally bright plant impressed itself on the visitor's attention. This was the “white blacksmith shop" of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, the walls, ceilings, and mechanical equipment of which are painted white and are kept so. This shop is as unique at the present time as the “ white power plant" at the Chicago World's Fair was in its day, and it is worthy of note and imitation. After seeing this, it is useless to say that a shop can not be kept bright, clean, and neat in Pittsburgh. Facilities for Controlling Temperature. Generally speaking, the factories and shops visited had ample heating arrangements; foundries were the exceptions. As much could not be said for the provision of means to control excessive temperatures; although here again the experience of different managers in plant construction, air blasts, electric fans, and air washing, was of a sort which if pooled and adapted to the needs of the different industries would have lifted the general physical comfort of work in the Pittsburgh District to a new level. The foundries represented the lowest level of plant practice on this point. Other than the two mentioned below they had practically no provisions for heating except crude open braziers in which charcoal or coke burned on Monday mornings before the foundry operations began. At other times dependence was placed on the heat radiated from the molten metal and the castings. Heat from such sources is intermittent, and as a rule the workmen did their molding work in the 224The “White” Blacksmith Shop A triumph of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad. When you add the grime and soot of a smithy to the grime and soot of industrial Pittsburgh, you have set a double problem in cleanliness and ventilation. Lift your roofs, get rid of your soot as made, use white paint, so that if you fall backward you’ll know it was the P. and L. E. prescription.Engineering for Light and Air Main aisle, machine shop. Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing CompanyINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT cold and got thoroughly heated during the casting. The casting comes just before they go home and, in the absence of facilities for changing their moist clothing, they are made susceptible to colds and other disorders of the respiratory system. In the Westinghouse foundry at Trafford City, and in that of the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company in Allegheny, an air blast formed a very effective heating system. In the latter plant the summer temperature was considerably modified by running this blast unheated. The skelp furnaces of the National Tube Company at McKeesport had hollow fronts through which water was circulated, thus making their proximity comparatively bearable to the men who had to work before them continuously. In addition, immediately at the side of the men revolving fans had been placed to blow a stream of air upon them which greatly ameliorated their working conditions.* In the Reymer candy factory an air-washing, temperature regulating plant which cost $12,000 held the temperature of the air from 60 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit in all seasons, and maintained the humidity at 50 degrees, so that the preparation and packing of certain confections should be carried on under standard conditions. Work in these rooms was noticeably comfortable in the hot weather. A similar plant had been installed in the building of the Central District Telephone (part of the Bell system) Company, to cool the rooms of the “Long Dis-tance” department.! In the laundry of Brace Brothers, one of the largest in the East End, the heat in the ironing room, directly above the washing machines in the basement, was very high.J An air-washing and cooling system, though not as elaborate as those mentioned, had been installed, but its operation had been discontinued because the ironers objected to the cool air blowing directly upon them when they were heated. The Reymer Company had experienced this same difficulty at first but met it by deflecting the current of air upward. The office building of the H. K. Porter Company had a similar installation as also had the Mc-Creery department store, which served to keep the merchandise free from a great deal of soot and incidentally added to the comfort of working force and patrons. * See also Kelley, Florence: Factory Inspection in Pittsburgh. P.200 of this volume. f This temperature regulating system has been installed by the telephone company in the principal long distance central offices all over the country. t Out of 32 steam laundries, Miss Butler found one in which the heat-producing wash room was installed on the top floor, radically ameliorating the work conditions in all other departments. See Butler, Elizabeth B.: Women and the Trades, p. 167. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) is* 225WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Ventilation. The trend toward saw-tooth, depressed bay, and lantern roofs in the steel mills and other heavy works of the District is, of course, in the interest of coolness and freshness as well as of light in the general run of factories. Except for the instances mentioned above and the temporary installation of portable electric fans 1 saw no evidences of artificial ventilation. Pennsylvania has no state legislation calling for definite amounts of cubic feet of air per hour to be supplied to each operative. Yet it is demonstrable that with such provisions more and better work can be accomplished, often more than enough to pay for the installation, maintenance, and operation of such a supply system. But the initial cost and the very tangible expense of running the plant, in comparison with the somewhat intangible returns in quality and quantity of work, tend to discourage managers from introducing this very important adjunct to factory equipment unless they are compelled by legislation to do so. The absence of ventilation may have been due to the amount of soot in the air of the Pittsburgh District. Any system which would increase the volume of air in a factory would also increase the soot, and this would necessitate an air-washing device and further expense. Such devices were to be found in the office buildings of the District. An excellent device which combines a heating and ventilating system and by which the air is washed was installed in that of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad. The windows were intended solely for the admission of light and did not open, the air entering and finding its exit by special ducts. Drinking Water. The need for pure air as a basis for healthy and effective work brings us back to the consideration that however marvelous has been the development of machinery and automatic processes, the intelligence which controls at every point in manufacturing operations is human. It has both the gift and the limitations associated with animal organisms. The worker must have air and water. He can not go from morning to night without food or respite. The waste tissue worn out in the process of work must be disposed of. And when we mass these needs by the tens and hundreds and thousands in congregate work places it is not enough to give the workers merely elbowroom and shelter. Creature conveniences must be planned for as definitely as coal bins or steam pipes are planned for in the boiler room. In the Carnegie mills, the United Engineering and Foundry Company, and in some other plants, it had been customary for thirty years, within my own memory, for an extensive bucket 226Cooling Hot Work Workman in front of a furnace protected from heat by water-cooled door, movable shield, and ventilating fan. This equipment is typical today of the furnaces of the National Tube Company. The American Sheet and Tin Plate Company are carrying the plan one stage further, and making the floor plates also water-cooledCooled Drinking Water for an Entire Plant Refrigerating Plant. Showing from left to right the ammonia compressor, circulating pump, and filters; cooling tanks and coils in background. Installed by the National Tube Company at its Continental Works, Pittsburgh Fountain in Machine Shop Water at fountain is taken directly from a circulating line, leaving no dead ends where water can stand. The line is 1,500 feet long. Water returning to the starting point is not over 70 higher in temperature. Before this system was adopted, the men often had cramps from drinking water improperly cooled. Now they rarely or never suffer that way. One fountain to every 30 men is providedINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT brigade of men and boys to carry, by a shoulder yoke and wire hoop attachment, pails of water from springs situated in some instances at a considerable distance in the hills. This archaic institution persisted in Pittsburgh steel mills where hydraulic engineering had reached its highest achievements. Although the water might be cool and pure enough at the spring, it became warm in the carrying. The perspiration from the water carriers' arms dropped into it in transit, and the dirt from the ice which the mill men handled probably offset the benefits. If the companies had piped their water from the springs a quarter of a century ago they would have saved many times the cost of the present method of transportation and distribution, and would have delivered water purer and at a temperature much more healthful than that which was being provided. That the current expense of this system had not impressed itself upon the management through the records of the cost department was inexplicable.* In contrast, the National Tube Company had filtered city water piped into their plants and was installing systems for cooling and distributing it through sanitary fountains. The system as laid out had no dead ends where the water could lie in the pipes and become heated or stagnant. Similarly, the American Steel and Wire Company's general superintendent stated that in plants where buckets and tin cups were used the company was arranging to replace them with automatic drinking fountains, as it considered the old system insanitary. These fountains consist of a small basin, from the center of which protrudes a vertical pipe. Out of this the stream spouts an inch or two in the air, so that a drink can be obtained without touching the metal. The water may run continuously or be controlled by a valve. These fountains if purchased are usually elaborate; if home-made, they are very simple. For twenty-five years prior to the opening of the filtration plant in 1908 the river water supplied to Pittsburgh was known to contain typhoid germs, and no one who could avoid doing so used it for other than washing purposes. In consequence, practically all industrial plants put in their own driven wells or, like the Homestead mills, drew their drinking water from adjacent springs * These water-carriers have cost the Carnegie Company $20,000 a year. Recently, a modern water supply system has displaced many of them and the days of the last survivors are said to be numbered. See footnote, p. 232. 227WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH which had a local reputation for purity. Although managers usually stated that they had their wells or spring water analyzed frequently by the board of health or local chemists to test its purity, as a rule no records of analysis could be found. With one or two exceptions, those produced were several years old. Time passes rapidly, and unless it is the specific duty of some one person to make a systematic and periodical inspection this safeguard is likely to be forgotten until an epidemic occurs. In most of the factories the well water was filtered, but how often the filters were cleaned was an open question. Usually the supply was so generous that it ran continuously at faucets which were distributed throughout the plant. In the rolling mills these faucets were placed at the “boshes” where a continuous flow was necessary to keep the water cold enough to cool off the furnace tools. Sometimes a cup for the use of all the men in common was attached to the faucet. Both water and drinking facilities therefore were possible centers of danger, to which the engineers of the District were only beginning to give attention.* Lunch Facilities. The noon hour is intended to allow time for the midday meal and for relaxation and rest from the fatigue of the morning. Many companies employing girls in their factories and stores in the city had a room with tables at which the girls could sit down and eat the lunch they had brought with them, the company providing hot coffee or tea free or at a nominal cost. Two flagrant exceptions to this practice were noted. The Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company several years ago set aside a space in one of its buildings for a lunch room for nearly i ,000 girls. The girls brought their own lunch, and coffee was furnished free by the company. Later, when there was a demand for more room in which to install some machinery, this room was crowded out and since then the girls had eaten their lunch sitting on the factory floor and leaning against their machines or the wall of the building, as the company did not even provide them with seats which had backs.f * The Woman's Act of July, 1913, requires employers to provide a “sufficient supply of clean and pure drinking-water." Department stores are reported by the Consumers League to be observing the law, but this is not true in general of factories. t Today (1914) the company has a dining room seating 400, with separate rest rooms. See also footnote, p. 230. 228Girls’ Dining Room H. J. Heinz CompanyFeatures of the Heinz Factories Recreation Room for Employes Sewing Class for Employes Roof Garden and GreenhouseINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT In the lunch room of the United States Glass Company were some tables and chairs and a large cast iron stove for warmth in the winter. On this stove the superintendent said the girls were “permitted” to heat their coffee which they themselves purchased by each contributing a cent from time to time. On the day that I called, although the thermometer stood in the 90% the stove had in it a roaring wood fire. I have no idea how high the temperature stood in that room, but it is safe to say that although “ permitted ” the girls did not that day take advantage of the extended courtesy to eat their lunch there. The new plants which are situated outside of Pittsburgh had provided lunch rooms in their administrative buildings for the accommodation of their officials,—heads of departments and office force,—but in only two instances that came to my attention had they similarly provided for the people in their works. Such a lunch room offers a change of environment which makes a pleasant break in the routine and in itself has a relaxing and recuperative effect. Coffee and tea if provided, supply warmth to an otherwise cold lunch. The effect can be noticed in the work of the first hours of the afternoon which ordinarily are less productive than those of the earlier hours of the day. Progressive manufacturers maintain the efficiency of their working people throughout the day by providing a wholesome meal at cost in comfortable rooms. The Mesta Machine Company had a lunch counter where 75 men could obtain a good lunch at cost, and on the upper floor of the “Casino” at the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company there was a lunch counter for men, while on the ground floor were bowling alleys, billiard and pool rooms. With these two exceptions—and the H. J. Heinz Company—I found no concern in 1910 providing lunch rooms for men.* Yet in the rough work of a mill, where the heat is likely to be excessive and to cause profuse perspiration, the men become very much exhausted and in the absence of a lunch room usually repair at noon to nearby saloons for beer or a stronger stimulant. As the effect of alcohol quickly wears off, the after effect is evident in the inefficiency of the operatives who get “ dopey.” The American Steel and Wire Company experienced in another city the beneficial effects of local option, which temporarily removed the saloon from the vicinity of their mill. They stated that the number of accidents that occurred after lunch hour was reduced. This improvement in working conditions was subsequently lost by a change in politics which restored the saloon. * So far as the general run of the steel mills go, the situation is the same today. 229WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Rest. Rest—especially for women workers—is not merely a question of a noon stop but of consideration, at every point in the work, of what will ease tension. Standing at work all day is very fatiguing and progressive managers in Pittsburgh as elsewhere recognized and acted on this fact. But in some shops where women were employed there were no seats. When the superintendents of the factories of the United States Glass Company and the American Sheet and Tin Plate Company were asked whether they did not allow their girls to sit down when tired their replies were fairly identical: “Why certainly, we have no objection to their sitting down.” “Where?” was asked. “Well,” said the superintendents as they looked in vain for something on which the girls could sit, “when they are tired they can go out to the lunch room.” But these girls were piece workers who would dock themselves if they left their work. Moreover, neither lunch room had any facilities for “ resting,” so that the opportunity offered was, I imagine, seldom exercised. The Pittsburgh Railway Company permitted their motor-men to supply their own stools and sit on them while at work, and many men took advantage of this privilege. Sitting continuously without a back-rest is as much of a strain on the nerves and muscles of the back as standing. In the clothing factory of Rauh Brothers and in the Armstrong Cork Works the girls were given chairs with backs to them. In the Jenkinson cigar factory and the Heinz pickle works the girls had backless stools.* I asked one of the subordinate officers of the cigar factory why he did not supply chairs with backs so that when the girls were tired they could lean back for an instant and relieve the strain on the muscles of the back. As things stood, they had to get up from their stools and leave the room ostensibly to visit the toilet but really for rest. He said that he had spoken to the proprietors about supplying chairs but without effect. He knew that the time saved by supplying seats with backs has always paid employers who have made the change. A similar inquiry made to a high official of the H. J. Heinz Company elicited the reply that the company had tried chairs and the girls would not use them. The chairs tried proved to have been made of wire with spring backs such as are used * Chairs with backs are now provided at the Heinz works. 230Stools are Poor Seats Chairs with backs have displaced them in this factory. Can making department, H. J. Heinz CompanyChairs with Backs are Better Sorting room, Armstrong Cork CompanyINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT by typewriters. This chair for factory use is absolutely unserviceable. The official acknowledged that possibly the ordinary chair would have been acceptable. McCreery’s department store had seats behind the counter which the sales clerks were expected to use whenever they felt so inclined.* A few factories where women were employed contained “rest rooms” where an employe temporarily indisposed could lie down. These were usually adjuncts to the locker or dressing rooms, with washrooms either in or adjacent to them. Many factories had elaborately appointed emergency rooms containing an operating table for supplying first aid to the injured men or women, but this hospital equipment is no substitute for the service supplied by good rest rooms. Frequently, women who on account of household duties hurry away from home in the morning without any breakfast or, what is worse, with a hastily eaten one, reach the factory faint or with a severe headache. There are periods also when the heat of the workroom or the pain from slight injury will cause a temporary weakness which an hour’s rest will remove. A rest room in charge of a trained attendant who can administer simple remedies in place of the headache powders and other nostrums usually employed proves to be an actual saving to a company, as otherwise the employe may go home for the day. The presence in these rooms of an intelligent person who at times of emergency may get into close touch with the patient and bring to the attention of the company the knowledge of any pressing needs, also tends to weld a link between employer and employe. The H. J. Heinz Company, McCreery and Company, and the Telephone Company had commodiously appointed and cheerful rest and emergency rooms for women. Folding cots in the women’s wash rooms of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company,! the Armstrong Cork Company, and the Brace Brothers’ Laundry were poor attempts to supply this need. In the lunch room of one of the factories of the United States Glass Company stood a broken down lounge. It would have required so much exertion to keep from falling off that little rest could have been obtained by using it. Lockers. Change of Clothing. Managers in the Pittsburgh District seemed to have confined their attention in the * See Kelley, op. cit., p. 204. f See footnote, p. 228. 231WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH matter of clothes rooms largely to their women workers, whom they provided, in connection with washing facilities, with rooms which contained partitioned closets with pegs or hooks. Steel lockers are preferable to wooden lockers and closets, as they are vermin proof. Such lockers were provided by the Armstrong Cork Company, but the upper tiers were practically inaccessible and had never been used. When large hats became the fashion the lower lockers would not hold them, so that shelves and pegs had to be substituted until a change in fashion should make it possible to return to the lockers. Lockers were usually provided for men in the machine shops, but they were frequently so inconveniently situated and so open to the accumulation of dust that the men usually preferred to lock their clothes into their tool chests, thus keeping them clean and convenient of access. In the best arranged shops for men elsewhere I found clothes rooms which contained washing facilities in the care of an attendant. These rooms are ventilated by a fan, and steam pipes run through the lockers. Workmen coming to work in wet weather can change clothing, shoes, and stockings for a dry outfit, and by night can change back again to their now dried out street clothes. Nothing so diverts a man’s thought from his work as cold feet, and to go about all day in wet clothing lowers the vitality and invites cold and sickness, thus causing irregular attendance and consequent inefficiency. Cleanliness. Washing Facilities.* Except in the machine shops, the mills of the steel industry in Pittsburgh were not adequately supplied with washing facilities for the men. When you asked why, you were told that “ mill men do not wash.” When you retorted that they ought to be encouraged to wash and that you had seen them do it in the boshes, the managers usually said, “Yes, those who want to wash can wash there.” There was a general complaint that the men in the machine shops did not use * In 1911, a bureau of safety, relief, sanitation, and welfare was created by the United States Steel Corporation, with headquarters in New York, which has entered upon a program of sanitary rehabilitation that gives promise of equalling the notable advances since 1908 in safety engineering. (See Appendix XX, p. 494.) The investment involved is staggering—to make up for years of neglect; but one after another, wash rooms and locker rooms are being placed in the mills; drinking fountains and filtered water are superseding the bucket brigades, lavatories are supplanting rank dry vaults and the insanitary privies which overhung the rivers; shower baths are becoming part of blast furnace equipment, and in general new standards are being set for the District. The change is not confined to the constituent companies of the Steel Corporation. Yet there remains a large task for public opinion in bringing old plants and laggard establishments into line. 232Washing up in the MillInexpensive Type of Sanitary Wash Bowls The latest design of the U. S. Steel Corporation abandons bowls altogether, and provides a running shower which does away with any collection of dirty water Swimming Pool Westinghouse Air Brake CompanyINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT either the wash basins or lockers. My experience has always been, however, that when men do not take advantage of facilities offered it is because there is something wrong with the facilities. Self-respecting people (and those are the people managers should endeavor to secure and encourage to stay with them) like to appear well on the street. They ought not to be compelled to go home from work looking like hoboes and so covered with dirt and grease that they soil the clothes of people who sit next to them in the street cars, making well dressed people hesitate to ride with them. In this matter the Pittsburgh mills were not living up to their obligations to their employes or to the state by any means, and in fact were actually maintaining nuisances in the community. For over fifty years the proprietors of these mills had seldom made the slightest effort to furnish men who wanted to wash any facility for doing so and by their neglect were actually educating them to go dirty. The steel mills of the Carnegie and the Jones and Laughlin companies, and Brown and Company, the factories of the United Glass Company, the city power plant of the Allegheny County Light Company, and the A. Garrison Foundry Company had no wash rooms at all. The men got their hands and faces black from the grime of the work and when they wanted to clean up before eating lunch or at quitting time, had either to resort to the boshes, or to the drinking water or other pails which they themselves supplied privately. They brought soap and towels from home. In contrast, the several large works of the Westinghouse interests seemed to have adopted a common policy in regard to wash rooms, of which they had a number in each plant. These were furnished with individual basins supplied with city water cold. They were kept in order by an attendant, who at noon and night just before “whistle blow” distributed roller towels (individual towels were used for the office force) and cake soap, collecting them afterward and putting them away. In its new plant, also, The National Tube Company was pioneering among the steel mills. Wash Bowls.—Awash bowl or sink seems to be a simple and common piece of furniture, but even a sink must be of the proper kind and conveniently placed, equipped, and kept in order. If the individual porcelain 233WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH bowl is considered too expensive, a very good substitute is an iron sink on the front and back runs of which tin basins can rest. Each man can then have his individual basin which he empties into the sink when he has washed. Such an arrangement is rapid in operation, no waits having to be made while the basin is being emptied. It is better to have a number of these sinks scattered throughout the plant than grouped in one place. The men then find them accessible and do not lose much time in going to and fro. An attendant should keep them in order and see that soap is provided and that clean towels are distributed and soiled ones collected. There should be plenty of hot and cold water at each sink. Hot water and soap are both necessary to soften the grease and dirt which accompany factory, shop, and mill work, and towels are required to dry the hands afterward. In their absence, oil and cotton waste which are more costly will be the regular substitutes. In order to show how carelessness can affect the usefulness of a wash room, let me describe the condition of some basins that I saw at the Armstrong Cork Works. Almost all the stoppers had become detached and lost. As there were plenty of corks handy, however, these had been substituted; but there is a difference between a stopper with a chain and a cork without one. After washing, the cork was usually left in the outlet and the next person to use the bowl had to plunge his hand into the dirty water to empty the bowl. When I saw these basins all were full of dirty water and some of the workers were going home without washing up rather than clean out a bowl. Such carelessness on the part of the management, not only in the upkeep of its apparatus but in permitting its misuse, could not have anything but a demoralizing effect on the attitude of the men toward other forms of company equipment. A more serious charge lies against them; they have unquestionably—if unwittingly—spread disease and caused preventable suffering. Towels and Soap.—In the works where the men's hands and faces are very dirty and are apt to have cuts and open sores upon them, sometimes caused by blood poisoning or by venereal diseases, the danger of passing these disorders along is increased by the use of roller towels. The manager of a towel supply company which furnished and washed towels for many of the factories in Pittsburgh as well as doing all the washing for the Pullman Company in this District, told me that the company was fully alive to this danger of infection, never recommended roller towels, and took special precautions in handling them. Professor W. T. Sedgwick,* of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls them a “sanitary abomination." Nevertheless, in Pittsburgh factories, wherever * Sedgwick, Wm. T.: Principles of Sanitary Science and Public Health. New York, Macmillan, 1903. 234INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT any towels were supplied at all, roller towels seemed to be the rule. A very large number of manufacturers did not supply either towels or soap; they said that the men who washed preferred to bring their own supplies. Others declared that they tried furnishing soap, but that the men took it home; that even when they tried the kind which is chained to the faucet or basin the men actually cut the chain and took the soap away. It would cost less, be vastly more sanitary, and reduce the likelihood of theft, to use one of the many liquid or granulated soaps on the market which are supplied from a "dispenser/' and which allow a few drops or flakes to come into the hand at a time. One of the best of these liquid soaps will give i ,000 washes for about 20 cents. Their use is no longer an experiment, yet I failed to find more than one manager who had a soap dispenser, and that only on trial, in his office building. It is hard to grasp that captains of industry should acknowledge themselves vanquished by soap! In 1910 the largest electric supply manufacturing company in the District supplied roller towels, cake soap, and cold water. In the shops of their competitor in an eastern city there was a washroom on a mezzanine floor accessible from two stories. This was equipped with individual slate basins but no water, no soap, no towels. Which was the more sanitary? No doubt the latter. Shower Baths. Foundry and mill men who get very dirty and perspire freely should be given facilities for taking shower baths and for changing to dry clothes before going home, particularly in winter when they are liable to become chilled and are thus made subject to pulmonary trouble.* Although shower baths were installed in several plants, in but one instance did I find evidence of their having been used recently. This was due in every case, in my judgment, either to inconvenient location and poor installation, to long hours of work, or to the fact that the cars on which men depended to take them home started so soon after the whistle blew that there was scarcely time to catch them. The charge that workingmen do not care to wash was not substantiated by the evidence. They could be seen at quitting time washing up in the boshes and in pails, and the Westinghouse men took advantage of their inadequate washrooms. Pools. That this is so, is evident by the patronage of the city natatoriums, the public bathsf in the recreation parks, and the other *A law of 1911 makes wash rooms in foundries obligatory, and during recent months the department of labor and industry has ordered installations throughout the Pittsburgh District. f Among general social agencies in Pittsburgh, The Civic Club of Allegheny County has long demonstrated the gospel of cleanliness in its bath houses. At the present time, Mrs. Henry W. Oliver and her daughter, Mrs. Rea, are erecting a modern bath house near the Oliver works on the South Side, to be given to the city with endowment to cover operating expenses. 235WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH swimming pools in the industrial districts. The following record shows both the popularity of these institutions and the danger of transmitting disease through them—a danger which Pittsburgh and other cities have taken few if any steps to ward off: The Carnegie libraries at Homestead, Duquesne, and Braddock, each with 50 to 100 bathers a day, changed the water in their tanks twice a week; the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, with 100 to 200 daily bathers, usually let out about one-fourth of the water each day; the Turkish Bath Natatorium, with 200 to 400 daily bathers, changed the water three times weekly; the Lawrence Park recreation grounds, with 500 to 800 daily bathers, and the H. J. Heinz Company, with 25, changed every night. In the West Park recreation grounds, Allegheny, and in the public recreation grounds at McKeesport the water was running constantly.* Water-closets. Apparently the usual method of handling water-closets on the premises of industrial plants was about as follows: First, select the most remote part of the shop, a place which on account of darkness and restricted space is useless for anything else. Then put in the cheapest apparatus and one that will be inconvenient and uncomfortable so that the men will not be inclined to come often or stay long. Then when it is found that the men take home the toilet paper, stop supplying it. The men will then take in newspapers and read them. Remove the lights to prevent reading. The condition of the place will then become insanitary because the men can not see the condition of the seats and no longer use them as intended. When the odors become strong enough to be observed at a distance, instead of recognizing the fact as a warning of the insanitary condition and remedying it, install “disinfectant drips” of thymol or eucalyptus, which even the managers acknowledge do not disinfect and really do little more than overcome the existing odor by a more pungent and powerful one. Superintendents of factories almost universally contended that it was practically impossible to keep water-closets in order for the class of * At the time of my initial Pittsburgh report there was nothing in any language on this subject. Some months afterward accounts appeared in the technical press of epidemics of throat and eye trouble at colleges, traceable to the swimming pools. See article, The Menace of the Swimming Pools, in The Survey, July 27, 1912, describing my subsequent investigations into the sanitation of the swimming pools of New York City. See also Manheimer, W. A.: The Survey, April 18, 1914. 236Bath House and Plunge Erected by the H. C. Frick Coke Company at its Standard Mine. Thirty-four showers, 12 wash basins, two closets, and an 18-foot plunge make up the equipment Locker and Lunch Room American Steel and Wire Company, Donora, PennsylvaniaClosets in Comfort Building at Lucy Furnace Several instalments have been made by the Carnegie Steel Company at its Homestead plants, to take the place of dozens of the oldtime insanitary privy vaults Porcelain Urinal Surrounded by sheet steel screen. National l ube Company. In 1913, 223 such urinals were installed by the United States Steel Corporation. Its present policy is to place them at convenient points in every works, in the belief that convenient and sanitary urinals make not only for health but efficiencyINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT people they employed. They were unwilling to incur the expense of such an attendant as keeps a hotel lavatory in trim, and yet they would have saved more than his salary by lessening the time wasted in those plants by the men, reading, smoking, and loafing in the toilets, which ran into a very large sum every day. Take, for instance, a works manned by 1,200 men—a small force for Pittsburgh. Suppose that only half of these (a low estimate) use the water-closet each day, during “company time,“ each man staying there ten minutes. This would amount to 6,000 minutes, or ten days, which at an average wage of $2.00 per day would mean in lost time to men and management $20 per day, or $6,000 per year. Superintendents and directors did not realize how much their badly managed water-closets were costing them. If this item of expense had been embraced in their cost system it would soon have come to their attention. The experience of a large company in another city may be cited. The management found considerable loafing in the toilet room. The company had the room attendant take the check number of each man and the time of his entrance and exit and this record was sent daily to the cost accountant's office. The men were admonished if they spent too much time in the toilet rooms, and when their time overran a definite maximum they were actually charged for it. The superintendents of the Carnegie mills and the H. K. Porter locomotive shop complained that the men spent too much time reading in these places; yet they had only a few moments before told me that the company did not provide toilet paper and that they had all the newspapers which had been left around the shops during the day collected at night and put into the water-closets for the men to use, thus actually furnishing them reading matter. Moreover, newspapers, on account of the printer's ink, are not healthful for toilet use. In the machine shops of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad the water-closets were on a mezzanine shelf and the urinals underneath on the ground. A large sign was posted on the shelf, which read as follows: “Use nothing but toilet paper in this closet. Smoking and reading is also prohibited.'' Whatever the rhetoricians might say, this notice is said to accomplish its purpose. The amount of cotton waste which the men use when toilet paper is not supplied will surprise any manager who will thoroughly investigate the subject. This waste sooner or later clogs up the pipes and increases the expense of keeping the plumbing in order. Individual bowls are not necessary in a large plant. They require a great amount of work to keep them clean and the duplication of traps increases the number of stoppages 237WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH due to use of unsuitable articles. The closets of shops have a way of attracting two-foot rules from the rear pockets of the men. These open in the traps and act as very effective stoppers in closing the pipe. The American Steel and Wire Company appointed a committee to make a special study of wash and toilet rooms and drinking facilities. As result of its work, well appointed toilet rooms were being installed in their different plants. The concern was going so far as to have separate accommodations for boys so that they “ would not become acquainted with the filthy habits or hear the profanity and obscenity so often indulged in by men in places of this kind.” This is a refinement which seems illogical. The intercourse of the men should be kept decent by the presence of an attendant. The boys and men associate throughout the day and the segregation of boys in a place of this kind, except under supervision, is in itself pernicious. In one of the mills of the American Sheet and Tin Plate Company, where some 20 girls worked, a small one-room frame cottage had been built and set aside for their use as a lunch room. In one corner was the water-closet. Each week the superintendent assigned the care of the room to two of the girls, whose duty it was to see that the place was kept in order. Here was at least an attempt to preserve cleanliness and tidiness, but it seemed to me uncalled for to make the girls do the janitor work. The combination of lunch room and water-closet needs no comment. The United Engineering and Foundry Company, the Pittsburgh Valve and Construction Company, the National Tube Company, the Westinghouse interests, and the Mesta Machine Company were conspicuous among those who in 1910 maintained sanitary toilet rooms for their shops. Each of these companies had a man in attendance whose sole duty was to keep the toilets in order. The toilets had cement lined floors, syphon flush enamel range closets with partitions which insured a semi-privacy to each man. There were cuspidors in each section. The closets were light so that the condition of the seats could be distinctly seen. Hose attachments were installed and the room was hosed out at least once and sometimes twice a day. No disinfectant drips were used. The attendant saw that the receptacles were filled with toilet paper and that the latter was not unduly wasted or carried off; also that smoking, reading, and loafing were not indulged in. In contrast, many of the mills of the large steel companies and some of the older foundries and works,—such as the brick works which are situated outside the sewage system of the city,— 238INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT had placed open privies adjacent to or over running streams of water. These places were left practically to take care of themselves and were in a very insanitary condition. The United States Glass Company in its South Side plant maintained open privy vaults that were disgracefully filthy. The girls' closets opened directly into the workroom. I was escorted to these by a director of the company who informed me that he had been a physician but had retired from active practice. When I asked him how, knowing the insanitary condition of these places, he could allow them to exist, he replied, “ When I was a physician 1 gave my attention to my profession. Now that 1 am in business I give my attention to helping that business make money. We have made only 13 per cent profit in five years and if you had been in the directors' meetings during this time you would have found that our attention was directed entirely to financial matters; we had no time to spend on sanitation." A little more time and money on sanitation would have gotten the United States Glass Company a class of work people more self-respecting, capable, and efficient than would put up with such mare's nests; a little more efficiency in the working organization might have turned the balance between profit and deficit; a little more professional conscience on the subject of the health of the workers might have contributed more to the sum of things than the increment of business acumen which this doctor-director put into his investment. An instance of how easy it is to preach and not practice was shown by the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company, one of the largest manufacturers of bathtubs, urinals, and water-closets in the country. Its advertisement in the technical press read: “Are the toilet rooms of your factory clean, modern, and sanitary? Their condition is a daily expression of your attitude toward the health and physical well-being of your employes. Large employers are more than ever before realizing their moral responsibility for the environment with which they surround their employes and surely none is more important than the toilet rooms. Would it not be worth your while to make a personal inspection to ascertain the true condition of your toilet rooms? The removal of insanitary fixtures and the installation in their stead of 'Standard' sanitary closets is your best assurance of safe sanitary toilet rooms," . . . and so forth. 239WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH When I asked the manager what kind of fixtures the company had found best for its own employes he replied: “You know the saying about the shoemakers' children going barefoot." Their closets were below the average of decency in the District.* Ill SAFEGUARDING EMPLOYES AGAINST ACCIDENT AND DISEASE Having secured the working force, having furnished not only the tools but the shop facilities which will enable that force to work to the best advantage, the employer should see to it that its members are protected from accident and illness within his control. There is moral compunction here, but there is also an administrative advantage, for there is great waste in repeatedly breaking new men in and in making good the gaps caused by temporary absence. This waste is most obvious in the skilled departments, but it is present wherever accustomedness gives speed, or team work gives group efficiency. Fire The most general factory hazard is fire, but for one great group of industries in the Pittsburgh District that hazard is low. There is little to burn in any of the buildings connected with a steel works except in the pattern shop and the pattern storage building. These are usually built so as to be proof against fire from both outside and inside. They are also usually protected by the sprinkler system, which is the most efficient method of plant protection so far devised, and are further equipped with fire-fighting apparatus and have a fire brigade instructed in its use. Fire insurance will cover the immediate losses on this property, and as the buildings are one-story structures, or have few people in them, the possibility of loss of life is remote. Factories in other industries present a different problem. Several stories high and containing inflammable materials and many workers, they are not safe, humanely speaking, unless they * This company (1914) is installing two three-story comfort stations, with showers, locker rooms, and toilets, for the service of its foundry department which comes under the special state law. Its Louisville plant has installations for the entire plant, but in Pittsburgh the enameling department, where toilets and bowls are glazed, has still the same sanitary equipment as in 1910! 240INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT can insure a rapid escape of the occupants from the building without injury from smoke, or fire, or panic. It is usually assumed that when a fire-extinguishing apparatus has been installed in a factory and fire-escapes provided, the fire emergency has been met; that if a fire occurs it will be promptly extinguished or, if not, the occupants will get out without difficulty by the fire-escapes. Experience, however, does not bear out this assumption.* The mere installation of a fire extinguisher does not make the apparatus effective at the critical moment. Certain persons must be instructed how to use it and this duty assigned to them. Moreover, fire-escapes, since they are not in constant use, become obstructed or broken; and people, not being accustomed to use them, are either afraid to do so or jam them and are injured in the crush. The ladders or stairs are inadequate, and the flames and smoke issuing from the windows underneath make them fire traps rather than fire-escapes. The time is rapidly approaching, if indeed it has not already arrived in some communities, when an architect who puts a fire-escape on his building or has one put on by the authorities, will be considered incompetent as a designer of safe buildings. It is a truism that equipment to be kept ready for effective service must be used occasionally. Only a recurrent fire drill will solve the problem of use. That such a drill is effective in spreading confidence among those who take part has long been proved in the public schools. Here is all the difference between knowledge and ignorance. One inspires confidence, the other terror; one assures an orderly escape, and the other breeds a panic. I have in mind a New York candy factory which until a fire drill was installed was all tension whenever a fire engine passed on the street. More often than not some nervous woman in the large force fainted. Incidentally, anything which will prevent the minds of employes from being diverted from their work will increase their efficiency and be a paying investment for the employer. I found but one Pittsburgh factory that had given consideration to this subject. The others said they had fire extinguishers and drop-ladder fire-escapes, but when I asked to whom was assigned the duty of using the former or lowering the latter, they gave the usual reply that “anyone would attend to them.” *The tragic factory fires at Newark, New York, and Binghamton since this was written, have driven home the truth of Mr. Porter’s findings.—Editor. 16* 241WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH In one factory a lot of rubbish had accumulated in the basement. “Suppose a fire should occur here, right now, what would you or anyone else do?” I asked. There was no reply. The building contained no fire alarm system of signals and someone would have had to cry “fire,” with a probable resultant panic. I examined the fire extinguishers. Some were so old as to be useless and others so corroded at the nozzle that if they could be got to work it is doubtful whether anyone would have been able to force the plug of corrosion before the rubber tube had burst. In the Rauh clothing factory the openings leading to the fire-escapes were obstructed, and when we looked at the drop ladder, which a few minutes before the proprietor had said anyone could lower, it was found so bent and jammed in the balcony floor that when I left fifteen minutes later two men were still engaged in trying to extricate it.* Several kinds of drop ladders are used in Pittsburgh, some of which are counterbalanced by weights hung on chains or wire ropes. These rust and get out of order. There is another kind of ladder which is required by law in Boston, but which I did not see here although it is the best so far devised. This is a stairway with hand rails, counterbalanced on a brass axle by weights hung on the extended stair supports, on the cantilever principle. The stairs swing down gradually from the second floor landing to the ground when a person walks out upon them. The stair strings are so shaped that they bind on the balcony as a person goes down and the farther down he goes the slower they move, and finally they lock when he reaches the ground. The one firm which had given serious attention to the matter of fire egress was the Armstrong Cork Company. They had inaugurated a fire drill which they repeated once a month and which they executed for my benefit. The women left the building by a different stairway from that used by the men. The fire brigade unreeled a two-and-one-half inch hose and pointed it at an imaginary fire. The drill was admirable; the work of the brigade, I fear, was impractical. In the first place, fire is the most fearful antagonist known and it requires long training to learn how to attack it effectively. In the second place, a two-and-one-half inch hose in the hands of inexperienced men would damage the place with water faster than it would check the flames. Fire which has reached a stage requiring the use of such hose needs professional fire fighters. Well placed buckets, water barrels, and chemical fire extinguishers, which a fire-fighting corps can handle after a little practice, are quicker and more effective implements for factory volunteers in checking an incipient blaze. There should be an alarm so arranged that its signal * In July, 1914, the ladder was still unextricated, but had recently been given a coat of paint in its dislocated position! 242INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT not only notifies everybody in the building on just what floor the fire is located, but also calls the city fire department. With such an alarm an effective fire drill will get the occupants of a factory out of the building before the fire department arrives, so that the professionals can take effective charge of the situation. The Fire Drill. The question of an effective fire drill, however, is not a simple one. When, in 1894, 1 took charge of the Nernst-Lamp Company, a Westinghouse interest in Pittsburgh, I found the factory to be an old building of brick, with so-called interior mill construction. It possessed only one stairway, and housed on its five floors somewhere between two and three hundred people, mostly women. As the building itself was full of inflammable material, and as it was surrounded by rolling mills and furniture storage warehouses, it was considered a bad risk, and insurance rates upon it were proportionately high. Realizing my responsibility for the safety of the employes, I set about studying how they could escape. The chief of the fire department, after inspection, agreed with me that the building was a fire trap, but could offer no recommendations, except more and better fire-escapes, precautions against fire, and methods of extinguishing and retarding its spread until the arrival of the department. Not being satisfied, however, that even with the preventive measures introduced, the occupants of the building would be safe if a fire gained headway, I appealed to the managers of most of the progressive manufacturing establishments of the region, only to find that not a single concern had developed a scheme of rapid dismissal similar to the fire drills of the public schools. 1 then wrote to some of the largest concerns in the country with the same result. The drill master of the local board of education was appealed to. After several attempts to introduce in our factory a similar drill, he reached the conclusion that the building was so different from those to which he was accustomed, the people so much older and less subservient to discipline, that he was unable to develop a fire drill which he felt would operate in an emergency. The crux of the problem was a defective building from the standpoint of human egress. Driven back on my own resources, 1 proceeded to work out a solution from an engineering standpoint. This was to arrange 243WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH for what amounted to practically a separate stairway from each floor. When this was accomplished we installed a fire drill without difficulty which emptied the building in three minutes. This fire drill, actually taking the employes out of the building, was the first, so far as I know, ever introduced in an American factory. Yet ten years later I found no surviving example of it in the Pittsburgh District.* At the time, managers from all over the country visited our plant to see it in operation. Those who tried to introduce similar fire drills experienced the same difficulties I have mentioned, namely, that factory buildings are usually deficient in stairways. Small factories growing into larger ones, add lateral extensions to their buildings, but usually provide no additional stairways. This doubles or trebles the number of people who must crowd down the old exits when the shout of “fire” goes up. The same thing is true if in a new construction additional floor space on the same building site is secured not by wings but by building higher. To serve these upper stories in case of emergency, outside fire-escapes, originally ropes or ladders, have gradually been developed into a permanent feature of modern buildings. But because of their contracted space, the cut-off at the first story, and their tendency to get jammed in the case of panic, fire-escapes have proved their inadequacy in emergencies, with frightful loss of life. My later studies for the New York State Factory Investigating Commission developed the principle that people should not have to remain in a burning building longer than three minutes. Every building should have an exit test which should empty it in this time. If the building fails to meet such a test it should be altered till it does, or condemned. The Fire Wall.*)* Where factory buildings are too tall for separate stairways from each floor, the only adequate solution is the fire wall running from foundation to roof. This separates the main building itself into two great compartments, and the * An act requiring fire drills in factories and industrial establishments where women or girls are employed was passed by Pennsylvania in 1911. Many Pittsburgh establishments carry it out, but the law has yet (1914) to be universally enforced. f In 1911-12 Mr. Porter was the fire expert of the New York State Factory Investigating Commission, appointed after the Triangle Fire, when 143 employes lost their lives. The fire wall was his major constructive recommendation. It is now read into the New York law and is being adopted by architects generally. 244INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT employes may escape laterally, instead of vertically, simply by passing through and closing the fire doors behind them. A fire drill will empty the employes from the danger zone within a minute, whereas without it, the employes on the lower stories fill the staircases, and those on upper stories are held back while smoke and panic cause death even if the flames never reach them. Fire walls are now required on new construction by Pennsylvania law. Safety Appliances and Hospital Care There is now a general tendency all over the country to guard the employe against accidents due to dangerous machinery by installing safety appliances. The reader is referred to Mrs. Kelley's report* for a presentation of the extent to which unguarded machinery has long been permitted in the District, and to Miss Eastman'sf for a reckoning of its frightful human cost. In the absence of governmental compulsion, exceptional employers had done pioneer safety work. The United States Steel Corporation,{ to which many of the Pittsburgh mills are subsidiary, attacked the problem of accidents in a very practical manner through the appointment in 1908 of a committee of safety, —since become a Bureau of Safety, Sanitation, Relief, and Welfare—whose inspectors examine the plants of the corporation and their equipment and submit reports of conditions with suggestions for improvement. The constituent companies also have safety departments and many of the subsidiary plants have mill committees of their own. The procedure in the National Tube Company at McKeesport is somewhat as follows: The manager of the plant appoints a permanent chairman who draws up a schedule at the beginning of the year assigning two superintendents of departments as members of the committee for each month. In this way the superintendents know at what time they are to serve and at all times are keeping their eyes open for matters they wish to report. This committee makes an inspection of the plant semi-monthly. Two reports are sent to the manager signed by all the members, one taking up the question of safety to employes, and the other, sanitary conditions. * Kelley, Florence: Factory Inspection in Pittsburgh. P. 189 of this volume. f Eastman, Crystal: Work-Accidents and the Law. (Pittsburgh Survey.) t Ibid., pp. 244-268. Appendix III, Safety Provisions in the United States Steel Corporation, by David S. Beyer. In 1911, C. L. Close, safety expert of the National Tube Company, was made manager of the bureau described in Appendix XX, p. 494 of this volume. 245WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Once a week the heads of the various departments meet for luncheon, after which the reports are taken up and each superintendent has instructions to carry out the recommendations pertaining to his department. He is required to make a report at the next meeting. The co-operative work of these mill committees proved so effectual that it was determined to appoint departmental committees to co-operate with the mill committees and to consist of three workmen for the day and three for the night turns. One member of each shift is changed each month so that in the course of time a great many men in the mills will have an opportunity to serve. These workmen make an inspection every week and report direct to the superintendents. I attended one of the meetings of a “mill committee” in the National Tube Company’s plant at McKeesport and was very deeply impressed with the conscientious way in which their work was being carried out. The recommendations of these safety committees, once they have proved their worth, are compiled in a code of standard safety specifications, and all new machinery is ordered to accord therewith. As a result of this system the number of accidents has been materially reduced. The National Tube Company has compiled figures which show that from 1909 to 1914 there was a marked decrease in the number of serious and fatal accidents to its employes, and also in the working time lost by reason of accidents. Similar figures for the United States Steel Corporation show a decrease in serious accidents, and an increase in expenditure for accident relief. (See charts, pages 496 and 497.) This system of preventing accidents is supplemented by a more and more adequate system of care of injured men. Many minor cases which heretofore were not properly treated are now given the utmost attention on the ground that infection may incapacitate men for longer periods than hurts. A speck of grit or steel used to be removed from a workman's eye by a fellow-workman who backed him up against a wall and tried to get it out with a knife or a piece of wood. This frequently led to blood poisoning. Today it is the intention to give each case immediate, antiseptic treatment. The Carnegie Steel Company has developed* since 1909 a most comprehensive system under a chief surgeon. Fully equipped first aid to the injured hospitals are established at each of the mills, and two first class surgeons are in charge, one during the day and the other at night. A trained nurse acts as assistant to each surgeon. A folding stretcher equipped with a * For a comprehensive statement of this work see article by William O’Neill Sherman. Appendix XV, p. 455. 246INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT tourniquet is placed in each mill building and there are electric warming pads in the local station for use in case of shock. These local emergency hospitals, however, are supplemented by company wards in one of the largest city hospitals to which each case, as soon as it can be transported, is transferred in an automobile ambulance. Here X-ray apparatus and other special equipment are available, types of mill injuries are made the subject of continued and expert study, and the leg and arm which in years past would have been amputated is saved. Every foreman receives instructions regarding the operation of the system. Every employe when engaged is furnished with a copy of a notice which is printed in seven languages including English. Under the old system men frequently went back to work too soon, only to break down and perhaps become permanently incapacitated. Under the new, the foreman gives the man a card to the surgeon, and the man can not go on the payroll again without presenting a card from the surgeon that he is physically fit. The accident relief system established by the United States Steel Corporation in 1910 tides the workman over this enforced lay-off.* It also makes it to the interest of the management to get him quickly and permanently well. If expert medical care can cut short his convalescence it reduces the charge on the relief fund. If, on the other hand, it guards against a relapse due to premature re-employment it may save a second and perhaps greater charge against the fund. The system of medical supervision extends over the men after they are again at work, and in case the patient does not report regularly to the surgeon his foreman is at once notified so as to prevent a break in the treatment. This intelligent and skilled handling of accident cases has materially lowered the mortality from accidents and rendered the results of casualties less serious. In contrast to this system developed by the Carnegie Company many of the machine shops and factories had arrangements for first aid to the injured which were absolutely trivial. A bottle of antiseptic wash and a roll of bandage tucked into the drawer of some clerk who was thought to have some knowledge of how to bind up a wound was all that could be found in some shops, while others had a Red Cross outfit and someone about the place supposed to be best qualified was assigned the * See Fitch, op. cit. Appendix VII, p. 330. 247WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH duty of applying remedies. At the Mesta Machine Company the task fell to the lot of the foreman of the pattern shop; in the Jones and Laughlin mills—which in output rank well up with the Carnegie Company—to the watchman at the gate.* Protection from Occupational Diseases Poisons, Dangerous Fumes, and so Forth. The danger attendant upon some factory occupations is often of a different character from that which suddenly maims the body or claims the life. It may be unperceived, insidious, slowly but surely affecting the vital organs. It is just as essential that the employer protect the employe against lead poisoning and acid fumes as against accident or fire. The manager who controls a dangerous process bears a moral responsibility for the health of employes, and the trend among industrial nations is to make the responsibility legal. No general systematic study of occupational diseases had been made in the Pittsburgh District, although powerful chemical reagents enter in at a hundred points in manufacture. In the course of my tour of inspection I gained some indications of the extent of the problem. Steps had been taken by particular companies to ward off the more obvious dangers. Thus, as part of its accident-prevention work throughout the country, the American Steel and Wire Company had endeavored to control the fumes from its wire annealing tanks. In the annealing processes elsewhere I found no special provision other than that of a high and open room for carrying off the acid fumes from vats where nickel or tin plating or pickling of steel was carried on. It is wellknown that these fumes occasion acute and chronic inflammation of the mucous membrane, as do those of brass foundries where pit furnaces for crucibles were installed. Where the Schwartz furnace is used a hood and pipe through which the fumes of the volatilized metals escape out of doors is part of the installation. In the car painting shop of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad the paint was applied by mechanical spraying apparatus, and the assistant superintendent informed me that they had had no cases of painter's colic, due to lead poisoning, since they had installed an effective suction draft system. Previously they had had frequent cases. * The Jones and Laughlin Company was the “tail-ender” in the accident movement among the great companies of the Pittsburgh District. Subsequent to 1910, L. R. Palmer, an electrical engineer, was put in charge of their safety work, and inaugurated radical reforms. Emergency hospitals and sanitary facilities have been introduced, as well as protective devices. In the first year the company reported a marked decrease in accidents. 248CONQUERING DUST How the air of one of its carpenter shops has been cleared by the United States Steel Corporation View of Carpenter Shop Showing piping to carry off dust from the different machinesExhaust Tubings Sucking Dust from a Circular Saw The Outlet where the Sawdust is BaggedINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT At the National Lead and Oil Company, where paints are manufactured, and at the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company, where lead is an element in the powdered enamel used in glazing bathtubs, high rooms and good natural ventilation were provided and respirators supplied. The men, however, complained that the latter were inconvenient and uncomfortable and many were not wearing them. The superintendents said that some men were constitutionally immune to the disease while others caught it quickly. The latter, they claimed, were immediately relieved and cared for by the companies till well, and then given other work or let go. A more reasonable explanation seemed to be that certain employes had exceptionally rugged constitutions, others kept themselves in good physical condition by being careful in their diet, in their habits of bodily cleanliness, and in their methods of work. Under these circumstances lead poisoning might not assert itself for years. The company physician stated that he had had no serious case of lead poisoning in all his experience in the bathtub works, but neighboring physicians told another story. As many of the employes were non-English-speaking foreigners, a clear and unmet obligation seemed to rest on the company to inform its men as to the dangers, explain how to guard against them, and itself make a scientific investigation of a problem which may or may not mean the jeopardy of life and health and livelihood.* Dust. The ordinary iron and steel foundry is a very dusty place at certain periods of the day and night during the sandmixing process and during the “shaking-out” of the castings. The grit when breathed is irritating and often conducive to tuberculosis. With two exceptions, no efforts were made to improve these conditions in foundries: At the works of the National Tube Company a suction draft system to draw out the dust from the sand-mixing room had been installed. The Sanitary Manufacturing Company had given up the old method of tumbling and shaking the castings to get rid of the sand. Many of their castings are thin and there had been a large percentage of breakage. They adopted the sandblast method and operate it in an enclosed room where the workman is supplied with a helmet similar to that used by divers and, like a diver, has fresh air piped to him from outside. * A lead poisoning act was passed by the Pennsylvania legislature in 1913 (see Appendix XII) but up to July, 1914, no attempt had been made to enforce it in Pittsburgh. The Standard Company has added a trained nurse, who gives medical attention and advice; but in four years has made no expert study of trade disease in its works, nor introduced methods for cure and prevention such as are employed by English enamelling works. Its physician, Dr. Langfitt, now states that they have had but one case of lead poisoning in two years; and sets his verdict against the world's experience. 249WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH In brass and metal polishing rooms, grindstones, emery stones, and buffing wheels were as a rule covered by a hood from which the dust was drawn by suction.* In a few cases, however, these hoods were found pushed so far back by the operatives in order to get better light that they were practically ineffective. In Homestead, where fire bricks are made, the work naturally occasions considerable dust and there were no provisions for preventing employes from inhaling it. Work which involves contact with poisons and dust has an obvious bearing on the health of those employed; there are other factory conditions in which the connection is not so obvious but which clearly aggravate disease. I did not in 1910 find any instance of a company taking part in the national war against tuberculosis in ways which are open to the progressive employer. The state board of health had for some time been inspecting the factories of Massachusetts for tuberculosis. In many shops the applicants for positions are physically examined. In the Worcester district, employes who develop the disease in service are sent to the state sanatorium, the employer paying part of the expenses of the employe for ninety days, the state the remainder—a period long enough to make a start for recovery in incipient cases and to inculcate habits in the use of sputum cups and in right living generally. Throughout New England notices about spitting on the floors are conspicuously posted and cuspidors are distributed about every room in machine shops, one being placed at each machine tool. In the 38 plants visited in the Pittsburgh District notices of this kind were seen in 1910 in the Heinz factory, and there only. Alcoholism. Managers have been even slower to keep abreast of the physicians in another field. Those who seek an efficient working organization will tell you that they hesitate to accept chronic alcoholics, because although they may be excellent workmen when they are normal, they can not be depended upon for regular service. Yet I found no system of selecting employes in Pittsburgh which would have discovered these alcoholics, nor did I find any measure of relief being practiced which recognized the drunkenness which disrupts the force as in the nature of a disease. * The Armstrong Cork Company has an exhaust system for removing dust which at once saves valuable cork waste and is a boon to the workers. So also with metal filings in the main grinding room of the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company. A “ Blower Act” requiring such apparatus in all grinding rooms came into effect January 1, 1914. 250INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT One manager complained that a certain bookkeeper who was a very competent accountant never could be depended upon when any special work was to be done; as, for instance, the closing of the books for the annual directors* meeting at the end of the fiscal year. This man would always be missing at that time. It was clearly exasperating. The fact that the cause had not been associated with the effect seemed to me surprising. Students of neurasthenia state that overwork, overstrain, and work in high temperatures, all tend to physical exhaustion from which certain temperaments seek to recuperate by the use of stimulants. A large number of people who have an hereditary organic nervous weakness crave alcohol, and indulgence in it induces a physical condition in which more alcohol is demanded until the body becomes saturated with the poison. Then a revulsion of desire takes place and a more or less normal physical state is gradually attained. This cycle is so recurrent and so common as to be recognized as a disease and is given the name “ alcoholism.” The victim becomes incapacitated for work, gradually falls lower in the social scale, and finally reaches the status of a dependent. To refer to a minor symptom: The representatives of more than one company told me that among the greatest banes to management in Pittsburgh were tardiness and irregularity. The usual custom, to dock the employe for an hour’s time when he turned up after the whistle blew, or lay him off for the day, only served in many cases to cost the management more in overhead expense which went on in the man’s absence than it cost the offender in lost wages. I have known managers to get better results who, instead of docking the late man, paid a bonus to all who were punctual and regular in attendance. This acted as a deterrent to the drink habit and increased the number of men who turned up in good condition after pay days and holidays. The problem is not past invention. A blast furnace superintendent in McKeesport cut off the bulk of the drinking among his men between heats by the simple device of having them register every time they passed through the mill gate to the row of saloons across the way. Just as it is illogical to punish a man for being late by making him later, it may be uneconomical to put an end to absenteeism in an experienced and valuable employe by discharging him without trying to help him master his fault. In Bellevue Hospital, New York, alcoholics are grouped in a special ward and given a treatment, employed by at least one Pittsburgh physician, which in the majority of cases staves off a recurrence of the habit unless the patient deliberately starts in again. Workmen ought to be willing to co-operate in eliminating this menace to shop organization and routine. But whether they do or not, managers knowing that the inefficiency and accidents 251WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH due to alcoholism are a serious source of loss, should not remain supine before the problem and chalk off to human nature what may in large measure be laid to slack discipline* or, as we shall see, to degenerating work conditions. Alcoholism in the case of mill and furnace men, where great heat and long hours are the rule, would seem almost to come under the category of “occupational diseases/' In 1910 the Illinois Occupational Disease Commission examined 240 employes in blast furnace departments who had had mild cases of “gassing/' These men had occasionally been overcome by the constant inhaling of carbon-monoxide. They were removed to the outer air where they recovered, and then returned to work. An excess of red corpuscles was found in every case. The men were submitted to a strength test along with an equal number of workmen not exposed to “gassing." The blast furnace men were deficient in muscular power; the majority were below the average mentality; 97 per cent admitted using alcoholic liquor, and 70 per cent admitted using it in excessive quantities. Since it is a recognized fact that prolonged exposure to carbon-monoxide may produce a profound impression on the nervous system, it was difficult to make deductions as to whether the sluggish mentality and muscular deficiency were due to gas or to alcoholism; or whether the alcoholism was itself a result and not a cause growing out of the length of hours, the atmosphere in which they performed their heavy work, and the natural reaction of human nature in the brief leisure left them to turn to pleasures that are concentrated and seek stimulants raw enough to goad the fagged senses, f The elimination of alcoholism, then, is more than a matter of prohibition during working hours or of expelling drunkards. It may hang on the whole scheme of work and call for remedial readjustments in hours and physical conditions. On the other hand, it may hang on the whole scheme of recreation outside of working hours, or on a combination of the two with human nature thrown in. The president of a Pittsburgh mining company, who had tried to shut liquor selling out of one of the company towns and failed, was executing a flank movement by starting a club with billiard room and bowling alleys. In a region such as this, where indus- * The restrictions thrown around the Westinghouse Relief Funds—providing that benefits shall not be paid for disability due to alcoholism, stimulants, brawls, etc.,—undoubtedly have a bracing effect on an organization as a whole. See Appendix XVII, p. 468. t Fitch, John A.: The Steel Workers, pp. 57-58. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) The U. S. Steel Corporation has introduced oxygen, helmets for the use of repair men whose work takes them into a gas-laden furnace. See Appendix XV, p. 455. 252INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT tries have grown by leaps and bounds far in advance of an adequate setting of community life, the situation calls for civic leadership as well as trade ability from the forceful men who would build up the productive efficiency of the industries. Fatigue Human fatigue, mental or physical, is like the “fatigue of metal." Up to a certain point stress may be applied repeatedly and recuperation to a normal condition be effected, but beyond this “elastic limit" fatigue is cumulative in its effect and the natural processes can not restore the injury which has been produced except through a period of rest and specific treatment.* Sometimes, in the case of both men and metals, when this cumulative action has been carried too far the effect through an actual destruction of tissues and material is permanent and a breakdown is inevitable. Engineers recognize this fact in designing machinery, and the latter is bought under a guarantee that it will meet without “fatigue" the service to which it will be subjected. Nevertheless, care is taken that the machine should not be overtaxed, and frequent inspection is made to ascertain whether through ignorance or carelessness it is being maltreated. When there is any evidence of such maltreatment investigation is made, the person responsible for it admonished, and its recurrence guarded against. In certain cases where it is impossible to observe the effect of repeated stress, as in hoisting chains and hooks of cranes, these are periodically subjected to the annealing process to restore their physical properties. In several shops in Pittsburgh chains have been discarded altogether and wire ropes substituted, which, when subjected to overstrain, break one strand at a time and the first one getting into and clogging the pulleys serves as a warning of approaching failure. With these illustrations of the care which is taken of machinery, the lack of care of the “human parts' of the plant as a going concern stand out prominently in the Pittsburgh situation. The length of working day, for example, is an elementary consideration in the matter of nervous and physical strain. Yet time schedules have not been modified according to the extent to which a given kind of * See Goldmark, Josephine: Fatigue and Efficiency, p. 13. Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Survey Associates, 1912. 253WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH work exhausts a man. Wherever pared down, it has been due to a very different consideration—the bargaining power of particular labor unions. Thus, we had in Pittsburgh the eight-hour day in the building trades as against the twelve-hour day of the steel mills; a whole holiday every alternate Saturday in the foundries in summer, as against the 365-day year of the blast furnaces, which did not stop even for the Fourth of July. The growing factory practice of a Saturday half-holiday in summer, usually made good by a shortened noon hour the rest of the week, and the custom of using spell hands in hot work in the steel mills, perhaps marked crude beginnings toward easing the tension where heat aggravates fatigue. Apart from them the only evidence I discovered in Pittsburgh of a recognition on the part of a management of the severity of the stress to which employes are subjected was in certain departments in the telephone service, where a respite during the middle of the morning and afternoon, in one case of fifteen and in another of twenty minutes, was granted the girls, who were meanwhile relieved by others.* The distance we have still to go in determining the relative exactions of different forms of labor is suggested by the findings of the Toronto physicians who constituted a board of inquiry into the physical aspects of a telephone exchange, and who held that more than five hours' rapid work a day at the switchboard as there conducted was bound to use up the girls. The manager of a factory who has required his employes to pass a physical examination knows definitely that they are not equal in their ability to undergo stress. Other managers ought to know in a general way that all people are not equally robust any more than they are of equal height or mentality; nor is the same person always at the same level of dynamic efficiency. Especially is this true with women and with those who have passed their youth. We are only beginning to consider the adjustments necessary, so that from the production standpoint the curve of output may be kept as nearly even as possible, and from the human standpoint the health of the operatives be conserved. The Shop Clinic The pioneers in scientific management have set themselves the task of laboratory methods to study variation in efficiency as it occurs in a given shop or department. The “preventive clinic,” which exceptional works-managers * See Butler, op. cit., pp. 282 if. See also Goldmark, op. cit., pp. 51-52. 254River Boat for Saturday Afternoon Outings A different set of employes go out each week from the H. J. Heinz CompanyMinstrel Show Given by Employes of H. J. Heinz Company Auditorium for Employes I he Heinz Company is the pioneer in the Pittsburgh District in eliciting social and educational values from the gathering together of hundreds of people to perform workINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT have established here and there in America—but none as yet in Pittsburgh*—has possibilities as an instrument for the study of the human factor in such equations. Here entrance physical examinations are made and periodical visits paid by a physician who examines all employes who for any reason are brought to his attention. Those examined are either treated or given a diagnosis of their case and advised to consult their own physician. At intervals, talks on hygiene are given by the doctor to the assembled working force. Circulars with sanitary information are distributed. The subjects to which attention is especially given in a plant employing large numbers of women are: Common colds, anemia, immoderate use of tea, coffee, alcohol, and tobacco; constipation, neglected teeth, eyestrain, skin diseases, irregular menstruation, tuberculosis, alcoholism. Such clinics help ward off the infectious diseases which uninformed workers bring into the factories. They detect incipient cases of tuberculosis and can be made the means of instructing workers how to guard themselves against trade dangers, such as poisons. They may prove in time valuable sources of information as to occupational disease, and like the chemical laboratories which test every heat of metal turned out by a steel mill, may watch the processes from the standpoint of fatigue and efficiency. IV DEVELOPMENT AND STABILITY OF EMPLOYES Traces of German influence and the beginnings of scientific management are to be found in Pittsburgh plants, more or less at variance with the methods of handling labor which have grown up in the steel industry. Yet the local methods are themselves typical, even when extreme, of much of our industrial practice, and will be better understood if we stop to consider the countrywide and often world-wide developments of which they are a part. During the wonderful expansion in industry which characterized the latter half of the nineteenth century, our technical schools, following the example set by leaders in technical education abroad, *The medical service of the H. J. Heinz Company has developed notably in this direction. A dentist and two physicians (a man and a woman) are regularly engaged who render service without charge to employes. Among other employers, the Armstrong Cork Company has a physician and dentist in attendance and the Telephone Company a rounded scheme for safeguarding health—including physical examination, first aid, payment of board outside the home when there is a contagious disease in the family, sick benefit for six weeks, disinfection of instruments, and so forth. 255WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH devoted their curricula exclusively to the physical sciences and applied their knowledge to the perfection of mechanical equipment in the trades. The great wealth of our natural resources, which through this mechanical development suddenly became available, attracted a flood of immigrants whose labor in turn produced a material prosperity which those who were capable and alive to the situation were not slow to grasp and develop. Many thousands of factories, mills and industrial establishments of all kinds sprang up all over the country, each requiring one or more men to manage its working organization. As there were no schools of instruction in labor management, each of these men was obliged to evolve a method of his own and became more or less adept according to his general education, tact, temperament, and innate ability to handle men. Under such circumstances there were many instances of bad management, and some of its effects upon its victims were shown by remonstrance, strikes, and labor troubles generally. Some of these mistakes in management resulted from certain ingrained habits of thought which are slow to change. For example, if a man were to take his horse out in the street, hitch his traces to a post or a rock and then proceed to lash him with a whip, it would not be long before bystanders would interfere no matter whether he proclaimed that the horse was his property and that he fed and housed him and therefore could do what he chose with him, or that he thought his actions would not do his horse any harm. Nevertheless, if the man should loosen the post or the rock from the ground he could beat the horse all day long while making him drag it and no one would expostulate. We see similar occurrences in our streets even now. In other words, the horse, as soon as he is used as a beast of burden, loses his identity as an animal and certain treatment is accorded him by custom as an agent for work, and is admissible notwithstanding the fact that it tends to make the horse less capable of performing the work desired of him. So in the field of industry, when it came to pass that many working people had to be yoked to a single task. Suppose a man were to place a number of men and women in a room, make some of them stand all day long without allowing them to sit down to rest and require others to sit all day on stools or boxes without any support to their backs. Suppose he made the room so dark that they could with difficulty see clearly; and left it so poorly ventilated that they would become poisoned by the bad air. Suppose he frequently chided and threatened them because they were not standing right or sitting as he had told them to do. 256Welfare Building Westinghouse Airbrake Company, WilmerdingGymnasium Westinghouse Airbrake Company, Wilmerding, PennsylvaniaINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT Even if the man should pay these people—let us assume they need the money—it would not be long before there would be such a protest by the public that he would have to stop his performance. But let this man, in addition to the above exactions, make these people do continuous hard work all day long, work perhaps of a nature subjecting them to hazard of health and limb, and at once their identity as human beings is lost; they are looked upon simply as “labor”; the fact that they are employed in productive labor and that productive labor is a desirable thing, gives the performance a sanction in the eyes of the performer and of the slowly aroused public. Welfare Work We in America were not quick to recognize the change in the character of the work brought in by the factory system, with its repetitive methods of manufacturing duplicate parts; nor the intensification of these methods by “piece work” and “rate cutting” in the era of severe competition among manufacturers. Military Germany, on the other hand, with every citizen prized first of all as a man of war, saw the disastrous effects of abnormal competition and bad management upon her working classes in the period of industrial development following the Franco-German War, and as an imperial policy sought to bring about a different condition of affairs. Hence Wohlfahrts-Einrichtungen, or “welfare institutions,” fostered well lighted rooms cooled in summer and warmed in winter; bright, cheerful, and comfortable lunch rooms where the working force could obtain a wholesome and substantial meal at a nominal cost; rest rooms, equipped to supply first aid to the injured; complete hospitals for the more seriously injured or for those who were ill; reading rooms where the best literature, both technical and popular, could be obtained and drawn for home use; lectures and classes for the instruction of those who desired to advance themselves in their work, with social and athletic clubs, gymnasia and baths, for the pleasure, health, and physical development of the men and their families, and beneficial organizations and pension systems for sick, injured, and aged workmen. American manufacturers who traveled abroad to learn what was being done in foreign establishments, were not slow to observe the improved efficiency of the operative in quantity and quality of output. They forthwith introduced many of those features into shops in this country with very satisfactory financial results and exploited their intro- 17* 257WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH duction by advertising their plants as “ model factories,” and the innovations as “welfare work.“ This name, an incorrect translation of the German, was taken to imply that the new features were solely for the benefit of the working people when they were at bottom a paying investment. Welfare workers soon began to be looked upon as a part of the employer's method of covering up his own shortcomings or his exploitations of the employe. In some instances the resentment naturally aroused among American employes, who objected to being considered objects of charity, killed the purpose of the installation; in others (as in the Westinghouse Air Brake Works) the name has been or is being dropped as inappropriate. The result is that while the process of improvement in factory administration has perhaps not been delayed by the welfare movement, it has gone forward through other channels as part of the regular course of management; through the agency of outside organizations, like the Young Men's Christian Association; through the demands of organized labor, through borough and city governments; and, above all, through factory legislation and enforcement.* The last ten years have seen a demand for increased efficiency and social reform calling for the introduction of many of the features referred to, especially shorter hours, better lighted, heated, and ventilated workrooms, better washrooms and toilet accommodations, and protection against occupational diseases and accidents. I do not suppose that there is a more notable example in this country of the generous adoption of the German welfare system than that in the H. J. Heinz Company in Allegheny City, reference to which has already been made. Mr. Heinz, a German, absorbed the ideas which he had seen worked out in factories in Germany and introduced such as could with advantage be adapted to his business here. This business is now a large one and the company claims that its growth from small beginnings is in no small part attributable to the efficiency developed by these features and the consequent close co-operation between employer and employe. A free circulating library is situated in the main building and frequent lectures and entertainments are given in their auditorium. There are a gymnasium, recreation rooms, and a roof garden with a conservatory which supplies flowers for window and roof boxes ; there are classes in drawing, cooking, millinery, and dressmaking, * For example, see Appendix III, p. 414, for a statement of Y. M. C. A. work for immigrants; Appendix XIII, p. 453, for brief résumé of work of outside organizations among wage-earning women; Appendix XIV, p. 454, for sanitary standards set this year for the first time by the brewery workers; and see Kelley, p. 213 of this volume for digest of the new woman’s labor law of 1913. 258College Room, Westinghouse Club East PittsburghBridgeworkers’ Gardens Ambridge Works, American Bridge Company. The low ground along the river front has been turned into garden plots, and some famous truck has been grown by employes who live on the higher ground back from river and works. More recently, the H. C. Frick Coke Company has promoted gardening in its mining towns. In 1913 it reported 6,296 cultivated plots, being “91 per cent of the total number that could have been planted.” The estimated value of the crop of each vegetable garden was $27.60—or a total of $173,140 in foodstuffs for household useINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT and when a new need of this kind is discovered it is cordially met. Gatherings bring all members of the organization into close touch.* But notwithstanding the existence of this object lesson for forty years in the heart of Pittsburgh, 1 found that it had been very little imitated in the District. This was largely because the Heinz employes are mostly women, while the predominating industry has been that of iron and steel, which requires buildings, machinery, and operatives of so different a type that the lack of resemblance of the work has precluded comparison of conditions. Moreover, so preponderating has been the influence of the steel industry! that the conditions that have prevailed in its plants have tended to retard sanitary improvements and advances in other lines in the District. Among other plants employing women! the Armstrong Cork Company had a supervisor whose duty it was to see that their needs were met. At the Rauh clothing factory, where Messrs. Rauh themselves took a personal interest in the treatment of employes, men and women were separated in their work. This was also the case at Jenkinson’s stogy factory. McCreery's department store was lending tuition to employes who desired to take salesmanship courses in a correspondence school. These students were invariably advanced in the organization. Classes in sewing, dressmaking, and millinery also were held in the building, and lectures on business methods and thrift were frequently given by the manager and others whom he invited for the purpose.§ * Members of the Heinz family are erecting a spacious social building to take the place of the neighborhood house which has long been maintained near the Allegheny canneries (Covode House). It is for the service of the people of the District. f In addition to safety and sanitary reform, playgrounds in mill neighborhoods, visiting nurses in a few of the mill towns and resident household demonstrators in two or three of the mining communities in the coke region are today manifestations of a new order in the master industry itself. % In its lunch rooms and rest rooms, its kitchen where tea and coffee are served free of charge and odorless cooking is permitted; its fortnight vacation with pay, its sick benefits, pensions, and medical service, the Central District Telephone Company has adopted many of the welfare features in which the Heinz plant led; but in common with the national social policy of the Bell system it has introduced a more modern note in its physical examinations, its scientific study of workroom environment, and of work processes. For example, it developed a one day of rest in seven schedule in its continuous operations years in advance of the steel companies. § The McCreery store was selected for inspection in 1910 as representing the highest standard then reached in Pittsburgh mercantile establishments. The four years succeeding have been years of rebuilding, new buildings, and enlargement in six large department stores in Pittsburgh, and social work among 259WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Mill Towns Turning to plants employing men: All around Pittsburgh are small towns which have grown up either as the result of the development of some natural product found there, or because some enterprise previously located in Pittsburgh outgrows its site, and unable to acquire adjacent property, has been compelled to move where land is cheap and where it will have plenty of opportunity to expand. Such a town, especially if composed of employes of one industrial establishment and their families, presents distinctive responsibilities from the managerial standpoint. In talking with employers some of them stated very positively that they did not feel that they had any business to interest themselves in what their employes did outside of working hours. Some employes also stated with equal positiveness that it was none of the employer's business what they did in their own time. When, however, what the employe does in his own time has a very decided effect upon what he does in his employer's time, it can not help but be the employer's business to interest himself in it, and when he does this in a proper way it is not only not resented but is welcomed by the employe. The suburban plant must be able to attract and hold a labor force nearby; and living conditions and recreational facilities are factors which help or hinder in doing so. The Westinghouse interests in Pittsburgh had notably recognized these responsibilities in their two manufacturing centers. The Electric Club in a building belonging to the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company at Wilkinsburg, is a club headquarters for the engineers of the various Westinghouse companies. It contains an assembly hall where social gatherings took place frequently and where lectures of a popular and technical character were given twice a week. Some of these latter were published in the Electric Journal, edited and managed by members of the organization. At the Westinghouse Air Brake Company's plant at Wilmerding, employes has actively but irregularly entered into the new scheme of things. Lunch and rest rooms, vacation camps, women physicians, social clubs, welfare workers, Saturday closing in summer, are features in which different stores have excelled. At the same time, the Consumers' League and labor department have with the new women’s law which went into effect November i, 1913, a better instrument than ever before to enforce common standards of hours, comfort, and sanitation for all mercantile workers, a group which Miss Butler found to be among the most desperate sufferers from lack of public regulation. See also Appendices XII and XIX. 260MINING TOWNS OF PITTSBURGH-BUFFALO COMPANY John Etta In the Freeport district of Pennsylvania Marianna The coal mining business can not draw on a city full of workers. The mining operator must not only build his plant, but figure out how his employes are to live. Not a little of the labor trouble in the past has been due to construction of inferior houses, rented at exorbitant prices. The Pittsburgh-Buffalo Company, under the leadership of John H. Jones, himself a practical miner, has done much to change this order in starting a number of mining towns from the ground up, at the same time that they have sunk their shafts from the ground down. The advances in house construction and community service give promise of similar advances in street layout and architecture in the futurePanoramic View of Annabelle, West Virginia The latest town built by the Pittsburgh-Buffalo Company and, to their mind, the bestPanoramic View of Annabeli.e (To the right of the view shown opposite)Miner's Dwelling The rentals in these mining towns of the Pittsburgh-BufTalo Company are below anything that can be obtained for the same money in the industrial center. Brick houses rent for $1.75 a room; frame, $1.50. The majority of the houses are furnished with electric light and some with natural gas, hot and cold water and baths. Wholesale construction, and power and water supplies needed to run the mine, make good household service possible, even when the town starts in an out >f the way mountain valley School at Marianna A revolution over the early days in the mining towns of western Pennsylvania. In bath houses, schools and recreation centers, progressive operators are recognizing the social element entering into the mining operationsINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT a town which contains practically but this one industry, the company had established two buildings, one for the Young Men's Christian Association and the other for the Young Women's Christian Association, and here classes were held in stenography, typewriting, drawing, woodworking, and in elementary engineering. There were also classes in English for Italians and Hungarians and similar classes were being started in another part of the town close to the homes of these people. Aside from its humanitarian aspect, this instruction has become practically desirable in Pittsburgh owing to the large number of foreigners who do rough work often under the supervision of foremen who can not speak their language, with resulting waste, injury, and expense. * Classes in English also were held in a building owned by the Am-bridge Works of American Bridge Company, one of the subsidiaries of the United States Steel Corporation, and a gymnasium was located in the administration building of the plant. A very large acreage of low land, flooded in spring by the Ohio River, on the banks of which the works are situated, had been turned over to the families of employes as a vegetable farm, and a large number raised their year's supply of garden truck there. In the office building of the shops of the Mesta Machine Company, at West Homestead, there was a branch of the Pittsburgh Carnegie Library, to which the company supplied a large number of technical and popular magazines and trade papers for the employes, who had the privilege of taking them home. The most commodious social centers for workingmen in the District are in the three Carnegie towns adjoining the Braddock, Duquesne, and Homestead plants of the Carnegie Steel Company. Mr. Carnegie built very large and attractive buildings, each housing not only a Carnegie library, but class rooms, a billiard room, a gymnasium, and a swimming pool. These are patronized not only by the men, but by the women and children of the communities. The library is free, but for the educational and social features small fees are charged. Subsequent to my Pittsburgh visit, the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company at its new plants at Woodlawn, has gone into perhaps the most extensive company house enterprise of the District, and the Crucible Steel Company has plotted a town at Midland along town planning lines.f The model town of Vander-grift built by the Apollo Iron and Steel Company, the pioneer undertaking of this sort in the industry, was laid out on modern * See Roberts, Peter: Wage-earners of Pittsburgh. P. 33 of this volume. See also Appendix III, p. 414. f See Appendix II, p. 410. 261WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH lines, but unlike Woodlawn and Midland had no special facilities for the unskilled laborers who make up the bulk of the force. It had remained, therefore, up to 1910, for the coal industry, rather than for steel or manufacturing, to attempt a rounded community experiment, in which forethought was given to all the common factors entering into the day's work and household needs. This was Marianna, started in the open 100 miles from Pittsburgh, by the Pittsburgh-Buffalo Coal Company. It had a thousand men on the payroll at the outset. The houses are built of brick and wood and contain from four to five rooms, the larger of them having baths. They were rented at the rate of 50 cents per room per week. There was, at the time of my visit, a large store, which although not run by the company was owned by persons directly connected with it. The men, however, were not compelled to trade there and teamsters from neighboring towns might bring their wares into Marianna and solicit competitive business. A large, well appointed brick building, with billiard and pool tables and bowling alleys, an auditorium for entertainments and lectures, and a room for roller skating and dancing, formed a pleasant social center. On the first floor of this building there were also a drug store and a physician's office. The coal tipple in Marianna was when built the largest in existence and was designed on lines which in many respects—not the least of them the safety features—were original. The coal mine itself was entered from a “bath house" in which all the miners changed into their working clothes on arrival. On leaving the mine they again entered the house and took a shower bath before putting on their clean clothes. One whole floor was given up to these showers, and another floor to the clothes room. In the latter were separate baskets in which each man's clothes were packed and locked and then pulled up to the ceiling by ropes, a system copied from that in a German mine. At the base of the entrance shaft the mine was lined for a considerable distance in all directions with white brick and the ceiling was supported by iron girders. It was lighted here by electric lights so that the appearance was not unlike the subways of New York and Boston. Ventilation was supplied by fans driven by a 600 horsepower steam engine with alternate unit of smaller size for use in case of accident. Precautions to prevent accidents were taken at every point. This company was largely a family affair and owned mines and brick yards in other industrial towns, each one embodying improvements suggested through experience gained at the others. For example, John H. Jones, president of the company, himself a total abstainer, said that ex- 262INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT perience had led him to prefer a bar in the town, run on the canteen principle, to an attempt to enforce prohibition. In one case the amount of liquor consumed per person can be limited, whereas in the other beer and whiskey are brought into the homes in quantities in kegs and cases. The town was run at the start as a “borough” under the laws of Pennsylvania by various men of the Jones family, who are practical miners and know personally a large number of their employes. This adaptation of the “borough” system in launching a new community was worked out by the president who, although rather paternal in some of his methods, is broadminded enough to know that the men's wishes must be consulted. The mines are strongly unionized. Relief and Pensions The mining company which has to set up civilization on a mountain side along with its hoisting engines and ventilating fans, appreciates what it means to have efficient men in call. The manufacturer in the large employing center does not feel the need so keenly. Yet various efforts to build up community of interests with their employes are observable, based on the employer's desire to maintain a corps of men upon whom he can depend. The question presents itself to the manager as one of stability, to the workman as one of security. What is to become of my employes after their efficiency has been used up in the work of the shop is a question which the average employer has not asked himself. Much less has he come to the point of securing their willing interest and sense of partnership by assuring all who arrange to serve him for a definite term of years a year-round income or at least a pro rata payment which would enable them to tide over a period of interrupted service. Yet employers in Pittsburgh and elsewhere get just what they pay for, and a study of results obtained where high standards of management are established tends to show that the respective bargains are likely to be in essence as follows: Cheap and Insecure wages: Low Efficiency, Floating Employes; or, High and Sure wages: High Efficiency, Permanency of Service. Accident and Sickness Relief. Benefits to employes who have been injured or have become ill are in a limited sense guarantees to employes that those who are dependent upon them will be cared for in case of accident while at work. The old common law of master and servant, little modified, has been the rule in Penn- 263WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH sylvania. At one time it was customary here as elsewhere for the manager of a factory to insure himself in an employer's liability company against the danger of being sued by an injured workman, and as soon as anyone was injured this company was notified and immediately made the cheapest terms of settlement it could with the workman. Pittsburgh employers came to believe, however, that their employes got very little of the money paid to the insurance company, and there has been for some years past a tendency among the larger companies to deal with the injured person directly and during disability to give assistance based on the man's record and term of service, and his family responsibilities, apart from the question as to whether or not the company was legally responsible for the injury.* If, however, the injured person sued the company for damages he was barred out from all the automatic benefits he might otherwise have secured. Some benefit plans are supported without contributions by the men, as in the case of the relief plan of the United States Steel Corporation; some by the company and employes jointly, as the relief departments of the Westinghouse companies,! to which 80 per cent of their employes belonged, the Pittsburgh Coal Company, the Pittsburgh Railway Company; and some by employes alone, as the Standard Manufacturing Company and the Heinz Company. In 1914, the Pittsburgh Railway Company together with the Du-quesne Light Company, the Beaver Valley Traction Company, Equitable Gas Company, and other public service corporations affiliated with the Philadelphia Company, took out group insurance covering all employes in their service for one year or over. This is not only a notable departure for the Pittsburgh District in the method employed, but is described by the Equitable Life Insurance Society as, to the best of their knowledge, in point of the number of lives, the largest aggregate ever insured. The premiums are paid by the employers; and individual policies distributed to the employes, who designate the beneficiaries. Those employed two years or more are insured for an amount equal to one year’s salary, payable in the event of death in 12 monthly instalments; those employed over * For an analysis of adequacy of these payments, see Eastman, op. cit., pp. 119 if. The relief departments have tended to prevent friction and to give the employe a sense of sureness in case of accident; but until new standards were set by the relief plan of the U. S. Steel Corporation (see Eastman, Appendix VI, p. 300) had in no sense made good the lost earnings. t For the new relief plan of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, see Appendix XVII, p. 468 of this volume. 264Double Houses. Four rooms and bath. Running water, gas range. $12 a month WOODLAWN The Jones and Laughlin Steel Company is the largest local competitor of the U. S. Steel Corporation. Its plants flank both sides of the Monongahela River in Central Pittsburgh. In 1910 it built its great Aliquippa Works (steel, rod, wire, and tin) 19 miles down stream and woke up to the fact that it could not draw on a city labor force. Woodlawn is the result, its main street running up a huge culvert over a stream that broke the bluffs. Hundreds of houses have been erected by the Woodlawn Land Company (a subsidiary) in 12 colonies on hill crests separated by sharp ravines. The physical difficulties made the project in itself an engineering feat, involving macadam roads, street cars, bridges, water supply, gas. The slopes have been preserved in their natural beauty. Land was bought in great enough acreage to stave off speculation, the announced policy of the company itself being to build the town, supply homes and get out with a five per cent interest on the investment. Houses from $1,750 to $4,500 are sold 10 per cent down and per cent per monthHigh School, Woodlawn Erected by the engineering and construction staff of the Steel Company, and turned over to the borough at cost Department Store, Woodlawn Maintained by the Jones and Laughlin interests—a modern survival of the old time company store. The practice prevails throughout the mining regions, but theirs are the only company enterprises of the sort in the steel towns. Competing firms have adjoining locations at Woodlawn Municipal Building, Woodlawn The borough has a population of 5000. 30,000 is predicted for it by its promoters Meat and Fish Market, Woodlawn Sharp criticisms have been leveled at the system of deducting purchases from pay. But the public has not yet matched through collective action the organized efficiency with which the company keeps food prices down for its employesINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT one year, but less than two, for an amount equal to one-half of one year’s salary. The benefits are markedly less than the standard set by modern compensation laws, but cover all deaths, those from natural causes as well as from work-accidents. In the matter of service pensions, no less than in accident relief, leadership in Pittsburgh has gone to Mr. Carnegie who, when he retired from business, established a pension fund of $4,000,000 for the employes of his 12 constituent companies. Under its provisions any employe who had reached the age of sixty years, had been at least fifteen years continuously in the service of the company, and was incapacitated, might be pensioned. An employe under the age of sixty years who became permanently disabled from sickness or from injuries received while not on duty, might also, provided his case fulfilled all the other foregoing requirements, be placed upon the pension list. The pension allowance authorized was upon the following basis: For each year of service 1 per cent of the average regular monthly pay received for the entire term of service; thus an employe who had been thirty years in the service and had received an average of $70 per month would receive a pension allowance of 30 per cent of $70, or $21. The acceptance of a pension allowance should not debar any former employe from engaging in other business, but such person must retire or be retired from and can not re-enter the service of the company. TABLE I.—BENEFITS AND PENSIONS PAID BY CARNEGIE RELIEF FUND. I902-I9IO INCLUSIVEa Year Accident Benefits Death Benefits Pension A llowances Total 1910 .... $l7> 777-0° $92,496.25 $106,596.35 $216,869.60 1909 .... 21,722.00 84,771.00 94,052.00 200,545.00 1908 .... 20,307.70 109,023.00 81,093.00 210,423.70 1907 .... «7.545-15 130,449.00 68,769.90 216,764.05 1906 .... 15,02370 101,972.50 58,212.55 175,208.75 1905 .... 96,187 80 123,249.00 46,853.35 266,290.15 1904 .... 128,471,57 76,943.00 36,57375 241,988.32 1903 .... 106,655.37 46,824.00 27,172.80 180,652.17 1902 .... i9.7OO.9O 16,316.00 12,196.95 48,213.85 Total #443,391.19 #782,043.75 $531,520.65 #i756,95 5-59 a From Ninth Annual Report, showing operations for 1910. The American Steel and Wire Company at about the same time established a pension department for the employes of its 24 works scattered throughout the country, seven of them in the Pittsburgh District. 265WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH This department, like the Carnegie Fund, was in 1910 taken over by the United States Steel Relief and Pension Fund—devised along lines comparable to the new compensation laws now enacted in 23 states—which it preceded by ten years.* The Pittsburgh Coal Company established a pension fund to which they gave $10,000 outright, setting aside also $2,500 worth of capital stock to be paid for by the employes. In addition, for every 3 cents per week paid in by each employe the company contributed an equal amount. This fund supplied a pension of $10 per month to each employe who had served the company for ten years continuously, and who through old age, accident, or sickness was permanently unfitted to earn a living. Reymer’s Candy Company gave to faithful employes of twenty-five years’ standing a pension varying from $25 to $50 per month. The Armstrong Cork Company paid its old and faithful employes $1.00 a day for life, but reserved its decision as to who should fall into the category of old and faithful. Many of the companies interviewed had practically pensioned off some of their old hands, but expected them to do a nominal service as regularly as they were able. This method of treating employes is open to the criticism that it savors too much of charity. They feel that they are dependent upon the caprice of the management, which they can not rely upon, and are unable to look forward with pleasure to their time of retirement or to live with satisfaction under the system. Profit Sharing, Initiative and Co-operation Profit Sharing. In 1902 the United States Steel Corporation announced its policy of offering 25,000 shares of its common stock for sale to the employes of its 135 subsidiary companies at $82.50 per share, and each year since then such amounts of either preferred or common stock, or both, as employes would subscribe for, have been sold to them for about the market price. Conditions of the sale have been slightly modified from time to time in accordance with the dictates of experience, but in general terms the amounts to be purchased by employes have been limited in accordance with the salaries received by them. For instance, those receiving $250 or * Eastman, op. cit., p. 300. The most comprehensive pension system inaugurated in the Pittsburgh District since that of the Steel Corporation in 1910, is that of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company published in Appendix XVIII, p. 485. Generous as are their terms, they both induce security—to the employe in his old age, and to the employer, against a shifting working force—at expense of another social good; namely, liberty to strike or to change employment without sacrificing the accrued benefit. In this respect they make for stagnation and subservience. In many other respects, they are a notable advance.—Editor. 266Pensioners American Steel and Wire Company, Shoenberger Works, Pittsburgh, Pa. Average age when pensioned—64 yearsStockholding Employes U. S. Steel CorporationINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT less are not allowed to subscribe for more than can be secured by about 20 per cent of their salary, while those receiving $6,750 are limited to about 10 per cent. Payment, to be deducted from the wages of subscribers, can be made in monthly instalments in such amounts as are desired with minimum payments of $3.00 per share. Up to three years, as much time may be taken to pay for the stock as desired, but interest at 5 per cent per annum is charged on deferred payments. Dividends are credited in part payment. If the stock is held continuously and certificates are exhibited to the treasurer every five years with evidence that the holder has been continuously in the employ of the company and has shown a proper interest in its welfare and progress, the company will pay a bonus of $5.00 per share, and in addition a pro rata portion of the fund composed of all such bonuses which have accrued on stock returned by the employes. Employes temporarily suspended from employment by the company, as for instance through the closing down of the plant, are not deprived of the bonuses above mentioned nor will payment for stock be required during such suspension, nor will the time during it be counted as part of the three years allowed for payment. The employes, however, have always felt that there is a string tied to the five-dollar bonus payments by the requirement of evidence of a “proper interest,” and they have not taken stock as freely as they otherwise would. In Reymer’s candy factory I found a crude system of profit sharing extending to the higher officers, foremen, and women. The only other company in the District which had done anything in the direction of profit sharing was the H. K. Porter Company, and they abandoned the plan seven years earlier as they “found that the men showed no more interest in the company’s welfare than they had before.” Initiative and Co-operation. In a paper read before the National Civic Federation at its meeting on November 23, 1909, George W. Perkins, a director of the Steel Corporation, said: “If profit sharing means anything, if providing for old age means anything, if caring for those who become ill or injured while in the service means anything, it should mean the fostering of the interest of men in their work, whether that work be sweeping out the office, shoveling coal, or presiding over a great commercial company. In short it should mean real co-operation between stockholders, managers, and employes. In all the inventions and ingenuity that have been brought to bear on business affairs in the last quarter of a century nothing has been found to take the place of a man’s ability to do,—with a proper incentive behind that ability,—and no such substitute ever will be found. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance to American business interests of today and tomorrow 267WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH that every man in any given concern be so associated with that concern that he will give the best there is in him to the performance of the duties assigned to him.” Our discussion of these various social schemes affecting the working force has thus brought us to the basic problem of organizing for work. It will be possible to take up only certain phases which especially impress the observer of labor administration as it is practiced in the Pittsburgh District. Dictation is of course at the opposite pole to the co-operation preached by Mr. Perkins. Yet immigration, methods in vogue in handling gangs and machine tenders, and the anti-union policies of the large plants have combined to reduce the average Pittsburgh workman to a small cog in the scheme of industry. Bonus System. Acute labor troubles in the past led to determined efforts to import a class of tractable but inexperienced foreign labor which was subsequently trained to do the work required. The stream of immigration, thus accelerated, has become self-perpetuating, and has supplanted many of the native workers. Today the Pittsburgh managers complain of the dearth of skilled men. Although they say they would be glad to pay higher wages to a higher class of labor, so far as 1 could ascertain no concerted effort was being made to attract such a class to Pittsburgh or to develop one there. The managers seem content to make the best of the class of help which automatically presents itself. To meet the situation, however, a few machine shops had instituted a “ bonus system,” a slight modification of what is generally called the premium system of wage payment, devised to make it worth a man's while to increase his output. One of the features of this system is a planning and rate-fixing department which makes a time study of the various operations and sets the time in which at a certain definite speed of machine and feed and depth of cut of a special tool the task should be accomplished. This task system tends to destroy a workman's initiative in his work and he becomes practically a part of the machine. Undoubtedly, under the intelligent study of the trained specialists in the planning department much unnecessary labor has been eliminated, and the work has been so systematized that the workman accomplishes his tasks with greater facility and less interruption than before, while his rate of wage payment is much fairer. The material is delivered to him, 268INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT his tools are sharpened and the machine is set for him, and all he has to do is to put the work in and take it out. In this way almost any young man can be made a “machinist” in a comparatively short time. As he begins to pick up a little general knowledge about machinery, however, his curiosity becomes aroused about some of the things he sees about him and he volunteers the remark: “ I should think that you would do this this way,” which is too often met with the retort, “Never mind thinking, you are not paid to think. Do as you are told, we'll do the thinking.” This admonition, the slogan of the system, is about as modern as the dictum of a priest of the dark ages or a ukase of the Czar of Russia. As the planning department knows that the workmen have not the data from which to make intelligent comments such an answer is pertinent, but it discourages all initiative on the part of the men and the company does not get the benefit of whatever intelligence they possess. One of the effects of this system also is to discourage young men from entering technical schools. Employers having developed a system which does not require skilled operatives, are not going to pay for skill. The Carnegie Institute of Technology stated that the graduates of the craftsman classes established in the early years received no more than the ordinary workman's wage and he therefore encountered considerable difficulty in securing students, as the boys consider the time spent at school wasted. The Pittsburgh employers failed to see the advantage in hiring such men or in encouraging their training. This arrangement of work gives fair satisfaction to the men until one loses his job and then he is no better off than when he went to work, as he has gained nothing which will help him elsewhere. When hard times in the industry come, and men are laid off, they can do little more than join the bread line.* Moreover, the monotony of the routine causes these men to seek other work, and the percentage of loss of help of this type is very high. A natural consequence of this monotony is that men who find their conditions of work unattractive, are putting their children into offices to learn a business rather than a trade. Generally speaking, Pittsburgh managers tacitly acknowledged that in respect to building up their organizations they were simply opportunists and were temporizing with existing conditions. * Efficiency methods introduced in the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company and the laying off of 5,000 employes out of a total of 14,000 in the course of six months (due to the financial depression) were two factors in the strike of June, 1914, when 8,000 employes were out for a month under the lead of industrial unionists. 269WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH The Suggestion System. This losing-out of the individual in the matter of skill and volition in doing things, is only one-half the story. Every man has, or thinks he has, certain needs, and until these are met or until he is shown that they are largely imaginary he will be dissatisfied. Under the close relationship which used to exist when shops were small, the employe went directly to his employer with his grievance, they talked over the situation face to face, and more often than not dissatisfaction was removed before it reached the acute stage. Now, however, the growth of industries has materially changed conditions so that in such modern industrial plantsas those of the Pittsburgh District the employer can not possibly come into sympathetic contact with each of his employes. There was evident need for some substitute for the old relationship in order to supply a safety valve for individual grievances; for if all channels of communication are cut off, the employes naturally feel that the employer is indifferent to their needs and efficient team-work between management and employes is lost. The simplest way to bring out needs of the various individuals in a large organization and to supply a vent for grievances is through the establishment of the suggestion system. Where such a system is in use, locked boxes with a slit in the lid through which communications may be dropped, are distributed about the works, one at least being placed in each department. In order that suggestions may be written in duplicate and on the same size paper for easy filing, pads with numbered leaves in duplicate, carbon sheet, and pencil are attached to each box, the writer keeping the copy, and the original going into the box. All suggestions must be signed, no anonymous communications being given consideration. Collections are periodically made and the person whose duty it is to attend to the system tabulates the suggestions in the order received, omitting the names of the writers. The second stage in this development is the establishment of a works committee, composed properly of representatives elected by the working organization. This committee meets weekly to pass upon the suggestions. As these are submitted to the committee without the authors' names, they are considered purely on their merits. Such a committee is likely to exercise a severe censorship over the suggestions, as they wish the management to feel that any that receive their endorsement will be a credit to the organization. 270INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT A list of the suggestions, with the action which the works committee takes on each appended, is posted on bulletin boards placed adjacent to the suggestion boxes. This publicity ensures careful action by the committee, develops discussion and a public opinion on the value of each to the management. A copy of the posted list goes to a second committee, composed of foremen and superintendent, which is appointed by the management. When this committee has acted on the suggestions its decisions are also posted in the shop and the whole organization thus knows exactly what has been done with each communication. The recommendations of both committees go to the management for final action, and suitable remuneration is made to the authors of all adopted suggestions. Employes who have made the greatest number of adopted suggestions each quarter year are given an extra payment, and the foreman from whose department the greatest number of adopted suggestions originate, also gets financial recognition in order that he shall encourage rather than oppose the system. When properly installed, the suggestion system, supplemented by the committee system, is essentially an educational measure. At first an employe does not know how to observe; gradually as his vision improves, he begins to think, then to realize how little he knows, and finally to read and study. The opportunity to indulge his growing desire to improve must, however, be satisfied by giving him technical and other literature to take home. When these educational measures lead employes to start courses in a correspondence school or to attend trade schools, a very important step has been reached in the development of workmen who would otherwise be engrossed in the monotonous drudgery of a repetitive process. Later, suggestions of real value begin to come and employes are gradually inspired by an ambition to advance. The adoption of their suggestions encourages them to feel that they are important factors in the company, and a slight payment makes them understand that their services are recognized. I know of nothing to compare with these means for stimulating internal development in a shop. But the rationale must be understood by the man responsible for the installation of the system and its maintenance or it will wither and dry up. I found a suggestion system working in the plant of the American Bridge Company. The superintendent said that they were getting a great deal of benefit from it. A works' lunch room, the result of a suggestion, was then being planned. The National Tube Company, like the Bridge 271WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Company, a subsidiary of the Steel Corporation, had some time earlier established the system in their plants both at Kewanee, Illinois, and at Lorraine, Ohio, and were considering its introduction at their plant at McKeesport along lines which would be an extension of the works committee instituted as part of their safety campaign. In the H. J. Heinz Company the suggestion system was in operation throughout the plant and the manager stated that they continually received valuable suggestions, that the employes endeavored to fit themselves to make suggestions, and in this way the whole force had improved. Co-operative Committees. The workmen's committees are an important factor in the safety campaign. David S. Beyer, for several years chief safety inspector of the American Steel and Wire Company, with headquarters at Pittsburgh, has described them as follows: “Our superintendent makes out the lists of workmen's committees for several months and posts them in the mill so that the men will see them and know some time ahead that they are to serve on the committee. They (the men) like to see their names used in this way and 'load up in advance for the time when they are to begin their service.' The men, pleased of course to meet the head of the plant (when on the committee), take considerable pride and interest in the safety work and are coming to realize more fully its importance." In other words, they begin to feel that they are an integral part of the business and proceed to assume some responsibility for its welfare. Any system is at fault which causes its participants to load up and hold their suggestions for several months waiting till they get on the committee to deliver the goods. Every employe should be induced by a prompt payment to be constantly on the lookout for improvements, and the foreman whose men do not make recommendations should be admonished. Through the committee system, a company can benefit by the activity of a thousand human minds. When this system is properly installed, with its works committee elected by the men, with a proper arrangement for a monthly change of one or two members so that many employes have an opportunity to serve, and with the other committee or advisory board composed of foremen appointed by the company to serve by the year in operation, the similarity to the upper and lower houses of a legislature is 272HOUSEKEEPING CENTER An invention in tenement neighborhood work transferred to the Connells-ville coke region. Under President Thomas Lynch, the H. C. Frick Coke Company—one of the subsidiary companies of the United States Steel Corporation—is today developing a system of teaching practical housekeeping in connection with v isiting and district nursing in its mining communities in western Pennsylvania. The nurse makes her home in one of the regular houses, furnishes it at a cost which a miner’s family could stand, and by classes in cooking, sewing and housework — and even more especially by living the life—endeavors to build up household standards. The furnishing of the house at Lambert Mine, shown in this and the succeeding pictures, cost $259. The work is modeled after that of the Association of Practical Housekeeping Centers, in New York, and was taken up at the suggestion of Miss Ida M. Tarbell.Cooking Class Sewing Class Reading and Instruction Room Sleeping Room Visiting Nurses’ Headquarters Lambert Mine, H. C. Frick Coke CompanyINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT apparent, and a first step toward industrial democracy taken. In a very short time an inert body of uninterested individuals develops into a thinking, vital force working for the success of the enterprise. When we look back over the history of political government we can see the evolution which has taken place from the patriarchal and tribal relation through absolute monarchy and oligarchy to democracy. The patriarchal type of government was crude, but it served its purpose while the tribe was small and all the members knew one another. When, however, the tribe grew to be a nation the leader became separated from his people and lost that personal contact which gave him an intimate knowledge of their requirements. The evolution of industrial management has, as it were, paralleled that of political government. The small shop with its proprietor, a practical mechanic, who knows all his men, typified the patriarchal, tribal stage. This form of government in many industries gave way to the larger industrial establishment in which the employer was a stranger to his employes; his contact with them was through subordinates, jealous of their temporary power and wielding it autocratically until managers and employes became distinct classes between which there was no longer a common bond of interest. Instead of working together they pulled in opposite directions; and instead of men organized for work solely by plants or establishments, we have had the organization of employers on the one hand and of workmen's unions on the other, and the fight of the two for mastery. That is the economic history written large in the Pittsburgh District. In the dominant industry the employers, as Mr. Fitch has brought out,* are in the saddle. How far the unions are able to contest or share in that control in other occupations is brought out by Professor Commons and Mr. Leiser-son.f But in no industry in the Pittsburgh District did I find an instance of such a co-operative scheme of industrial government as that since worked out in the garment trades in New York, by which employer, employe, and the public sit on a joint board of control, * See Fitch, op. cit., pp. 139 fF. |See Commons, John R., and Leiserson, Wm. M.: Wage-earners of Pittsburgh. P. 113 of this volume. 18* 273WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH having jurisdiction in sanitation, safety, and shop conditions generally, while similar boards take up and settle grievances. V CONCLUSION Except in comparatively few plants among those visited in the Pittsburgh District could 1 discover that employers were trying to improve the condition of their employes or to elicit their cooperation with the expectation of developing a higher type of organization and in consequence a better and greater output. On the contrary, their efforts seemed to be directed primarily toward a merely mechanical increase in the quantity and quality of output; though of course, if at the same time some of the means installed for this pitrpose did indirectly improve the employe the employer was all the more pleased. In defense of this statement I can point to the conditions already described. All managers complained of the dearth of skilled labor. But this dearth was caused not only by the character of effort demanded by tonnage industries, but by the character of treatment accorded to labor generally in the District. The bonus systems with their planning departments and the repetitive character of the work were not tending to develop either skill or intelligence in the working organization. Only in fragments of the industrial area was thought given to the comfort and convenience of employes with the aim of enabling them to do more and better work. The exceptions, some of them notable, have been set down, and I will not be accused of overlooking them in saying that, taking the District as a whole in 1910, if men wanted to wash they had to do it as a rule in the cold water of the "bosh" in which the furnace tools were cooled. Clothes lockers were scarcely known in the mills; hot water, soap and towels even less so. If men wanted a drink they were obliged to get it from a pail of dirty water. No proper place was provided where they could eat their lunch, so they went generally to a saloon across the street which offered a chair to sit on and a cheery welcome. Water-closets were insanitary and loathsome. There was practically no attempt to select healthy employes nor any solicitude shown to keep them healthy. Little thought was given to prevent occupational dis- 274INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT ease. No attention was paid to tuberculosis or to alcoholism, for the development of which conditions in the shop are often largely responsible. Yet the managers complained because the men were addicted to drink, were tardy and irregular in attendance, and careless in their work. In accidents, however, the United States Steel Corporation was showing the world what it could do when finally prompted by interest; and in sanitation, since the year of my investigation, large scale improvements have been entered upon. But ten years before precedents for doing these very things were not wanting, and precedents exist today for doing many other things which would be as greatly to the corporation's interest. What has been needed has been to overcome the inertia of managers whose minds were molded under the fierce competition that in the 9o's existed between the companies that now compose the corporation. Every locality has a history in which some event, or series of events, have prominently figured and permanently left their impress. And it does not take long to discover, in reviewing the record of the Pittsburgh District for the past half century, that it is largely the history of the development of the Carnegie Steel Company, “which," as the historian states, “started in 1858 with a value of $4,800 and was sold 43 years later (1901) for nearly one hundred thousand times that sum." Such a remarkable achievement has undoubtedly had a very powerful effect upon the District. What in fact impressed me most forcibly in revisiting the field as an old-time steel man and Pittsburgh manager, was the number of old and dilapidated mills which in their day had been important plants. A little inquiry elicited the fact that these were owned largely by companies which were building new and up-to-date establishments outside of and at a considerable distance from the city limits and were allowing the old plants to actually work themselves out. This is only part of the change. In the early years each enterprise was small, the owner was a practical iron worker who selected his fellow-workmen according to their skill, and developed an organization in which all worked together under what we have called a sort of tribal and patriarchal government which produced mutual effectiveness. This early owner had little knowledge of bookkeeping and was satisfied with a fair profit on his investment. 275WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH When Mr. Carnegie entered the field he brought with him a knowledge of railroad organization and management which was of a much higher type than that of the ordinary mill owner. His natural shrewdness led him to demand that his investments pay as high a rate of interest as could be obtained. He was the first to develop cost accounting, so that he knew with a fair degree of accuracy not only what his product was costing him, but also, by keeping his eye on his competitors' improvements, what their product was costing them. He saw that by having better equipment, a greater capacity, and a more energetic organization, he could turn out more product than his competitors in the same length of time and underbid them in the open market. So he built machinery in dull times and raced it in high times, and a pack of competitors followed in full cry. It was the pursuit of this policy that set a pace in mill tonnage which has given Pittsburgh the supremacy of the world in the steel industry. But it has been at a fearful human cost. Its treatment of labor was followed by an equally domineering form of trade unionism, which was in turn vanquished in the Homestead riots and kept under thereafter by an iniquitous spy system. It fostered railroad rebates, opposition in state legislatures to the passage of laws for the amelioration of labor conditions, and support in the National Congress for a high tariff. It promoted “ gentlemen's agreements" which were only to be broken. It wore out the mills and drove the less aggressive and more conscientious managers to the verge of bankruptcy. Finally, no longer able to stand the financial strain, the unsuccessful competitors combined and bought out the aggressor at his own price and the era of combinations was started. Then, with wornout mills, each combination tried to pay dividends on the enormous capitalization which the promoters had saddled on to it in order to recompense themselves for their part in the transaction. In the effort to reduce the cost of manufacture, the new management cut down wage rates, raised the hours of labor, and in other ways developed a method of treating the employe which drove the most skilled, intelligent, and self-respecting workmen elsewhere. Their places have been filled by foreigners whose immigration was encouraged. The effect of unrestricted competition was never better demonstrated. The old efficiency 276H. J. Heinz As founder of the great canneries in Allegheny City, Mr. Heinz has not only made "fifty-seven varieties” of pickles famous, but brought in more fully than any other Pittsburgh employer the welfare system of modern Germany Arthur A. Hammerschlag Director of Carnegie Institute of Technology which in the field of applied science and applied art—and especially in that of “applied industry” —has brought a new and creative impetus into the field of technical education in AmericaCharles L. Taylor Secretary of the Carnegie Company under the Carnegie régime, chairman of the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, and Chairman of the Carnegie Relief Fund throughout its operations from 1901 to 1911. Mr. Taylor brought a life-time of practical experience in the mills, plus a decade of devotion to various philanthropic enterprises, to his work on the stockholders’ committee, which in 1912 brought in a remarkable report on labor conditions in the corporation’s mills W. B. Dickson Former first vice-president U. S. Steel Corporation—who, like Schwab, Corey, Farrell, and others of the great steel executives, worked his way up from the bottom of the industry. As vice-president of the U. S. Steel Corporation, he became the foremost exponent of higher standards of labor administration; committing the American Iron and Steel Institute to a policy of one day of rest in seven, and standing out courageously against the twelve-hour day in the continuous processesINDUSTRIAL HYGIENE OF THE DISTRICT which came from Mr. Carnegie's original co-operative organization and its economic management, was lost. Since those strenuous days Pittsburgh has borne a poor reputation in the labor market. As few attractions are offered it, skilled labor does not come. Fortunately for the industry, the “good times" which followed this period of combination aided the payment of dividends and allowed the accumulation of surplus for depreciation and renewals. After awhile, when the time arrived in which it became financially possible to renovate the old mills, many of them were so far gone that it would have been necessary to rebuild and reequip them. When it was seen that the modern machinery was larger than the old, and therefore that more ground area would be needed for its installation, that the price of real estate in Pittsburgh had increased and therefore taxes would be inordinately high, and that restrictions against the smoke and ore dust and other nuisances were becoming severe, it seemed best to build out of town where conditions for manufacture would be more favorable. It has been fortunate just at this epoch that the new policies for accident prevention, ventilation, and comfort, have taken hold of the younger steel managers themselves. How far labor conditions will be bettered in the new industrial towns, inwardly as well as outwardly, will depend upon just how far these new forces in mill administration win out against the old. It will depend on just where the financial heads will be willing that the balance shall be struck between profits and the terms of work. As the development of Pittsburgh has been due largely to the steel industry, so the customs and methods of the business have in the main imposed themselves on the various other industries which have grown up in the city, the only difference being that as a great amount of ground area was not necessary for the accommodation and extension of these latter, they have not been driven out of town but have expanded upward in buildings several stories high. But in the fierce competition of the last few years these industries have emulated the example of the master industry and the most ambitious manager in each has forged ahead and, gathering around him the ablest minds and the highest skill that he could 277WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH obtain, has built up a fortune for his company little recking of results to the particular industry at large or to the community. In conclusion it should be said that there are no criticisms made in this paper which were not made to the people who showed me their plants. The spirit with which those criticisms were received leads me to feel that there is a desire to make improvements, and that the conditions which are not modern are so not on account of deliberate purpose but in some instances from a lack of physical ability to change at once the direction of the great cosmic forces which have been so long at work, and in other instances from a lack of knowledge as to how to make the change. Pittsburgh manufacturers are probably doing what they can under the conditions which environ and hobble them, but with the aid of an awakened public sentiment and an ideal of enlightened management they should emerge from the serious disorder which has tapped Pittsburgh's social vitality and brutalized her labor to a recuperation full of civic and industrial virility. If they stop short in this endeavor Pittsburgh will lose her industrial supremacy altogether, for her efficiency of operation will follow the skilled labor which has already left her, and another city or another community offering higher inducements to labor will be her successor. 278KEY UNSANITARY HOUSES . CONGESTED MIDDLE CLASS HOUSES . SMALL BUT \MM LARGE.WELL BUILT HOUSES.WITH GROU MAP OF SHARPSBURG“Thf. Great Black Mill Dominates Eye and Ear” As the town sees the Moorhead iron Mill. Here the main thoroughfare, trolley, and railroad lines come to a focusSHARPSBURG: A TYPICAL WASTE OF CHILDHOOD* Elizabeth Beardsley Butler WERE a child of Sharpsburg to wander adventuring about the streets he would find his way sharply cut off to left and right by the Allegheny River and the sheer wall of hills which run parallel to it a scant quarter of a mile back from the water's edge. Starting at the bridge which marks the boundary line between Sharpsburg and Etna (the industrial suburb next nearer Pittsburgh on the west), he could journey eastward through a narrow rectangle of workaday activities. The borough is not more than a mile and a quarter in its corporate length, yet within it he would make acquaintance nevertheless with many different races and occupations. At the entrance of the town the sordid slums give way to numerous small shops, a few factories, and characterless lumber yards, all leading in gradual crescendo to Moorhead's Iron Mill and the one rather imposing office building situated opposite it at Tenth and Main streets. From this point on, the streets grow more heterogeneous. They are lined by middle-class homes, fairly prosperous looking shops, slums, a few attractive frame houses in good repair, some stone houses, once well-built but fallen upon degenerate days, and still farther eastward by factories once more. The atmosphere of the place, from the tube works at the Etna bridge to Tibby's glass-house at the upper end of the river front, is one of dingy, restless utility. * For changes in child labor and compulsory education laws subsequent to 1908see Kelley, Florence: Factory Inspection in Pittsburgh. P. i89of this volume. The fourteen-year age limit remains unchanged, but was made real in 1909 by requiring proof of age, placing the issuance of certificates in the hands of the school authorities. For three legislatures (1909, 1911, and 1913) all attempts have failed to repeal the exemption of glass-houses from the night-work prohibition for children under sixteen years of age. The description of the town is of 1908. 279WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Among confused impressions of narrow boundaries and much doing therein, the great black mill would inevitably stand out in the child's mind. It dominates eye and ear. So too it dominates the commercial life of the town, in its power to bring prosperity or ruin. It has attracted stove foundries and kindred industries and with them molds the character of the community. About it, too, have gathered the glass-houses which, as we shall see, even more than the mill itself, set meets and bounds to what life means to the young people of the community. Sharpsburg bears little trace of ever having been a residential suburb, and the few wealthy men who at one time lived here have moved away. Workmen, not business men, are now in the majority,—unskilled laborers, railroad trackmen, workers in iron and glass. According to the census of 1900, a fifth of the nearly 7,000 inhabitants of the borough were foreign born. Since then the Italians, for example, have spread from lower and upper Twelfth Street to Thirteenth Street, Benson Alley, and along Penn Street, where they join forces with the Poles. The latter have increased in number to the point of building a church and opening a parochial school for their own children. Mill men tell you that Americans, who long since refused to compete with “Hunkies” for day laborers' jobs, are proportionately fewer now among the glass blowers or puddlers; that Slavs and Italians are in demand not only as laborers but even as apprentices for the more skilled trades. There are Greeks and Jews, but these are still few in number compared with the older Irish and Germans. The iron mill, and occasionally the railroad, employ Negro workmen, but the Negro population remains practically stationary, crowding its three or four hundred souls into a few squares of the worst slum dwellings. These were the most obvious factors entering into the physical aspect and social condition of the town when, in the winter of 1908, 1 came to study it as a place where children are born and brought up. The characteristic industries which location and topography had jointly molded, the racial groups which the industries called together, the cheap, inadequate dwellings congested because of the very prosperity of the town—were all so many elements in the environment of Sharpsburg children. Cheap fuel, abundant raw material, transportation facilities by river and rail had brought large commercial returns, but the children, byproducts of the town's unthinking life,—what care was being taken of this yield? How far had the community assumed responsibility 280sharpsburg: a waste of childhood not merely for perfunctory school teaching for them but for their all-round development? THE HOMES OF CHILDREN In street after street the children, largely those of workmen's families, knew a home environment of two-story frame houses built with extreme barrenness of outline, weathered and smoke begrimed. Here and there a group of comfortably built frame houses were occupied by clerks and small business men from the city, a few by glass blowers and other skilled craftsmen, but of the 380 squares in the borough 181 contained two-story frame dwellings of the class described. A child learns early the sensation, if not the idea, of “ leveling down" which manifests itself even in the outward aspect of such houses; ambition and imagination are alike stifled by the sense of subordination to industry in home and neighborhood. The United States Census of 1900 gave the total dwellings of the borough as 1,273 and the total population as 6,842. The postal census taken in the fall of 1907 estimated that a thousand newcomers had settled there during the intervening seven years.* Clearly, the town could not grow up over its steep hills or down into the river. The newcomers, therefore, had been obliged to house themselves within an area small even for its former population. The result had been a slight increase of rear shacks, a great increase of room crowding particularly among Poles and Italians. While the middle class element had possibly held its own, the demand for laborers had filled whole streets with boarding houses of young Italian workmen. Thus, sixteen-year-old Theresa Scorzafava was found helping at home in a house with nine boarders. She had been in America eight months and had never gone to school. A father, mother, daughter, and seven boarders were living in four rooms on a third floor for which the rent was $7.00. The rooms were to be reached only by a rickety frame staircase on the outside, and water was obtainable only from a hydrant in the yard. This family lived on lower Twelfth Street, a muddy, unpaved region where children were many. The river overflowed frequently to the second floors of the group of shacks which were their homes. Close to these shacks were two rows of dwellings, newly built, of a type scorned by English * The census of 1910 gave Sharpsburg 8,153 people. 281WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH housing reformers in the 4o’s.* Each had a door front and rear. Some were divided into two houses built back to back, each with one upstairs and one downstairs room. Before each front window stood the privy vault. There was but one hydrant for an entire row. “Glass House Row” on Main Street, at the far end of the town, was of the same type. Each of its eight houses was divided into two dwellings of two rooms each, and the tenants who lived in a front house had to pass through their neighbor's living room or walk around the square to reach the vault in the rear. There were four vaults (one overfilled and out of use) and but two outside hydrants for the 18 families in this row. Waste water was thrown into the street sewers. The basements of the houses were of little use as they were flooded when the river was high. It would seem that in such districts, where a majority of the houses had no proper sewage connection and no water save from the river, imperfectly filtered, where dwellings on Main Street and on all streets south of it were affected by the floods, especial care should have been taken by the community to safeguard the health of the people. The board of health had no statistics of causes of deaths nor complete yearly records of contagious diseases. The city physician made no report to the board and although, theoretically, when medical care was needed, a poor family might send for the city physician, this was practically never done. When a case of illness came up the city physician turned the matter over to the county poor relief physician who had in every instance, my informants stated, refused to assist the borough in either medical care or poor relief. One case cited by the secretary of the board of health had occurred during a smallpox epidemic two years earlier. A boy was quarantined in a frame out-house. His mother was bedridden at home, his father worthless. The family had no means of support nor of receiving proper care, but when the case was brought to the attention of the officials, relief was flatly refused. Except in cases of smallpox, scarlet fever, and diphtheria, the majority of the people were apparently doing without a physician, and even in those diseases they called one only when the illness was acute. Houses were fumigated only in case a patient died. As the families lived usually in one or two rooms and had no other place in which to stay, this was but a mock performance. Even apart from the danger of contagion, the continu- * Engels, Frederick: The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, pp. 55» 5b- New York, John W. Lovell Co., 1887. 282Back to Back Houses Double row owned in 1908 bv Tibby Glass Company, each household section being made up of one room on each floor. No through ventilation, no sewer connection, no running water. In nearly every house lived children who had gone to work below the legal ageThe Wav to Work Some of the children had to cross here at night to get to the glass-housessharpsburg: a waste of childhood ance of lax disinfection and inadequate medical care made a high standard of health and physical vitality in the poorer districts of Sharpsburg impossible.* THE SCHOOL PLANTS There was much good by contrast in the school environment of the children, although here too there were serious abatements. Public Schools. The two public schools enrolled between 800 and 900 pupils. With the exception of 200 Italian-born children, five Poles, and three Negroes, they were American-born whites. The buildings were well planned and kept in repair; class rooms were light and the arrangements for heating, ventilation, and sanitation were good. The school board included two former school principals, a former teacher, and a physician; it was perhaps their combined influence which had led to the establishing of a high school class from which students were admitted to the second year in the Pittsburgh high school. No high school existed in the borough itself. School hours were from 9 in the morning to 3130 in the afternoon, after which period the responsibility felt by the school authorities ceased and the children were free to go their ways in the only playground they knew, the street. In the larger of the two public school buildings were cement basement playgrounds, 65 by 30 feet, one for boys and one for girls. But they were used by four grades only and during the recess period, never before or after school. The large grassy yard was kept, not for play, but as an attractive adjunct to the building. There was no gymnasium. Medical inspection was unknown. The board of health reported cases of diphtheria, scarlet fever, and smallpox in families having children in school (when the family had called in a physician), and in such cases the other children attending school from the family were kept out for thirty days. One child died of diphtheria, and although the door was placarded the principal did not know of the death until notified of the funeral. Since the city physician was one only in name and many people were doing without medical care, it was possible for contagious diseases to go unreported. The principal used his judgment in readmitting a child who had been ill with a contagious disease, or in excluding one with * Not only child labor at night, but rank sanitary conditions have been suffered by the Sharpsburg community, unchanged, to judge by two rows of double frame houses visited in the neighborhood of the river in July, 1914. Two yard hydrants are depended upon by eight houses in one row, 12 in the other. A double battery of outside privies divides the court, fronting the doorsteps of each house, so that privacy is unimaginable. The interiors of these privies were scoured—a tribute to the standards of the immigrant housekeepers; but they could not scrub out the stench. A tile drain was supposed to carry the excreta to the river’s edge, but for a week it had been clogged and the vaults were full, the seepage draining out onto the court, where children were playing and a milk wagon drove up with clanging gong.—Editor.WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH evident skin disease. Between factory inspectors and school officials, as between school and medical authorities, there was little evidence of co-operation. The principal received no reports from factories (as required by law) as to children under sixteen working. Although 50 or more children were leaving school yearly to go to work, he did not know into what shops or factories they went. Parish Schools. Of the non-public institutions, the German Lutheran school had only a small number of children and no classes beyond the sixth grade. In the two large Catholic parochial schools, German and Irish, the combined attendance was nearly as large as that of the public schools. The same laxity as in the case of the public schools prevailed with regard to keeping track of the children from year to year; the same lack of records as to the number who went to work and as to where they were working. Moreover, Polish and Italian children who were attending public school in the spring of 1907 were advised not to return in the autumn as two new church schools were in course of construction; but up to February, 1908, the new buildings were still uncompleted and a half year's school attendance was thus lost to children who needed it badly. The parochial schools charged a tuition fee of 50 cents a month, although this was sometimes remitted, and required pupils to buy their own books. The buildings were far superior to many of the Pittsburgh parochial schools, but they were not well ventilated and one of them had no washing conveniences. Playgrounds were conspicuously absent. One school had none; the other had a brick paved playground 50 by 60 feet at the side of the building, but this was used only before school and at recess. Neither school had a gymnasium nor any regular physical drill. As in the public schools, there was no medical inspection. In one school the sister in charge stated that she received no reports of contagious diseases from the board of health but simply heard of cases through children or neighbors. She said that a child with skin disease was “encouraged” to stay at home, but she evidently did not consider the matter serious. The city physician the year before had been at the school and had vaccinated such children as needed it, but neither city physician nor health officer had visited the school during the current year, which was half completed at the time of my inquiry. No eighth grade work was taught in either of the parochial schools. What corresponded to the seventh grade class had in St. Joseph's (the Irish parochial school) an average of 15 pupils; their fellows had dropped out during the fourth, fifth, or sixth grades, at the age of twelve or thirteen. St. Mary's, the German parochial school, had a commercial class, a two years' course, for which a tuition fee of $50 was charged (covering also the cost of books), and unless a child entered this class he had no opportunity 284sharpsburg: a waste of childhood to finish seventh or eighth grade work. About one-half the children left after the sixth grade. St. Mary's had shown itself progressive and quick to adopt the suggestions of Father Devlin, then diocesan supervisor of schools, for the improvement of the courses offered. It even had a small library for the use of pupils, mainly composed, however, of children's books. An attempt had been made by the head sister to secure a branch of the Pittsburgh Carnegie Library, but this had failed as books were not sent out of the city. In spite of many excellent features, the two parochial schools in Sharpsburg had the common failing that the majority of the children considered their school courses finished, no matter what grade they had reached, as soon as they had made their first communion. At the age of twelve or thirteen years, in spite of compulsory education law or truancy department, they either went to work or stayed at home. LOST CHILDREN Slack record keeping in the schools, public and parochial, slack registration outside, thus offered many a loophole for the Sharpsburg truant to escape detection. It was only for the children actually enrolled that the schools felt responsible. Of these they managed to keep a high percentage of attendance,—95 per cent in the public schools,—and the parochial schools also had few cases of prolonged and unexplained absence. But how far the children of the District were enrolled, the educational authorities did not know. The register assessor* who took the school census in the fall of 1907 reported 1,099 children between the ages of eight and fifteen; yet the total enrollment in public and parochial schools at the time was 1,654 (85 5 in the public schools, 549 in St. Mary's, and 250 in St. Joseph's),—a discrepancy of over 500 which was not accounted for by the few children who came in from Etna. The use of old lists in lieu of a house-to-house canvass made the assessor's report of little value. The schools depended upon the inclination of parents to enroll their children rather than upon any effective public compulsion. Moreover, each grade teacher's report was kept independently after her own fashion, some reporting during the first month in the fall the presence or absence of children who had been in their grades in May. This lack of uniformity in record keeping made it wellnigh impossible to keep track of the attendance of the individual child from year to year. *Act July 11, 1901, Section 4, P. L., page 661. 285WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH The following table is made up from data furnished by the public schools and St. Joseph's parochial school as to the present ages of children enrolled. Assuming as we fairly may that approximately the same number of children had entered school each year during a period of nine years, this table shows that many a child had made use of the opportunity to drop out at the bidding of impulse or of financial need. TABLE I.—AGES OF 806 CHILDREN IN SHARPSBURG SCHOOLS. 1908 Age Children Eight . Nine . Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen 136 134 112 113 89 89 72 47 14 Total 806 The striking fact shown by this table is that although there was a drop of 19 per cent in attendance at the age of fourteen, when a child might under the Pennsylvania law of 1905 legally go to work, there was a drop of 21 per cent at the age of twelve. As elsewhere in Pennsylvania truancy throve through defects both in the law and in its enforcement. The borough had but one truant officer, an elderly man, unfamiliar with foreign languages and consequently unequal to the difficult task of searching out missing foreign children. He made some use of the assessor's list, the inadequacy of which has already been pointed out, and followed up children reported absent by public or parochial schools. Beyond this, however, he made no attempt to find those who had never been enrolled or to keep track of the shifting element in the population. Although each child on the assessor's book should have been reported either as in school (with the school specified) or at work, the truant officer did not compare this registration list with the school record in order to detect children who had failed to report. The actual extent of truancy, like the actual child population of the borough, was not known. Typical cases follow which suggest truancy not attributable to demand for child laborers, but 286sharpsburg: a waste of childhood resulting from carelessness of parents and lack of vigilance among the school authorities: J. S., Clay St.; n years old. Had been in this country four years, and had never been to school. A. Z., S. Main St.; io years old, and J. Z., S. Main St.; 13 years old. Both went to St. Joseph's until 1907. Went to the public school until the Christmas vacation of that year and then left to wait for the Polish school to open. M. C., alley back of 7th St., 13 years old. Worked at home. Mother had rheumatism. Father a laborer at Moorhead's. Went to St. Joseph's school as far as grade 4, until June, 1907. F. M., 12th St.; 15 years old. Had never been to school and did not work. Once out of school most of the girls were permanently apprenticed to housework and the care of children; some of the boys were left to run the streets. Eight-year-old Theresa was first kept at home every Monday to help with the washing for the family of 11; such an intermittent apprenticeship usually soon becomes permanent. Her brother, a keen-eyed, dark-skinned little Italian, drifted away from the streets which offered no genuine play place, to a factory which had a lure for ragged lingerers outside. Any day that one chose to go during school hours to the forlorn alleys of lower Twelfth and Thirteenth streets he was sure to find the children of the neighborhood playing as best they could, —the row of 12 privy vaults in front of them, the waste land behind. Some of them went to school, of course, but there was no regularity about it. The street and the factory were more enticing and to the factory we were obliged to look in completing our roster. THE WORKING CHILDREN Data concerning 177 Sharpsburg children who were at work were secured and compiled, and upon these data the following tables are based. Table 2, on the following page, shows the ages of 41 children under fourteen years whom we found working at the time of our inquiry: 287WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH TABLE 2.—AGES OF 41 SHARPSBURG CHILDREN UNDER FOURTEEN FOUND AT WORK IN 1908 Age Children Nine . Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen i i 8 8 23 Total 41 These 41 working children were all under the minimum legal age set by the law of 1905. Along with them, in the next table, are grouped 102 fourteen- and fifteen-year-old children whom we found at work, together with 34 sixteen-year-old boys who had begun work at fourteen or before. Grouped by the ages at which they started in, they show still more strikingly the tendency toward early employment. TABLE 3.—AGES AT TIME OF BEGINNING WORK OF 177 SHARPSBURG CHILDREN UNDER SEVENTEEN FOUND AT WORK IN 1908 Age at Beginning IVork Children Six Eight . Nine . Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Unknown 1 5 2 9 16 43 66 18 17 Total 177 Of these 177 children only 18, as may be seen, had when they began work reached fourteen years, the age which was recognized in the majority of northern states throughout this period as the earliest at which work was permissible. Three years had elapsed since fourteen had been made the legal minimum working age in Pennsylvania. Seven years had elapsed since thirteen had been made the minimum. The age when children might legally go to work had never been lower than twelve, yet every fifth child had started work at eleven years or younger. 288sharpsburg: a waste of childhood TABLE 4.—STATUS OF FATHERS OF 177 SHARPSBURG CHILDREN FOUND AT WORK IN 1908 Status of Father Children Whose Fathers Were as Specified Dead 33 Deserter or incapacitated 9 Living with family and occupied: As day laborer 47 In miscellaneous work (mainly common labor) .... 47 In miscellaneous work (partly skilled labor, as that of mixer, boiler maker, etc.) 18 As glass blower 9 As puddler 3 As sales clerk 2 Not in country, or status unknown 9 Total 177 Of the 177 children, nine wholly supported their widowed mothers by what they earned. In other of the 33 cases where the father was dead, older children shared the burden of the family needs. The case of Charles South illustrates the confusion of sentiment in enforcing the law with respect to such children. Mrs. South had been three years a widow, and Charles, thirteen years of age, was the older of her two children. The year before the date when his case was investigated he had gone to work in the Pleasant Valley post office for $7.00 a month, from 7 a. m. to 8:30 p. m. daily. During the last three months he had held a position in the special delivery department of the Pittsburgh post office, working alternate weeks on day and night turn, and earning usually $25 a month. The day turn was from 7 a. m. to 3 p. m. and the night turn from 3 p. m. to 11 p. m. The neighbors spoke of this position as a fine one. When the boy first went to work the truant officer came to inquire about him, but after the mother had explained her circumstances he had made no further effort to have the child returned to school. From the list of occupations given, it is evident that in a majority of cases where the father was living he earned only a small wage, $1.60 to $2.00 a day, and that, even if steadily employed, economic pressure was a factor in leading to the attempt to add to the family income through the child's earnings. In 49 of these 19 * 289WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH cases, this pressure came in the form of from one to io younger children still in school or even below school age. WORK PLACES The list of places of employment of the 177 Sharpsburg children who had gone to work at fourteen or before stood as follows: TABLE 5.—WORK PLACE OF 177 SHARPSBURG CHILDREN FOUND AT WORK IN 1908 Work Place Children Glass factory .... Pittsburgh factory or store . Tube mill.................. Mercantile house in Sharpsburg Iron mill.................. Shovel factory .... Household (domestic servants) Railroad (water boys) Stove foundry .... Bowling alley .... Milk wagon .... 97 25 17 11 7 6 6 4 2 i i Total 177 It should be noted that there was constant interchange of child workers between Sharpsburg and Pittsburgh. Many of the glass-house boys came from the heights across the river, and on the other hand some Sharpsburg children went to the city to work. Only 28 girls are included in the table. As the demand for girls in Sharpsburg was limited to the laundry and a few stores, they sought employment in Pittsburgh in the cork and pickle factories, telephone offices, and department stores. In most cases, these suburban girls showed a tendency to irregularity of work, changing from one store to another, and from one kind of employment to another, not only as seasons varied and slack times came but with the constant hopefulness of finding work a little easier and a little better paid. Sometimes apparently the change was made from the mere desire to change. One case is illustrative of many, although it can not be considered typical: Emma B., whose age the school record gave as thirteen, was the only daughter in a German family living “down the hollow” on Kit- 290sharpsburg: a waste of childhood tanning Pike. Her father, a tinner by trade, had been out of work for six months. Her two older brothers were laborers, and her younger brother, Charley, eleven years old, had been with her in the ungraded valley school. One of the older boys was learning mechanical drawing at night school, and in order to pay for this course and at the same time help the family along the two younger children were put to work, Charley in a glass-house and Emma in a Pittsburgh department store as cash girl at $2.25 a week. After the deduction of carfare and lunch money the sum that remained was so small that Emma's mother overcame the pride which had kept her from sending her daughter to a factory, and Emma accordingly went to work in a cork factory for ten hours a day with occasional overtime, at $4.00 a week. The boys who went to the city came in most cases from the prosperous stratum of workingmen’s families, and could afford to take poorly paid positions as office or errand boys, with what was felt to be the prospect of desirable work later on. In the Metal Trades It was in the iron mill, stove foundry, shovel factory, but especially in the glass-houses that boys were to be found at work in occupations characteristic of the Pittsburgh District. Big and black as the iron mill might loom in the imagination of little Sharpsburg children, powerful factor as it was in the borough life, promoting railway traffic and stimulating trade, it was the glass-houses which were suzerain over childhood in the town. They had use for over half the children at wages in Sharpsburg. The iron industry, on the contrary, is distinctly men's work. Three or four hundred men were employed in the puddling furnaces, bar mill, plate and nail mills of the Moorhead plant, and even the score of “boy's jobs" about the place were sometimes held by men too old to work at the furnaces. The pay of these positions ranged from 90 cents to $1.50 per day. With each shift came out “pull-up" boys to open and close the furnace doors for the egress of the white-hot iron ball on its way to the squeezer, “chain-boys," and “shear-boys" to cut the cold iron into strips, work that requires more physical strength than is ordinarily possessed by a child of twelve or thirteen years. The management asserted that no boys under sixteen were employed, yet of seven whose cases we investigated, two were found to be sixteen, four fifteen and one fourteen. Two of these seven boys had gone to 291WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH work in the mill at thirteen years of age, and the others at eleven or twelve. The furnaces did not run Sundays so that the boys worked only six days a week, but these days were of twelve hours each. This plant still continued an old arrangement of shifts which bore especially hard on its child workers: 2:30 a. m. to 2:30 p. m. day turn; 2:30 p. m. to 2:30 a. m. night turn. Whichever turn a boy was on, he could not have a normal division of the day into rest and work. He either came to or went from the mill during the chill of night. Whatever the effect on a mature man, it can hardly be questioned that such an unnatural extension and arrangement of working hours is harmful to a growing boy. The work done by the boys required watchfulness and care, no skill. In itself it was not dangerous, but the mill was full of dangers—swinging cranes, flying bits of hot iron from the squeezer, and various kinds of heavy machinery which sometimes slips from the operator's control. For nine out of ten boys, moreover, their jobs meant not a first step in the line of preferment, a point nearer apprenticeship in the skilled positions of the trade, but merely one of a series of laborers' jobs, first at one mill, then at another, at approximately the same wages. At the stove foundry, on the contrary, boys were taken only as apprentices, worked altogether by day, and had an opportunity to become skilled workmen. Of the three boys who were apprenticed in the fall of 1907, one was nineteen, one sixteen, and one fourteen; all were working under the direction of their fathers. Some Sharpsburg boys found work in Hubbard's shovel factory on the Pittsburgh side of the bridge. When all the departments were running, this plant employed about 350 men and boys, operating cutting machines, boring holes for rivets, straightening handles, “ cornering shovels," and doing similar work of a sort which requires some dexterity but little skill. The distinction in this factory between men's work and boys' lay partly in the differences in the ware, and partly in the operation of light or heavy machinery. Here too the manager stated that no boys under sixteen years,* consequently noneneed- * The Pennsylvania laws of 1905 provided that a child fourteen years of age, but under sixteen, could be employed only when a certificate showing ability to read and write English, and issued by a person empowered to take oaths, was on file in the office of his employer. 292sharpsburg: a waste of childhood ing certificates, were employed. Work was slack at the time of my visit, but of the six boys seen two were certainly not over fourteen years old. Four of these had begun work in the factory at thirteen and one at twelve. One thirteen-year-old boy who said he had passed for fourteen ever since he had gone to work the year before at 75 cents a day, described the work at the punching machines: “On a three-hole machine, you get a cent a dozen, and can make as much as you're able. I made $1.30 once. Oh, all the boys get cut or burned. Once 1 had my hand cut so that I had to lay off for two weeks. And then, if you don't look out, you're likely to run the scrap into your foot." One boy who bored holes in shovel handles averaged $1.50 a day. Others on lighter work made $1.10 to $1.30. The day was of ten hours with no night work. One boy of fourteen had been at work for two years. He had started packing hammers for fi.ooa day, then went to a glass factory as “sticking-up" boy for a few months, and returned to the shovel works, where he was found painting picks—a process that delays the rusting of the metal—for $1.40 to $1.50 a day. A boy who was quick and alert could advance to the rate of wages paid unskilled men in a shorter time than he could in most of the other nearby factories. He could not, however, advance much beyond this point. The advantage of day employment was balanced by the tendency to overtime, and although the boys were in little danger of grave injury, they ran the risk of frequent cuts and blisters. Burned fingers were of daily occurrence in the department where boys heated iron for the bolt makers. Some of the work, especially the punching and boring, was too heavy for children, and it may be questioned whether all under sixteen should not be prohibited from operating a machine which may involve the loss of a finger as well as from operating one which may involve the loss of life. It is to the interest of the community that its children reach maturity whole. Personal dangers to minors were even more serious in the tube mill (Spang, Chalfant and Company) where Sharpsburg and Etna meet. When all departments were in operation, 236 men and boys were employed, boys as well as men working day turn and night turn: The 17 Sharpsburg boys whom we found working there all 293WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH had certificates, and only two were under fourteen. Three were sixteen, and the others between fourteen and sixteen. They were earning from 90 cents to $1.35 a day, and in some cases, when they could do heavy work, $1.50. The hours were: Day turn, 7 a. m. to 12 m.—12:30 to 6 p. m. (io}4 hours) Night turn, 6 p. m. to 12 p. m.—12:30 a. m. to 6 a. m. (1 \}4 hours) Here, too, the boys worked day turn and night turn alternate weeks. Boys were employed in “belling” or “putting-on” in the butt-weld process. Before the pipe left the furnace a boy placed at the furnace mouth a bell-shaped ring. As the skelp passed through the funnel of the ball, its sides were welded together into a pipe. The “running-hook” boys attached the pipe to a traveling chain which carried it from the furnace door to a table where it cooled. Boys handled only the smaller pipes, three-quarters of an inch to two inches in diameter. Other boys “tended rack”; that is, operated the lever by which the cooled pipe was let down to the pile. The boys were seldom kept steadily at one kind of work. Probably the most fatiguing job was “running hook,” for here they were hurried along unceasingly by the traveling chain. “ It's on the three-quarters inch pipe,” said a mill man, “that the boys have to run. You’d wonder that anybody could run so fast. Men aren’t agile enough to do the boys’ work well. Besides, if we put men on, we’d have to pay them laborers’ wages. We get the boys for a good bit less. We never have any shortage of boys; they like to work here.” Both belling and running hook are dangerous, as more than one mill boy had learned to his cost. An Italian boy, thirteen years old, who had never been in school, worked “on the hook” at the tube mill at the time of my stay in Sharpsburg. The summer before his arm had been so badly burned from a white-hot pipe that he had had to stop work for several days. Whoever was at fault for the accident, the child had received no pay while he was laid off. One boy had recently lost his leg while doing this kind of work, and another had had his foot crushed. Many had had fingers cut off and had received other minor injuries. “ Do you have people hurt here every day?” an employe of the mill was asked. “Every day,” he answered. “Sometimes 294sharpsburg: a waste of childhood five or six. Of course if the accident is a bad one I send for the doctor, but it's many a doctor's bill I've saved the company by tending the men." The Homestead Messenger for September 12, 1907, gave the following: Joseph Brosski, 207 Powers Alley, Sharpsburg; aged 14; tube mill; disemboweled September ii, 1907; died at Allegheny General Hospital. He was worker at one of the rolls; in some way the hook turned around, the point catching him in the abdomen. A witness said “You never can tell how these accidents happen—it is so quick that nobody knows." This was the second case of a boy's being killed “running hook" within the memory of boys then in the company's employ.* Was it an equitable contract between tube company and boy of fourteen that the latter assumed the risk of permanent injury or loss of life as a condition of earning his daily wage? The Glass-houses It has been from the glass-houses of Pennsylvania that the greatest demand has come for child workers; about them our chief interest centered in Sharpsburg. From glass blowers and glass manufacturers came the strongest opposition to the child labor bill proposed in the legislature of 1907, and through their influence was inserted the clause in the law of 1905 (which still stands) that boys under sixteen might work at night when necessary to prevent waste or destruction of material. At the extreme end of the town, occupying ground from Main Street down to the waste land at the edge of the river, was Tibby Brothers, one of the few glass bottle factories where the “pot” system instead of the “continuous tank” was still in use. There was no night shift here, but estimating an average of three men and six boys to a “shop,” the plant called for 200 hands (125 of them boys). The work was annually interrupted not only by summer heat but by floods from the river. In contrast, on high ground and with a tank system which called for day and night shifts to run it, the plant of the H. J. Heinz Glass Company was representative of the modern plant with its continuous operation. Moreover, as the same kind of bottles were made here week after week, the workmen * In 1910 the National Tube Company at McKeesport introduced a mechanical device which took the place of the “running-hook'' boys. 295WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH developed a highly specialized skill and great rapidity in manipulation, impossible in factories in which orders are taken for many varieties of ware. This factory had the reputation of being one of the best equipped in the state; about 40 men with 80 boys to help them were employed on its double shift. At Glenshaw, three miles out from Sharpsburg, a third bottle factory employed seven Sharpsburg boys. The three bottle factories at the time of this investigation had altogether about 270 boys' jobs. Some of these jobs were held by young men waiting for a chance to begin their apprenticeship, and fully half by boys from Etna or the Pittsburgh side. From a case investigation of 97 Sharpsburg boys employed in the glasshouses in 1908, and from statements made by glass blowers and officials at each plant, the data which follow were obtained.* Twenty-one of these boys were sixteen years old; but four of them had begun work in the glass-house at fourteen years, eight at thirteen, eight at twelve, one at eleven. Of the 76 boys under sixteen years of age who were at work in the glass-houses, 30 were under fourteen; and of these 30, 13 were thirteen years of age, eight were twelve, eight were eleven, one was ten. Of the 46 remaining boys (those fourteen and fifteen years of age), nearly all had begun work in the glass-houses before they had reached the age required by law. Four began at fourteen years of age, 21 at thirteen, 11 at twelve, three at ten, two at eight, while of five the age at beginning work could not be ascertained. Certificates for minors between fourteen and sixteen were on the whole carelessly kept by the employers. Their registers of boys' addresses were incomplete, sometimes even those of their names. The boys were known in a general way to the men, but if one was absent his place was immediately filled. He was not sent for unless the supply of younger brothers and loungers about the factory failed. The boys themselves felt no stability in the tenure of their positions, but had a marked tendency to drift from one glass-house to another, from glass-house to mill, back to glasshouse, then to shovel works or mill again. Some did not work more than three or four days a week, and children still in school were sent by their mothers to the glass-houses Friday nights or Saturday mornings to fill the places of absent boys. * In each case statements of parents and neighbors were compared with the school record and with other documentary proof where obtainable. 296Holding Molds I he boy at the right was twelve years old and had not been to school for two yearsBoys in a Sharpsburg Glass-house The boy in right foreground is holding molds. He opens the molds to receive the glass from the blower, and closes them to press itsharpsburg: a waste of childhood Robert B., for instance, eleven years old, had worked nearly every Friday and Saturday for a year past, and said that 20 others from his class were doing the same. None of these boys had certificates. One Polish woman from the Twelfth Street district said frankly that her boy was ten years old. She had never heard of a certificate or legal working age. She only knew that “the boss from----'s came after him.” Charlie L., thir- teen, a “sticking-up” boy, was one of the older sons in a family of nine; he had stopped school in grade one, and had worked seven years. John V., twelve years old, an Italian boy who lived in a rear house in Glass-House Row, had been working in the adjoining factory for a year. His mother had taken him to the squire to get his certificate, which the squire refused, saying, “You know that boy isn't fourteen. Now if you don't put him back in school, I'll prosecute you.” The result was that John worked without a certificate instead of with one. One manager said, “Why, you talk about these little Italian chaps; they're the brightest fellows 1 have. One came here the other day who couldn't write his name, and 1 told him he'd have to learn how or the factory inspector would turn him out. Well, if he didn't go home and practice over night, and the next morning he could write his name well enough to pass anywhere." It is easy to understand the lure of glass works, the unde-fmable magic that chains to the entrance-way groups of small boys who have failed to be taken on. The molten wax-like glass in the furnace, the skilful twist and turn which prepares the embryonic bottle for the mold, the speed with which the wax bubble is made a thing of use, the white light, red glare, and shifting shadow, the dexterity of the bare-armed men, combine to cast a spell over the gaping youngsters and to arouse a compelling belief in the efficiency and commercial success of the glass blower. The work done by the boys is monotonous but not continually hard. Six boys usually belong to each “shop," or group of three men; “cleaning-off" boys to stand by the gatherer and clean the end of the blow-pipe after the bottle has been left in the mold; a “mold" boy to open and close the molds for the blower; “sticking-up" boys to reheat the neck of the bottle before it is finished; and a “carry-in" boy to take the shaped ware to the lehr for tempering. The only heavy work is done by carry-in boys who, as a rule, are older than the others. They carry trays of bottles constantly from finisher's table to lehr. The other boys stand or sit near the 297WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH ovens. One factory which had a regular system of promotion paid its boys according to the following scale: Spare boys (doing odd jobs)...........................$0.75 a day Sticking-up boys ........................................75a day Cleaning-off boys ........................................90 a day Mold boys.................................................95 a day Carry-in boys...........................................1.35 a day This scale varied slightly in the other factories, one of which paid its cleaning-off boys only 75 cents, but its mold boys $1.12, and its carry-in boys $1.10 to $1.75 a day. The other paid its carry-in boys $1.00 to $1.25 according to the size of the ware, and its mold boys 85 cents to $1.00. It had become a custom to pay 50 cents extra every two weeks to boys who worked well and missed no time. This extra money was put into a separate envelope, so that the boys did not need to hand it over to their parents. . As the three glass-houses were union shops, the hours were essentially the same in all: Day turn: 7 a. m. to 10 a. m.; 10:15 a* m- to 12 m.; 1 p. m. to 5 p. m. Night turn: 5 p. m. to 8 p. m.; 8:15 p. m. to 11130 p. m.; 12 p. m. to 2:30 a. m. In the two continuous tank factories, each boy had day and night turn alternate weeks, and consequently each week he was obliged to make a change in his habits of eating and sleeping. Here where the average age was so much lower than in the iron mill, the requirement of day and night work was even more injurious. The change from the heat of the furnaces to the chilly night air outside was almost sure to affect constitutions which had not yet developed much physical resistance. In July, 1907, at the age of fourteen, Willie App died of rheumatism of the heart. He had worked in a Sharpsburg glass-house on alternate day and night turns for a year and a half. During his illness of several months he had continued to work intermittently until his strength utterly failed. While his death may not have been due wholly to the conditions of his work, his physician was confident that it was hastened by them. Two Sharpsburg physicians who had had experience with glass-house boys stated that all of them, when put to work early, became pale, anemic, undersized, and stunted in development. It was significant that only five of the 97 boys were glass blowers' 298sharpsburg: a waste of childhood children. The evils of this night work were intensified when boys worked double turn, as they sometimes did to earn more money. “ A good many boys hang around after day turn,” said one of the old hands, “and will do night turn too if they get the chance.” It is curious that parents should have considered the glasshouse the alternative for boys who for different reasons were unable to go to school. Headaches and dim sight sufficed to take Roy H-----away from his studies at eleven years of age, and the family council had put him into the glass-house. When his courage gave out because the other boys tormented him, he tried study again for awhile and reached grade six. Then he left altogether and for an entire year had been holding molds. He had ceased to be able to read, but his family had never had his eyes examined nor done anything except put him to work. Ralph and Louis Carracotta were two slight oval-faced Italian boys, thirteen and fourteen years of age, who had been working as “stick-ing-up” boys for two years. Both were feeble-minded. Their father was a laborer of rather low grade, and a third »child in the family was also defective. The parents believed that as the boys were unable to learn anything in school they must choose the glass-house. Frank S., fifteen years old, had had epilepsy since he was ten. He was working as a mold boy. At the age of thirteen the physician had ordered him to leave school, and he was immediately put to work. When his mother was questioned as to possible danger to the boy if he should have seizures while at work, she replied, “Oh, the men look after him and see that he doesn't hurt himself." Aside from the fact that small boys are demanded by the glass-houses, the most serious count against the work itself is the weekly schedule in the continuous plants. “ Is it good, do you think, for boys to have alternate day and night turn?” a manager was asked. He shrugged his shoulders, “Well, what are we going to do about it? we can’t waste the glass.” This change in hours is perhaps in part responsible for the restless, unreliable disposition of many of the glass-house boys. One must be strong to stand extremes of heat or cold; one must be both strong and mature to stand such extremes and the added strain of interrupted habits of sleep. For two months in the summer the glass-houses are shut down and this period gives a further impetus to the boys’ tendency 299WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH to drift. Some remain idle, and are more irregular in their work when they return to it, others find positions elsewhere, and the ability to do this increases their irresponsibility. One boy of seventeen had worked at intervals for five years in a glass-house. He had gone to a parochial school for awhile, but had never got beyond one of the lower grades, and at seventeen he was still cleaning-off boy at 90 cents a day. When he was not in the glass-house or loafing he drove a wagon for his uncle. “ He'll never amount to anything," the men said of him. “ He's no good." John C------was fifteen. He had first gone to the parochial school, then to the public school as far as grade two. At the age of eight he had gone to work first in one glass-house, then in another; then in a shovel factory, and again in a glass-house. “He's a hard one," the clerk said; “he's learned it all in his fifteen years." Then generalizing, “The boys work for two or three days, then loaf; then come back and work awhile. Friday night half the boys don’t go home at all; they hang around until the next morning. What becomes of them, do you say, by the time they are twenty-two or twenty-three? The workhouse. They are no good to us any more. Why, I've seen some boys led up to the factory door by their mothers, who wanted the money most likely, and as soon as their mothers had gone, out they'd go by the other door. After a few years of this they don't care anything about their homes. They’re ready to tell their people to go to hell." Beyond all this, glass-house work offers a boy slight chance for apprenticeship. In other industries the prospect of a trade is often enough to keep a boy steady and reliable. The glass bottle blowers' union allows one apprentice to 10 journeymen; but in each glass-house there are two boys for every man. Sometimes the hope of learning the trade is held out to keep boys at work. One boy had been promised the next vacancy if he would not go out on strike with the others. He was eighteen'when I talked with him, still a carry-in boy, and had been working in the glass-house nine years. He thought that he might become an apprentice during the following year; he would then be obliged to work forty-five months on half pay before he would be allowed to become a glass-blower. A young man had worked from the age of eight to twenty-six before he had been apprenticed. Two other youths, John W., twenty-one years old, and Frank W., eighteen, had worked for nine years and were still earning but 95 cents a day. 300sharpsburg: a waste of childhood Not many will work so long at boys’ wages when they might go into another sort of factory and earn men’s. When the prospect of learning the trade, the one thing which might have a steadying effect, is so slight, clearly unwholesome influences have free rein. Thus, not only the physical effect of child labor, but its deflection of the years of mental and social development are to be considered. Educational opportunities lost are far-reaching and fundamental. The state bases its educational requirements upon its own self-interest, its need that each future citizen shall be equipped as a producer of values for the community. Only the least that is necessary to so equip a citizen does the state guarantee. It requires all children between the ages of eight and fourteen to be in school, presumably because no child is equipped at an earlier age to do his share in the world’s work. Moreover, it requires all children who go to work between the ages of fourteen and sixteen to have employment certificates which shall state their ages and which are not to be issued unless they have met the educational test; that is, the ability to read and write in the English language. While it does not compel further schooling in the case of the fourteen-year-old boy who can reach this standard set by the state, in the case of the boy between fourteen and sixteen who can not, it commands extension of the training period until his sixteenth year. A native-born child of normal mentality would reach the seventh or eighth grade at fourteen years. This is a difficult attainment for a foreign-born child, whose customs and language are different. Special training may give him a chance equal to that of the native child, but in the absence of it, the foreign-born child lags far behind. Inquiry as to the grade in school reached by the 177 Sharpsburg children investigated indicated that just six had reached the eighth grade, which presumably the state considers as a reasonable education with which to start life. Forty-eight others had reached the sixth or seventh grades or their equivalents, and the rest straggled along with varying degrees of incomplete training. Nineteen had never been to school at all. Three could neither read nor write and two were just able to write their names. Not one had had industrial training of any sort. Ill-equipped and 301WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH prematurely employed, these Sharpsburg children were extravagant tools for the manufacturers in the community to be using. They could scarcely become either intelligent citizens or good workers, and they failed on yet another count. OF LEISURE HOURS The state has need of citizens, not for ten hours or twelve hours, but for twenty-four. It is in the use made of leisure hours that the community is most definitely creative, that the permanent content of its life is most enriched. By the use which a group of workers make of their leisure, may their training, equipment, and industrial life be appraised. Sharpsburg in its uneven growth has emphasized not leisure but work. After work was over for the day—or night—what did the town offer for the recreation of the young boys and girls who were contributing to its prosperity? The eight Protestant churches depended upon the Young Men's Christian Association as a social center. One church had a club room of its own for purely social purposes, and all members of the club were expected to attend meetings for religious instruction. Courses in the night school of the association—reading, spelling, arithmetic, stenography, mechanical drawing—were open to pay members,* but cost extra. Non-members were admitted to the reading room, which was well stocked with periodicals, but not to other social rooms or to the gymnasium. The majority of the younger members either attended school or were employed in offices during the day. The street boys and the mill boys were not reached. Immigrants had been kept out of the association because of the prejudice of members and directors against them. A class for teaching English to Italians was, however, conducted by one of the Protestant churches. The two largest Catholic churches made some provision for the young men of their parish; one conducted a literary society in a small frame building, the other, club rooms in the basement of its school. In both cases a monthly fee was charged. Both had reading rooms and one a billiard room * The Young Men's Christian Association charged an initiation fee of $2.00 to all, and annual dues of $2.00 to juniors (boys between nine and fifteen). Intermediates (boys between fifteen and eighteen) and seniors (boys above eighteen) were charged $5.00 annual dues. 302Living Conditions, Sharpsburg Lower Eleventh and Twelfth streets. Central privy vaults used by families in both rows. Two hydrants A Glass-house Boy’s Home He was Polish, thirteen years old, two years at workRelative Values The far doorway opened into the borough office in 1908. T he main part of the building was taken up bv a wholesale liquor store As the Mill Sees the Town View from interior of mill yard, upon main streetsharpsburg: a waste of childhood and shower baths; but in neither place was there a gymnasium nor provision for wholesome class work. In the autumn of 1907 the public school had opened a free night school with elementary courses, but it was so poorly attended that after a month the attempt was given up. Thus, Sharpsburg in 1908 had no club life dissociated from religious organizations, no free night school, no public library, and no playground. “We don't need any library," said a prominent citizen, “the people all have libraries in their own homes. They wouldn't take a library if it were offered to them." The one playground, formerly used by the Young Men's Christian Association, had been leased for business purposes. “The children do not need one," it was said. “They have the streets and the side of the hill." The side of the hill was often too muddy for use, but it is true that they had the streets, and on the streets were 14 barrooms, four poolrooms, two nickelodeons, and a public skating rink. This made up the sum of the town's attractions. In one nickelodeon the performance was confined to a rather dreary succession of moving pictures, shown by a glaring light. In the other, the pictures were varied with vaudeville acts and dialogue coarse almost to the point of obscenity. The roller-skating rink afforded the one opportunity for meeting together in pleasurable activity, but to the casual observer its crowded room and close atmosphere seemed to offer stimulation to nerves already excited, rather than to give relaxation and healthful enjoyment. Child labor grows in significance as we realize that this barren life is its connotation. That physical development should be checked is bad. Far worse is the waste of a child's faculties which strips him to mental and emotional poverty. After unschooled children had been given to the use of manufacturers, and eight or ten hours of furnace flame had licked dry their creative powers, they were not even given a fair choice of spending their unoccupied hours well or ill. For the town to leave unrepaired its broken-down scheme of compulsory schooling was scarcely less destructive than for it to fail to make good to these unschooled children some of the educational opportunities which their early working age had denied them; or to fail to meet the need for trade training in ways which should be confined not to the children 303WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH who already had had a common school education, but should be thrown open to children whose school instruction had been meager and irregular, and who from unskilled boys would grow up to be unskilled men. To reach these boys there was need too of a social center beyond the influences of the streets, unassociated with vice on the one hand, and with religious instruction on the other, which should aim at physical and mental invigoration through congregate work and play. That so many boys had alternate weeks of day and night work made the problem of meeting this need more difficult of solution but not impossible. The leading officials of Sharpsburg—magistrates, members of the borough council—were well satisfied with the prosperity of the town. They saw mills and factories running, new churches being built, an increasing supply of labor. They did not feel, nor did the churches and schools feel, that the problem before Sharpsburg, as before many a community of more imposing size, was whether or not it was willing to waste its children; waste them through neglect as manifested in miserable homes, lack of sanitary and medical care, the dead-ending of its unenforced educational scheme and its dearth of free and wholesome means of enjoyment; or waste them deliberately, by requiring of its children unhealthful and often dangerous work, through prolonged and irregular hours, in order to supply the cheap labor which its industries demanded. For as we have pictured Sharpsburg—its narrow rectangle of flat land, seamed and blackened by successful industries; its alleys crowded with hastily erected, cheap, and ill-planned dwellings; its children, by-products, asides, of a life intent on more immediate returns—as we have summarized the effects of ill-fitting laws and unused opportunities, this fact of child labor stands out above all other facts. Unto this duress the community was suffering many of its little children to come—to child labor in shop and factory, child labor in mill and glass-house, to child labor terminating in injury to life or limb, or terminating in injury less easily seen but more terrible—in a thwarted and incomplete maturity. 304IV THE REVERSE SIDETHE REVERSE SIDE James Forbes UNDER the king's hearthstone are many cockroaches." So runs the old French proverb. The good people, the well-to-do, may deprecate the existence of those half outlawed elements in our American life which compose what for lack of a better name we call the “ underworld "; yet these elements endure and live on, like the king's cockroaches, under the reform administration of a city as well as under its misrule. In the underworld we have the potential forces which control and manage pool rooms, gambling houses, disorderly saloons, and brothels, which "fix" juries, corrupt policemen and officials of the city government, and which repeat at city elections, voting early and often against "reforms" of any kind. The industrial, no less than the civic life of the community is levied upon from the same quarter. The underworld preys especially upon the producing classes. It filches their earnings from the wage-earners. It recruits from them by flaunting the allurements of vice and excitement, and the apparent offer of easy money, all in marked contrast to the heavy round of factory and mill. Thus in Pittsburgh the quick riches and easy spending of the successful in this great tapping of wealth have attracted not only the anti-social, the unproductive, and the parasitic, but have caused a constant drift of the weak and the rebellious away from the mills. Moreover, large numbers of immigrants, compelled to submit during the first years to the hardest grub stakes, are housed in the very districts relin quished to the underworld. Thus we have a reverse side to the picture of the work and prosperity of the city. For not alone in splendid achievement over raw nature do we read the story of steel, and after their kind, of 307WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH the lesser industries. The harnessing of tremendous forces for mills and road beds reduced the human unit from its high state, managers and men alike becoming reckless of life itself. The toll of industrial accidents which mounted as speed grew faster and tools more huge, has shown this fact in its most brutal form. It is not surprising then that in the community outside the mills, where those subtler elements which must be relied upon to oppose frailty and wrongdoing are at stake, there has been a corresponding lack of appreciation of human values, of what social waste this undercurrent of evil involves, or of how to master it other than to keep it under. As in all our cities, this problem of social control has been left for the most part in the hands of the police. I THE POLICE, AN ORGANISM It is foreign to the purpose of this paper to trace the development of the police force as a social institution. Its work lies close to crime and prostitution and violence, to political allegiance, and to the shady practices of certain of the so-called respectable elements in the upperworld. So circumstanced, it has evolved a caste which wields an influence out of all proportion to its numbers. Its principal manifestations are common to every municipality; it has put its mark on many social and non-social usages and has built up a code and traditions of its own. Its potentialities for good or evil are past reckoning. Made up of a fairly permanent rank and file, it has in each of our cities been the medium called upon by changing administrations to carry out absolutely inconsistent policies of social control. These policies have reflected the various compromises between the laws which state and community enact in the open, and the practices which they tolerate more or less secretly; they have reflected the alternate ascendancy in political life of types as different as Roundhead and Cavalier; they have been bent to suit the exigencies of hypocrisy and cosmopolitanism, graft, business, and politics. It is not to be wondered at that the police has found difficulty in carrying out these divergent policies and that it has been subject to criti- 308THE REVERSE SIDE cism and suspicion which others have deserved; nor again, that it has deserved such criticism. The political charlatan by his extravagances, his pettiness, his general lack of manliness, has incidentally done much to crystallize qualities among the rank and file, which in many of our cities have converted the men into accessories to crime. Nor is it to be wondered at that the police body has contrived various forms of self-protection for its members, or that the men have themselves essayed at times to play the master.* Under an exceptional leader, on the other hand, and when in a reform administration they are assured a square deal, the better element asserts itself and becomes fairly efficient. The force more often, however, presents a “dead wall” against reform from without, and exhibits a certain regrettable cynicism not only toward changes in organization but also toward efforts to remove the sources of crime. The traditional duty of the police is the protection of property, and herein lies the first test of any police department. In whatever city habitual offenders with deft fingers “work” unmolested upon street or railroad cars, at circuses or fairs; with nimble cards or oily tongues in bar or hotel; tap imaginary wires from racetrack or pool room; “hoist” goods from department stores, or with jimmy and dark lantern force entrance to office, vault, or dwelling, the premise may be assumed that they work upon a business basis with the local police. In the vernacular, such operations are “percentage jobs.” The regeneration of such a police force must come first from the top. Otherwise the new recruits, though of good quality, are quickly absorbed into the “system/' It may be remembered how a former New York police commissioner, since risen to high estate, imported 2,000 “sturdy yeomanry,” irreverently styled “bushwhackers” by the unregenerate, from the crossroads and hills of his state. Fresh, clean, untainted, native born, they were to reform, reinvigorate a police debauched by metropolitan vices. Unfortunately the keen hucksters of the crossroads * It should be stated that the various benefit societies which are features of the average police organization, and which are often criticized as regrettable adjuncts of the system, furnish a measure of protection to their members at once against the intolerable abuse imposed by scheming politicians and the galling methods of bureaucrats posing as “reformers.” 309WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH soon demonstrated that while Irishmen and Germans might develop greed, they themselves were possessed of insatiability and of superior cunning besides. Had the department continued to have at its head men of high ideals, the result might have been different. Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Force The observance of outward decency has always been favored in Pittsburgh and has been brought about in a measure through the influence of the strong church element in this Scotch-Irish community. For example, as perhaps in no other American city, Sunday observance laws have long been enforced on saloons and hotels. But beneath this outward observance the powers that prey early found in Pittsburgh a valuable mine, to be worked more especially by those whose weapons were of cunning rather than of violence. How many “good things” were “pulled off” in the old days, how many “suckers” were “trimmed,” how many thousands of souls ruined, they alone knew. Then it was that the brothels paid large tribute; that a convention was sufficient excuse for the flocking to the city of numbers of professional criminals; that gamblers flourished; that Pittsburgh was headquarters of swindlers who exercised all the known devices for robbing workingmen. The deep-seated cravings of the people for honesty were slow to gather headway against the various factions of the Republican machine, and the police force was without other tenure of office than that assured by subservience to the faction temporarily in power. The successful non-partisan revolt of 1905 finally brought to the front men of a new type as heads not only of the police, but of the other city departments, under the leadership of an independent mayor; and in July, 1907, for the first time a stringent municipal civil service law was adopted.* Directors, superintendents, and chiefs of bureaus knew what was expected of them and the police department under new leadership made decided strides toward efficiency and self-respect. The Pittsburgh police force constitutes one of the bureaus of the city department of public safety. I n 1907-08 it had on its roster something less than a thousand men, and its organization did not differ materially * The character of the municipal Civil Service Commission under succeeding administrations has militated against the effectiveness of this law. 3IOTHE REVERSE SIDE from that existing in cities of equal size.* The pay of the higher officers was less than that received in New York and Chicago for similar service, and less than men with equal responsibilities would receive in business in Pittsburgh. The pay of $3.00 per day for patrolmen was less than the rates paid organized labor in the skilled trades in Pittsburgh, but above the average for the larger body of semi-skilled men in the mills. The civil service law of 1907 gave to the new administration,! along with the good men, a heritage of men worthless and incompetent save under discipline. A number of the most incapable were eliminated and the remainder felt in general that they could trust the administration to do the fair thing by them. Another important step was taken when, under the reform administration, the detective bureau, which hitherto had been independent of the superintendent of police, was brought directly under his control. Some of the plain clothes officers were good men from the thief-taker's standpoint; they knew a “gun" when they saw one and would bring him in; but the significance of the change was illustrated when Mayor Guthrie had to discharge his chief of detectives because he could not or would not get evidence against a Sixth Avenue establishment of common notoriety. Operating in the same territory with the municipal police are county detectives under the direction of the district attorney's office, the sheriffs deputies, various private guards and detective forces in the pay of the railroad companies and manufacturing corporations, and constables attached to the various aldermen's courts. Moreover, the local police authority in any city or town in Pennsyl- * In June and July, 1913, the New York Bureau of Municipal Research investigated the Pittsburgh department of public safety as part of its general commission for the City Council. Its report on the bureau of police is a 110-page document, dealing exhaustively with the work from the administrative standpoint. To overcome the disorganization and inefficiency disclosed, it recommended the establishment of an adequate course of training for recruits and the training of the present members of the force, reorganization of the detective bureau, the installation of complaint, record and filing division, a complete reorganization of the system of records, introducing concise daily reports and a centralization of control in the office of the director. The creation of a civilian aide to the director, a night court for women, the elimination of children from the magistrate’s courts and the radical reform of the latter, a study of arrests for inebriety, of discharged cases, and of police station lodgings were other recommendations. A number of ordinances were passed by Councils in line with the report. A civilian aide appointed by the new administration in coming to office in 1914, the detective bureau changed into a “secret service,” and the Emerson Company engaged to install changes. To date (July, 1914) a general rehabilitation of training, administration, and service, is still a matter of the future. Excerpts from the report are published in Appendix XXIV, p. 516. t The direct management of the force was placed in the hands of a man of very different makeup from a majority of his predecessors—an active, forceful Irishman, Thomas McQuaide, who kept step with the reform administration so long as it was in power and showed himself not incapable of appreciating the possibilities of the office in preventing crime. 3”WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH vania may be re-enforced in emergencies by state police,* and this in turn by the militia. The state police is made up of four companies of highly trained men, mounted and organized on military lines. Their barracks are situated in strategic parts of the state, and the troopers may be found patrolling the country roads and co-operating with forest, game, or health officials. They follow up individual offenders and are on call as a body to suppress rioting and assist in preserving order during labor disturbances. It is, however, with the municipal police and with its practical control of the groups in the social order whose acts lie outside the conventions and sanctions of the times, that we are principally concerned. Repression Under Reform In Pittsburgh, under the reform régime, habitual criminals were handled in a way which met satisfactorily what we have described as the first test of a police administration. In any city the practical observer within a few hours may gauge this fact by the presence or absence of pickpockets on the streets and street cars. Not pickpockets alone but confidence men, ‘ knock-out-drop” and “hold-up” men, and other professionals understood, when the power of the Guthrie administration was at its height, that there was no buying from officials protection that protected. The amount of property saved to residents and visitors was undoubtedly great; but this saving was not to be compared in importance with the effect for good upon the rank and file of the police department, particularly upon men of the detective bureau. How strong the pressure was upon the police authorities to relax, how real the strength of the threats, cajolements, and entangling devices of the underworld, only the higher officials knew. The stopping of liquor selling in Pittsburgh brothels struck commercialized vice a blow harder than that of any number of spectacular raids, and scores were closed. “All disorderly houses off the car tracks” was the order given the police, and these were driven from the streets where trolleys passed the doors. Moreover, a large number of the male parasites of the industry, thieves themselves more often than not, and responsible for training women in theft as well as for prostitution, were driven from the city. Gambling houses and pool rooms were closed; the liquor law in general was strictly enforced; bunco games in hotels were checked. * The constabulary were called into the Pittsburgh District on strike duty at McKees Rocks in 1909, Westmoreland, 1910, and East Pittsburgh (Westinghouse), 1914. 312THE REVERSE SIDE Systematic grafting by the police was stopped. Individual members of the force might take their chances, but even to the crooked policeman or detective, however hungry for his “bit,” Pittsburgh was “no good” and “dead.” The town was closed. Such was the police situation as I found it on first coming to Pittsburgh in the summer of 1907. The more or less complete elimination of graft from the force during the period studied made it possible to set off certain problems of social control, partially stripped of the element of police corruption with which they are often confused. These problems are so intricate and human that it was felt our understanding of a modern industrial city would gain something from fresh scrutiny of the strata in which they lie embedded. Hard and fast boundaries the underworld has not, but different groups have to a degree set their stamp on the habitations of men; on the haunts where the sporting element lives by its wits; on the hang-outs where the craftsman of violence and burglary lies by or plans his daring; on the common lodging houses where the local mendicants and the “down and outs” drag out a miserable existence; on the brothels where vice is to be had for pay. II THE UNDERWORLD To mingle among the “wise people” of the town,—those spurious wise with pallid or bloated faces, drawn-down mouths and furtive eyes; those wearers of loud clothes and conspicuous jewelry,—was to hear much talk of “plungers,” “tips,” “ringers”; of “suckers trimmed,” “good things pulled off,” “easy money,” “steering,” “doping,” and the like; also more confidential talk of “fixing” and “politics,” and of the “system, ” which, in abeyance for the moment, was to come into its own again once the accursed administration* was beaten. With all this talk one would find the current setting continually toward * It should be noted that Councils remained antagonistic to reform throughout the Guthrie administration; and that the district attorney’s office during the same period was in the hands of the machine. It was a later district attorney’s staff which, in conjunction with the Voters’ League, exposed the wholesale council-manic graft throughout this period. 313WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH certain names which for the time stood in somewhat the same relation to the anti-social forces of Pittsburgh as have the Sullivans in Manhattan. Such a name was that of A--------, slight inquiry as to whose antecedents revealed the fact that he was not always “in strong” at the district attorney's office, nor a feared and controlling power. Some years before he had been so unfortunate as to be caught in running a crooked foot race and had served his sentence. His photograph and measurements were taken for the Rogue's Gallery, but photograph and negative had long since disappeared. A gambling house of his in a suburb of Pittsburgh had been closed under the reform régime, after which it was generally understood that he was convinced that a change of administration for the city was essential. Associated with A in the public eye was B-----------, also an ex-convict and said by many to be superior to him in brains and cunning. Both men had long since discarded the clumsy antisocial methods which earlier had brought them to the penitentiary. A posed as a real estate man; B operated a small factory. Pittsburgh papers in May, 1907, were full of an alleged “trimming” of an Ohio banker for a sum amounting to about $100,000. This banker charged that B, C---, and D-----inveigled him to New York where they induced him to take part in a bunco card game, of the type in which the dealer pretends to be “sore” at the syndicate and willing to manipulate the cards so that “suckers” can win large sums from his associates. Such operators are known in criminal parlance as “sure thing men,” as they are generally assured of their own subsequent immunity from arrest because the victims are disinclined to advertise their part in open court. In this case the grand jury ignored the bill charging conspiracy to defraud; it was sent back by the district attorney and a second time ignored; important witnesses for the prosecution were not heard by the jury and there were other ear-marks of a “fixed” case. Up to the date of our study no action had been taken by grand juries. A parallel to this case was the alleged swindling of a victim described as a wealthy oil operator, of a large sum by the same gang at the same game. In this affair also they escaped justice. Like the Marietta banker, who was “trimmed” in a Columbus Avenue establishment in Manhattan, the oil operator was taken to New York, which has long been recognized as the “turning joint” for similar swindles,—notably the type 3MTHE REVERSE SIDE which the New York Sun dubbed “wireless wire tapping/' For a long time the complaints of victims, either to police magistrates or to higher officials, were in vain. The master criminals in New York had affiliations that could secure safety for the out-of-town operators. It remained for District Attorney Jerome to secure the conviction of “ Larry” Summerfield and other members of his band following their longtime operations in this sphere. That no attempt was made to “turn” these “tricks” in Pittsburgh is significant. The fact that the thing was done in New York at heavy outlay for expenses, and that further division of the plunder with New York swindlers was considered necessary by the Pittsburgh conspirators, shows that they were unable to do business at the time with the Pittsburgh police. In a somewhat different category than A and B should be named “Buck” E---------, the son of a mill worker, who was himself in boyhood employed in the mills, was later “capper” for gamblers, then saloon keeper, and finally business agent of the underworld, ready to negotiate with any official or administration willing to make a deal. Prominent also among the many organizers of anti-social forces in Pittsburgh, and operating in a kindred field, may be mentioned two ex-councilmen: F-------- of the old seventh ward, known among the brothel keepers as “King of Second Avenue” or “Maxey the Fixer,” and G-------, at one time alderman of the eighth. The latter was generally recognized in the Pittsburgh tenderloin as the principal broker in a certain class of properties located in that section, as a go-between in cases when owners or managers ran foul of the law, and as usurer at high rates of interest in the not uncommon event of the negotiation of loans by their keepers. These two colleagues were indicted in 1906 for leasing properties as bawdy houses. F was finally declared guilty, fined $550 and costs, and given one day in jail. G secured a “Scotch verdict,” being declared not guilty but at the same time ordered to pay costs.— But more of them and their world later. The Camp-followers of Crime The American people have been slow to learn that it is dangerous to allow criminals of the types described to maintain a footing in any city. 315WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH It was to G's court in the eighth ward that B succeeded in having the case against him transferred when the information had been filed before another alderman; nor did the influence of the master criminals stop with a petty magistrate of the Hill District. These same men showed an influence in the county court house sufficient to block any efforts to bring them to book. It is one of the elementary propositions with the men higher up in the underworld that through their control of officials, petty or otherwise, they must be able to draw such juries as they may require, for their own ends or the ends of those they serve. Their highly organized following is often sufficient to turn the tide of local elections. One of the saloons of which A was alleged to be the owner or backer was the so-called “Band-Box/' on Grant Street. Its bar and restaurant occupied the ground floor of two small connected buildings which were formerly private dwelling houses. Upstairs behind the curtain “wise” people were reported to meet in secret, and here it was said that the fixing of criminal cases before trial was long attended to. To forward such ends the situation of the Band-Box was particularly convenient, having the court house on one side and police headquarters on the other. The history of H------, one of A's henchmen, showed the rise of many of the lesser lights in the underworld. Down and out when he landed in Pittsburgh, H first worked as porter and odd-job man about different saloons, then peddled bar fixtures for the proprietor of a notorious place on the “ Diamond,” and was finally taken up by A as a man suitable for his purposes. Multiply H's history by a thousand, and some idea may be gained of the recruiting of the anti-social forces of a community. To the great mass of such followers, honest industry has ceased. They will live by crime, or starve serving crime,—crime whose boast it is that it “beats the game”; crime sufficiently subtle, cunningly enough contrived, to prey upon human weaknesses; crime fortified by venal alliances to the point of practical immunity. In New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, or in any large city where even an embryo “system” has taken root, behind its organizers troop this army of parasites who seek only a living,—night bartenders in lawbreaking saloons, bouncers in cut-throat dives, 316THE REVERSE SIDE lookouts, doormen, dealers, and waiters. Among them also are the boosters, cappers, and steerers, who work upon percentages, today the false bell-wethers to rustics at a county fair; tomorrow the fleecers of workmen, coming from a factory, pay envelope in hand; again, the inveiglers of “marks” at hotel, train, or steamer, dealing the “big mit,” steering the sucker to the “turning joint.” Then, the riffraff of the race track,—jockeys, stable boys, bookmakers, sheetwriters, cashiers, runners, spongers, and touts. Of the pimps and procurers who carry lechery to its ultimate levels we shall speak later. All these men are patrons of liquor and vice resorts, and large numbers of prostitutes seek concubinage with them to escape from the more rigorous service of the brothel. Invaluable auxiliaries to the forces of evil, their very bread dependent upon the ability to do evil unpunished, no city seeking redemption can overlook them.* The Drift from Industry No more dramatic study could be made than that of the individuals who in an industrial district drift into this so-called sporting and criminal life. Among the hangers-on of Newell's Hotel on lower Fifth Avenue were many former mill workers. An interesting example was the patriarchal figure of a Welshman, J-----, who was all of seventy years of age. For many years a hammerman in the days when skilled mill men made big earnings, he was said to have saved sufficient to bring him in a small income. His children were in clerical callings, but when gambling had been last openly carried on in Pittsburgh, the father got employment as dealer for a crooked faro game. There was still even then something of the skilled workman’s dignity about the old man, and white-haired though he was, he looked hale and hearty beside the pallid, hollow-eyed young rascals whose companion he had so late in life become. * In setting forth the parasitic character of these elements, it is not my purpose to under-estimate the loyalties and open-handed traits to be found among certain of them. The down-and-out who may have met only indifference and the grind of existence in his own world, finds friendliness and welcome at their hands. Nor do I want to ignore the exceptional bartender or race-track man who lives a clean life. Perhaps the biggest gambler in Pittsburgh, I-, a man whose name was lumped by the camp followers in 1907 with those of A, B, and C as the fourth member of the “ Big Four,” was a man whose personal record was said to be a clear one. 317WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Another mill man was “Buster”-------, who worked for “Paddy” L----, a wellknown local bookmaker. One evening 1 chanced upon a knot of people at the Newell Hotel discussing the death of Buster, who a few days before had been brought back from Mt. Clemens, whither the sporting people had sent him as a last resort. Official diagnosis of death—tuberculosis; unofficial, “hop,” “booze,” and the usual adjuncts. A subscription was being taken up to bury the man, Paddy L----and an uncle of Buster being counted upon to make good any deficit. Buster was a Pittsburgh product. His father, a saloon keeper, had been killed in a gun play there some years before. An interesting character among the employes attached to one of the municipal bureaus was a former prize fighter whom we will call “ Doc. ” His life had been a varied one. Of German extraction, he had been born on Pittsburgh's South Side. As a boy he had been known as a “scrapper” and the reputation clung to him. His father was a mill man and Doc's first job was as helper at 80 cents a day in a hoop mill. Later he earned go cents taking scrap from the shears. Still later he became a helper at $1.10 a day, “catching on.” But he had several narrow escapes from accidents and he tired of the steady drive of mill work. He secured a job at making boxes in a bakery at $7.50 per week. Meanwhile, his fighting had begun to attract attention of small fry “sports, ” policemen, and others, and his first direct enlistment in the sporting world came when he got a job as bartender at $15 a week—more than double his old wage. This was in a saloon at Fifth Avenue and Smithfield Street, kept by an ex-detective. A few weeks later the place was closed by the sheriff, but Doc stuck closely to the sporting people and was soon at the training quarters in Sheepshead Bay, New York. He claimed to have done some prizefighting in New York, Bridgeport, and New Haven, and his knowledge of Chuck Connors, Morris-the-Handshaker, and other characters about the hop-joints of Chinatown, gave credence to these later bits of personal history. In spite of his varied career, however, he had had a good record in the city service. At the time of a smallpox epidemic in Pittsburgh, “Doc,” then a sanitary policeman, had stuck to his post in the infected quarters, nursing and caring for the sick. Such instances of the drift from industry into the small office-holding class by way of the so-called sporting world are not altogether rare. The mill worker turned prize fighter, and the ex-prize fighter turned policeman, is a sufficiently well defined type, closely affiliated with, when not actually of, the underworld. 318THE REVERSE SIDE Preying Upon Work People In an altogether different sense, this underworld drags upon the workaday life about it. The confidence gangs that fleece a banker out of $100,000 grade down to the “tin-horn” gamblers who long were familiar figures on pay days at the mills and factories in and about Pittsburgh. The operation of a “chuck-a-luck" machine or "wheel of fortune" was for many years a favorite means for separating the workman, especially the foreigner, from his pay. Worthless “prizes" were given out to keep interest alive, and clever boosters (confederates) were employed who won the more valuable awards. An operator who did not clear $50 to $60 a day with a wheel of this kind was doing poorly. After fixing the local cop, or such substitute for a policeman as the neighborhood afforded, paying his boosters and the rent for the wheel, a comfortable income remained for the operator. These wheels were usually stationed at “pays" in the smaller boroughs, where the police, even if honest, could not always give proper protection to the workingman. Such gambling devices were popular around the holidays,* when turkeys or chickens were used as prizes. This was the testimony given me before I came to Pittsburgh by an itinerant crook who had visited the district five years before: “Take a stroll on a pleasant afternoon in East Pittsburgh, Wil-merding, or Manchester, for example, when it chances to be pay day. The scene around some of the big mills resembles the grounds at a county fair on the ‘big day' (Thursday), when the fakers and grafters have everything their own way. The ‘strong joint' is the device operated most extensively and the one that 'gets the money.' " “By actual count, on one occasion I found 14 men with stands, six of them ‘working the hulls,'—the three shells and little ball, termed in England, ‘thimble-ringer,'—around the steel car works in Manchester. The police of the mill towns descend on these people every now and then and have exerted themselves to exterminate the class, bag and baggage; but it is a difficult task. Many of the factories are situated ‘out in the woods'; that is, in a wide space of open ground. The grafting fraternity * At Old Home Week in McKeesport in July, 1910, there were fully a dozen such wheels turning along the river front. Among them was at least one which made no pretense of distributing prizes other than in money. 319WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH can therefore take their stand and note the approach of the enemy with a sweep of the eye in time to make a ‘clean getaway/ ” I found their operations had become less and less frequent, not merely because of the greater efficiency of officials but because the workers, even the “Hunkies” and “Polacks,” had grown “wise” and it was necessary to reach them in more devious ways. A typical and cruel imposture practiced to a considerable extent in the Pittsburgh District, and of which foreign-born workingmen were invariably the victims, was the swindle known indifferently as the tin-box, handkerchief, or pocketbook game. This is essentially a trick of substitution. The operators were Slavs or Italians, and preyed upon men of their own race. The thief, dressed as a workingman and accompanied by one or more confederates, frequented the vicinity of railroad stations and of the mills on pay day. As a possible victim approaches, one confederate drops a pocketbook in his path. The immigrant starts to pick it up but is outdistanced in so doing by the thief, who eagerly opens the pocketbook and finds it well filled with bills. The victim asserts his right to a portion of the find, or if he is backward about doing so the other confederates mix in and advise him of his rights. The matter is hotly argued for a time, but is brought to an end by the thief who, apparently recognizing the justice of the victim's claim, or pretending fear of the confederates, or of the police, proposes an equitable division. All hands adjourn for a drink, and the thief makes an excuse to leave the party. Another argument arises, based upon a confederate's alleged belief that the thief intends to disappear with the prize. Finally the “found” pocketbook, containing apparently hundreds of dollars, is entrusted to the victim, who as a guarantee of good faith deposits his own pocket-book, pay envelope, or watch and chain, with one of the confederates. Somewhat later the victim discovers himself alone with an old pocket-book stuffed with bills which he learns were issued years before by a defunct government, the Confederate States of America. The pocketbook dropper is ready to content himself usually with the earnings of some Slavic workman who has just drawn his pay, or displayed a little money in purchasing a railroad ticket. The handkerchief and tin-box games are essentially similar in operation, but are more often the result of systematic and detailed planning. A returning immigrant, usually Italian, whose savings are concealed about his person, is induced to deposit them for “safekeeping” in a tin box, or perhaps a handkerchief, belonging to one of the band. 320THE REVERSE SIDE The Pittsburgh detectives seemed to appreciate the social significance of the type of swindle referred to, but as much could not be said for the courts, which often contented themselves with the infliction of a fine on the guilty party. It is difficult to get witnesses against this type of swindler, for oftentimes when an officer appears while the game is being played, the prospective victim will slip away as eagerly as the thieves, fearing detention and loss of time from his work. Two of the most expert swindlers in the Pittsburgh District of the class described, were a Pole, J-, and his “stall” or confederate, K-. A Pennsylvania Railroad detective, who effectively protected the Union Station, Pittsburgh, from the operations of such criminals, secured J's conviction at Scranton, where he was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment. The man had been twice arrested in Pittsburgh previous to this, but had gotten off with small fines. On one of these occasions, when arraigned in court as a suspicious person, he had not denied his record, but asserted that he had reformed and showed that he had $7,000 in bank. A woman accompanying him was a prostitute whom he was taking to Chicago to establish in business. Striking Out from the City Under the reform administration, such lesser fry, and the master criminals as well, were not allowed to work to any extent in Pittsburgh itself. But even when a town is closed, local men of this type neither starve to death nor do they abandon their criminal ways. They are simply put to it more hardly to make both ends meet. They may “dig up suckers” (inveigle persons of means) who are to be “framed up against” (introduced to) some sort of a crooked game to be pulled off in another city by out-of-town crooks or by themselves, and for which, when the trick is turned, they are to get their share, or “bit.” Again, they may extend their operations into neighboring territory, managing a fake prize fight here or a crooked foot race there, secure gambling privileges in a nearby mill town on pay day, or operate a pool room across the West Virginia line; or they may work with “gun mobs” from other cities. Take, for example, McKeesport, the largest mill town in the Pittsburgh District. This was in 1907-08 commonly reported 21* 321WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH to be a “percentage burg”; namely, a town where the local police department, for a consideration, tolerated raids by outside gun mobs on pay day at the mills. The time for the gun mob to work was strictly limited. It had to be a case of getting in to town, “fearin' 'er wide open,” and “blowin' on a rattler,” all in the same day. This to “cover” the “coppers.” Here the locally informed criminal had value to give the outsider. He sent the “dope” to the outside “guns,” and thus prepared they utilized every moment of their working time. Such a mill paid at a certain hour, for example, or the workmen had to ride on a certain car under conditions favorable for “dips” (pickpockets). Another mill had a saloon in its immediate vicinity, the proprietor of which could be “reached” to the extent of standing for “strong arm” work (hold-ups) or an occasional “peter” (use of knock-out drops). In another town a certain class of workmen was not wise to confederate money. Outside Invaders Under a reform régime, also, however well the local forces may be held in leash, we have drifting into the city a class of “take-a-chance” people, socalled because they hope by occasional and inconspicuous foray to carry off plunder which, to their way of thinking, “it's a shame to let go lyin' around loose.” Let us tell of them in words of their own cult: Detectives the country over will recognize at first glance the portrait of “Chappie Moran. ” When arrested in Pittsburgh in March, 1907, Chappie described himself as a “race-track worker”; there is a certain naive ingenuousness about an occupation so described. As a “wireless wire-tapper” Mr. Moran was well posted in all race-track vernacular; his opportunities were found also in the city crowds hurrying to the race track by car, ferry, and train. He had had a career of highly varied externals but withal, just the daily hopeless grind of a common thief. Drugs, liquor, and painted women, plus the weight of a thief s soul, had reduced him from such high criminal estate as he may have superficially assumed, and we found him here one of the “take-a-chance” people, picked up on suspicion by the Pittsburgh police “with a record, judge, as long as your arm.” Without even an opportunity to “break even on expenses,” he was obliged to “dig down” for fine money and “copper” a fine of “25 bucks”; “three hours to leave town” was the order; and 322THE REVERSE SIDE *‘bulls” (policemen) “hoisted” him “aboard the rattler,” back to New York. Another wellknown American was sure that Pittsburgh needed a change of administration, and that badly. “Big Sam” Strosnider, “salesman,” floating into town, found an unpretentious hotel handy to the railroad station. Unfortunately for Big Sam his “mug” was known to most detectives and the Pennsylvania Railroad was prejudiced against his inviting strangers into a “friendly game” in the coaches. So Sam was obliged to “ frame up the marks, ” while his partner rode the “ rattlers ” and “turned the tricks. ” But “bulls, ” “suspicious persons, ” and “hours” all came to Sam, and he also left the city in disgust and not unattended. In May of the same year, along came “Little Dan,” also known as Mr. Daniel Gross, Mr. Daniel Weber, Mr. Daniel Taud, and describing himself as a “salesman. ” But the “bulls” got him, had no hesitation in affirming that he lived by the “dip,” and out and away went Little Dan. In “York” the “interests” could “spring a guy” (secure a prisoner's release) as “easy as taking candy from a kid”; but in Pittsburgh the “bulls” declined to take chances, and the “good people” (wellknown members of the underworld) were under cover. A deplorable state of things. Messrs. James Monroe and Philip Lamont paid a social visit. These were gentlemen “on the dip” (pocket-picking), and understood admirably all the operations of “stalling,” “bumping,” “ringing a thimble,” and “getting a rock or a front” (a watch or scarf pin). Their business took them a great deal on street cars, on busy lines, especially during rush hours. They were extremely courteous, so much so as to decline to occupy seats to the exclusion of ladies, and they sought the fresher air of the crowded rear platforms in preference to that of the vitiated interior of the cars. Altogether, they were very wise gentlemen of remarkable vocabularies, and possessed decided affinities for “bulls” (plain clothes detectives). Some they found good fellows, “willing to live and let live”; others were unspeakable “gougers” who “wanted it all,” inclined finally to “double cross a guy at that.” The Pittsburgh bulls had no use for the gentlemen, and arrest, fine, and hours in turn became their portion. Once clear of the city they would probably have told you in the back room of the proper joint in the tenderloins of New York, Chicago, or St. Louis, that the Pittsburgh bulls were “hostile,” which is another way of saying “square. ” And probably both gentlemen had sufficient public spirit at the time of the next Pittsburgh city election to go back to register a protest at the polls against a police administration which was “unwilling even to let a guy break even." 323WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH National Aspects The difficulties experienced by these gentlemen showed what a change for the better had come in Pittsburgh. The country-wide front of crime which challenges an honest police administration in any city is, however, not limited to such chance comers. We have seen how the criminal element in Pittsburgh had passed beyond the stage of the individual gang to loose, elastic, but effective confederacies of interests; how it had affiliations which count for immunity; and how it struck out from the industrial center over a comparatively wide area. As the Marietta banker duped by Pittsburgh sharpers in New York learned to his cost, these more or less coherent local groups were in alliance (equally loose but equally effective) with similar ganglia in other great cities. In a more overt way, the members of the underworld of a hundred cities touch elbows through a national organization, sufficiently embracing in its membership to take a place among the fraternal societies of the country; that is, through the “American Order of Eagles.” This order was founded at Seattle in the 8o’s by John Considine, proprietor of the original “Honka-Tonk,” a place so notorious as to have given its name generally to tough dance halls and joints on the Coast. Considine was active in local politics, and saw the value of organization. In the crowd that frequented his place he found material for the first “aerie,” as the lodges are called. Soon many of the guns, fixers, joint keepers, and sporting men generally of the Coast had gotten together in the new order which began to extend itself eastward through the mining states. Considine and his brother moved to Detroit where they secured the handbook privileges on the local race tracks and became, with the added prestige of the Order of Eagles behind them, more influential figures than they had been in the west. The free masonry of their kind brought the Considines into touch with the New York Sullivans, and Timothy D., the “Big Feller,” was quick to grasp the possibilities of a national organization which would include not only “guns ” but the riffraff who live by and upon crime while ostensibly race-track followers or bartenders; also the so-called sporting element in general, together with slum politicians of all degrees and parties, the heelers and parasites of politics and a few prominent office holders as make-weights. Of recent 324THE REVERSE SIDE years, to offset in part the malodorousness of the organization, many bona fide bartenders, policemen, small saloon keepers and middlemen dependent for a living upon the liquor traffic or local political machines, have been brought into the order. In spite of this last element, the order always has been and continues to be the one example in our American national life of organized anti-social forces. A Pittsburgh police official expressed himself as tired of pulling off Eagle buttons at the Central Station before “mugging” their wearers—an act of courtesy generally extended by police departments to the fraternal orders. When a branch of the order was started in Pittsburgh in 1900, it absorbed an old local organization made up of toughs. Its aerie stood appropriately enough in the center of the city flanked on either side by brothels. In the fall of 1907 distinguished representatives of the order from New York met the Pittsburgh representatives in friendly conclave, and at a meeting in Central Turner Hall on Forbes Street the silver-tongued Grady spoke for the “Big Feller” unavoidably detained in New York. The waiting cabs lined Grant Street for several blocks, while within the Band-Box good fellowship was pledged in unstinted champagne to the joys of easy money, and to the common sentiment, “to hell with reform/'* An army of persons, free spending, free living, debauched and debauching, is at once the right hand of professional crime and the left hand of political corruption in every large city. We have seen in Pittsburgh how they can not be driven from a city overnight; how their evil operations were merely curtailed by a rigorous administration, not done away with altogether. We have seen that the floating body of crooks are quick to learn the temper of such an administration and will give that city a wide berth which sets its face against their ways. But we have caught glimpses of the inter-municipal alliances of the resident underworld, predatory, resourceful, biding its lean years. Under a clean municipal administration, Pittsburgh was no longer a wide open city, and with the merging of Allegheny City, the District as a whole was becoming hostile to professional crim- * J. M. Morin, director of the department of public safety under the succeeding administration, was given as president of the local aerie in the Pittsburgh Leader of March 6, 1910. 325WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH inals. The effect of this change on the community might indeed have been far-reaching, except that the situation was after all one of abeyance;—the “master thieves” lying low, waiting, nursing relations with certain factions in local politics; a rim of gambling hells encircling Pittsburgh; good government people here as elsewhere, failing to understand the power of professional criminal “confederation,” or to credit the prophecy among “wise”- people as to the end of reform. Ill YEGGS There is another group of offenders, to which as yet no reference has been made, distinct enough to be treated more or less by themselves in the discussion of the police problem of such an industrial city as Pittsburgh. The yeggs are national characters in the life of the underworld, covering even more territory in their wanderings and criminal activities than the professional pickpockets. Distinctly an American product,* half tramp and half criminal, they are desperate and daring safe blowers, hold-up men, and burglars. They operate generally in small communities, * The Pinkertons thus describe the yeggs: “Nine-tenths of this class are made up of so-called driftwood of humanity in this country, composed of about one-half natives, one-quarter foreign descent, and one-quarter foreign birth. Most of these are mechanics or have been railroad men, iron workers, or originally jn some trade; have lost their places of employment through labor troubles; and in stealing rides on cars, or tramping from one city to another, they have formed the acquaintance of criminals, gradually becoming criminals themselves. “A mechanic who loses his employment through a strike or other labor troubles leaves his native town for larger cities in search of employment, intending at first to find work and continue at it. But being unsuccessful he gradually drifts to lodging houses or to the cheaper class of saloons, until, his money being exhausted, he through pure desperation starts out with some other mechanic similarly situated ‘on the road/ tramping, beating his way from one city to another, begging his meals. And it is while doing this that he forms the acquaintance, in camps, of the yegg, who proceeds to take him in hand to determine what his ability consists of. If a mechanic explains that he is a machinist or has been an iron worker, especially in building construction, he is gradually introduced to other yeggmen and finally becomes a member of some yegg tribe. They may also be recruited from ordinary tramps who are possessed of exceptional personal courage and resource. The yeggs may be said to have formed themselves into a loose confederacy, since they have a strong sense of comradeship which is superior to the boundaries of the several states and is re-enforced by a vocabulary sufficiently distinct to provide the equivalent of signs and pass words made use of in the ordinary secret society." 326THE REVERSE SIDE especially on country post offices and banks; but they are to be found between times, and after they have grown old in the life, begging on the main streets of the larger cities, usually practicing certain types of imposture peculiar to themselves. Occasionally they are real cripples, having lost an arm or a leg while “ beating the freights/' but more often they simulate partial paralysis or the loss of speech and hearing. The continued presence of yeggs in considerable numbers in any large city is generally proof positive of the existence there of a well established hang-out. This is usually a saloon or furnished room house maintained by a veteran of their class who has settled down and acquired suffic ent local political influence to gain for his former comrades on the road a certain amount of security at least in carrying on their begging operations. The proprietor acts too as “fence," or go-between in disposing of postage stamps stolen from country post offices, or of other loot. In the 90's, according to Josiah Flint, Allegheny City itself had the nickname in the underworld of “The Fence," and was on a par with Toledo as a harboring place for criminals who “worked" in other cities. These were unmolested in 1907-08 by the Allegheny officials; and, in turn, did not carry on depredations there. Working the Factories It was my good fortune to secure some expert testimony as to the extent to which the manufacturing sites and industrial towns about Pittsburgh and Allegheny were to the begging yeggs of the middle states, what the shoe shop district of the New England states was to the Eastern tramp. The Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, the Union Iron Works in San Francisco, the Pullman Car Shops in Chicago, and the Westinghouse plants in East Pittsburgh, were looked upon by the “street men" of the land as the “best works in the country in which to make a pitch." The following statement was written for me by a man who was an ex-newsboy, tramp kid, thief, and street faker, and whose acquaintance with Pittsburgh conditions dated back to 1905 and before.* * Morton Ellis, the author of certain stories of criminal life published in the New York Sun. 327WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH "There was a prevailing custom in Pittsburgh among business houses, particularly in saloons, restaurants, shoe and clothing stores, etc., of giving away small advertising cards with the firm's name printed on one side, and on the other, a complete list of all the most important manufacturing concerns in and around the city for a radius of ten miles, together with the days on which they pay their employes. Visiting beggars, thieves, and street fakirs knew this custom and would provide themselves with these lists before starting to ‘pling' the district. "Since in recent years ablebodied begging had largely become a thing of the past, a long-suffering public refusing to ‘give up' to a strong man, able to work, the profession was obliged more and more to depend upon special devices. Every tramp of any note sought to ‘ double up with a boy,' and when it became difficult even for a ‘kid' ‘to produce,' the beggars were driven to another expedient. They found that the only ones who could bring in the pennies were the crippled boys. If a kid had an arm or a leg off, or was lucky enough to have any other physical deformity, he was sure to be a particularly successful mendicant. Several years ago every ‘jocker’* in the country had his eye on ‘snaring a kid with a natural bug' (a boy suffering from a real deformity). Now when a jocker has such a boy it is customary, in making a tour of the country, for the lad on their arrival at each productive town to simplify matters by first getting a permit from some one in authority to ‘ beg the burg.' Ostensibly, of course, his mission is to raise enough money to buy his ticket home to his widowed mother,—always a long distance off. This is part of the system. A permit once obtained, the rest is easy. He simply proceeds from one store, office, or residence to another. "In begging from the employes of a factory, a similar method is in vogue; the beggar who first goes to the superintendent or manager on pay day with a long pathetic tale may succeed in getting permission to go through the works; the rest is merely a matter of collecting. It isn't every mendicant, however, that is clever enough to get this permission; and not a few factories refuse to allow any one to bother their work people under any circumstances. On one occasion a jocker and kid, wellknown in yeggdom, made a complete tour of the district surrounding Pittsburgh and Allegheny and they reaped a rich harvest. The boy, although young in years, was well trained, and peculiarly fitted to successfully separate money from the pockets of the working people. ‘Chi Slater' and the ‘Star Kid' were the ‘monikers' (nicknames) of this pair. The jocker, himself a * A “jocker” is a hobo who takes with him a vagrant boy to do his running and various menial tasks, and to beg. The boy is usually made by his older male companion to submit to sexual abuse. 328THE REVERSE SIDE cripple with one leg missing, was an old timer around these parts, having worked the factories for every dollar he could get, and had returned after an absence of six months with a kid to complete the job. The boy, a fine looking, neatly dressed lad of American parentage, about sixteen years old, had the thumb of his left hand missing. Ordinarily this deformity would have excited little or no sympathy and would have resulted in small gain for a beggar out for ‘big earnings'; but previous to visiting the factories, the stump of the boy's thumb was burned with vitriol, the flesh was then permitted to become ragged and festered, and vaseline was applied and allowed to remain without further application. The mere exhibiting of this sore was enough to make any one ‘give up.' The pair then started to work the shops, and in two months they got over $500. Every penny was afterward spent on the New York Bowery for ‘slops' (liquor)." On the “Main Stem” My introduction to the yegg element in Pittsburgh occurred at nine o'clock on the first night of my stay there. It was a summer evening and the Salvation Army was holding an open air meeting at the corner of Smithfield and Diamond streets. The usual crowd was grouped about the uniformed men, street traffic was normal, and nothing of particular interest seemed afoot. I turned to pass on. As I did so two men came up Diamond Street on different sides, and began to beg among the bystanders. The first “plunge” was made by a short, clean-cut yegg, who wore a high Stetson hat, striped black and white shirt, and polka dot tie. His face was clean shaven and he had a springy walk. This fellow made a successful “speil” to a number of men, finally entering into conversation with those whom in the vernacular he set out to “slug” with argument. By a touch of humor, rather characteristic of the yegg, he described himself as an undertaker. “Not a common beggar, sir,” he reiterated (after meeting a preliminary rebuff), “I simply need carfare to Allegheny.” He gleaned perhaps 40 cents in the first ten minutes. Thinking he could be easily picked up again, I turned my attention to his comrade, a bulky man of middle age with grizzled mustache, who limped and carried a crutch. He stood outside of a clothing store, partially hidden by a show case, waiting for a likely “mark.” A few years earlier only force could probably have made such a typical yegg eschew the tall Stetson hat and 329WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH other habiliments of the caste of “John Yeggdom”; but with age had come an enforced moderation in his way of living, and he now wore a derby and permitted himself a mustache. Between the younger “shorty” and this riper “caneman,” I chose the latter as more likely to be informing if started right. After a few more plunges, “ Shorty” quit, waving a farewell to “ Sticks, ” and walked swiftly away. Sticks finally found the lights of the “main stem” too public, and as he had had fair success, started down Fourth Avenue to Wood Street to solace himself with a couple of whiskies. Cross-country “Jumps” Later, in a saloon on Diamond Street, I hailed Sticks with a yegg password. A little fencing on both sides, a “try-out” or two on “monikers” and “records,” and Sticks was ready to tell his story. It brought out some common phases of typical yegg life in its national aspects which must be grasped by any city which would counter them. Sticks was born in a country town in Ohio, where his brother still kept a saloon, and as a young man he had lived for some time in the city of Cleveland. With a touch of pride, he said that when he had traveled with the “Peter men“ or “hard-boiled“ people (safe blowers), he had been known as “Cleveland Jim.“ He claimed to have served at least one five-year “bit“ in a “factory“ (penitentiary) for “Peter“ work himself. Now that he was getting old he did “straight plunging“ (begging) only, and was known as “ Baldy Callahan. “ Removing his hat he exposed a head that was quite bald. He had just come in from Youngstown, Ohio, having picked up Shorty in the railroad yards. Both intended to quit Pittsburgh at once as they knew the town was “hostile,“ and if they had not been well “steamed up“ they would not have taken a chance at “plunging“ on the “main stem.“ Shorty, he continued, was a “dope,“ and had hurried away to find a drug store where he could get some “white stuff“ (cocaine) and “shoot” himself full enough to muster nerve to “make a train“ and go on east. Baldy, too, was bound for the Bowery, after some years of rather successful exploits. All through the southwest, he would have me believe, even in the smaller towns, a “four-bit tip“ was esteemed the proper thing to hand to a beggar, and the yeggs were making all kinds of money. Not a passenger train west of the Mississippi nor south of the Missouri but carried “high heels” and jockers, and train crews connived at their 330THE REVERSE SIDE presence.* “Hard-boiled” people, too, said Baldy, were “going good” from the zinc district right down to the city of Mexico, notwithstanding the “tapping” (hanging) of “Tea” West and his partner for “plugging” (shooting) a deputy sheriff in Arkansas. According to Baldy, it had not been Tea but another yegg whose “gatling” (gun) had made a “stiff” of the “bull.”. Tea, loyal to his code, had gone to his death without a “squeal.” So had “Denver Shine,” a Negro; but on the other hand, Baldy told of the iniquities of “Riverside Slim” (another wellknown Negro tramp), who had ceased to respect some of the obligations of his kind and had been punished by a “kangaroo” court (tramp’s court) and banished from the roads of the southwest. “Leadville Jimmy,” who with “Texas Red” had killed “Swedish Clara” in “York,” had been cornered in San Quentin prison.f When the talk, by way of reciprocity, turned to affairs in New York, Baldy was especially interested to learn of the fortunes of Mickey G-----, Tom Lee’s bartender on the Bowery, and he recalled with some enthusiasm Mickey’s former exploits,—how when on the road he was famous for recitations and improvisation songs given around the tramp camp fires in the “jungle.” That he now had a flat and a woman was a concession to domesticity which seemed to amuse Baldy immensely. He commented without bitterness upon the mushroom prosperity of “Los Slim,” “ Illinois Jimmy,” “New Orleans Ray,” “K. C. Red,” and other yeggs who had gone to “keeping place” (running saloons). The old yeggs were, to Baldy’s mind, going fast. “Harrigan,” who for years with “Billy Kid” had held down the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy and the Rock Island railroads, had been “done away with” (died); and “Old Baldy,” whom the yeggs used to term the “best known citizen of Indiana,” had also made the “big jump.” *A “high heel” is a woman companion of professional yeggs, so named from the practice of wearing high false shoes which enable her to pretend that she suffers from hip trouble. t This incident well illustrates the national ramifications of the craft. Swedish Clara was killed in a yegg rendezvous, a furnished room house at 73 Delancey Street, New York. Justice later overtook the men who emptied their revolvers into the body of this woman and then calmly walked out of the house and escaped. While undergoing sentence in the Nashville penitentiary for safe blowing, dynamite was smuggled in to Texas, and he with his companions blew up an entire corner of the prison and escaped. They were, however, tracked by blood hounds to a neighboring swamp and there he was shot down and killed. Leadville Jimmy was brought from San Quentin to New York on the old charge of murdering Swedish Clara, and was committed to Matteawan (the state institution for criminal insane). Powerful political friends in New York would have effected his release through a legal trick, had it not been for the strong stand taken by the state medical authorities who asserted that the man was a criminal degenerate. 331WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Baldy himself had been traveling in rather hard luck since leaving the southwest. The police had shooed him away from Cleveland and he had gone to Youngstown where, when a druggist refused him even a couple of “Indians” (coppers), he had knocked him out with his “sap” (crutch). He had been arrested and sentenced to $10 fine or ten days in jail, but on giving a good “con” as to his crippled condition—he affected paralysis—the judge had remitted the fine and a policeman had seen him to the railroad yards. Baldy was, of course, not lame, and used the crutch for a “stall” (pretense). He hoped for better luck in the east, claiming old acquaintanceship with “Chi” Tom Lee, famous in yeggdom as a friend of the New York Sullivans, and he did not expect to be “bothered” at the beaches. Sitting with Baldy in a Pittsburgh saloon, I could not but recognize how a chance meeting brought one at once in touch with almost every phase of the yegg world, its ups and downs as violent as its “jumps” back and forth across the continent. Today John Yegg “snuffs a drum” (cracks a safe) and “blows” into a “hang-out,” weighed down with “junk” or “flimsy” (coin or bills), able to match coins with double eagles or to throw a note on the bar with instructions to keep the crowd drunk until it is gone; tomorrow his luck changes and he may think himself lucky if he is able to “make a sit down” (beg on the sidewalk) or even to receive a “hand out.” Shorty was the type of young desperado who with youth in his favor is able to despise and to defy an oftentimes impotent local police. In due time he would in his turn degenerate in the estimation of the brotherhood into a mere “fatty,” just as Cleveland Jim, companion of the hard-boiled people in former days, had now become plain Baldy Callahan. How much evil already has been and will be done by this type of criminal can not be known, for the yegg road is long and devious and tens of thousands travel it. Pittsburgh a “Hostile Town” Four years had intervened, but it still was a topic of discussion in yeggdom how Scranton Jimmy, in the fall of 1904, emulous, no doubt, of his fellows in other places who had developed into successful saloon keepers, had “jumped” into the Smoky City and 332THE REVERSE SIDE opened a bar room in the vicinity of Diamond market; how the word was passed along the line; and how yeggs and “pan handlers” (tramp beggars) flocked into the place and celebrated with good measure the opening of a new headquarters. The history of Scranton Jimmy's place, however, was brief. During the first six weeks the police raided it twelve times; twice a week they “backed the wagon” to the saloon door and took one or more loads of prisoners to the station house. Scranton Jimmy finally gave up. Since then no similar hang-out had been established in Pittsburgh proper; and yeggs in transit like Baldy Callahan made only temporary stops. There were, however, some exceptions to this rule. In the winter of 1908,1 found a wellknown yegg, one M--, posing as a cripple, carrying a crutch, and throwing out “dockets” (printed begging appeal slips) in saloons on Smithfield Street. This man had served two years for burglary in the Western penitentiary at Allegheny City. He had been arrested a number of times in Pittsburgh and Altoona since 1904, and on at least three occasions had served thirty days in the workhouse at Clairmont. Working local Pennsylvania Railroad trains was also in his line. Only a few weeks previous to my interview he had been brought into the Pittsburgh police headquarters and had been released upon promise that he would leave the city. For a time he had a furnished room on Wylie Avenue where he lived with his high heel, who carried out an imposture with a crutch and a false shoe, handing out dockets. Another exception to the general rule was “Burly” N----whom the writer found occasionally stationed on the bridge spanning the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks from Washington Street to the Union Station approach. This fellow was a genuine cripple, or, in yegg parlance, he had a “natural leg,” having lost his limb a few years before while beating his way on freight trains through the Cumberland valley. However, according to his own statement, he had long been a “burly” (ablebodied beggar and tramp) before meeting with this accident. A native of Philadelphia and now only about twenty-five years of age, he had been on the road since boyhood, and had served time in various jails and workhouses. He was proud to claim acquaintanceship with noted yeggs whom I knew or had heard of. At one time, sick of the road, he had found work at window cleaning in Pittsburgh through the local police, but he had later obeyed the call back to trampdom and was now probably permanently settled in this 333WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH life. N found that the Pittsburgh District agreed with him, “ nobody bothered him,” he could keep “half soused” all the time, and need only remain sufficiently alert to “throw his hat ” (beg). The “ sucker ” did the rest. He was well pleased with his “earnings” on pay days at the Pressed Steel Car Works in Allegheny City. More lately, however, having in good nature taken two burlys down to “break them into a good thing,” they all grew tired of keeping one foot or arm tucked away as though injured and sought a quicker means of getting rich. Under a convenient railway bridge they “held up Hunkies” for their entire pay. The bulls got “sore” because of the “hollers” (complaints of victims). Suspicion pointed to N as sponsor for the burlys, and the Steel Car Company was as good as closed to him until “Whitey” O------could fix things up. The Fence In contrast to Pittsburgh's freedom from hang-outs, Whitey O's headquarters at 105 Grantham Street, Allegheny City, had long been a yegg rendezvous. Until 1908, the Pittsburgh police were not in a position to rout them out of the District. So long as Allegheny City existed as a separate municipality, not only were these hang-outs allowed to flourish there, but the town was also a resort for other professional thieves from all over the country and to a certain extent Pittsburgh itself furnished a convenient field for their operations. Whitey was one of the hard-boiled people who was “in right" with the Allegheny bulls, and could and would fix anything within reason for suitable compensation. His picture was in the Rogues' Gallery in Pittsburgh, and his furnished room house was a center for fake cripples like the docket-thrower, M. According to a police authority, this was a real “cripple factory" where young men brought in from other cities were “fixed up,"— furnished with crutches, and their arms or hands bandaged in order to carry out the pretense that they were bona fide workmen who had been injured in the mills. The leader of one gang, P-------by name, who had previously operated in Wheeling, West Virginia, and Buffalo, sent out members to ply their trade throughout the steel district and even on the main streets of Pittsburgh's business section. For example, a “hand-out stiff” would be 334THE REVERSE SIDE posted on the sidewalk outside the Duquesne Club to solicit alms. Along with the mendicant would be sent boosters, men who would pass in front of the supposed cripple and with some show drop a quarter into his hat. The booster was poorly dressed, and the game was that more wealthy passersby would note the coin and go him one better. Such fake cripples are closely akin to the yeggs in their begging operations. While for the most part they differ from the latter in that they do not resort to burglary and safe-blowing, being content to commit lesser offenses, they sometimes become recruits; and they are not to be considered as working only in the pursuit of their calling. Their headquarters in saloons or furnished room houses are places of rendezvous for the more desperate yeggs as well as for men of their own class. Thus Whitey O's was a sort of post office where transients called for their mail and planned their operations. It flourished unmolested until, with the consolidation of Allegheny City and Pittsburgh in 1908, Director Lang and Superintendent Mc-Quaide of Pittsburgh took summary action. Within a few weeks' time the furnished room house on Grantham Street was raided on three different occasions. O was twice fined $50 in the central police court and the third time $100, sums which he readily paid rather than go to jail. In addition to this headquarters, there were several other "sub-stations" in Allegheny City which fake cripples and yeggs used for meeting places. Six members of a gang were arrested at 206 Anderson Street, in Allegheny, and revolvers, cartridges, and steel saws were found when their quarters were searched. The belated Allegheny raids went to prove what Pittsburgh had already halfway demonstrated,—that the closing up of established yegg hang-outs by the police of an industrial city is not only a practicable measure, but will result in the virtual disappearance of these criminals from the neighborhood. On the other hand, the yegg hang-out if tolerated in any city is bound to infect it with evils. 335WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH IV BEGGARS Not only was Pittsburgh in 1907-08 “hostile" to begging yeggs, but considering the city’s size and wealth there was comparatively little street begging by semi-professionals, such as “down and outs” or lodging-house frequenters. As in other industrial cities where there is a more or less steady demand for labor in mills and factories, ablebodied begging is looked upon with disfavor. Even the cold of the winter brought no considerable increase. There was the usual number of licensed street peddlers operating as petty tradesmen, but few were in reality beggars, and very few who were unlicensed used their wares as a cover for begging. There were only a few blind street mendicants and no “black hoods,” wrinkled old women dressed in shabby black, such as go about begging in downtown office buildings in New York, or at the servants’ doors of private houses. I made no personal investigation, but was told that house to house begging by women with large families and long stories was common. There was also some begging at the doors of churches. But the people who did this were of a type that showed the need of a strong associated charities rather than of police repression. Such local parasites as existed, however, were not so vigorously dealt with as the visiting swindlers and pickpockets, who, as we have seen, upon their arrival in the city were promptly gathered into the police net and given “hours” to leave town. One place at least in the city was evidently known as a safe and presumably profitable “pitch.” This was the bridge spanning the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks from Washington Street to the Union Station approach. It was here that I first made the acquaintance of Burly N, whose story has already been given, and during the summer and fall of 1907, I observed (at different times) no less than 15 mendicants, some of them apparently yeggs. There were a few semi-professionals also to be found begging around the Diamond and in Pittsburgh’s business section, of whom the following were representative types: 336‘■Making a Pitch” Beggars outside a mill gate on pay day “ 1 hrowing His Hat” Mendicant impostor of the “John Yegg” type who flopped on Washington Street bridge above the Union DepotTwo Types of Blind Mendicants—The Beggar and the Street Musician Pittsburgh had a third type, a blind newspaper seller, who was not a mendicant at all, but an energetic tradesmanTHE REVERSE SIDE A “down and out” was observed for several weeks begging on the streets at night. The man was stoop-shouldered, hollow-eyed, and toothless, and his beard was mixed with grey. His clothes were nondescript and he wore a battered derby hat. Although it was winter, he had no overcoat. According to the man's story, he was a widower, sixty-two years of age; his wife had been dead a number of years and his two children were also deceased. His great grandfather, he claimed, had come from Germany to America and had been one of the first glass manufacturers in the country. He was a glass worker himself, he claimed, and formerly carried a card of the Amalgamated Association of Glass Workers. Latterly, he had bummed about, working for a few days or weeks from time to time in the kitchens of cheap restaurants. He slept at the Salvation Army lodging house paying io cents a night. He had been arrested a number of times for drunkenness and had served short terms in the local jail. A genuine cripple—a colored man partly paralyzed—was frequently to be seen begging on Wylie Avenue in the Hill District, apparently unmolested by the police. An Irish “widow” was found visiting the downtown office buildings. She was dressed in mourning and claimed that her husband had been a blast furnace helper for several years previous to his death. She had been begging for a few days only, she informed me, but had realized from $2.00 to $2.50 each day. A local charitable society had occasionally supplied her with coal. The story she told was that her family consisted of seven children, the oldest being fourteen years of age. Investigations made by the Pittsburgh Survey into industrial accidents showed that, in the absence of any enforced system of workingmen's compensation, many widows were undoubtedly thrown upon their own resources, and among the cases studied some took to begging, but it was usually among their own people and at church doors. Such a situation of course plays into the hands of impostors, and at the same time tends to break down the self-respect of bona fide widows. Of blind mendicants, there were perhaps a half dozen local characters who were tolerated by the police, each of whom confined his operations to a separate locality. A blind couple, a young man and woman, were occasionally to be seen promenading the streets in the financial and shopping districts. The man wore suspended from his neck a framed photograph of the two, pre- 22* 337WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH sumably taken earlier in life, and called out shrilly at short intervals, “ Buy a pencil, five cents. ” This couple formerly sold newspapers on the streets and, according to one police official, owned a farm in Ohio. No effort was made, apparently, either to warn them against begging or to learn other facts in connection with their history. Another couple, a blind girl about twenty years of age and a girl companion who acted as guide, played and sang in saloons. The guide sang and the blind girl accompanied her on a mouth organ. One Saturday night, during which this couple operated unmolested at the Union Station, they collected about $15. The blind girl was a native of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, but was living at the time in McKeesport. She had entered the school for the blind at Overbrook, and had learned chair caning and bead work, but had not had the ambition to follow these trades in the face of the easier income to be gained from street begging. Another Overbrook pupil played a flute on a street corner. The need was apparent for some system of placement and supervision, such as that carried out by the association for the blind in New England, which would neither let the adult blind drift into mendicancy, nor expect them to be able to gain a livelihood unassisted in the intense life of an industrial center.* At the corner of Wood Street and Oliver Avenue, a blind man was to be seen through the day selling newspapers. According to the writer's informant, he had been a hard working man,—a miner,—and had lost his sight in a mine explosion. He was in effect a small merchant and the accurate way he identified the different papers he handled and made his change, presented a striking contrast to the begging letters and whimpering tales of some of his boy competitors. These boys were part of the sales force employed by the publisher of a fake newsboys’ journal, perhaps the most perverting type of street imposture which operated unchecked in the city, and one which could have had no other effect than to teach the children habits of getting money by other means than that of earning it. It was no less than a school of beggary. These instances are sufficient to show the opportunity in Pittsburgh for such social police work as that which was carried on for several years by the New York Mendicancy Squad. This *The Pittsburgh Association for the Blind was organized in 1910 ‘'to prevent unnecessary blindness, to help the blind help themselves, and to ameliorate the condition of the blind." 338THE REVERSE SIDE was at once repressive in clearing the streets of professional beggars, fake cripples, and of yeggs, by immediate arrest and such record keeping as meant the full term of imprisonment for old offenders. On the other hand, it was constructive in bringing real unfortunates into touch with natural sources of help. V LODGING HOUSES From the gambler and yeggman “higher up” in the scale, we have seen how the underworld grades down with age and vice and disability to a dreg-like stratum. Here we have not only the foot-loose and parasitic of the criminal world, but those others who through misfortune or drink or flagrant economic injustice have dropped through from their place in the industrial world. This brings us to the problem of shelter in its lowest terms; of the sort of accommodations Pittsburgh afforded the unskilled laborer who is irregularly employed on the river or in the markets; the man who is down and out, but who formerly lived in better circumstances; the friendless workman crippled or advanced in years, as well as the so-called homeless man or vagrant who works now and then at whatever job he can pick up, who sometimes obtains an odd penny by begging or even commits an occasional petty theft. A partial answer to these questions was to be found in a series of inspections I made of the cheap lodging-house section in the summer of 1907 when, if ever, the industrial life of the District was in full tide. I was struck with the comparatively small number of such establishments, accounted for largely by the fact that the alien laborers from southern Europe, who have become the chief factor in the manual labor of the city, are not to be found in the common lodging houses; they live with their families or herd with boarding bosses in their own sections of the city. The lodging house population had its roots rather in the English-speaking population. It could be traced in part to the break-up of families of English-speaking mill and mine workers that occurred during the great strikes in the coal, coke, and iron regions in the 8o's and 90^ and in the succeeding industrial up- 339WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH heavals.* The exploiting, displacing, and disabling processes of a new and increasingly specialized industry, as well as the strain of machine production, have left a residue of physically weakened, discouraged, and permanently declassed men. The active agencies of prostitution and of the abuse of liquor and drugs all tend to augment the number of industrially unfit and semi-employed. The cynic would have found meat and drink to his taste in the fact that among the lodging houses frequented by such derelicts, the “mission” with its call to salvation combined with a cheap bed for the night, was much in evidence. For the municipal authorities had taken little thought of the homeless men, offering them only a cell in a police station or the board and lodging afforded by a sentence to the local workhouse. Beyond this, they left the matter to commercial enterprise and the sporadic efforts of mission philanthropy. Half a dozen mission lodging houses were to be found in the downtown district. No more pathetic figure may be seen than the homeless man or vagrant, who is especially attracted to the mission lodging house. As he advances in years he tends to sink lower and lower in the social scale. Looked at askance by city charitable organizations, he is told to go to the country, and there he is warned under pain of sentence in jail or the workhouse to leave and “go back to the city where he belongs/' The only place where he is sure of welcome is the mission. Faced with the problem of shelter for these cast-offs, it has been but natural for mission leaders to conduct lodging houses, and it has been but natural for many drifters to exploit the indiscriminate help given, and become mission bums or loafers who profess conversion in lively anticipation of benefits to be received. On the other hand, it is perhaps equally inevitable that insincere men should have paralleled these genuine undertakings with others devised to make money out of the meager pockets of their patrons. Of the good intentions of mission laborers; of both the weaknesses and the personal successes which have characterized the movement in this country, a whole literature has been written. * As expert testimony on this point, I have already quoted the Pinkertons, who themselves played a prominent part in the Homestead strike of 1892. See page 326. 340THE REVERSE SIDE With their spiritual endeavors 1 am not concerned; but how far in Pittsburgh they maintained a proper standard of physical shelter for the homeless men who came to them, lay clearly within my field. In 1902, the Pittsburgh bureau of health issued 21 licenses to establish and conduct common lodging houses; in 1903, 11; in 1904, one; in 1905, two; in 1906, three; and in 1907 prior to July, one. These diminishing figures did not mean that lodging houses had ceased to exist in Pittsburgh, or that the license fee ($2.00) had been raised, or inspection standards unreasonably increased. The lodging-house keepers had simply ceased to trouble themselves to license. A Five- to Twenty-five-cent House. Of the score of common lodging houses in the section bounded by Second Avenue, Market, Ross, and Water streets, the lowest level reached was that of the one conducted by Q----, who was sometimes referred to by the local newspapers as a man of means and a philanthropist. This lodging house was situated at Nos. 405-407 Second Avenue, and consisted of two brick houses, each comprising three stories and a cellar, which had been used as brothels until the reform administration drove such establishments off the streets containing car lines. The main floor was occupied by the Providence Mission. In the cellar section directly beneath, the writer on the evening of his visit counted 28 Negroes occupying double-decker cots (cots slung on iron frames, one over the other). A meeting was in progress in the room overhead and the shuffling of feet, the clanging of brass, and every word of exhortation could be distinctly heard. Sleep for the lodgers was impossible until after the meeting should adjourn; nor did the sterile emotionalism going on above send down any practical help for them. A single small window at one end of the room offered the only means of ventilation, and this was closed. Gasping upon an upper bunk and spitting blood upon the dirt floor, lay a Negro, far gone with tuberculosis. In the farther cellar slept 30 Negroes, every bunk being occupied; while in a coal hole at the rear, a cot beside the water-closet was the sleeping place of a Negro employe. He was engaged at the moment in cooking supper over an oil stove for the watchman. On the two upper floors of the establishment, the superior whites rolled upon verminous cots, or lay in weary sleep, or in the stupor of alcohol or drugs. Negroes and whites alike were all most miserable and dejected looking. As the place had never been constructed for lodging-house purposes, the two upper floors were divided into a number of small rooms. 341WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Two were filled with single cots, each renting for 25 cents per night; the remaining rooms with double-deckers renting at 15 cents per night for each bed. Both cots and double-deckers ranged so close together that it was difficult to make our way between them and from one room to another. On the two floors there was accommodation—so called—for 130 men; but as it was summer, the beds were not entirely full, there being possibly a score of vacant places on the double-deckers. In the winter time, according to a statement made by the lodging-house clerk, the place was crowded to suffocation. As we entered one of the double-decker rooms, an inmate dressed himself and started to leave hurriedly as though fearing arrest. He was a hard-faced youth, who slipped into a new suit which he explained was purchased from money given him by a market man. A room-mate was described as a former collar and cuff salesman who had once earned a salary of $2,500 a year. He had lost his position two years since through drink and drugs, and had become a regular inmate of Q’s. A former city policeman and a former official of Allegheny were also pointed out to us in this room. On the ground floor at the back, the old yard of one of the houses had been roofed over, probably while it was occupied as a brothel, and in this additional room men were allowed to sleep on benches or on the floor for 5 cents each per night. Even on this stifling summer night, the place was well filled. In winter, prospective guests were obliged to reserve accommodations early in the day. Toilet and ventilation facilities throughout were of the scantiest and the worst. The expenses for help in this establishment were as follows: A clerk at $12, a watchman at $7.00, and five bed makers and cleaners at $3.50 each per week. The mission paid $2.00 per night for the main floor room. With 170 double-decker cots at 15 cents each, and about 25 single cots at 25 cents each, plus the rental paid by the mission, some idea may be obtained as to the profits above any probable rental to be realized by this business. We may understand too why the proprietor did not confine his operations to this place alone, but had opened another plant on Second Avenue on the two upper floors of an old loft building. Mission Houses. A little farther along Second Avenue, a similar combination of mission and lodging house caught the eye. Here the Volunteers of America conducted a common lodging house, of a grade above the double-decker and dormitory type, fitted up with cubicles at 25 cents each per night. While toilet and bathing facilities were poor, the place was considerably superior to Q’s; yet as a common lodging house, it had nothing especially to commend it so far as the physical 342THE REVERSE SIDE comforts of its inmates were concerned; nor, save as the city failed to provide decent quarters, to justify its operation by a professedly religious organization. On the Diamond, the Salvation Army was similarly engaged in the common lodging-house business. An old brothel property was occupied and shamelessly crowded with men. Every cubby hole of a room—and the building had been constructed with a view to furnishing a large number of separate rooms—was jammed full of cots. One upper floor was crowded with double-deckers leaving scarcely room to pass; upon these for io cents a night men slept in their clothing, no bed clothing being furnished. The lower hall was crowded with double-deckers, and both the office and the entrance hall were equipped with convenient tables and benches upon which “drunks” were stretched. The man in charge stated that in the winter time lodgers paid 5 cents each per night for the privilege of sleeping upon these benches and tables. Many of the lodgers, he said, begged their bed money nearby on the Diamond. At 330 Liberty Avenue was found the Liberty Avenue Mission. This place boasted a gospel wagon nicely enameled, and in the meeting room a group photograph of “workers” and wagon was exhibited. In a rear room on the main floor, where the wagon was housed, were found triple-deckers adjoining a filthy toilet. A cellar beneath this building contained more triple-deckers and was littered with scraps of a bread and coffee dole. Triple-deckers and Sanctimony. An even more pretentious example than Q’s of “lodgings for charity and 100 per cent” was found at Eighth Street and Duquesne Way. Here, at the time of my visit, stood a hotel kept by the “Rev.” R-------. An alley led to a sub- sidiary enterprise labeled “Bethel Home.” This consisted in the main of a large back room or store room of the hotel, and was equipped with tripledeckers and numerous cots. The triple-deckers, we were informed, each furnished three men with a place to lie at 5 cents a head. No bed clothes were provided. There was also a cellar filled with cots. These were in demand the year round at 10 cents each per night. The proprietor, it may be noted in passing, stated that he did not believe in organized charity; that he did “practical” work instead; and at one public meeting, at least, actively opposed the proposition to establish such an associated charities in Pittsburgh as had been bothersome to business men in other cities. He had been able to get his hotel recommended as a safe and proper place for respectable young men coming to Pittsburgh; and he escaped paying taxes on his lodging-house property because of its charitable pretentions. 343WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH A city fireman, at an adjoining fire house, said, that following a flood, the Bethel management had been so anxious to resume its activities that cots were installed and occupied almost before the firemen had taken out their pumps, the mud and slime remaining in the cellar. A Poor-man's Tavern. At 123 Second Avenue was found the one lodging-house keeper who had thought it worth while to bother with a license. “Clem” Hackenberger kept at that address a lodging house which served a quite different class of men from those already described. River men and market men were his patrons. The old brick dwelling house had cots in every room, each with a number in large figures on the wall above the bed. Placards bearing advice regarding the disposition of valuables, and warnings addressed to lodgers against causing trouble, were posted on the walls. Fresh paint and whitewash made the place fairly clean and attractive within. Each bed cost 25 cents per night. Water was lacking save in the yard, and each floor was provided only with a common bucket; but the general appearance completely differentiated this place from the ordinary common lodging house, whether run as a mission or as a sanctimonious counterfeit of one. One felt that the transients who lodged there patronized a kind of tavern which was justified by their necessities, and that it was designed for just such travelers as they; that having paid a reasonable price for its use, they went on their way. Crude, coarse, and comfortless enough as were too often the lives of its patrons, still here they might come and go escaping the vitiating atmosphere of the common lodging house or the complications of soul and body injected into the hiring of a bed for the night at a mission. River Men's Houses. Very different in type, sinister and squalid, was another type, a “river man's house,” described by the police official who accompanied the writer as “Jennie S's old place.” This house was still standing in the heart of the old noisome river section, where a trunk line railroad had pushed its way into the center of the market district. Many old rookeries, historic buildings, brothels, saloons, and lodging houses had been removed to make room for the railroad's elevated track and had been replaced by strong clean spans of steel and concrete. Such rookeries as survived looked by comparison the more hopeless and degraded. This part of Pittsburgh, the first ward, is the oldest section of the city. A little lower down, the famous “block house” still stands on its old site, now forming the corner of a freight yard. The street had a character all its own, resembling the waterfront of any large city. Here all the hard, sordid life of the river centered, and to Jennie S's brothel came river men, hucksters, and truck farmers, as in former days came the “Rogue Riderhoods” of the waterfront. 344A Second Avenue Lodging House and Mission in 1908Cheap Lodging House, InteriorTHE REVERSE SIDE Lodging-house Resort. At 104 Fourth Avenue was still another type of house, kept by a Roumelian Greek who ran a coffee room on the ground floor. The building was of brick, formerly a mansion, and an unusually high ceilinged room on the second floor was divided into cubicles by rough wooden partitions about 7 feet in height. Over a number of these cubicles wire netting was stretched—a suggestive precaution. At the time of our visit not only men, but women with their transient guests, were going in and out of this building. A faded woman seated at a table in the hall, with a grimy register before her, supplied a sufficient index to the character of such couples as sought accommodations. As direct result of this tour of inspection, made in company with the chief executive officer of the bureau of health, Dr. James F. Edwards, and members of his staff of sanitary police, the bureau of health closed the Q and R lodging houses. The Salvation Army and the Liberty Mission were likewise enjoined. New rules were drafted. Q’s place was not permitted to re-open until the double-deckers had been ripped out, the cellar lodgings done away with, shower baths installed, and adequate toilet facilities provided. Abandoning its location on the Diamond, the Salvation Army rented an old church at Thirty-seventh and Charlotte Streets.* * In 1909 a further investigation of Pittsburgh's lodging houses was made by a local committee whose object was to secure the establishment of ,a municipal lodging house, work test, and employment bureau. At the lodging house conducted by the Volunteers of America at 343 Second Avenue, they found accommodations for 70 men at 25 cents each per night. As the building was narrow and shut in on both sides by adjoining buildings, artificial light was used on each floor day and night. The sleeping rooms were 6 by 9 feet in size, and the investigating committee was divided in opinion as to whether these rooms were as sanitary and well ventilated as open dormitories. The Volunteers also conducted two industrial homes in the city where men were sheltered and cared for in return for work done. One of these, situated on Beaver Street, was dirty, in bad repair, and the accommodations were poor. At the Salvation Army Shelter, 35 Diamond Street, the rooms were well ventilated and lighted, the bedding clean, and there were no bad odors. 130 men could be accommodated here at 15 and 25 cents per night. The Industrial home on Beaver Avenue conducted by the Salvation Army, one of three, was clean, sanitary and homelike. Q’s place in Second Avenue was also visited. The Providence Mission was still housed here and there were accommodations for 75 men at 15 and 25 cents each per night. The establishment was filthy throughout. There was a very bad odor in the wash room, and the bed clothing was full of vermin. The place again required immediate action by the board of health and showed the need for unrelaxed sanitary inspection. At 1112 Forbes Street, a hotel, conducted by the same management, accommodated 400 men at 25 to 75 cents per night. The building was clean, sanitary, and fireproof. The restaurant run in connection with the hotel was clean and attractive. At the Rescue Mission, Wiley Avenue, 25 men were allowed to sleep all night 345WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Lodging-house Types Even such flagrantly needed reforms can not be carried out without human consequences sometimes least anticipated. Apart from the financial loss to the proprietors, the closing of these lodging houses fell heavily upon their employes. Often perhaps only the last promptings of energy induce men to accept the poorly paid work, bad food, wretched sleeping quarters, and long hours of employes in the kinds of places described. One may see in their lives how a workman grown old and cast aside, or a business man who has failed in middle life and never regained a footing, seeks to earn the semblance of a livelihood in such an environment, and to maintain a small degree of independence. Far down as they are in the social scale, such men are yet removed by a great gulf from the completely devitalized drifters who live on the doles of missions or by street begging. Thus at Q's in the tiny “office” set in the narrow entrance hall was found an old railroad yardmaster, a widower, his children grown and engrossed in their own households. There he sat at his desk, thrown in among the cast-offs of humanity, few of whom at their best had ever risen above unskilled labor. The satisfaction of toil well accomplished; the camaraderie with men skilled and usually reckless of danger to themselves, and full of the uplift and confidence which come to masters of enginery; the habits and vocabulary, the very dress ordained by the code of an established order had been his,—and then the ambitious young yardmaster appearing on the scene pushing and driving, and finally, the older man “let go.” And now, after the years spent at his post in all weathers, but always out in the free air of the railroad yards, to be penned in a common lodging house to keep track of the greasy pennies got from the hands. Even though Q’s establishment had not been a credit to the city, and though his occupation was a distasteful one, 1 was glad for the old railroader's sake when the place was running again. Another employe displaced when Q's closed temporarily was of a type more common to the mission lodging house. This man was younger on chairs in the mission room. A building on an adjoining corner was in process of reconstruction by this mission, to be used for the joint purpose of mission and lodging house, which, according to subsequent information, was well run. As result of the investigation by this committee, covering also the conditions under which the eight police stations of the city lodged an average of ioo men each night in the year, an ordinance was passed by Council providing $10,000 for a first year’s operation of a municipal lodging house, but was vetoed by Mayor Magee. No radical change of the lodging-house situation has been reported since. 346THE REVERSE SIDE in years and served as watchman. A shifty individual, he had drifted from one knew not what evil antecedents, had been capper for thieves at a county fair, “barker” for a catch-penny show at Coney Island, a “scab” in labor troubles, a giver of false names and addresses to charitable societies, but one who had always found temporary success whether recurrently playing the role of mission-stiff, hanger-on, or impostor. With Q’s closed he dropped out into the streets, which saw him for a little time a peddler of paper parasols, soon to drift on to new enterprises perhaps, but on a plane perfectly well defined and delineated; a poor thing, morally bankrupt, yet still with desires keen enough and teeth sharp enough to pit his weasel skill against society for a little while longer. Municipal Provision As already stated, there was no municipal lodging house in the city like those of New York and Chicago, nor like the wayfarer's lodges conducted by the society for organizing charity in Philadelphia. In these shelters men may earn their night's lodgings by work, and the staff undertakes to help them in ways that will lead somewhere. At the central police station in the department of public safety building, certain cells on the ground floor were set aside for applicants. These cells were of the ordinary sort containing only a plank bench large enough for one man to lie down upon, and a toilet. In them the men who could not crowd upon the bench, lay upon the floor. They were admitted at the discretion of the desk sergeant, and no record was made of their name or of other details. An applicant was not expected to ask accommodations more than once a week, but as similar lodgings were provided in each of the eight police stations there was little to prevent a man from making the rounds of them if he chose. At the central police station, it was stated that but few arrests were made for “repeating." The men performed no work in exchange for their lodging or breakfast, and no efforts were made to put them in touch with employment upon their release. During 1908, 17,569 such lodgings were given. At the time of my visit, 1 was told of the pathetic case of a boy of eleven who had sought shelter for the past two or three nights at the central station. According to his story, he was an orphan who had been placed out on a farm in one of the outlying boroughs. His hands were heavily calloused and he had run away because 347WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH of the hard work. His presence illustrated the underlying evil of such police lodgings; for young* and old, the hardened offenders and those who had nothing but ignorance or hard luck against them, the sick and the healthy, rubbed elbows, and by just so much mingling did the city help to swell the fate of offenders. Worse than no provision by the city itself, sporadic and ineffective oversight of private establishments, summed up the public policy toward homeless men in this city to which thousands come annually. They were left to become bed-fellows to disease and cell-mates to crime. VI PROSTITUTION A great money-making and money-spending community, Pittsburgh at the present stage of our social development inevitably became a center for commercialized prostitution. Its surplus of males is only less than that of a barracks town or mining camp. Managers and laborers are alike engaged in the harder physical processes of production. They are quartered as temporary sojourners where conventional restraints lose their accustomed force, and where vents for recreation such as more leisured communities provide are lacking. Link the promptings inherent in such a situation, on the one hand to the undisciplined spendings of sudden fortune makers, and on the other to the earnings of young salaried men and day laborers, both often insufficient for family life according to their standards, and you have a social order * As far as the police care of vagrants is concerned, these conditions have continued. There is this exception, however, that a boy under sixteen who lodges over night at a police station may be held for the juvenile court, or if he is over sixteen the authorities of the county poorhouse at Marshalsea may be notified and he be given shelter there. For a description of the persistence in 1913 of police lodging evils see Appendix XXIV, p. 526. A newsboy lodging house had in earlier days done distinctive work, but in 1908 was temporarily housed in an old church building. Here conditions were not sufficiently better—double-decker beds and insufficient bedding—to make the place an altogether desirable alternative to the police stations. This was due in part to the fact that while a new building was being planned, the state subsidy was cut off and the management worked against great odds. The place became in time a hang-out for young loafers and out-of-town boy criminals. With the new building opened, and an experienced boys’-club director in charge, the development of the work along different lines was begun in 1910. 348THE REVERSE SIDE in which the mistress (or kept-woman) and the prostitute (or woman in whom many share) play their part despite the strict moral canons of an uncompromising church element in the community. Not in Pittsburgh alone, but in all the nearby industrial towns of western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, there is an unnatural proportion of single men in mills and mines. Hundreds of footloose wage-earners from all parts of the industrial district look to the city when bent on having a “good time,” making it, in the phrase of an old sporting man, “one big Saturday night town.” Yet there can hardly be a sadder picture than the “parlor” in a disorderly house where sit the daughters of working people soliciting debauch at the hands of youths of their class. My belief is that labor unions are delinquent in not engaging aggressively in efforts to educate in their members a class consciousness without offense. A broader, a more inspiring propaganda, linked to that for higher wages, should be possible to such organizations as the United Mine Workers, the Amalgamated Association of Steel, Iron, and Tin Workers, and the various railroad brotherhoods. It is surely time for us to hear the last of “mill men's houses,” “railroaders' houses,” and so on, in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. The situation which thus provokes illicit intercourse has been aggravated and exploited to the full by the business managers of vice. While prostitution has been covertly carried on in many parts of the city in flats or furnished rooms, there are two large districts which from time out of mind have been the markets for this traffic in women's bodies, by the women themselves and those who control them; and while the reform régime attempted to root out houses of prostitution from other parts of the city and to cut off the revenues of those which remained, the houses were officially tolerated within these areas. How centrally situated is the chief of these districts may be appreciated from the fact that the Pittsburgh general post office has been in the heart of it. A step to the right or left from the southern half of Smithfield Street, the main business thoroughfare of the city, and one is surrounded by officially tolerated vice. Business buildings, fire company houses, hospitals, missions, 349WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH railroad depots, the markets, the steamboat landings, and some of the hotels all rub shoulders with prostitution. This is the section in and about lower Second Avenue in Pittsburgh proper. It lies in the territory between the heart of the business district and the Monongahela River, extending to Liberty Avenue at its lower end, and at its upper spreading through a nest of alleys lined with squalid dwellings which run up the Hill past Fifth to Wylie Avenue. Here the section flanks the tenement quarters where Jewish, Italian, and Negro households rear their children. Prior to an expansion of the business section of the city and the establishment by the Wabash Railroad of a terminal midway to the Point, a large part of the entire area lying between lower Third Avenue and the Monongahela River was occupied by houses of ill-fame. Lower Second Avenue continued thereafter to be the main thoroughfare for these establishments, but commercial encroachment tended to spread them up both rivers, along the line of Penn and Fifth avenues, and scatter them in certain sections of the East End. In the Second Avenue section alone there existed in the summer of 1907 over 200 brothels, a number considerably less than before the restrictive measures were enforced against them.* The second vice district of long standing is situated across the river, adjacent to the workingmen's quarter in the former city of Allegheny. This district occupies a large area which may be said to be bounded by the railroad yards and the Allegheny River, and of which the principal thoroughfare is East Robinson Street.| One beneficial result of the more rigid restriction of vice to these districts under the reform administration was the almost entire absence of “massage" or “manicure" parlors such as afford a cloak for prostitution in other large cities. At the more expensive restaurants, however, the kept-women of business men and politicians displayed themselves, expensively gowned, and they were often to be seen riding about in motor cars through the principal thoroughfares. At night, among the crowds at the downtown cafes and resorts were well dressed women who, in the residential sections where they lived, preserved more or less secrecy as to their mode of livelihood. Street walkers were very few, but there were indications that numbers of shop girls, office employes, and factory workers added to their incomes by occasional prostitution. All of these formed a fringe to the main body of the inmates of disorderly houses. * The once notorious “Yellow Row" stood idle and condemned at the time of the writer’s visit, housing only an occasional squatter. This structure was torn down during Mayor Guthrie’s administration. f Closed in May, 1913, by the Morals Efficiency Commission. 350THE REVERSE SIDE Types of Houses The brothel, housed in an oldtime residence, is the typical vice resort in Pittsburgh. The colored glass doors inside the vestibule and big numbers are trade marks that by day escape the notice of the uninitiated. But in the evening the outer doors stand open and a light shines through the red or green glass panels of the inner door, offering a ready welcome for the young stranger whose work brings him to Pittsburgh and who may spend half a year without inclusion in any other gay company of youth. In such establishments social lines are none the less closely drawn. At the top of the scale in Pittsburgh were to be found a few houses known as ten- and fifteen-dollar houses. Here some of the inmates were French, the remainder being American-born women. The five-dollar houses came next. They were recruited from American-born and German girls. The patrons of these places were mainly salaried office men and the higher class of mill men. On a lower level were the two- and one-dollar houses. These were by far the most numerous and were considered the more profitable. They were filled with young Jewesses, many of them American born, with Pennsylvania Dutch, with Irish and German, Canadians, and a few “drifters” from wornout American stock. These houses were supported in the main by clerks, salesmen, mechanics, and railroad men. Each of the above contained from five to 30 girls who paid from $10 to $25 per week for board and room and received 50 per cent commission on all earnings. A few places, however, boarded the women free, relying on the large expenditure made by their visitors to offset this cost. The fifty-cent houses were conducted for the most part by Jewesses of Russian or Polish birth, and by Italians, and the inmates were mainly of these nationalities. In addition, there were a few “Hungarian houses” filled with immigrant girls from Austria-Hungary. Their guests were, as might be expected, of a mixed class, largely the rougher sort of railroad employes, and foreigners, Italian and Slavic, able to speak a little English, and at work in the mills and mines throughout the Pittsburgh District. Last of all in the scale were the twenty-five-cent houses, patronized by Negroes,—mostly hovels hidden in the alleys of the Hill District, and each housing perhaps half a dozen inmates. So far as the writer could learn, these usually contained Negresses only, but there was a sprinkling of broken down, diseased white prostitutes. 351WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH At the higher priced houses, with parlors lighted by electric bulbs and showily furnished, and the young women in evening gowns, a certain refinement in the methods of entertainment was practiced. Their appointments, and the routine of singing, dancing, and refreshments bore somewhat the same relation to those of low-grade establishments that an expensive restaurant does to a cheap lunch counter. As one went down in the scale, the furnishings became less comfortable and more crude, conventions more businesslike, the dress of the inmates more tawdry and suggestive. Slot machines took the place of musicians; the drinks became cheaper but more insistent. Active efforts were made to increase profits by such devices as lewd dances, exposure of the person, nude acrobatics involving the genital organs, and other methods to stimulate the sexual passion. Women of the Underworld • Let us look more closely at the kinds of women who follow the calling in a city like Pittsburgh.* World-wide Aspects. While organized vice lays tribute on the youth of both sexes in every community, the prostitute, like the pickpocket and the yegg, is not confined to any city. The trade can be thrust out of arty locality; but its sources are international. It is a far cry, for example, from the “ Big Number” houses of Pittsburgh to the dives of Hong Kong. In the fall of 1907 Pittsburgh brothel-dom of the prosperous class was full of excitement over reports of the murder at Hong Kong of a woman we will call Gertrude Ware by a former United States sergeant of marines. The motive of the crime was robbery evidently, as the murderer soon afterward opened a dive at Chefoo with the proceeds. The story of this girl, who was from Youngstown, was not without its human appeal. She had some ability as a singer, and had become a favorite with such rich men as these girls are able to win. She was a “boarder” in a Second Avenue house when in 1905 Beattie S. had come to Pittsburgh to recruit girls for “ American houses” in Manila, Shanghai, Chefoo, and Yokohama. Beattie S had herself once been one of Cleo Ts boarders, but now had wonderful stories to tell, wore bizarre costumes, was waited upon by a Japanese maid, and had a number of small pet * It was not possible for me in the time at my disposal to investigate the sources of prostitution in Pittsburgh. The examples cited illustrate tendencies which have been marked and analyzed by students of the problem elsewhere. For data gathered by the Morals Efficiency Commission see Appendix XXII, p. 507. 352THE REVERSE SIDE Japanese dogs. She called herself the Countess Plavako and said her husband was a Russian count who had escaped from Siberia. So much of a sensation had she created in the Pittsburgh sporting district that Gertrude Ware consented to go back with her. The car in which she had left Pittsburgh for San Francisco was festooned with roses, the reputed gift of a coal operator, and champagne had flowed freely in her honor for days and nights before. The night previous to leaving she had won $80 on the wheel in a Penn Avenue gambling house and was sure she would have luck in her travels. Two years later her body was found jammed into a trunk after strangulation. The sergeant of marines was later hanged for his deed. No wonder Second Avenue buzzed with comment on such distorted bits of fact as the newspapers published! The story gives us a glimpse of the way in which the scales of the trade balance,—French prostitutes in Pittsburgh's Second Avenue section, the export of white prostitutes to the Orient in such numbers that Judge Wilfley at Shanghai found the term “ American girl" synonymous with the lowest forms of vice. The Federal Immigration Commission of 1910 brought out authoritatively the international aspects of the white slave traffic, and the prosecutions under the Mann act have since shown its interstate ramifications. The Drift from Workaday Life. It is, however, the local aspects of the traffic that most deeply concern a given community, the less spectacular drift from the ordinary walks of life to this underworld. The country girl and the low-wage city employe are alike victims. The girl whose heredity is a predisposing factor, the half-idiots whose sexual impulses are exaggerated by the taint which robs them of mental balance, are quick to be gathered into the web. Young girls who come from households that are barren of affection, or squalid, or monotonous, too often fall easy victims of the lure of ease and excitement which the life seems to offer. Many prostitutes are, we know, themselves working girls or the daughters of working people, and various attempts have been made to gauge how far economic pressure is behind their downfall. That it is an important factor in many cases, both with them and with their brothers, is clear. Over one of the Second Avenue houses of the medium grade presided a woman still in the early thirties. She conducted a two-dollar 23* 353WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH house, frequented largely by railroad men. Possibly it was chance that first sent these visitors to her establishment some years before, but she improved her opportunities and it paid her to be known as keeper of a railroader's house. This woman could not, like So many of her class, boast of having come of a “good family,” but she supported her mother who was living in a neighboring town and visited her regularly. Early in life she had learned that little girls who begged pennies on the streets and charity at the servants' doors of the prosperous might find ways to supplement the rather scanty gains of mendicancy. Later, as cash girl and saleswoman in a local department store, she had learned that security of position and advancement on the payroll could be hers as long as she proved accommodating to certain superiors. She next found it easy to become the mistress of a professional gambler, himself the black sheep of an old Pittsburgh family. This connection lasted nine years, or until the man left her. Then, her education in vicious living completed, she bought the goodwill of her present establishment. A number of inmates in the house were also former department store clerks or saleswomen. Miss Butler in her study of the working women of Pittsburgh* cites the following illustrative cases of girls who had succumbed to the moral jeopardy of the shops: Rose was employed at the ribbon counter. She had a mother and two sisters dependent upon her, and her mother was always urging her for more money. She began while still in the store to “make money on the side.” The management discovered this and dismissed her. She left for a city in Ohio; went into a house of prostitution there from which she sends her mother money. Her wages at the ribbon counter were $6.00 a week. Vera is twenty years old. Four years ago she was employed as a salesgirl at $3.50 a week. After a year she left for another store where she was employed as a cashier at a salary of $10 a week, for making concessions to her employer. After two years she left the store for a house of prostitution. Jennie came to Pittsburgh from Akron, Ohio. She had no friends in the city and was obliged to be self-supporting. She obtained a position at $6.00 a week as a saleswoman. After five months in the store, she consented to be kept in an apartment in the East End. She still keeps her position in the store. * Butler, Elizabeth Beardsley: Women and the Trades, pp. 305-306. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) 354THE REVERSE SIDE Colored Girls from the South. Nearly every house of prostitution in Pittsburgh carried a staff of Negresses engaged as maids, cooks, or laundresses. These young women, coming from the South, eagerly accept the comparatively high wages offered and often take service ignorant at least in part of the real character of their employers. It is perhaps unnecessary to state that they generally become corrupted and publicly or secretly form irregular relations with men of their race who live upon them. This is one and not the least source of Negro prostitution in the North. The largest number living as prostitutes in Pittsburgh found places in the alley houses of the Hill District, whose patrons were men of their own race or Italian and Slav laborers. In addition, prostitution was widespread among large numbers of indigent Negresses on the Hill. Their earnings were wretched, they were the “body snatchers” of their color, and the men they decoyed into alleys and robbed were usually as outcast as themselves. For every Negro woman of this type it is safe to say that there is a Negro man who lives upon her gains supplemented by such petty thefts as he may be able to commit. Cocaine and vile liquor, a complete lack of proper hygienic precautions, bad food and wretched housing, all combine to use up the Negro woman of this class more quickly than the white prostitute. One July night with a police official as companion, I made a tour through this section of the Hill District. In one alley, a rather handsome Southern Negress, with jewels in her ears, stood outside her empty house and watched with envy her neighbors in evil who made money while her own house remained “dark.” A transgression of the police rules regarding the sale of liquor in her establishment had brought this punishment upon her. In sharp contrast, a young Negress wasted by tuberculosis was seen in the vile tenement building then standing, known indifferently as the “Stockade” and “Tammany Hall.” With a mixture of Greeks, Syrians, Arabs, Poles, Italians, and Russian Jews as her neighbors, she was the only one of her color in the building. She occupied two tiny rooms opening on an interior court, and although the night was stifling her bedroom window was nailed tight,—for protection, as she herself explained. She sat in the other room playing with her dog “Rags,” a Skye terrier, and listened while an Italian neighbor ran a gramophone belonging to 355WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH her. She had some “real nice times,” she said. She “took two kinds of medicine. ” A cuspidor on the floor and a row of patent medicine bottles on the shelf told the story. Glad to talk with someone, she explained that coming from the South where she had left a child with her parents, she had answered an advertisement for a domestic and had learned later that the place of employment was a “sporting house.” That was seven years ago; now she was twenty-five, and cooked for the day shift in a house on Sachem Alley for $6.00 weekly and meals. Formerly she had cooked for the night shift at $8.00 weekly and meals, but she was no longer strong enough for this night work. Not being able to afford any better rooms, she had come to the “Stockade,” where she paid $7.00 a month rent. The Woman in the Alley. On this same stifling night, when to protect her own body this Negress employe of a brothel deprived herself of even the little air that could find its way into Tammany Hall, another tragedy was being enacted a few blocks away. In a noisome alley whose shacks were tenanted now by families of Italian working people and now by Negroes, a young white woman lay on a doorstep gasping for air, choking down a little water from time to time, and then spitting blood into the gutter. Fourteen years of the life of Pittsburgh's brothels had brought her to this; but though she was the wife of a Negro, and was now deserted and dying, awaiting only the ambulance and Marshalsea (the city poorhouse), she could say with pride “my father was twenty-seven years a yard master on the B. and O.” Following betrayal, she had come from a West Virginia railroad and manufacturing city to Pittsburgh, and this was the end. The Negro madame had been very kind to her. She had trusted her for four months' board, had given her eggs, milk, and best of all, whiskey. Insurance? “Oh, well, the madame deserves all the insurance she will get. ” The madame, as she sat on her door steps, looked every inch a business woman. The ready clinking handbag at the belt, the keys by her side, and a certain avidity of gesture all gave the impression that perhaps the dying woman was not such a “dead loss” after all. Just then an attractive young mulatto woman wearing a flowered silk kimono, red satin slippers on her feet, and red roses in her hair, came up the alley followed by a young Negro with a guitar. They were, it appeared, daughter and son-jn-law of the madame of the house. Soon they were making music to the delight of a score of Italian children who with their parents jostled 356THE REVERSE SIDE prostitution for living room in the alley. The yard master's daughter, declining to call for an ambulance "till tomorrow," thought she "certainly would enjoy the concert. ” From time to time, the children crowding eagerly about the players shut off the little air about the sick woman. Then the madame, shaking her big bunch of keys would bid "them Dagoes" keep back a little and not "step on the lady." At short intervals prospective patrons received an encouraging word or gesture from the madame, her pocketbook open to receive fees and make change. From time to time one of the Negresses sitting on the stoop would get up and stroll inside with a guest. Soon the couple would come out again. The man would walk away and the girl would take her place again on the stoop and resume the thread of gossip she had dropped. The Street Walker. There remain few further stages in the span of a woman's life in the underworld. The reproach of street soliciting in Pittsburgh did not exist so far as the principal thoroughfares were concerned, but along Ross Street in the appropriate shadows of court house, jail, Bridge of Sighs, and morgue, the most wretched of the outcasts “played dice with the work-house." On a night as hot as the one just described the bodies of three women, self-slain, lay on the slabs beneath the glass-topped cases of the Allegheny County morgue. Rose, a young white prostitute, had drunk carbolic acid after a quarrel with her "lover.” Madeline, a young mulatto prostitute, had drunk carbolic acid after a quarrel with her "lover." X, weary of the life of an actress in one-night stand companies, had cut her throat in a shabby hotel. Weary with fruitless sauntering, two prostitutes came into the morgue to satiate a curiosity which it was said had kept a constant stream of their kind in and out all day. It was the only building in the street open at that late hour, entrance to which involved no expenditure. To those not knowing its character the place looked rather cheerful, too. It was at least brilliantly lighted and white and clean. The younger prostitute, a Scotch-1 rish girl, drew the police inspector's attention to her hair, lately dyed chestnut. It had been black, she said, but black was "too common." The girl and her history happened to be familiar to my informant, who had known her as a domestic, as an unmarried mother betrayed by an employer's son, as a kept mistress of the 357WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH sons of wealthy men, as an inmate of a brothel, and finally as too vile and drunken to be of value, reduced to the street and the companionship of the Jewess who came in with her. This latter, a fleshy “body snatcher” in police slang, was too gross to inflame even a drunkard; so she acted as a sort of scout for “Chestnut, ” sharing her wretched gains. Gertrude Ware, the “top notcher,” and at the bottom of the scale the body snatcher under the Bridge of Sighs;—these were buoys which marked the course to which this undercurrent in the life of the community was setting. Profits* Under the glamor of the life, the ribs of a hungry business showed through. Its details are prosaic and sordid enough were it not for the lure of mystery with which the silence of respectable people invest it, and for the tinsel and conviviality which its promoters skilfully throw about it, while they batten on what ignorance, need, and one of the strongest animal impulses throw into their net, and what the whole force of convention tends to hold there. The landlords who own the houses, and rent them at figures which could not be paid by ordinary tenants, pocket the profits from these women's bodies as surely as do the madames. Certain plumbers, house furnishers, grocers, and marketmen, find here good customers. The florists, druggists, and physicians who serve them, the telephone and telegraph companies, are paid from the same pocket books; the brewers and whiskey dealers grow fat with the proceeds. The very existence of many of the Pittsburgh houses was undermined by the police order of the Guthrie administration, prohibiting the sale in them of intoxicating drinks. A number of Second Avenue women informed me that they had for months been running behind from $50 to $250 weekly. Take, for example, one establishment the character of whose business may be judged from the fact that $16,000 was paid within recent years for its goodwill and fixtures alone. Notwithstanding the high fee charged, the proprietress asserted that the running expenses ordinarily ate up every dollar of “legitimate" intake. The profits came almost entirely from the sale of alleged champagne to its patrons, sons of * For estimates of Morals Efficiency Commission see Appendix XXII, p. 508. 358The Bridge of SighsTHE REVERSE SIDE rich families, or from the sale of “wine” bought ostentatiously by the financial “sharks” and “pikers” of Pittsburgh's bucket shop and “sporting” contingent. Every first class brothel visited had stories of wealthy patrons who on occasion had lain intoxicated in the place for a week at a time, obediently signing checks when presented with a bill; as, for example, “Seventy-five bottles of wine at $10.00, $750.00.” And if the victim objected to the amount of the bill, 75 “dead soldiers” would be brought up by the maid from a stock receptacle in the cellar. Under the new order of things, this class of business was all but impossible. An indication of the business ramifications back of prostitution is the fact that “Maxey the Mixer,” indicted for trafficking in houses of ill-fame, was the Pittsburgh agent for one of the best known brands of champagne. The Purveyors With such secondary interests at stake, prostitution becomes, at the hands of its primary purveyors, not the supply of a demand as old as human nature, but a business, artificially stimulated for business ends, reaching out for the girls it shall hire out, reaching out for the men who shall use them, that it may make its own gains. When to such a situation is added the customary divorce between municipal enforcement and the statute laws which penalize prostitution and make it a crime to rent property for such purposes, the way is open for police blackmail, from the patrolman to the man “ higher up, ” for the political fixer, the bail giver, and the money lender,—all capitalizing the law-breaking element in the community and selling protection for sums which come from but the one source. In Pittsburgh, the taxes of a large proportion of the buildings used for purposes of prostitution were paid under names which were seldom to be found in the city directory. How far these names represented the actual ownership, or to what rank of life the men belonged, was a matter of surmise and speculation. The go-betweens and active promoters in the business were of a stock which, by one of those vivid contrasts as old as written history, has contributed some of the most fearless and self-forgetful leaders to the religious and civic life of our cities. 359WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH In a majority of the brothels not operated by Negresses, the proprietresses were Jewesses, and the men who financed them were of the same race. And of the same race were a majority of the pimps or cadets who lived wholly or in part on the earnings of the women,—these last the meanest in the whole coterie of those who take their dues from prostitution. The payment the pimp takes is easy living; but he becomes not merely a drone but an active agent of evil, by seducing girls and by swelling the ranks of voters who owe allegiance to the political leaders of the underworld. In the higher grade houses in Pittsburgh men of this class were not allowed to collect a girl's earnings, and their presence was discouraged as far as possible. Proprietresses knew from experience that the influence of these men made a “parlor" girl discontented, and desirous to try the more independent life in a flat or furnished room house. But in the meaner places, where girls are used as remorselessly as are men in some of the legitimate industries, the proprietresses were compelled to defer more largely to the cadet class, whose chief business it was to entangle “new" girls and to hold them through the “protection" they offered when the girls got in trouble in these houses or at the hands of the police. Though the authorities were unwilling to admit that the number of such men had reached proportions which approximated that in the cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, their evil faces were only too frequent a sight in the cheap lunch rooms and pool parlors on Third or Penn Avenue; and from her “furnished room" on Federal or Tunnel Street in the Hill District the white slave, colloquially a “sweater," was led to “work" daily to some squalid den. In these dens, when the brass check system prevailed, the inmates often did not receive any money, the men whom they maintained collecting their wages. The girls worked in two shifts, a night shift and a day shift, but though those in the latter returned home, their day's slavery was not necessarily over. These unfortunate women could seldom get a dollar for themselves, as the class of patrons they attracted were not able to give much “ stocking money," and the cadets habitually searched them to prevent their hoarding money and escaping their life of temporary servitude. 360THE REVERSE SIDE Restriction Prior to the advent of Pittsburgh's reform administration, the police, and especially those “ higher up, " gained no inconsiderable spoils from this evil. However, as officers and men had not been working under civil service rules, they lacked the necessary permanence in office and the identity of interest to make the organization, like the police in many large cities, a single active, dominant power. They had, therefore, been obliged to take the “smaller end" of the graft and the larger prizes “got past" to the politicians. On the coming in of the reform administration, Mayor Guthrie and his advisers recognized the menace to their administration of so fruitful a field for public scandal as this large area devoted to prostitution, and the inconsistencies involved in allowing its promoters free play. Their policy was not to suppress the traffic, but to cut down its amount, its profits, and its graft. The city in effect tolerated it in the two districts already indicated and under the following regulations: 1. No intoxicating liquors to be sold. 2. No soliciting on streets or from windows. 3. No disorder in houses; music to be confined to rear rooms. 4. No robberies of guests. 5. No abuse of minors. 6. No cadets to live in the houses. 7. No house to front on streets having car lines. 8. Houses to be open to police inspection. By thus practically licensing vice in the districts indicated, the power of the dishonest elements in the police department and in other branches of the city government as well, to levy extortion and blackmail on keepers of disorderly houses, was considerably curtailed. The first regulation, that prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquor, was looked upon, even more than the restricting police boundaries, as a measure that would cut down the amount of prostitution by striking at one of the vital sources of profit of the resorts that remained. 361WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH The cheaper establishments were the hardest hit. Inmates and proprietresses alike lacked the acquaintance of wealthy men from whom they could borrow money; and as most of the houses of this class were individual enterprises, the political weight of a “chain of houses” was lacking and money was not to be had readily from “fixers” to tide them over the period. Moreover, the clientele was larger and less wellknown, and doorkeepers of necessity much less particular than in the better class of houses, thus making it easier for police stool pigeons on the lookout for evidence to gain entrance. In such cases the chief burden fell upon the wretched inmates, who were obliged to accommodate more men and to eat poorer food in return for their exorbitant board money. Police detectives and stool pigeons were alert to detect evidence of liquor selling, and as the fixers were unable to act, “take-a-chance” proprietresses and inmates ran serious risks of being dragged to court, fined, and having their houses closed for a time. One woman who had grown rich in the traffic complained bitterly that after twenty-two years in the business and after never having been arrested before, she and her girls had been compelled to ride in a patrol wagon. They had not even been allowed to take carriages ! The director of public safety estimated that 40 per cent of the houses went out of business because of the liquor order. Of equal moment were the steps taken to rid Pittsburgh of the large number of pimps by arresting them on the charge of vagrancy. When they could not show a legitimate basis of livelihood, they were given workhouse sentences; and by this means the bulk of them were driven from the city. They did not go far away, however, and were kept in funds by prostitutes through the Pittsburgh post office. The majority of these orders were payable at Youngstown, Ohio, and Wheeling, West Virginia, neighboring cities which afforded temporary quarters until the men were able to return to Pittsburgh in safety. Their action was one reflected in many ways within the whole quarter. As we have seen, throughout the underworld the period was one of abeyance,* and as election time approached there were not wanting signs of the police getting more out of * Under the incoming administration, that of Mayor William A. Magee, outward decorum was preserved in the districts, houses were kept off the car tracks, but liquor selling was resumed in the brothels, new houses were permitted to open in tenement neighborhoods of the Hill District, and gambling houses re-opened. In 1910 the city administration was made the object of attack for conniving at these conditions, by a citizens’ committee, under the leadership 362THE REVERSE SIDE hand, and of the purveyors of vice seeking alliances that through a change of administration would put an end to these policies of semi-repression. Commercialized Recreation Throughout the reform administration the social observer could not fail to note how little promise mere police repression gave of satisfying the community’s need for an adequate policy toward the social evil. While, as a rule, outward decorum prevailed, upon Saturday nights the demoralizing influence of an officially defined district could be witnessed in the bands of youths who passed through the streets in the downtown section visiting the " sporting houses”—the name by which houses of prostitution are generally termed in Pittsburgh as in other cities. This term is part of the pitiful hollowness of the life; the inmates are "sporting girls,” and visitors of the callow type prefer to be described as "sports.” For it is boyhood as well as girlhood that commercialized prostitution must win if the business is to be profitable. The conversation, gestures, and general deportment of these bands who passed from one house to the next "jollying the girls” differentiated them from the vicious or confirmed visitors. Saloon keepers who know the value of plate mirrors and bright lights, in contrast to the gloom of office and shop and the dinginess of cheap lodgings, are no less good psychologists than are the business managers of prostitution. Those who would supply counter social attractions could learn something from both and especially from the latter who, even in catering to the sexual impulse, think it worth while to appeal to the esthetic sense. Another Saturday night scene in the market section of the of William H. Matthews of Kingsley House, based on investigations carried out for this committee by a staff working under Robert Wilson, the Scranton detective who ran down councilmanic graft in Pittsburgh. In 1912, a second agitation led by the Voters’ League was successful; and throughout the remainder of his administration Mayor Magee carried out policies formulated by an aggressive Morals Efficiency Commission; leading in 1913 to an act of legislature creating a Morals Bureau. The Armstrong administration had the support of a strong church element in the elections of 1913, but on assuming office some of his minor appointments were so flagrantly of the “underworld” that they were recalled when their records became known. Six months had all but elapsed before he was practically forced to make appointments to the Morals Bureau. These commanded respect but did not include any one of the three most active members of the former Commission. It is not safe to prophesy which of thè contending elements in the community will fix or hold the policy of the administration toward the underworld. See Appendices XXI and XXII, pp. 501-509. 363WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH town was the turning out of doors at a few minutes before midnight, in accordance with local saloon regulations, of the crowd of young men and women gathered to eat, drink, and “see life” in a rathskeller known as the “Club/" It was a type of cafe which, under various previous administrations, had been a most potent element for evil. These scenes well illustrated the failure of this city of a thousand churches to provide clean centers of recreation which could successfully attract the crowds of young people in search of a good time; the failure also of our bulky budgets of laws, which protect property so well, to safeguard the subtler human values. The pimp, as we have seen, is a professional recruiter of young girls; but in his revolting craft he no more than personifies the destructive forces in society, some as old as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, some as new as the department store, as factory wages below the standard of self-support, as public dance halls adjoining barrooms—forces which break down the moral fiber of a generation. They turn the years of adolescence when the creative faculties of youth normally seek refreshment and gaiety and companionship, into years of tragedy. Season after season the story is repeated in stupid round. If every pimp in Pittsburgh were hanged on the court house “hump,” it will still go forward as long as the influential people in the community fail to provide ampler and less commercialized outlets for the spirit of youth, as long as the merchants and manufacturers of the country pay many girls wages which are not enough for subsistence, much less for normal amusements, and as long as young men's earnings are not enough to establish a home and family. Until then we are dealing, not with the old problem of the sexes—which will remain—but with a problem aggravated and distorted not merely by the promoters of vice, but by stockholders, proprietors, and complacent church people. Vice and Disease The outcome is not merely the toll of broken women, but disease of body and mind. For the modern brothel is more than an unconventional channel through which the simpler forms of 364THE REVERSE SIDE natural intercourse can be obtained by those who will. The city which harbors it is harboring an educational center in the unnatural vices which even the stoutest advocate of personal liberty must admit betoken degeneracy. Abnormal practices of course crop out sporadically in all communities, and moral perverts have long been a recognized type among institutions for defectives. But within the last twenty-five years, especially since the coming of the French prostitute, new and degrading levels for both sexes have been reached by commercialized prostitution in the United States. To the oriental methods so introduced American born women have been obliged more and more to conform as a matter of “business” in the high class resorts. As already noted, French prostitutes were an important feature of the $10 houses in Pittsburgh. On Second Avenue were three houses having exclusively French girls as inmates. At the other end of the social scale, post cards and pictures were at different times circulated among the gangs of Italians and other immigrant laborers in the Pittsburgh District, advertising these abnormal forms of intercourse in the grossest detail. On the final social aspect of prostitution, I can do no better than cite a Pittsburgh physician of standing: “Only the family physician who has learned to recognize the protean manifestations of venereal diseases among his patients has had an idea of the ever increasing extent of this curse of civilization. I need only mention the brides who go to the gynecologist's table during the first years of their married life, the chronic invalids, the childless homes, the blind and deaf and dumb asylums, and the hosts of tabetics, hemiplegics, paretics, hepatics, and mental and physical cripples who owe their affliction directly or indirectly to venereal diseases. . . If a young man practices sexual intercourse for ten years before marriage in a large city, the chances are that he will have had gonorrhea two or three times and the chances are about one to four that he will have had syphilis . . . The danger of any individual contracting a venereal dis- ease increases with the number of different persons with whom the individual has sexual relations; therefore the prostitute is the principal source, the chief factor in the spread, in ever increasing circles, of disease and disaster throughout the body politic. ” 365WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH VII. SOCIAL POLICE Only a large investment of time and means, coupled with complete police and institutional records, could enable us to judge how far, in such an industrial community as Pittsburgh, its reverse currents can be traced to sources elsewhere than in civic environment and individual character. Crime and vice are older than cities, and cities older than factory production; it would be stupid to attempt to consider them the special offspring of industrialism. Yet the preceding sketches would be incomplete did they fail to bring out how, at many points, economic forces enter in to sustain, or exaggerate, or thwart untoward tendencies in the social life. It is usual to recognize that a great industrial center attracts the professional criminal. The great mass of property assembled there calls him as carrion the buzzard, but between him and his prey stand the police, and, according as the police may or may not be complaisant, he may or may not prey upon any given community. Therein, we have seen, lies our first test of the machinery of law and order. It is less usual to recognize that a great industrial center generates its own social renegades; that a seeping-off process swells and perpetuates the groups of the underworld that have been described. Therein lies a more formidable test of the machinery of law and order, and, beyond that, of social statesmanship. The early settlement in the Pittsburgh District of a tenacious, hard-driving race, Scotch-Irish, at once aided the material development of the region and determined the local standards of morality. Their rapid accession to wealth (competence or public office absorbing a large portion of the original population) prompted successive waves of immigration by those content to begin at the bottom of the industrial order. Scotch, Welsh, English, and German came, and, filling for a generation or two the posts of labor, sought for their children employments easier or more remunerative. Latin and Slavic peoples poured in to fill their places, and industry, leaping forward, demanded larger and ever larger draughts of laborers. The result has been to establish a cosmopolitan city of which the rulers are English speaking, their 366THE REVERSE SIDE racial dependents filling the thousands of minor positions,—bank teller and policeman, city magistrate and prison keeper, clerk and labor boss. A non-English-speaking population performs the crudest manual labor and crowds the industries. Thus, at first glance, the early coming races seem to have made good their escape from the yoke of hard labor; but we must take into consideration the more subtle processes of nature and admit that success in arriving at softer and better paid employment may in itself provoke more acute forms of discontent. The pressure of competition, acquired tastes, and the natural call of instincts all tend to deflect a certain percentage of the original racial community from business, office holdings, and salaried positions into another groove—that of the so-called sporting world. The dues of apparent freedom from productive effort are being exacted from these refugees from labor, in so far as their children lack the robust qualities which the fathers have forfeited. However the resident stock may affect to place the burden of lawlessness and crime in the community upon alien newcomers, an honest search will show too clearly that the American born bear here, as elsewhere throughout the United States, a distressing relation to those features of our civilization at once the most hopeless and shocking. Whether it is justifiable to attempt to connect their personal derelictions with the general social discontent of the times 1 leave to more ambitious judges. 1 believe, however, that there is warrant for study and research with a view to reconciling the American-born child to labor. In a community where, without money, life is intolerable to most of the helot type, we find numerous “crimes” against property, committed not by habitual outlaws and recidivists, but by older men bankrupted in the struggle for existence, and by younger men who lack the virility either to struggle or to renounce. Such a crime is nearly always sporadic in execution, fatuous in conception, and depending on the good or ill will of those mulcted, their caprice, the pressure at the offender's disposal, and a thousand other chances, all remote from justice, result in his going unpunished or not. How many forged checks for small amounts turn up in Pittsburgh annually? By their number we might measure one of the by-products of a material civilization. What is the 367WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH value of goods annually purloined from the Pittsburgh department stores by the daughters of “somebodies”? The back rooms of police stations and private detective agencies, the inner rooms of lawyers, could tell some of the story. Drawn by the magnetism of accumulated riches and the relative prosperity of many of the doorkeepers of wealth, we find the native born, guilty of occasional attempts at plunder whether by graft or swindle, lapsing into the predatory class. Lower in the social scale, and more often found in the cruel light of police courts or the isolation of jails, are those who feel the same impulse, but, lacking means, tradition, or imagination, express themselves in cruder anti-social, anti-moral forms. The camp followers of saloon and brothel and gambling joint, the petty office holder, small ward grafter, and the managers of lean and little business enterprises defrauding those a stage more ignorant than themselves—make up a penumbra to the groups of the underworld we have described. It is, no doubt, the startling features of the crimes of aliens that, in American cities, fix so much popular attention upon them; that, and our natural tendency to punish those of the lowest social order who infringe. The former Mafios gains notoriety by his importation of threat and knife, spectacular forms of lawlessness. The Slav drinks, batters, and sometimes slays. The Jewish parasite of eastern Europe reasserts his old work relation of panderer, usurer, and liquor seller. Thus foreign convict typ>es, no less than native yeggs and pickpockets, add their quota to the resident criminals of any American city. But the great bulk of those whose strange names find a place on the police dockets or are haled to court by constables are recruited from a different sort. They are the inarticulate rank and file; whose burdens, being the heaviest, are naturally held to the strictest accounting. Ignorant, uncouth, illiterate, compelled to adapt themselves mercilessly to entirely new conditions of life, labor, speech, and conventions, they blunder into the police net, and receive almost inevitably the meed of their helplessness. Southern Negroes, Italians, Slavs— they clog the courts, crowd the jails, rot and choke in the upper tiers of our prisons, go to the gallows or the electric chair, crazed, screaming, but always inarticulate. The tragedy of the foreign- 368THE REVERSE SIDE born worker in America has never been told; the fraction of it will never be told. In the girls from farm and small town who drift into a life of prostitution by way of factory, housework, and department store we catch a glimpse of still another human current—for the brothel itself rears no children, and draws on the homes of the plain people for its recruits. Native born, foreign born, city bred, country bred, changed conditions brought in by modern industry, have thus given new personality and volume to the back-set currents of our cities. These currents reach far into the social order; and for any permanent change in them we must look to forces in education, in law, and in the economic life. None the less, in such a period of change, the part played by the police must become a force for reaction or for progress, in so far as its members are or are not alive to the awakened social conscience of the times. True, they are charged with onerous and widely differing functions, some of which have at most been but referred to in these pages. We look to them to protect dwellings and business houses from depredations; to regulate traffic; to enforce the liquor law and the city ordinances; to put down riot; to prevent resort to personal vengeance; to see that the law has its course—yet, inevitably, in the course of these duties, they are obliged to deal with individual cases which in the mass present what we call social problems. Moreover, in this enforced service, methods have been demanded of them other than those of the big onlooker, with a stick to preserve fair play. Whether they have wanted it or not, they have become part of society's machinery for dealing with misfortune, maladjustment, disease, and vice—part of the machinery of local government over which the municipal struggles of our generation have been carried on. The sphere of social action which opens up before the police will be simplified for us if we begin by noting certain relations it bears to the general community life. POLITICAL REFORM AND THE POLICE First, every movement toward clean government makes the police problem simpler by stripping it of that element of corruption with which it is generally confused. 24 * 369WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH To begin at the bottom, through the semi-outlaw groups which comprise the underworld, a formidable number of votes can be mustered by the political machine which wishes to control the municipality for its own advantage and that of privileged interests.* No element can be swung at the polls so successfully as that which is promised protection against the enforcement of the law. When hangers-on of saloon and brothel, race track, gambling house, and pool room are granted immunities, the police must, perforce, recognize in the grantees an authority higher than the law;f the fixer outranks the judge. More sinister, there arises in the police mind the feeling that semi-outlaw groups are to be taken for granted, its own morale is destroyed, and the way open to corruption. Yet we have seen how, under a reform administration in Pittsburgh, police graft was reduced to a minimum and it was possible to set off various problems of social control as things by themselves. The matter reaches both ways: only as the political movements for reform reach such a stage as to wrest the police department from its traditional alliances can we give a fair trial to the possibilities of a social police. Only, on the other hand, as reform administrations realize the crucial importance of the police department can reform be for any length of time secure. PUBLIC POLICY AND THE POLICE In the second place, the police, as now constituted, is not a legislature, and can not work to advantage so long as we fail to clear up responsibility for formulating the social policies it is expected to execute. When laws for a city are written on the statute books by up-state legislators, and when it remains within the power of the local mayor and council to disregard those laws and stand, as they choose, for a “wide open” town or a “closed” one, we have a situation which usually leaves it to the police department, actuated by such influences as are in control, to decide when and where it shall proceed against offenders. *This process was visualized in the Pittsburgh election of 1913, when the superintendent of the city almshouse at Marshalsea delivered at a polling place 30 infirm voters to swell the count of one faction. f See Appendix XXIV, p. 522, Sessions of Trial Board Secret. 370THE REVERSE SIDE We have seen how this double standard of law and enforcement long demoralized the police arm under corrupt régimes; at all times it is a deplorable makeshift for open and sustained public policy on the part of the people as a whole. With respect to the difficult question whether commercialized prostitution shall be regulated or abolished in a city the size of Pittsburgh, the police is faced with the still greater crevice between outward taboo and secret toleration. Moreover, it is dealing with a resourceful and entrenched offender. Yet prior to the movement which started with the Chicago Vice Commission of 1911, the efforts of American cities to cope with commercial prostitution were sporadic and lacking in coordination of purpose among the different agencies concerned, public and private. The social evil may well be taken, therefore, to illustrate the necessity (in each field of social control) of a rounded city program, embracing the police and other community forces reached. We have seen how the business of established houses was undermined by the Guthrie policies, which prohibited the sale of liquor, stopped soliciting from windows, and restricted the use of musical instruments as a means of attracting custom; how the brothel was relegated from all streets carrying car tracks; how the street-walker was banished from the main thoroughfares and the pimp was hounded out of the city. From such a situation, the standards of enforcement could either have fallen back or gone forward to a point where the city would no longer officially tolerate this deplorable traffic. With the retirement of Mayor Guthrie they fell backward; and it remained for the Morals Efficiency Commission in 1912-13* to retrieve the lost ground and carry reform to a point beyond that in 1907-08. These developments tend to confirm, rather than weaken, the following conclusions then reached by the writer: “ By closing permanently, say ten brothels, each week, upon each side of the river, a militant police department, held to results as rigorously as public opinion now holds the * For an interpretation of this work by a member of the commission see Appendix XXI. Asa permanent instrument for dealing with the problem, it secured legislation creating a Bureau of Public Morals in the Department of Public Safety, to be governed by a board of seven members appointed by the mayor. A half year elapsed before Mayor Armstrong, under pressure, made the appointments, and as this volume goes to press (July, 1914) the new board has still to organize its work. Its personnel has commanded public respect; it can employ a superintendent but is largely dependent upon police details: while the police department is not itself responsible for results. 371WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH police to accountability for house burglary, could in a year rid the city of every known brothel. That there would be an accompanying increase of the present number of prostitutes living more or less secretly in flats and furnished rooms is to be apprehended. The police could deal effectively with any such increase by giving prostitutes the option of going elsewhere or living in the workhouse. “The change, however, could not be effected permanently or humanely merely by such a policy of repression. Emergent funds, either public or from private charitable agencies, would be needed to bridge the way back to the ordinary walks of life for such as could be reclaimed in this way. Sick and worn-out prostitutes as well as those who had fallen from inexperience should be properly cared for and furnished with transportation, in some cases, after due investigation has shown that parents or other proper guardians will receive them. A residue of professional prostitutes, thoroughly confirmed in their mode of life, would remain. The permanent segregation, not only of idiots and imbeciles, but of recidivists or confirmed felons in Indiana and other progressive states, points the way for dealing with this residue. Farm colonies for male vagrants under comparatively long commitments (such as are carried on in Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland) could be established for females. ” The city which made such an attempt with energy, courage and persistence could become the first clean city in the country. Courage in plenty would be needed by Pittsburgh or any other city possessing the hardihood so to grapple with this evil. The sinister influence behind the business would find many mediums by which to mislead the public. Professional policemen or others whose opinions are in many cases worthless or open to impeachment would be quoted as alleging the evil to be a necessary one. Liquor dealers and other tradesmen would protest openly or secretly, and the politicians would do all in their power to render the cleansing movement abortive and temporary.* It will be seen that in such a program by a city administration pledged to high ideals, two governmental powers are involved, the one executive, vested in the police, which, if capable and determined, can, in my belief, eliminate commercialized prostitution *See Appendix XXII, p. 507, Excerpts from Report of Morals Efficiency Commission. 372THE REVERSE SIDE from any American city; the other, legislative, involving not only what the state enacts, but what the community wants. Efforts to correlate these two powers have resulted, on the one hand, in experiments in state controlled police, especially in liquor law enforcement; on the other, in the home-rule movements, vesting greater legislative authority in councils or city commissions. A further trend—in education, health, and factory inspection—is toward administrative boards given wide latitude in applying to local conditions the broad terms of a statute. What is very clear is that we need to bridge the gaps if the police is to do its work. No matter what laws may be upon the statute books affecting-prostitution, not until a community unitedly and openly voices its desire is the police likely to be accorded the power necessary to carry them out in any consecutive way. And only when the extent of prostitution and the diseases which have their roots in it become common knowledge by campaigns of outspoken public education, similar to that in the case of tuberculosis, is the electorate, and the men and women whose choices make up public opinion, in a position to voice a constructive policy (far broader than police action) with respect to sexual intercourse. PUBLICITY AND THE POLICE In other words, our third consideration is that the problems faced by the police department should not be locked up in rogues' galleries, but should become part of the sober understanding and knowledge of the community. The Pittsburgh public had no means, in 1907-08—nor now—for knowing who own the brothels in which its daughters are ruined and its sons infected, yet that is only the beginning of what it needs to know—what conditions of city life and wages postpone marriage and draw the young men of the working population to the brothel for their pleasures, what brings the daughters of workingmen to the same houses and thence to the police courts. The man on the beat has not the least significant testimony to offer as to why the streets are crowded afternoons and evenings with young girls idling about cheap theaters, moving picture exhibits, and the like, all potential victims of the seducer. 373WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH The standards of the police themselves would be the first to undergo a change for the better through a process of publicity and education. While in the civil government of English-speaking peoples our peace officers may be traced back to the old Saxon Watch and Ward, the city policeman, unlike his country cousin, the constable, may be traced also to recruits from the galleys. Turn to Balzac, Hugo, Dickens, LeSage, and the other writers of the picaresque school, from the days when Guzman de Alemon wrote his tale of Lazarillo de Tormes, and we find the ex-criminal who sells himself to society as a man-hunter, who speaks the argo of the criminal and thinks in his terms. Many of the features which now characterize the police department are the natural effects of this process of evolution. It has been this detective element which has tended to give tone to police work as a whole. (An ex-pimp and an ex-thief were two professional “guns” on the Pittsburgh staff in 1907-08.) The tendency to crystallize the work of the department in the phrase “set a thief to catch a thief” is one which has inhibited the natural development of the police department into a modern and scientific agency of society. The stool-pigeon* should no more set his stamp on the whole force than the bragging cop in the station house. Already the better class of officers fail to enthuse over the policeman who boasts of regularly breaking so many night-sticks a month on the heads of his prisoners, or who takes to himself credit for having “nailed to the cross” a particular offender who has been sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, and who, perhaps, in the process, has awakened his captor’s strong personal resentment. With such a radical change in viewpoint, the language of the underworld, the criminal jargon employed alike by police officers and thieves, would no longer impose its trade terms, its savageries and obscenities upon the police. Upon the new order, a thief would be no longer a “gun” or a “dip,” nor his female companion a “moll,” a “bundle,” or a “hoister.” The unfortunate woman of the street would no longer be termed a “cruiser,” a “hustler,” or a “body snatcher,” nor the victim of thieves or swindlers be contemptuously referred to as “mark” or “sucker.” Moreover, by the restriction of this jargon to the thief world, one common bond of comradeship between the police officer and the thief would be destroyed. Too long has the policeman *See Appendix XXIV, p. 525. 374THE REVERSE SIDE gone to school with the thief in order to learn his code. In doing so he has not only adopted the thief s vocabulary, but often his moral standards as well. By the breaking down of the bonds between the police and the underworld, of which this vocabulary is the symbol, and by creating new and common ties between the police and dynamic public intelligence, the cynical attitude taken by the latter as a class toward the existence of evil—which is the result of their intimate association with it and its dangerous toleration by the public—could be successfully combated. The point of view which sees in the professional thief simply a justification of the maintenance of a police caste dominated to a considerable extent by an approximation in mind and purpose to that of the criminal would lose its power. With a police actuated by these new ideals, it is hardly necessary to state that blackmail and extortion by members of the force would, in time, be curtailed. The physical examination of applicants for police appointment has served to raise the efficiency of the police force in our cities; the extension of the civil service has given it backbone; the inclusion of courses not only on laws and rights, but on elemental social ethics and social needs, in the schools of police instruction— in addition to the facts of local geography, traffic rules and the like—would give impetus to such a movement.* THE COURTS AND THE POLICE This socialization of police outlook and service is but part of a general tendency to readjust the processes of courts and correctional institutions to new theories of penology and life. Those who are interested in analogies would find in the extreme individualism of industrial Pittsburgh, coupled with the Calvinistic tenets of some of its strongest elements, a reason for the tenacious emphasis locally upon repressive and retributory methods in the treatment of offenders. For the police problem, intimate and intensely human as it is, reaches far. It opens up the old conflict between personal liberty and governmental control. It * Pioneer work has been done by Major Sylvester, chief of police of Washington, through the International Association of Police Chiefs, in raising the standards of police procedure. 375WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH is part of the newer battleground between the semi-religious ideas of punishment and the modern theories of reformation and prevention. A theoretical discussion of these contrasts would carry us beyond the bounds of police administration, but their bearing on certain practical phases of the latter can be brought out. The reproach of the old-time police officer was that, like Poo-Bah, in the “Mikado/" he sometimes attempted to serve both as judge and as executioner; ran his man up an alley, made him pay hush money, and let him off. In the development of centralized police systems the tendency was to eliminate not only this personal graft, but all discretionary action as well, on the part of the patrolman, and thus to limit the duties of the police to making arrests and gathering evidence for the courts to act upon according to the law. But while the law has laid down in black and white what penalties the courts shall impose and for what offenses, the plain fact remains that the judges have been faced not with crimes and misdemeanors, but with offenders, with the men whom the police have arrested. The outcome has shown that the three options of discharge, fine, and imprisonment, long the only recourse of the courts, founded as they were on a retributory idea of justice, are poor and insufficient means with which to prevent wrongdoing. In various progressive states, therefore, both in this country and in Europe, a new agent of the courts has been created in the person of the probation officer, to whom offenders are paroled instead of being sent to prison. They return to their homes subject to good conduct. Vested with much of the discretionary power which has been taken from the police officer, the probation agent supplies a flexible relationship between court and offenders which keeps the latter under supervision until they have proved themselves fit for entire freedom. The probation officer is not a limb of vengeance: he is a friend, responsible to a judge. Under such a system the minor court, from the legal viewpoint of punishment, becomes a major court from the social standpoint of prevention, because it first has contact with potential lawbreakers—with the rank and file at a stage when they are open to constructive work. 376THE REVERSE SIDE These minor courts, reaching back to the earliest Anglo-Saxon precedents, have been the slowest to feel the more acute social conscience of the times. Their attitude has been analogous to that of police circles. In Pittsburgh the magistracies are in fact agents of the police department.* The eight magistrates are appointed by the mayor, removable by him, assigned by the director of public safety, and hold court in the police stations. They have but one session of court each day in the week, convening at eight o'clock in the morning and adjourning, usually, two hours later. During sessions the outer room of the station house is transformed for the time being into a court room, the magistrate taking the place of the police sergeant at the desk and the prisoners in turn are brought out from the cells. Spectators stand outside of the rail. Children are held for the juvenile court, alleged felons for the grand jury, and the great number of petty offenders and misdemeanants disposed of summarily by the old unsocial routine of fine or short term commitments to the county jail or workhouse. There is no alternative of probation. It is an axiom in these courts that the police magistrate will hold any prisoner whom the department of public safety desires held, and this fact is proof positive that the police dominates the bench. As a result, the fine points in a particular case for lawyers and ufixers" have to be developed later on, when the case is tried before the higher courts; this tending to one good result, the cutting out, to a large extent, of the shyster lawyer, so familiar a figure in the police courts of other large cities. This absence, however, is compensated for by petty political leaders who perform for voters friendly to their interests the usual offices which are required of them. Legal training is not a prerequisite to holding office. In Pittsburgh, some magistrates have been painstaking and common-sense men; but, as a whole, the application of law to the everyday offender has been at the hands of a succession of appointees, in cahoots, not infrequently, with the underworld, whose malpractice has been an outrage and the subject of repeated scandal.f Nor do the magistrate courts represent the lowest ebb of maladministration. They are comparatively new, coming in with the development of the centralized police system. The old minor seats of justice are the squires (known as aldermen in the cities), *See Appendix XXIV, Police Magistrates* Courts, p 518. t See Blaxter, H. V., and Kerr, Allen H.: The Aldermen and Their Courts. The Pittsburgh District, p. 139. 377WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH one for each ward, borough, and township, without records or supervision, dependent upon a fee system which puts a premium on litigation and lends itself to all manner of petty persecutions. The creation of a county court in 1.911 offered the option of a clean channel in minor civil cases, but in criminal matters, where a preliminary hearing is required, the alderman’s jurisdiction remains intact, their practices and those of their constables, unregulated.* The latter serve as peace officers, but with considerably wider powers than those of a city policeman. The alderman is allowed a fee of 50 cents for every witness sworn the first time, and a lesser amount for each successive swearing of a witness. The manner of paying for the services of these officials shows how their powers are likely to be exercised in all parts of the field legally open to them in direct proportion to the personal monetary yield. The constables are altogether too frequently of the ward heeler type known to every resident of doubtful character in the neighborhood, “wise” to every possible petty dicker and deal, and thoroughly alert to the opportunities of their position. For years, constables on the Hill and in the tenderloin districts regularly reported, along with their fellows, that there were no houses of prostitution and no establishments selling liquor illegally within their precincts. Among the initiated the ceremony of this reporting is known generally as the “Blind Man’s Parade.” The constables have been less nearsighted of recent years, but the phrase is crammed with the general contempt in which the whole procedure of the law has been brought in the working people’s districts. The aldermen among the large, foreign-born population of mill workers on the North and South sides, those among the immigrant and Negro populations on the Hill and in the tenderloin, may be said to secure the “cream” of criminal cases of minor importance for the whole city. Petty offenders against municipal ordinances, “drunks,” “vags,” and so forth, do not come before them, but are tried in the police magistrates' courts, as the handling of these cases is comparatively unprofitable *See Koukol, op. cit., p. 61, and Roberts, op. cit., p. 33, of this volume. See also Blaxter and Kerr, op. cit. The Pittsburgh District, p. 134. 378THE REVERSE SIDE from the standpoint of the fee system. The aldermen generally engaged in the real estate business act as notaries or insurance agents, sell steamship tickets, or collect rents and accounts. This sort of brokerage constitutes the private business and unofficial life of the “judge” or squire. But let a constable enter with his prisoner or a possible litigant: the usually dingy quarters takes on a changed appearance. The squire drops his character of broker, and the place is forthwith a court of justice. To suit the convenience of the judge, cases are heard at all times of the day or night, even on Sundays, and in the evening the offices in these districts are frequently crowded to the doors with litigants and their friends, or “hangers-on.” In 1907-08 two justices' “shops” in the Hill District were characterized at certain hours of the day by the presence of notorious Negro and Jewish bullies, pimps, and steerers, who were “in right” with the local politicians. They lounged about and paraded before the door, waiting for business to turn up, holding whispered conferences with each other, or bustling into the shops in company with prisoners or complainants whose value to them in “coin” for services to be rendered they had already discounted to the last dollar. One of these shops in particular was made the political headquarters of the Negro element in the quarter by a swaggering crowd of “bucks” who dressed in flashy clothes and wore imitation diamonds. The leading local politician of color used to appear in his motor car and be greeted with due deference by the evillooking Negro constable attached to this particular office, who thus showed his superiority over the ordinary loiterer and hanger-on about the office door. Still, even such a paradise of petty graft seemed to some to indicate but a passing of the good old times. A Polish constable on the South Side who for years had been a “runner,” as he phrased it, for one of the busiest justice shops in the city, told the writer that the Polaks and Hunkies and Dagoes alike were “getting too civilized.” He said that the wholesale drinking bouts which often characterize important domestic events among the foreign-born workers, and, through misdemeanors and breaches of the peace which usually accompany them, furnish rich harvests for the justices' shops, were no longer so universally indulged in as was formerly the case. This change had occasioned a sad shrinkage in revenue for the worthy constable and his master. The situation possesses particular significance, because the victims of this judicial abuse are in the main working people, toilers in the mills and glass-houses, alien in birth and speech, and 379WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH until recent years, at least, totally helpless and inarticulate.* We can sympathize with the exploited prostitute, the thief, and the population fringing the underworld which yield their own revenue for the aldermen's courts, but the injustice committed against them is of small moment in comparison with that to which the foreign-born working population has been subject in these institutions of the law in Pennsylvania. The conditions obtain not only in working class districts in the city, but generally throughout the coal regions of Pennsylvania, as well as in the mil. towns outside of Pittsburgh. BEGINNINGS OF PROBATION Whatever promptings toward modern constructive methods may have come in the courts of higher jurisdiction, they have not been vital enough to pervade these lower chambers which are in closest contact with the people. Moreover, at the time this investigation was made Pittsburgh, in common with the rest of Pennsylvania, had no probation for adults whatever. A beginning toward this broader social equipment was to be noted in the juvenile court and in reformatory institutions for boys and girls Marked advances have come in the higher courts as result of laws passed in 1909 and 1911. Without change in powers and jurisdiction, the four courts of common pleas of Allegheny County have been consolidated under a president judge. Three of his eleven associates are assigned each month to sit in Quarter Sessions and the Court of Oyer and Terminer, before which criminal cases are carried for jury trial after indictment by the grand jury. Under the adult parole law of 1911, whenever any person is sentenced to the penitentiary, the court, instead of pronouncing a fixed term of imprisonment, is required to pronounce an indeterminate sentence, stating the minimum and maximum limits; the latter never to exceed the maximum penalty for the offense. Upon recommendation of the board of inspectors of the penitentiary the state pardon board may release such convicts after their minimum sentence is served. With exception of murder, incest, and certain other major crimes, * The reaction of such conditions on the general attitude of foreign workers to the forces of government was illustrated in the Westinghouse strike in 1914, when the feeling toward the deputy sheriffs and police at East Pittsburgh was colored by past experiences of lodging houses raided and foreigners “shaken down” in the squires’ courts. 380THE REVERSE SIDE the judge may, in the case of first offenders, suspend sentence and place them on probation for a definite period. Under these laws the Court of Quarter Sessions of Allegheny County appointed an adult probation officer in the latter part of 1910; 355 offenders were placed on probation in 1911, 446 in 1912, and 529 in 1913. To him, also, were paroled from jail and workhouse 16 prisoners in 1911,62 in 1912, and 112 in 1913. A card index system has been established upon which a history of the probationer is kept; monthly reports are received from them, and a ledger account kept with any who are required to pay in money to the county for costs and restitution. These payments can be made in instalments, thus minimizing the old system where, when a fine could not be paid in full, the man served his sentence, not unlike the old-time prisoner for debt. In other words, an effective beginning has been made in breaking away from the rigid notions of making the punishment fit the crime, in the direction of treating the criminal in the prisoners' dock as a man who is capable of rehabilitation in the community. Under a new county court created in Allegheny County in 1911 advances have been made in the direction of imposing social control over a class of offenders who theretofore had largely gone without effective restraint. A non-support law was passed in 1913, under which a colony of from 30 to 50 deserting husbands and fathers have been kept at the workhouse, the county paying each family 65 cents a day. This provision is applied where disciplinary means are needed, or in default of bond, but the vast bulk of non-support cases are handled on probation by the probation officer of the Court of Quarter Sessions. Four hundred and ninety-three such cases were so handled in 1912, and $28,249.68 turned over to the families by the probation officer; 604 cases in 1913, and $72,024.28 so turned over. With these advances in mind, the basic need in Pittsburgh is seen to be a thorough rehabilitation of the scheme of minor courts with which the offender first comes in contact. This calls for eliminating the aldermen and replacing the crude magistrates' benches with a municipal or county system, as competent in criminal procedure as the new county court is in civil.* * With the latter advance should go fresh scrutiny of the laws to which the obscure wage-earner and householder must look for his civil rights. Many of the loan shark abuses have been stopped in the city of Pittsburgh, but the laws which in practice require a lessee to waive exemptions on his household belongings, which enable the landlord to seize them for a full month’s rent in advance if his tenancy runs over a day, which leave him without equity in goods purchased on the in- 381WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH A second great need in treating delinquents is the need for greater coherence in the scheme of court administration. The common pleas judges are assigned in rotation to the Court of Quarter Sessions, and none gives up his entire time to the exacting problems of the criminal branch. There are no lines of administrative responsibility running down through county judge, magistrate and alderman, which would bind the system into a fabric of fair play and consistent treatment of all offenders. Even in the juvenile court this dislocation of machinery too largely negatives the work of probation officers. Children are held in police stations* overnight and haled before the magistrates in the morning, instead of being taken immediately to the house of detention for juveniles and thence to the juvenile court. The latter sits but once a week, and the judge often serves no longer than a month— four sessions and then a new judge to gather up the strands of distraught young lives. There is need to take to heart the marked advances in systematization of the Chicago municipal courts, which not only cover the city geographically, but are developing functional tribunals, such as the court of domestic relations. In the third place, there is need for making the probation work for adults in the higher courts really that. As yet, the single probation officer, with his two clerks, can carry on little more than high class parole work with the large number of cases assigned to him. The men and women report at his office. His report for 1913 was a plea for assistance which would enable him to carry probation out into the community. The constructive case work of the juvenile court probation officers, in helping young offenders to make good, affords an example of what should be done for adults in home and workshop and neighborhood. Probation should be made applicable also to others than first offenders. In the fourth place, once the minor courts are rehabilitated, probation work for adults should be entered upon directly with the group of greatest promise—the minor offenders. Pending such rehabilitation, the law seems to give ample warrant for the stalment plan if he has not made the last payment, and which leave him the common prey of ambulance chaser and company claim agent, need re-examination as to their suitability to modern conditions. *See Appendix XXIV, Juvenile Delinquents, p. 520. 382THE REVERSE SIDE higher courts to apply their probationary powers extensively to offenders who are summarily sentenced to jail or workhouse by magistrates and aldermen. A ROUNDED PROGRAM In general, the need in Pittsburgh is for a constructive social program to prevent and eliminate crime—a program in which the courts and penal institutions, prosecuting officials, probation officers, and police all have important parts to play. In such a program there is difference of opinion as to how far police activity should be stretched. The development of aggressive detective work on the part of district attorneys apparently overlaps the new field before the police. We have not yet worked out a technique for apprehending grand as well as petty social crimes. When there was notorious grafting in the old city councils of Pittsburgh nobody thought of turning in a police alarm. The policeman on his beat is the first to collar a hungry snatch-thief who makes away with a loaf of bread; but not until municipalities have developed bureaus of weights and measures do we find any checking of the wholesale stealing by bakers who sell underweight. The regulation of lodging houses, which have been described, fell ip Pittsburgh under the health authority. The police station was in the same building as the health bureau, and itself furnished hundreds of lodgings as bad as any condemned by the health officers. Obviously, without close co-operation between these two agencies no satisfactory control over the lodging house evil could be effected. To turn to another field, the report of the Chicago vice commission, made since this Pittsburgh investigation, recommended no less than three new agencies to deal with prostitution: (i) The creation of a morals commission; (2) the vesting in the health department of the power to close brothels on the ground that they are centers of infection; (3) a county committee on child protection. Pittsburgh has, in 1914, set up a morals bureau within the department of public safety more or less coordinate with the bureau of police. Opinion thus differs as to whether success in social control will lie in the multiplication of specialized agencies or in extending the responsibilities of those already existing. In the former case, we can hold that the police department must develop a broad social program to meet the needs which the congestion of our cities demands, and in the latter that, if it is relegated to the position of preserving outward law and order, its work must be closely correlated with the other agencies to which this specialized work is entrusted. 383WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH To the mind of the writer, it is time to reverse the ingrowing tendency of the police department. Its positive development, more than that of any other department of municipal government, has been neglected. The police themselves do not realize their potentialities. Their energies, hitherto consumed in defensive measures, can be released for aggressive social work. In numbers they are the second largest force through which the city has to act. They are enlisted for life. In discipline they are one of the few forms of absolutism at the service of a democracy. Before discarding this instrument of local government as negative and antisocial, its constructive capacities should be tried out. The fields before police and probation officer are in many respects distinct: they represent two arms of the law; but in the one case, as in the other, a new rapproachment to the problem of crime is needed; and to this the modern police officer, no less than the modern court probation officer, can give expression in his work. Such a program calls for more than his standing guard over what is valuable or patroling an unstable suzerainty over such groups in the community as those described in the earlier sections of this study. In exploring the possibilities for social service on the part of the police, let us distinguish between individual offense and organized forms of depredation. Organized law breaking dates back to antiquity, but the modern city has added new forms to the old. ELIMINATION OF ORGANIZED CRIME The first duty of the police should be to eliminate organized and professional depredation and to strike at those interests which profit by it. We have shown that, at least as far as offenses against property are concerned, the sum total of depredations committed by individual law-breakers or “lone wolves” is small in comparison with the actual money loss suffered at the hands of professional criminals who associate together under loose but effective confederacies, extending in some instances throughout the country. Among the first measures to be enforced would be those making for the permanent elimination from our municipal life of the more or less loosely organized professional criminals, such as pickpockets and confi- 384THE REVERSE SIDE dence men. If they could be banished from Pittsburgh under the reform administration, they can be banished from all cities. An honest police department, unhampered by political interference, would have little difficulty in restraining the criminal activities of local thieves and gamblers. The mandate of an efficient police head, “No tricks to be turned in this town,” would be sufficient, for the most part, to hold these in check and to regulate or completely break up “joints” and “hangouts.” Yeggs could be controlled by a police governed by the idea of the prevention of crime, no less than by one set upon the punishment of criminals. Their well established headquarters would be broken up. As the yegg spends much of his time on the railroads beating the freights, co-operation with railroad police departments would be important. With the establishment of work colonies, after the European models, it would no longer be tolerable to turn out-of-town vagrants loose at the city limits; their place of residence could be held responsible for their sequestration. The work of the state constabulary in suppressing gambling joints and black-hand headquarters in the remote districts of Pennsylvania illustrates what a thoroughly equipped force could do in running out kindred hang-outs in the mill districts. Further, an effective social police would keep a watchful eye upon those parasites who prey especially upon the workingmen,—the instalment and loan sharks, bogus employment agents, the real estate swindler offering to sell house sites which he does not own, and the small-fry confidence man who hopes to catch the workingman's savings by the inducement of a supposedly quick return on small investments. It would regulate strictly the sale of drugs, the use of which weakens the moral fiber and leads to crime, prostitution, or pauperism. A case in point was the prevalent sale of cocaine in Pittsburgh in 1907-08, especially to Negroes.* A social police then would early recognize the difference between the agencies which organize, aggravate, and profit by crime and anti-social living, and the individual offender. It would seek to stamp out the former. It would seek to deal with the latter with greater constructive imagination and deeper understanding of human nature. * How far and by what means drunkenness may be eliminated from such an industrial community, both because it is an economic evil and a contributing cause of crime and vice, are questions demanding exhaustive scrutiny in themselves. No attempt was made in this study to investigate the sale of liquor or the machinery for regulating it in Pittsburgh. 25 * 385WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH BUREAU OF PREVENTION To strike at the business end and organized forms of vice and depredation may be considered both a means to protect society against criminal operations and to restrict the recruiting of criminals. It would seem that the time is opportune to create a bureau of prevention which would balance the detective bureaus and give tone to the work not only of patrolmen, but of detectives alike. To such a police force the enforcement of a statute prohibiting the night employment of boys as messengers would be of as direct concern as to the factory inspector. By eliminating the procurer, by rigorously enforcing the law with respect to the age of consent, and by ejecting all minors from disorderly houses, a social police would strike at the sources of supply of commercial prostitution, just as the Guthrie administration struck at its sources of financial support. In a city like Pittsburgh, to which immigrants, ignorant of the language and unacquainted with the district, come in great numbers, a squad of uniformed interpreters could be at the stations to meet and direct these newcomers. If they were a different sort from the average functionary of the petty court, who is a crook with a double if fluent tongue, their function would be as serviceable as that of the traffic squad. Handbooks interpreting the laws in the different languages, such as those that mill and mining companies get out with respect to the precautions against accidents, would put the newcomer in touch with American institutions and ways of justice, reduce personal violence, and prevent a great mass of fraud. The service could be extended further to include an office of information and legal advice. Such methods as are here suggested are, after all, details, experiments which would have to be tried out and modified, no doubt; but basic is the requirement of a regenerative spirit in the force manifesting itself alike in thought and act in its relations to everyday people. There is prime need of a police which shall act as good neighbor and friend, and which shall temper, rather than accentuate, its representation of the law imposed upon an alien people by the dominant English-speaking race. More immediate, however, even than its responsibility toward the prevention of law-breaking would be the responsibility of a social police toward those who come in collision with the force of the law. 386THE REVERSE SIDE FIRST OFFENDERS AND ROUNDERS First of all should be noted the possibility of lessening the number of first offenders, such as “drunks” and “disorderlies,” by allowing the policemen a somewhat wider but more specific latitude in the making of arrests, and by convincing them that the preservation of order rather than a high number of indiscriminate lock-ups is the proper basis upon which to build up an individual's record. The work done by Chief Kohler in Cleveland and under Mayor Whitlock in Toledo in reducing the number of arrests of occasional offenders, the majority of them of foreign parentage, are cases in point. Following English methods, at instigation of the late Mayor Gaynor, each New York policeman is supplied with a pad of summons blanks on which he takes the name and address of the offender, and which, at his discretion, he can use instead of making street arrests. This method is capable of wide application in dealing with every one but the professional criminal. From the point of view of criminal procedure, the greatest advantage coming from this lessening of the number of arrests lies in the fact that the workingmen who form the great bulk of first offenders are thus kept from intimate association with professional criminals in police court and jail, and from the debasing influences which pervade the atmosphere of such places. In the Pittsburgh police station first offenders and old are locked into the station houses together. Neither should be there in numbers. The cutting down of arrests would keep out many a young man in his twenties;* a more rational treatment of rounders would cut the visits of the latter. Wise as might be some of the magistrates in dealing with human nature, if left to their official devices their treatment was largely limited to fines and imprisonments. The utter inadequacy of the fine in dealing with houses of ill fame illustrates the weakness of the first method. A fine is a small deterrent to a * The report of the New York Bureau of Research in 1913 pointed out that so long as the magistrates' courts were not kept open during the entire day a person arrested after 11 a. m., and in some sections of the city even earlier, was required to remain in a cell for the night or procure bail. More important, it showed that 41 per cent of the total number of arrests were for drunkenness, as against less than 20 per cent in New York, and that more than 45 per cent of arrests resulted in discharge; indicating among other things a great bulk of fruitless arrests and needless incarcerations. See Appendix XXIV, p. 518. 387WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH “madam”—it merely acts in place of a license; but it places a girl more fully in the toils of her keeper who puts up the money. As to the second method, a study made for the Pittsburgh Survey by Frederick A. King* of a number of recidivists on the records of the Allegheny County workhouse at Claremont, the jail and the police courts brought out the footlessness of the short term sentence. SCIENTIFIC TREATMENT The elimination of the repeater by the cumulative sentence would both reduce the number of ineffective arrests and release the energies of the police department for other work. In the case designated as that of “Red McHugh,” who was committed 29 times to the county jail in three years, once to the penitentiary, and 92 times to the workhouse in a period of forty years, there were under the present endless methods 122 police problems, when there should have been but a fraction of that number. With the lessened number of cases coming before the courts we should look for new and scientific standards of treatment for those that did come. The sending of persons charged with intoxication to the hospital rather than the jail is indicative of a trend of method and enlightened opinion which had not yet, in 1907-08, been reached in Pittsburgh. The establishment in New York of psychopathic pavilionsf to which attempted suicides as well as persons charged with intoxication, or the excessive use of drugs, or who manifest any other aberrations, are committed by the courts for examination by expert alienists, carries the method forward by another stage. The system of farm colony and hospital care of drunkards by Massachusetts, as diseased persons rather than as offenders, and the recommendation by the Chicago vice commission that women be permitted to voluntarily place themselves in hospitals for the cure of venereal disease are other illustrations of the common field of work of physicians, alienists, policemen, and courts. Such a program of enlightened standards with respect to * See Appendix XXIII, p. 510. f For description of antiquated padded cell in Pittsburgh’s central station house, see Appendix XXIV, pp. 520-521. 388THE REVERSE SIDE misdemeanants and felons would, through probation,—and if that failed through reformatories and the indeterminate sentence,— give those who are not confirmed law-breakers a chance to re-establish themselves in ordinary life. It would employ every means of industrial education, physical rehabilitation, surveillance, and institutional discipline to forward this end; where these failed, it would altogether abandon the repeated short-term sentence for recidivists, and would permanently quarantine them from the community by means of the indeterminate sentence. It would, through systems of prison employment and payment of prisoners, save the families of convicted men from suffering and disintegration. Equally important, it would, through systems of probation and parole, return to the community to be producers those men whose continued incarceration is worthless for themselves and society. Here we have a clear line of demarcation between the old and the new views of treating the convicted man. The detective bureau of the present system keeps track of the professional criminal— knows when he is to be released, meets him outside the walls, and maintains over him such close surveillance as, while usually not effective to prevent his subsequent lawbreaking, oftentimes prevents his earning an honest livelihood. Even more tragic is the fact that such policies are extended to the man who has only once offended. It is with the latter that, first of all, the probation and parole officer should direct their energies, not as with potential lawbreakers, but as with potential citizens, who can be helped into renewed self-confidence, self-conquest, and self-dependence. CASE WORK The social police officer is in a sense in a more strategic position than the probation officer, for the first deals with the man before he has been brought to court; he has in reserve the services of the latter. Let me illustrate by the mendicancy squad which under the Low administration in New York dealt with a special class of offenders. On its repressive side, the work included the vigorous prosecution of knavish impostors with whom all other means had failed, and with whom discipline was the only alternative; on its constructive side, it emphasized the necessity for finding or creating employment for those physically incapacitated from 389WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH normal employment who, without such help, inevitably lapsed into the chronic mendicant. The work called for active co-operation upon the part of the police at large, from magistrates, probation officers, hospitals, charity organization societies, and employers. For instance, a Greek boy who had lost the use of an arm in a woolen mill and who had been a beggar and companion of thieves since he was twelve, was sent for seventeen weeks to the Polyclinic Hospital, and there his deformity was cured. A boy picked up in Union Square, emaciated, hungry, a bit out of his head, could speak no English. Police interpreters failed to make themselves understood; language after language was tried, until it was found that he was a Dane who had fallen from the foreyard of a Norwegian bark-entine off Cape Hatteras, sustaining a concussion of the brain. Expert medical advice was secured, a brother found in this country, and after an operation which removed the pressure upon the brain, he was sent back to Copenhagen to his parents for a new start. These cases, out of hundreds, are typical of the constructive social work which opens before the police department. In conclusion, we may compare the social responsibility of the police department with that of an equally rudimentary agency —the almshouse. The almshouse was formerly the economic waste bin of the community, just as the jail was the catch basin of its disorders. In the early days there was no discrimination whatsoever—idiots, children, prostitutes, the insane, the aged, the disabled, even the misdemeanant all were herded together. The effect was to reduce all to the same level. One by one the special classes are being excluded from the almshouse, and more effective provisions made for them elsewhere. Thus we have hospitals for the insane, colonies for the epileptic and feeble-minded, schools for the blind. In some states the almshouse, so far as name goes, has dropped out altogether. In reality, it has become a hospital home for the aged. Similarly, to a certain degree, the jail has been raided of conglomerate inmates. In Pittsburgh, in 1910, the children were at last removed from the jail to a separate detention building. In the most enlightened states—though not as yet in Pennsylvania—all convicted men are retnoved to special institutions, leaving the jail merely a house of detention for accused men awaiting trial. The present work of the police is analogous to the work of 390THE REVERSE SIDE almshouse and jail before their modern reform. The people dealt with by the police, so far as method goes, have remained largely an undifferentiated mass. Our scrutiny of the wide gamut of human capacity and offense which these men and women represent lays bare the need for a new squaring with responsibilities by the police authority—and by the public for which it acts. Only so can we hope to apprehend and thwart not merely offenders of the widely variant groups but the causes, social and economic, which prompt, sustain, and exaggerate offense. 391APPENDICESAPPENDIX I REPORT ON LABOR CONDITIONS, STOCKHOLDERS' COMMITTEE UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION, APRIL 15, 1912 REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE At the annual meeting of the stockholders of the United States Steel Corporation held April 17, 1911, the following resolution was adopted: Resolved, That the chairman shall forthwith appoint a committee of not more than five persons from the officers, or stockholders, of this Corporation, to investigate and report to the Finance Committee, as soon as may be, but not later than October 1, 1911, as to the truth of the statements contained in a certain article appearing in the March number of the American Magazine, under the title Old Age at Forty, and that such report, together with such comment as said Finance Committee may desire to add thereto, shall thereupon be printed and mailed to the stockholders of this Corporation. Pursuant to such resolutions, Hon. E. H. Gary, chairman of the Board of Directors, appointed the following committee: Thomas DeWitt Cuyler, of Philadelphia, Stuyvesant Fish, of New York, Darius Miller, of Chicago, Charles A. Painter, of Pittsburgh, Charles L. Taylor, of Pittsburgh. The absence of several members of the committee, immediately following its appointment, prevented a full meeting until October 31, 1911, on which date the committee met for organization, electing Mr. Fish as chairman. Between that date and January 12, 1912, several meetings were held, at one of which Charles M. Cabot, the author of the resolution, and John A. Fitch, the writer of the article—Old Age at Forty— were present. They, with three members of the committee, held an allday conference. At the meeting held on January 12, 1912, William H. Matthews was chosen to act as secretary of the committee. Since that date he has devoted his entire time to visiting many plants of the Corporation, has interviewed workmen, superintendents, and officials, business and pro- 395WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH fessional men in the mill towns, and has been in conference constantly with one or more members of the committee. From the data gathered by our secretary, together with that obtained by the members of the committee, who, accompanied by Mr. Cabot on the committee's invitation, visited many of the works in the Chicago, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh districts—giving to such inspection all their time from April 3 to April 12—the facts and recommendations which follow are submitted. As a result of the several meetings held by the committee for the study of the article under discussion, as also through conference with Messrs. Cabot and Fitch, it seemed that the main questions calling for consideration were: (a) The seven-day week, and long turn, (b) The twelve-hour day, (c) The speeding of the workmen, (d) The repression of the men. Before taking up these questions singly, we believe we but state the facts in saying that no one of these practices was inaugurated by the United States Steel Corporation. Rather were they in vogue, to a greater or less degree, in the various companies which were brought into one when the Steel Corporation was organized. (a) The Seven-day Week and Long Turn Until recent years the seven-day week has been the general rule and practice followed in all the operations which are necessarily continuous, particularly in that of blast furnace work. Nor was it always confined to departments where such continuous operation was a metallurgical necessity. Recognizing the harmful effects of such a schedule of work, the Finance Committee of the Corporation, on April 23, 1907, adopted and transmitted to the presidents of all subsidiary plants of the Corporation the following resolution: On motion, it was voted to recommend to all subsidiary companies that Sunday labor be reduced to the minimum; that all work (excepting such repair work as can not be done while operating) be suspended on Sunday at all steel works, rolling mills, shops, quarries, and docks; that there shall be no construction work, loading or unloading of materials. It is understood that it is not at present practicable to apply the recommendation to all departments, notably the blast furnaces, but it is desirable that the spirit of the recommendation be observed to the fullest extent within reason. While the efforts made by individual officials to carry out the recommendation of the finance committee resulted in some progress being made toward compliance with the same, in many plants it was disregarded 396REPORT OF STOCKHOLDERS' COMMITTEE in whole or in part. The explanation of this failure to detach from the steel industry the seven-day schedule of work may be best found, we believe, in that zeal of operating officials for output, exclusive of all other considerations. This being contrary to the policy of the board, and at variance with the resolution of its Finance Committee, a telegraphic order of a peremptory character was issued by Judge Gary on March 18, 1910, to the presidents of all constituent companies, reading 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. Mr. Corey has written you on the subject within a day or two. 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 without first taking up the question with our Finance Committee and asking for a change of the views of the committee, which probably will not under any circumstances be secured. I emphasize the fact that there should be at least twenty-four continuous hours’ interval during each week in the production of ingots. (Signed) E. H. Gary. Whether viewed from a physical, social, or moral point of view, we believe the seven-day week is detrimental to those engaged in it. While not wishing to imply that the method adopted by any individual official or any combination of two or more methods would be the best to meet requirements in all mills, we are strongly of the opinion that no matter what alleged difficulties in operation may seem to hinder the abandonment of the seven-day week, they must be met. The records of today indicate that with the exception of two or three plants, the seven-day week has been relegated to the past. The resolution of the Finance Committee, as subsequently emphasized by Judge Gary, was strictly mandatory in character and should, in our judgment, be absolutely enforced at all times, in all mines, mills, shops, railways, docks, and works of the Steel Corporation. Any tendency on the part of anyone to disregard the spirit or the letter of such order should be sufficient cause for removal from service. Closely allied with the question of the seven-day week is that of the excessive hours of labor involved in continuous processes, caused by the changing of the working shifts from day turn to night turn and vice versa. An examination of the time sheets of many of the mills shows that this practice has been entirely abolished in many of the departments and not in others. We recognize that at rare intervals there may come emergencies and unusual conditions that would make absolute enforcement of any exact schedule of work hours impracticable, a fact equally true in any field of industry and commerce. Our investigation, however, leads us to believe that it is feasible and practicable to eliminate the long 397WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH turn formerly followed in the changing of shifts in continuous process work, and that it should be done. Further, that conscientious effort should be made by all to reduce to a positive minimum any undue length in work hours that emergencies and unforeseen conditions may sometimes demand. (ib) The Twelve-hour Day To ascertain the number of employes of the Steel Corporation working on a twelve-hour schedule (exclusive of officers, managers and clerical forces), we have examined the records of 175,715 men. Of this number we find 45,248, or 25^ per cent, are at present working twelve hours per day. Generally speaking, this schedule of work finds its largest proportion in those departments which are more or less continuous, such as rolling mills, open hearths and blast furnaces, where the percentage working twelve hours varies from 50 to 60. The explanation of such fact may be found, partly, at least, in the introduction of a large number of mechanical improvements which have steadily cut down the exhausting drudgery and the severe physical labor that was characteristic of many of the processes in the earlier years of the iron and steel industry. The actual physical labor involved in many of the positions is, today, much less than in former years, this being especially true of the open hearth and blast furnaces, where the intermittent character of the work is such that there is less call for actual expenditure of physical energy than in many of the eight- and ten-hour positions. Notwithstanding this fact, we are of the opinion that a twelve-hour day of labor, followed continuously by any group of men for any considerable number of years means a decreasing of the efficiency and lessening of the vigor and virility of such men. The question should be considered from a social as well as a physical point of view. When it is remembered that the twelve hours a day to the man in the mills means approximately thirteen hours away from his home and family—not for one day, but for all working days—it leaves but scant time for self-improvement, for companionship with his family, for recreation and leisure. It is important that any industry be considered in its relation to the home life of those engaged in it, as to whether it tends to weaken or strengthen the normalness and stability of family life. By a reasonable conserving of the strength of the working population of today may we be best assured of a healthy, intelligent, productive citizenship in the future. We are not unmindful of the fact that the twelve-hour day has, by its general acceptance and practice over a considerable period of years, become firmly entrenched, and that any sudden or arbitrary change 398REPORT OF STOCKHOLDERS' COMMITTEE would involve a revolution in mill operations. Nor are we at all sure that it would be possible for any one employer, or any number of employers, to inaugurate a shorter hour system, unless a similar policy should be adopted by all employers engaged in the same industry. We do believe that following in the wake of other betterment of conditions in the steel industry, there will naturally come a shortening of the hours of labor and the eventual abolishment of the twelve-hour day, which will tend toward increasing the efficiency and resourcefulness of the working population and for that reason bring benefit to both employer and employed. That steps should be taken now that shall have for their purpose and end a reasonable and just arrangement, to all concerned, of the problems involved in this question—that of reducing the long hours of labor— we would respectfully recommend to the intelligent and thoughtful consideration of the proper officers of the Corporation. (c) The Speeding of the Workmen In the article which is under discussion, considerable criticism is made against the system of payment of wages by piece work. We do not believe that there has been evolved any fairer or more generally accepted method of payment for labor. Likewise, what is known as the “bonus” system which has been largely employed by the Steel Corporation as an incentive to increase in output and efficiency, is objected to as tending to result in a system of speeding harmful to the men. That there is possibility of abuse in these systems is true. Have there ever been devised rules of procedure in any field of industry free from such possibility? Our observation of labor conditions in the mills of the Steel Corporation does not lead us to believe that there is either desire or tendency on the part of foremen and superintendents to pursue these policies to a point that would mean harm or injury to the men under their charge. It is, of course, within the province of the Board of Directors, and they should employ the necessary means whereby they would always be conversant with and able to promptly check any official, who in his anxiety for output, becomes disregardful of the possible injury to his men by overspeeding and excessive strain. As general operating policies, we believe the “bonus” system and the payment of wages by piece work to be of advantage both to employer and employe, guarding as they do against that dead level of wages regardless of the ambition, the resourcefulness, the efficiency of the individual concerned. They are the exemplification of that esprit de corps that is essential to the success of all enterprises; they are but a part of 399WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH that spirit of contest and competition that is characteristic of all American life, whether it finds expression in the school room, on the athletic field, in the target contests of army and navy, or in the legitimate striving for “place” among workmen, foremen, superintendents, managers, and higher officials in any field of commerce and industry. Through their operation, the qualities of perseverance, ingenuity, and grit have opportunity for expression, development, and reward. As stated above, these special bonuses are offered as an incentive for increase in output and efficiency. That they should find fair and just distribution among all whose efforts and labor contribute to any resultant increase in production, or economies, would seem to be a subject calling for consideration and action. (id) The Repression of the Men The Steel Corporation has made efficiency the one standard by which continuance of employment in its plants is determined. If we are to understand the term “repression of workmen” as a criticism of and objection to this defined policy, then the implied charge is true. If, on the other hand, it involves the question as to what measures the officers of the Corporation should adopt for the suppression of organizations that in the past have, at times, proved irresponsible and incapable of self-control, that have advocated and ofttimes insisted upon what are believed by many to be fallacious theories and practices, then, at least, the charge may well be open to discussion. As a committee of stockholders, we do not believe the final solution of the problems involved in this question has been reached. We do believe the present methods are preferable to the old for all concerned, and that the Steel Corporation, in view of the practices often pursued by labor organizations in steel mills in past years, is justified in the position it has taken. That the method of employment of today must prove to be the best for the future is a question on which there may well be a difference of opinion. The interests of society and the community at large will not best be served by that type of mind, whether it be employer or employe, which bases action on the assumption that might makes right. On the contrary, the adjustment of the relations between employer and employe is a task for men of sound minds, reciprocal natures, broad sympathies and courage, men who believe that the future may be made better than the present. May it not be reasonably hoped that such men, whether they be officials or wage-earners, may more and more be found working together to bring forward the day when employer and employe shall enter into a common administration of industrial interests? 400REPORT OF STOCKHOLDERS’ COMMITTEE In the article under discussion, Old Age at Forty, mention is made of the general social welfare policies inaugurated at different times by the Steel Corporation. It would seem to be in the province of this report to briefly outline those policies, and to consider their value as affecting the relationship of employer to employe. Safety Department It is not necessary here to trace the growth of the earlier efforts made by different subsidiary companies toward the prevention of accidents, to the time when they found their culmination in the organization of a central committee of safety early in the year 1908, which committee was given the power to examine all the various plants of the Corporation, and as rapidly as possible to bring every mill to the highest possible point of effectiveness in accident prevention. That committee has and is carrying on a determined and effective campaign for safety all along the line. Its work is considered as important a subject as any that the Corporation has to contend with in the manufacture of its products. From the start it has worked on a sound, vigorous and scientific system of accident prevention. The central office of the Safety Department is in New York, in charge of an acknowledged expert, with several assistants, and supplemented by local safety committees in each of the subsidiary companies, which, in turn, are supplemented by sub-committees of foremen and workmen all striving to study and safeguard the lives and welfare of employes. During the years 1910 and 1911, there was expended $1,750,000 for safety, and large appropriations have already been granted for a continuance of the work. Gratifying results have been accomplished, as evidenced by the fact that the percentage of serious and fatal accidents throughout all the plants of the Corporation shows a decrease of 43 per cent since 1906. This reduction of serious and fatal accidents, based on the normal number of employes (200,000), means 2,300 less in 1911 than 1906. Prevention is but the first step in the system of accident and relief work as carried on by the Corporation. Nearly every plant has its emergency hospital equipped to render first aid to any workmen injured. Each mill has its surgeon and nurse to administer promptly the necessary assistance in case of accident, and the company provides efficient hospital treatment, either in its own hospitals or those of the community. 26* 401WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Voluntary Accident Relief Plan In spite of all precautions taken and all efforts toward prevention, there will occur many accidents in any large industry, involving temporary or permanent disability, and sometimes death. To Andrew Carnegie, the steel industry is indebted for the first voluntary relief measures. In 1901, he created a trust of $4,000,000, the income of which was devoted, within the Carnegie interests, to the relief of families from whom the breadwinner had been removed by accidental death, to the temporary relief of those employes meeting with work-accidents, and to the pensioning of superannuated employes, and those permanently disabled. From this fund, there was disbursed in nine years the sum of $1,756,955.59 among 9,746 employes. What has been the policy of the Corporation in this matter of ameliorating the conditions which accidents often bring to the homes of its employes? In May, 1910, it established a plan of relief whereby it made voluntary provision for the care and benefit of all employes injured, and for the families of those killed. In a report of this nature, we can not discuss the considerable detail of such a system. During the years 1910 and 1911, $3,133,000 was paid in aid of workmen who were injured in the mills, and to the families of those men who were killed in service. In addition to this voluntary relief on the part of the Corporation, there exist in some of the subsidiary company plants employes' beneficial associations for insurance against sickness and death from causes other than mill accidents. To the funds of these, both the men and the company contribute, and in their administration there is a similar partnership. That there should be an extension of this form of insurance would seem to us desirable. Pensions In addition to voluntary accident relief, the United States Steel Corporation appropriated in January, 1911, a fund of $8,000,000 for pension purposes, which was combined with the fund of $4,000,000 which had been established in 1901 by Andrew Carnegie, for the benefit of the employes of the Carnegie plants. The income from the aggregate amount is now being used for the benefit of all employes of all the subsidiary companies of the Corporation. The pension obligations of those subsidiary companies, which had put into operation pension provisions prior to 1911, were assumed by and merged into the new fund. The record of operations of this fund for the year 1911 were as follows: 402REPORT OF STOCKHOLDERS' COMMITTEE Total number of pensioners December 31, 1911 Number of pensions granted during 1911 Total disbursements during 1911.................... Average pensions granted per month . . . • . Average age of employes pensioned.................. Average length of service of pensioners .... Sanitation and Welfare 1,606 _ 565 $348,480.37 $20.75 66 2-3 years 30 4-10 “ We have found that much attention has been given to the matter of sanitation in many of the mills. Pure drinking-water systems, sanitary lavatories, locker.rooms, shower baths, and other like provisions are being established in many of the plants. Not all have traveled as far nor as diligently along this line of improvement as we think they might. Along the line of general welfare work, scattering efforts are being made in the way of providing places of recreation, such as club rooms, playgrounds and other agencies for the families of employes. District nurses have been employed by some of the companies; sanitary engineers by others. Specialists have been employed to investigate and report on all questions affecting social welfare. An educational movement along these lines is now being inaugurated, and when that same energy and uniformity of practice that is characteristic of the safety department shall have been brought to bear on the question of welfare, either directly or by co-operation with agencies already at work in the towns, much of permanent value can and, we believe, will be accomplished. With the question of shorter hours of labor is closely allied this one of providing means and places by and in which the leisure hours gained may be profitably spent. It is not a question for the Steel Corporation alone. Rather is it one to which society as a whole may well address itself. During the year 1911 the Corporation expended $1,250,000 for this general betterment work. Stock Distribution In the year 1903, a plan was inaugurated, under which shares of preferred stock were offered to all employes and which practice has continued yearly since. A premium of $5 per annum for five years is paid on each share of preferred stock purchased by employes under this plan. As of December 31, 1911, 24,588 employes were stockholders under this plan; their aggregate holdings amounting to 102,245 shares of stock. In response to the 1912 circular concerning employes' stock distribution, the following table shows the subscriptions thereunder: Number of Employes Subscribing Employes receiving less than $800 per year . 15,349 Employes receiving $800 to $2,500 per year . 20,096 Employes receiving over $2,500 per year . . 1,501 Total....................................36,946 403 Number of Shares of Stock 17,233 35,255 8,866 61,354WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH While in the mills, we have made special point to ascertain from the workmen themselves their attitude toward this plan, and we have found most of them well informed as to its provisions. Many with whom we have talked were holders of one or more shares of the stock. Our belief that the plan has encouraged thrift and stimulated the men to save was but strengthened by the remark volunteered by several of the men with whom we talked—that they “had never saved any money until they began this way.” An impartial examination of all the facts presented in this report will show that much work has already been done by the United States Steel Corporation for the betterment of conditions under which their employes live and work. We believe there is evinced a widening sense of social responsibility; an increased willingness to accept the heavier burdens and obligations which have come with the development of modern industry. Yet, not less evident is the fact that there is necessity for still larger accomplishment in the future. Elsewhere in our report we have suggested some of the lines along which that should be wrought. It may not be amiss to say that the resolution passed by our fellow stockholders imposed a task upon this committee requiring much labor, careful investigation, and conscientious consideration. To approach the questions raised by the article under discussion with fair and open minds; to ascertain and present the real facts; to search for the practical, rather than the theoretical; to reach conclusions that should not be affected in any way by opinions gleaned from this or that possibly prejudiced source, whether of employer or employe—in that spirit have we endeavored to do the work entrusted to us. To that high tribunal, that final court of appeal—public opinion—we submit our conclusions and recommendations. The dissatisfaction and unrest which plainly exist in the industrial world today will not be lessened or removed by a policy that limits itself to a fault-finding, destructive line of action, but rather by one that will in tangible, definite fashion recognize and follow that constructive and conserving leadership of which we believe there is evidence, both in the ranks of employers and employes. There may be those, perhaps, who will accuse us of unwarranted optimism in expressing the hope that the men who, in the manufacture of iron and steel have been so successful in the invention and application of wonderful mechanical appliances, who have won success in the administration of immense enterprises—that these same men will lead and achieve in the just solving of the social and human problems that in this same industry press for answer. 404REPORT OF STOCKHOLDERS' COMMITTEE The publicity accorded by the Steel Corporation quarterly in its financial statements, and monthly in its tonnage statements, has placed it in this respect far in advance of other corporations, and by doing so has gained for it the confidence and trust of the public. In conclusion, we respectfully recommend to the Board of Directors of the Steel Corporation that hereafter, and at stated periods, a statement shall be submitted to the stockholders, dealing with the questions discussed in this report, so that correct and reliable first-hand information may be available as to the advancement and betterments being effected in these equally vital and important fields of endeavor. Respectfully submitted, Stuyvesant Fish, Thomas DeWitt Cuyler, Darius Miller, Charles A. Painter, Charles L. Taylor, Committee of Stockholders. New York, N. Y., April 15, 1912. 405APPENDIX II COMMUNITY CONTRASTS OF 1914 IN THE HOUSING OF MILL WORKERS 1. A SOHO HILLSIDE THE PERSISTENCE OF SANITARY NEGLECT IN CENTRAL PITTSBURGH Abraham Oseroff* Within ten minutes' walk of the “Schenley Farms," where some of Pittsburgh's finest and richest homes are grouped; within view of the University of Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Institute of Technology; and as a next-door neighbor to several rich and influential churches, lies a section of the Soho District which is burdened with nearly every one of the long list of housing evils to be found in our large cities. Fifth Avenue and Forbes Street are the main arteries along which well-to-do Pittsburghers are carried downtown to their work in office or store. Above the Twenty-second Street bridge, Rook's Hill bends these streets almost to the edge of the bluff that overhangs the Monongahela River and the huge furnaces of the Jones and Laughlin steel mills, the extensive plant of the National Tube Company, and Hussey and Company's copper works. Clinging to the hillside of the narrow belt between, designated in its various parts as Rock Alley, Rock Street, Maurice Street, and Cornet Street, in an area of something less than 23 acres, are 14 tenements, 15 two-family dwellings and 36 one-family dwellings; 65 houses in all. * The results of investigations carried on by Mr. Oseroff in March and April, 1914. His findings fairly duplicate the conditions found by the Pittsburgh Survey in the Soho District in 1907-08. Adequate housing laws and ordinances have been passed in the interval as result of local movements for reform. This Soho District, which is not wholly unrepresentative of tenement conditions throughout the city, shows the crying and unmet need throughout all this period for enforcement of those laws and ordinances. It indicates the bulk of neglect which faces the new director of the department of health, Dr. James F. Edwards, and which if anything has gone from bad to worse since his days of enforcement as superintendent of health under the Guthrie administration. The report from which this statement is excerpted was submitted by Mr. Oseroff as a master’s thesis at the University of Pittsburgh. 406Wing of the Largest Tenement in the District Two stories on Forbes Street and five stories in the rear. No fire-escapes. Over 20 families. A photograph of this building was published as an example of bad housing in the Bureau of Health Report for 1907. It is an example of worse housing in 1914General View of the Soho Hill District Cornet Street in the foreground; the Jones and Laughlin steel mills and the Twenty-second Street bridge in the distance; Forbes Street to the rightCOMMUNITY CONTRASTS OF 1914 They are workingmen's homes, if homes they may be called, providing living quarters for 126 families, 40 of whom in turn give shelter to 120 boarders: a total of 619 persons in all. A dismal, unkept, uncared for rut, running into the hillside, bears the designation of Rock Alley. It is lined on both sides by a variety of houses built at an almost equal variety of angles. One house here takes care of five families, and on the cold March morning of one of my visits its tiny attic room was doing its best to provide space for six sleeping mill workers with the two windows and the only door tightly closed. Another Soho Hillside The district covered by housing study is shown by heavy shading house has, as an appendage, a little frame shack which does service as a kitchen. On this same March morning, with the thermometer hovering about the freezing point, a family group was eagerly crowding about a little stove in one corner of the room. John, the oldest of the children, spoke up and said: “Gee, mister, the stove is the only warm spot in this house." And he was right, for the wind and the snow found no difficulty in crossing the fragile barriers of doors and windows and took full advantage of the many crevices between decayed boards. The population of Rock Alley is even more diverse than are its houses. Unassorted there are living side by side, a mixture of American, 407WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Welsh, Irish, Hungarian, and Polish families, and, indeed, a German boarder in the crowd. Rock Alley, in spite of its many other afflictions, has not escaped the privy vault nuisance. It has full share of insanitary, disease breeding vaults without sewer connection, ever ready to spread contamination and endanger the health of the neighborhood. Down Rock Street runs a long, open wooden sewer drain carrying sewage from both alley and street toward Maurice Street below. Rock Street residents are not well versed in the best standards of sanitation and the drain becomes the resting place for innumerable empty tin cans, worn-out brooms, old shoes, and other articles equally foreign to the lap of a respectable sewer. As a result, during rain or when its sluggish way is otherwise forced to capacity, it overflows into cellars and basement kitchens. The tenement shown in the foreground of the picture of Rock Street redeems itself, in part at least, for it is one of the very few houses of the district affording inside water-closets for its families. Their neighbors across the way are less fortunate, two families depending for toilet accommodations on a dry privy vault placed under a side porch adjacent to the kitchen. Maurice Street, one of the main thoroughfares of the district, forms a connecting link between Forbes Street and the plants bordering the district. Here for the first time a tenement court is to be encountered, consisting of an old frame shack at the rear, occupied by four families; a brick hovel in the front by one; and a brick house by four. For these nine families and boarders the sole water supply is one hydrant adjacent to a privy vault. On Cornet Street are houses in the last stage of dilapidation, but still occupied, and still a source of income to the landlord. Basement rooms are plentiful and foul, insanitary privy vaults open to the sight of all passersby. The worst housing conditions of the district, however, are to be found on Forbes Street. Here, in a long row of houses and tenements, almost every one in utter dilapidation, is a total neglect of most of the essentials of sanitation. The houses are breeding places of filth and disease, and some are veritable fire traps. One of the larger of the tenements, typical in most respects of the rest, is a dilapidated frame structure fronting two stories on Forbes Street and four stories in the rear. In 25 rooms, 17 of which are below the street level, and four of which are totally dark, it houses, in dark, damp, poorly ventilated, overcrowded quarters, 62 persons, besides providing stable quarters for a huckster's horse. The apartments consist of either two or three rooms and the rentals vary 408Clogged Drain on Maurice Street Hydrant Adjacent to Vault The only water supply for nine families Rock Street Showing the Open Drain “The drain becomes the resting place for innumerable empty tin cans, worn out brooms, old shoes, and other articles foreign to the lap of a respectable sewer. As result, it overflows into cellar and basement kitchens.”A Hillside Battery of Disease Thirteen dry unsewered vaults are shown in the length of the picture. W aste water drains down over the embankment, alongside the tracks where the through Baltimore and Ohio passenger trains set the dust awhirl. The vault next the end at the left is all that is supplied to three houses, sheltering eight familiesCOMMUNITY CONTRASTS OF 1914 from $4.00 to $8.00 per month. The total monthly rental of this tenement reaches the sum of $71. The privy-vault nuisance in this section is pernicious in the highest degree. In an area extending over no more than three city squares there are 27 unsewered vaults over which are 73 compartments. They are arranged usually in battery style, their seepage running down the hillside. Back of Forbes Street, in many cases, the ground to the very houses, and often even under the houses, is thoroughly permeated with sewage, foulness, and dampness. Wherever one turns the foul odors pervade the atmosphere like the very essence of civic neglect. What an anomaly we have here! The Schenley Farms district, with its wonderful semi-public buildings and magnificent homes, produced by Pittsburgh's millions, and these squalid hovels and dilapidated tenements—they, too, a product of the same process. The people who live in them are fairly representative of the unskilled working population of the district. The nationalities represented are as follows: American Irish Welsh . Slav Austrian Servian Magyar Russian Polish . English Hungarian German Scotch . 77 93 35 121 19 24 9 25 119 6 65 12 4 Total 619 The adult male population is dependent for employment chiefly on the industrial plants mentioned. Two hundred and twenty-one out of the 245 male workers are living on budgets ranging from $1.25 to $2.50 per day. Besides the boarding system, 37 women and eight children help by getting employment outside the home. The average rents they pay from these incomes are shown in the following table: 1 room . 2 rooms 3 rooms 4 rooms »4.00 per month 6.19 per month 7.42 per month 9.41 per month Six of the families live in one-room apartments, 45 families living 409WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH in two-room apartments, 41 in three-room apartments, 26 in four-room apartments, and the others in five or more rooms. Altogether out of 396 living rooms 85 are below street level, and 18 totally dark. Yet we must not get the impression that the situation is wholly dark. A re-awakening, due to the recognition of bad housing conditions in Pittsburgh, has shown itself in legislation reforms at the hands of civic organizations. The Chamber of Commerce Housing Committee has developed a plan for the building of small, sanitary dwellings for workingmen which seems practical, as well for the investors as for the prospective dweller. Why is not this district a logical one for the inauguration of the committee's plan? Perhaps then, too, prophecy may become fact, and “Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree. And they shall build houses and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them." 2. MIDLAND A FORERUNNER OF MODERN HOUSING DEVELOPMENT FOR INDUSTRIAL SECTIONS W. C. Rice Midland Improvement Company Midland, one of the new industrial towns of the Pittsburgh District, is located 37 miles southwest of the city on the Ohio River. Its site is 60 feet above high water mark, 1,200 acres of practically level land, having sufficient slope to insure good drainage. The town was founded by the Midland Steel Company in 1906 when it erected a blast furnace and coke oven plant at this point, and laid out a community in the usual checker-board fashion. All lots were made rectangular, from 25 to 50 feet in width, and from 120 to 135 feet in depth. The policy was to erect fairly good buildings, and certain restrictions were enforced as to the distance from the street, and the cost. Such shacks as were necessary during the construction period were razed on the completion of the blast furnace plant. No alleys were permitted, except in the rear of the main business street, for alleys invariably become a dumping ground for refuse and are always the last to be paved. The original plant site was taken over by the Pittsburgh Crucible Steel Company, a subsidiary of the Crucible Steel Company of America, 410 MIDLyiNt Midland Community development under the Crucible Steel Company of America, back of its millsite on the Ohio River. The town was founded in 1906, and laid out on a checkerboard street plan. Contrast the graceful curving streets of the new developments, which sum up the advances of ten years in town planning in the Pittsburgh DistrictStucco and Frame Buildings. Midland The tenants in this row are trained mechanics and skilled mill operatives, paying from $20 to $22 per month for five, six and seven room houses with all modern conveniences. The company encourages purchase, selling a house and lot from §2,500 to $3,400, 10 per cent down, one per cent per month with interest Low Cost Frame Houses. Midland Tenants of these double houses are foreign laborers and mechanics. They pay $12 per month for five large rooms, inside toilet, running water, gas, electric light, and fireplaces. The street is shown still in process of constructionCOMMUNITY CONTRASTS OF I914 in 1911, and the unsold portion of the town site comprising 600 acres was afterwards acquired by the Midland Improvement Company, also a subsidiary of the Steel Company. The curved and winding streets and many small parks which make up the new plan is the work of those who thus acquired the property. In this residential section all dwellings must be brick, concrete, stone, or other fireproof material. No small out-buildings are permitted other than a neat garage, lots averaging 50 by 135 feet, and but one building on a lot. Every construction must cost not less than $2,500, and be at least 30 feet from the property line. However, frame or stucco houses are permitted provided they cost not less than $2,000 if erected on lots where restrictions are less rigorous. The policy of the Improvement Company has been to encourage in every way civic improvements and the general good of its people. During the last year, the company has built several hundred houses and employed a firm of architects of national standing to design houses very different from the store-box type so common in industrial towns. The pictures opposite page 413 show 30 houses, single, double, and triple type, designed and patterned after houses in Essen, Germany. Notice the window-box effect. The company provided the plants for these window boxes, graded and sowed the lawns, provided window shades to insure uniformity of color, and provided screens. These houses are occupied by foremen, mechanics, and clerks, and have been given the sobriquet, "Toy-land/' Other pictures show stucco and clapboard houses all separate, with gas, electric light, furnace, bath, and other conveniences; separate houses of brick construction, two or three of each design scattered throughout the plan, also modern in every way; and solid concrete-poured houses consisting of four large rooms with gas, electric lights, inside toilet, and running water. This last construction is indestructible and germ-proof, as the walls, floor, and roof are solid concrete. The original layout provided for the segregation of foreigners (mostly Italian, Croatians, Lithuanians, and Poles, together with Jewish shopkeepers) to the extreme west end of the town. This rule has been followed in the larger development of the town. These houses are built in pairs with 10 feet space between them; contain five large rooms, equipped with gas, electric light, running water, and toilets, fireplaces, mantels, and porches. They rent up to $ 12 per month, 20 per cent less than inferior houses in other industrial towns in the western end of the state. The Negro population, which is not large, has a nearby section in the same end of the borough near where the foreigners live, and have been given the same careful attention. 411WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH The company believes that the conveniences offered produce an environment doing much toward the education of the next generation, if not the present, in household standards. Meanwhile, restrictions as to the number of men sleeping in one room are insisted upon. Owing to the lack of houses in Midland, those controlled by the Crucible Company are in preference given to their employes. However, houses are being erected by individuals at many points. Upon acquiring the town site, the Crucible Company found but one paved street. A number of streets have since been paved, trees planted, and storm and sanitary sewers laid. A number of the residents along sections of the town where the streets are running east and west, and where traffic is light, have petitioned the borough council to have the cart-way, or between curbs, reduced to 24 feet, leaving a grass plot eight feet wide between sidewalk and curb. This adds much to the general appearance and reduces the cost of paving. Streets running north and south are 50 feet wide with io-foot sidewalks. The main business street, Midland Avenue, is 65 feet wide; Park Place, east and west, are both 65 feet wide. These streets bound Lincoln Park, which consists of six acres of almost level land given to the borough by the parent company for a public park. In the center of this park a lake is projected which will be used for bathing in the summer and skating in the winter. The Cleveland and Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania lines, west, has recently purchased at Midland considerable grounds to be used for yard facilities. There will be no grade crossings from the town to the steel plant, as subways are to be provided for such purpose. To encourage garden improvements, the parent company appropriates each year a considerable sum of money which is divided among the different sections as prizes for the best lawns, floral designs, porch boxes, window boxes, vegetable production, and grounds as a whole. It also offers garden patches for cultivation, free of charge to those who apply. Judges are selected from the various industries of the town who award prizes, each fall, to those who show the best results. All residents are permitted to enter the contest, only one prize being given, however, to a single individual. Condition of the ground is considered and also the time the contestant has had for its cultivation. The foreigners enter these contests and frequently carry off the prizes, which is eminent proof that the company's policy of education on this point is well taken, and the money thus spent is well spent. The company has also donated a band-stand in one of the parks and the local band has been fortunate in finding members who have played in some of the best bands in Europe. Opposite a group of 30 houses on 412Poured Concrete Houses. Midland The Midland Improvement Company has tried out Mr. Edison’s invention. The concrete is poured into frames, and practically no wood enters into the construction. The tenants are foreign mechanics of a high order; rent $14 per month; selling price §1,900. The experiment of the poured house is still in process, these Midland houses being pioneers of the type, and attracting visitors from all parts of the industrial district Tenanted by Owners Not all the homes in Midland are company houses by any means. The dwellings on this street are brick and frame, seven to ten rooms; owned by high grade mechanics, clerks holding responsible positions, and professional people in the communityTOYLAND Triple House. Toyland Hollow Till and Cement Toyland is the name given to a row of tile and cement houses built after German models, making perhaps the most attractive industrial street in Western Pennsylvania. The houses still have to win their way with American tenants. Mechanics, clerks and department foremen rent them at from $22 to $27 per month, five to seven rooms. Selling price for double houses $5,400 to $6,000, 10 per cent down, one per cent per month with interestCOMMUNITY CONTRASTS OF I914 Rice Avenue, the parent company has provided a playground which is maintained by the residents in that vicinity. The water furnished Midland is filtered, and is furnished at low rates. No charge has been made the borough so far for fire hydrants or other water consumed. Neither is any tax charged to the board of education for water furnished any of the school buildings. To keep up with the increasing population, the board of education is endeavoring to provide sufficient school buildings in different parts of the town. Two are now completed, and a third is about to be erected. Schools are graded, with high school facilities. The board is at present negotiating with the Improvement Company for two and one-half acres of additional ground surrounding the central school for a playground and breathing spot. The Carnegie Corporation of New York recently appropriated $20,000 to the borough for a free public library, which is to be erected in the vicinity of Lincoln Park on a plot of ground donated by the Improvement Company. The borough council recently let a contract for a new municipal building with white tile front, to cost about $20,000. One-half is to be used for administrative purposes and the other for the town’s fire apparatus. The assembly hall in this building will be placed at the disposal of the people for all social center work. When dam No. 7 crossing the Ohio River at Midland is completed in September of this year, it will enable the Crucible Fuel Company to ship coal from their mines in Greene County to the Midland plant at all times of the year, thus enabling them to operate their present coke ovens continuously. The steel plant is a modern one in which safety engineering matches the town planning of the village. Other industries are locating at Midland, notably a foundry and construction company. Although the borough was only incorporated in 1907, the present population is 5,000, and in the next few years will be more than doubled. Two churches and two missions have been erected. Midland is a prohibition district, and its town site lies so high that malaria is unknown and the mosquito finds no breeding spots. The tax rate is the lowest of any borough in Beaver County. Altogether with Steel Company and citizens working in harmony it is hoped to solve here many of the difficult problems of the modern industrial town. 413APPENDIX III Y. M. C. A. WORK FOR IMMIGRANTS IN THE PITTSBURGH DISTRICT H. A. McConnaughey Immigration Secretary Y. M. C. A., Pittsburgh Beginning in 1909 the Pittsburgh Young Men's Christian Association has been carrying on active work in the interests of coming Americans or, in other words, of the immigrant population of Pittsburgh. Up to that time the association work of this industrial center had been conducted on strictly conventional lines. The new work was made possible by the coming of Lyman L. Pierce as general secretary of the Y. M. C. A. of Pittsburgh, under whose administration the association has made remarkable progress in other lines than its outreach among immigrants. In less than five years, three equipped buildings have been opened in various parts of Pittsburgh and, more important, a new and more democratic spirit has found expression. In developing its Y. M. C. A. work for wage-earners the Pittsburgh District drew on the national movement in the same field. It secured two of the six young men who under Dr. E. A. Steiner went to Europe to study and live in those sections of southeastern Europe that furnish the bulk of our present immigration. At the end of fourteen months they returned to this country to work in behalf of immigrants under association auspices. E. E. Bohner was in 1910 engaged by the Westinghouse Air Brake Company to conduct the work for foreigners at Wilmerding, the industrial town where the Y. M. C. A. has taken strongest root. In the fall of 1909, the writer had begun the organization of immigration work under the city association. Dr. Peter Roberts, secretary for immigration of the International Committee of the Y. M. C. A., who had made earlier surveys of Pittsburgh and Wilmerding was called in to look over the ground and help plan and place the work. From the start the system of instruction devised by him has been used in the classes for beginners. The first emphasis was upon English classes. Every year up to 1914 an average of about 500 men have studied under the direction of 414Teaching English with a Hatchet By object and action, an American without knowledge of foreign tongues, can, under the Roberts system, impart a working knowledge of English to a class of mixed nationalities. Italians, Slovaks, and Magyars are in this group being taught by Mr. McConnaughey (who is shown with the tool in his hand, as an object lesson) Boys of a Mill Section Reached through the community centers. Over-night and week-end camps within a radius of five miles of Pittsburgh, give them a taste of outdoor life and an acquaintance with the Young Men’s Christian AssociationThe Community Tent Eight such centers are in operation this summer in Greater Pittsburgh. The audiences of immigrant men, women, and children last year mounted up to an aggregate of 300,000. They listened to stereopticon lectures and watched moving pictures on American history and scenery, on health, safety, and the care of children, and on citizenship«• •.AHBWOOl S Spread of Young Men’s Christian Association in Pittsburgh District [1913] ★ Old branches. ■ Railroad branches. O New buildings. 4- Tents. • Points where groups of men have been reached by volunteer workers. WORK FOR IMMIGRANTSWAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH the association. The public schools under the new central board are now ready to undertake English instruction wherever it is needed in the city, and the present policy for the Y. M. C. A. is to co-operate with them and to conduct classes in out-of-the-way places that can not be covered by the public schools. To cover the summer months, extension work has been developed. Vacant lots are secured wherever possible in the foreign sections of the city. Where there is no vacant lot, permission is obtained of the city to use a block of a public street for certain hours of the evening. Here a stereopticon lantern or moving picture machine is operated nightly. The subjects of the lectures include: Prevention of Tuberculosis; Prevention of Infectious Diseases; Life of Lincoln; Life of Washington; Yellowstone National Park; Discovery and Early History of America, and so forth. Last year we tried out for the first time preparing the lecture material in brief, having it translated into eight languages and photographed on lantern slides. In this way the explanatory slides alternate with the pictures and people of many languages enjoy the entertainments and get the benefit of the instruction. Last summer the attendance was 300,000. The number of lectures has been greatly increased through the co-operation of the Daughters of the American Revolution Society. Through the efforts of Mrs. Samuel Ammon of Pittsburgh, chairman of Patriotic Education, their collection of historic lectures has been made available and prepared in seven languages. Another phase of the work has been co-operation from Pittsburgh with the Y. M. C. A. secretaries at port cities in caring for arriving immigrants, and plans for receiving and safeguarding all arriving immigrants are in process of arrangement. In civics, a number of young lawyers have instructed the men who have applied for their citizenship papers. The names are secured from the court register and notices of these meetings sent to all men who have applied for citizenship. We are conservative enough to fear that we might do some harm by a widespread effort to induce the mass of foreign men to take out their citizenship papers. We believe that the more ambitious as a rule are the ones who seek to do it on their own initiative. Moreover, the result can be only good of helping these who would become citizens at any rate and by influencing them during the period in which they are most concerned about this phase of their Americanization. This year we have had 250 of these men comprising 11 nationalities in citizenship classes. After coming three evenings a fine-looking Lithuanian turned up at the next session full of jubilation. He said “ I have just secured my 416Croatian Chorus Javor Swedish Male Chorus lìti ihJJj î V f1 < Russian Singing Circle of BraddockAt the Old City Hall Closing night of classes in citizenship conducted by the Young Men’s Christian Association of Pittsburgh. The association gets in touch with men who.apply for naturalization. Eleven nationalities are represented in this picture. The Polish men’s chorus is on the platformY. M. C. A. WORK FOR IMMIGRANTS papers. I tried twice before and I failed. One time I paid a lawyer $50. Now you helped me and 1 have them.” Another man from an outlying borough, attacked by rheumatism in the middle of the course, dragged himself to the class on crutches. Another, a Pole, was saved from serious troubles regarding his witnesses because of his connection with the classes. Each summer we use the contact afforded by the outdoor educational lectures to get in touch with groups of boys in the industrial sections. At points outside of the city and beyond the scope of the Pittsburgh Playground Association, playground work is conducted during the daytime with such success that two equipped playground centers have been made permanent. Groups of boys ranging from twelve to sixteen years of age are taken on hiking, over-night and week-end camping trips. In this way large numbers who can not get away for an extended vacation really get a taste of the joy of outdoors. Eight centers for this work are conducted this summer. The boys have the unusual pleasure of cooking over an open fire where the smoke blows in the eyes, and of sleeping under the open sky where the song of the katydids is not drowned by the roar of passing trucks and street cars. Around the camp fire before bedtime the last ten minutes is given over to the discussion of some scheme that will reach the heart and quicken the aspiration. Recently the Pittsburgh association has inaugurated a plan of community boys' work in remote parts of the city. The first place in which it is being adopted is in the Homewood district. An attempt has also been made to bring out before the public the racial values and the picturesque and artistic features of the foreign nationalities. To do this we have conducted for three successive seasons an All Nations Singing Contest at which various groups of men and women sing in their native language. Six nationalities have provided men's choruses, some furnishing more than one chorus. At these meetings we arrange for an interpretive and patriotic address. Two years ago Dr. Steiner spoke and last year Jacob Riis. This has been worth while and has done much to popularize the singing of these different national groups. They are now called on for public occasions and have a new recognition in the community. There has been development outside of Pittsburgh in the Western Pennsylvania field. The Wilmerding foreign branch association has grown to more than 400 members of 17 different nationalities. The foreign Y. M. C. A. (Airbrake Welfare Club) is fitted up with game rooms, educational and social rooms and eight first class shower baths, all features popular with the men. One piece of work of this association under Mr. Bohner has been 27 * 417WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH to interest children and adults in cleaning up a patch of ground that was used as a dump for tin cans and transforming it into a first class playground. The Pittsburgh association has for five years co-operated in educational and social work with the Pressed Steel Car Company. This company employs about 5,500 men when it is working fully, a very large per cent being immigrants. Each year the foreign people themselves have taken a larger part in the activities. The result is that the people who live in “Presston” feel a local pride of which they knew nothing five years ago. The state committee of the Y. M. C. A. has during this five-year period carried on work in connection with mining communities. First aid to the injured work has played a large part and mining institutes have been a leading feature. For the past year, owing to a change in the plan of organization of the state committee, some of this work has been discontinued. It is hoped that local associations in the neighborhood of the mining districts will undertake the work. Recently (1914) the Harbison and Walker Brick Refractories Company of Pittsburgh have secured Ira D. Shaw, formerly engaged in the mining work of the international committee, to develop welfare work under association auspices in their various plants in Pennsylvania. 418MANUFACTURING A PLAYGROUND How it was Done at Wilmerding, by the Young Men’s Christian Association Westinghouse Air Brake Company Site in foreign section of Wilmerding proposed for playground. Full of mud— covered with stones, tin cans, broken bottles, and so forth. At least 200 small children lived within 200 yards and they had no place to play 66,000 tin cans were gathered; 750 children collected them. Twenty volunteers—foreign-speaking men—helped count the tin cans and pay the boys and girls one cent per dozen Site was leveled and cleaned by 100 older boys and men—all foreign speaking-voluntarily. Many socialists helpedY. M. C. A. Community Work at Wilmerding Thirty boys and girls a minute from morning to late in evening is the rate this slide is used Class of Italian girls in sewing—conducted by Young Women’s Christian AssociationAPPENDIX IV THE JEWISH IMMIGRANTS OF TWO PITTSBURGH BLOCKS [1908]* Anna Reed The greater part of the. Jewish community of Pittsburgh is situated in what is known as the Hill District. This immigration brings with it characteristics so entirely its own that much that is significant of the common life was found summed up in a study of the families of two blocks in the heart of this district. A census of them proved more surely than even those of us who had long been residents in the neighborhood would have anticipated, the permanence and stability of this new element in the population. The two blocks reflected the sort of foothold which is open to this distinctive people in what is for most purposes a purely industrial center; what relation their new occupations bear to their training and experience in the old countries of Europe, and what, as measured in terms of livelihood and accomplishment, comes to them in this new setting. The blocks selected were two adjoining Center Avenue at different points on the incline of the hill. Pittsburgh has no really large tenement houses. These homes were originally built for two families, and while some still contain but two, many have been converted so as to house a great many more. In the process of rebuilding, downstairs front rooms have been changed into small stores where grocers, butchers, and tailors supply the needs of the neighborhood. The houses are of brick, and many are garnished by a government license sign, which indicates that somewhere in these already crowded quarters, a small stogy factory is located which sells in the larger market. The many synagogues where the men still wear the old-time praying shawls, and each repeats for himself in monotonous, low, musical tones the ancient Hebrew prayers, bring into this capital of the steel district the wonderful and fascinating spirit of the East. The Cheders, where the Hebrew language, which every hardworking father and mother, no matter what else is sacrificed, feels must be * Published in Charities and The Commons, January 3, 1909. 419WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH taught to the boys, and the Kosher butcher shops, where the dietary laws are still observed, are all distinctive of a people which, though it adopts American customs, still keeps many of the traditions in its own communal life. There were i,080 people in these blocks, 817 of whom were Jewish. Of the 143 Jewish families, 110 were from Russia, 27 from Roumania, five from Austria-Hungary, and one from Germany,—all largely from small towns. Among them there were very nearly three hundred children of school age or younger. A third of these families had been in America over ten years and two-thirds over five years. Of course, the fact that the census was taken in a year of industrial depression may have had a large influence on the comparatively small number of more recent immigrants in residence in the neighborhood, for these would have less resources to keep them in Pittsburgh during a period of hard times. But the actual number of stable family groups was very considerable, as shown in the following classification: Under 2 2 to 5 5 to 10 10 to SO SO to 40 Years in America 10 33 50 32 l8 Years in Pittsburgh . 12 3b 49 29 17 This permanence as an element in the citizenship of Pittsburgh is in contrast to an uninterrupted shifting among them as tenants. On the one hand, the latter is merely a reflex of the success of particular families in making their way and raising their standard of life; but the greater part of it is due to the lack of proper houses at a fair rental in Pittsburgh. It is a common occurrence for a family to move from place to place in an effort to secure more livable quarters. One family went through the torture of moving six times in one year. Two have lived from ten to twenty years in the same place, eight from five to ten, 46 over two, while 87 had been living in their present homes less than two years. Unsuspected by the casual visitor, there is a background of tragedy and national crises to such a neighborhood. Among the great nations of Europe, Russia and Roumania have absolutely refused political and industrial freedom to their Jewish subjects. The concrete forms which oppression and restriction assume are very real: prohibitions against their owning land, their exclusion in one part of Russia from the learned professions, in another from taking part in a government contract, and in 420JEWISH IMMIGRANTS OF TWO BLOCKS whole districts from owning their own homes. Here in these blocks there are many families who have lived and traded in daily terror of an outbreak or of the tyranny of an unscrupulous governor; who have been deprived of the rights and privileges of citizens and yet subjected to the full strain of military law and the brunt of religious persecution. You chance to meet a man in the corner grocery—he is tall and gaunt; his long beard is well sprinkled with gray. On talking with him you find he has served in the Russo-Turkish War, that his only son served for four years in the Russian army, and that a “pogrom” finally drove him to leave everything behind and flee to these shores. One man was robbed and his family outraged,—a son and brother-in-law killed in a recent massacre; another man, already past forty, had to take up his burden, and, like the pilgrims of old, go forth and search for a new home, because the edict had been given in Moscow. It was found that 41 of the families had come for purely religious and political reasons, 92 to better their economic condition, and 34 had followed relatives, friends, and townsmen who either sent for them or urged them to make the journey. Indeed, this personal relationship is on many counts the most important factor in swelling the population of a Jewish neighborhood. As a rule, no matter how poor the immigrant may be, he saves, often by the most drastic measures, to send for some loved ones. Such was the experience of a young man, educated in the public schools of Roumania, who had suffered in the uprisings there. His first employment in Pittsburgh was with a local druggist. He went through the usual apprenticeship, and soon another brother had come over and was working as a barber. They saved and sent part of their earnings to their parents in the old country, while the first, by work and study, prepared himself for entrance into the local college of pharmacy, was graduated and his earning capacity thereby increased. Then, the parents, a sister and two brothers were brought over and, when an opportunity for buying a drug store offered itself to him, the combined forces of the family made the purchase possible. Today, after eight years of hard work, he owns a well established business, is married, and the entire family seems well started on the road to success. The question of what a man does, when he comes here an uninterpreted stranger, is interestingly reflected in these two blocks. The stogy industry and peddling are dominant; of those who have become stogy makers, four were students, two grocers, one was a peddler, one a tailor, one a lumber trader, one a merchant, and another a butcher. The peddlers represent an even larger variety of skilled trades and other occupations. A jewelry peddler and a rag peddler were printers; 421WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH a weaver, two lumber dealers, a gardener, and a grocer have become peddlers of clothing; a carpenter sells pictures; two blacksmiths, a tailor, and a farmer are peddling rags. Of those who were skilled, a goldsmith has become a presser, a shoemaker is working at iron beds, an umbrella maker runs a pool room, and a Hebrew teacher is now an egg-candler. In contrast, and much more encouraging, are the six blacksmiths, 11 tailors, three barbers, two bakers, three shoemakers, two printers, a locksmith, a machinist, a plumber, and a glazier, who started and continue to use the trades they learned in the old country. One of the most interesting facts brought out was that the number of peddlers grew from io in the old country to 28 on their arrival in America, and to 32 as the first work in Pittsburgh, dropping again to 17 who are peddling at the present time. The following table compares occupations in the old country with those practiced in the new: Old Country New Country Store keepers 20 20 Craftsmen . 37 28 Laborers 4 7 Peddlers 10 17 Hucksters 4 16 Factory workers 1 9 Factory owners 1 5 Restaurant keepers 2 4 Lumber dealers 3 # . Gardeners, farmers, etc 7 • • Clerks 1 4 Traveling salesmen # . 2 Miscellaneousa 2 7 a Under miscellaneous were classed a foreman, manager, agent, contractor, collector. The meaning of this table will be made clearer by telling two stories: one of a man who is succeeding, and one of a man who has known the keen anguish that to the great masses of men is involved in the words “hard times. ” For the results of an industrial depression show themselves with promptness in such an immigrant neighborhood. One man, married and the father of three children, was employed as a porter in a downtown store. He was thrown out of work, and to the terrors of rent was added the fact that his wife was soon to give birth to another child. Four weeks afterward, the landlord levied on the furniture for the unpaid rent, and the 422JEWISH IMMIGRANTS OF TWO BLOCKS weak, under-nourished mother became temporarily insane. She was placed in a sanatorium, two of the children were sent to a day nursery, and the youngest child—too young to be taken by the nursery—was sent to a private family. And then, for the man, began the struggle to get work. He bought a small quantity of fruit and peddled it in a basket from house to house. He was arrested one morning in a freight yard, where he was charged by the yard policeman with stealing. He was acquitted at the trial and the police sergeant claimed that cases of injustice of this kind were not infrequent. Next, he secured work as janitor in a hospital at $5.00 a week, and after a time his wife's condition improved and he was able to reunite his family. Thereupon, he borrowed $10 and bought a second-hand pushcart with a license, and now he is once more trading in fruits and vegetables in his struggle against odds to care for them. Another man, forty-eight years old and the father of 11 children, had spent his early life in a small town. His first job on coming to New York was that of a clothing operator. The overstrain of the sweatshop caused the only too frequent breakdown in health. Two years later he came to the Pittsburgh District, where, as a peddler in the country towns, he gradually regained his strength. Today, he owns his home and has a paying grocery business. Of the 263 non-Jews in these blocks, nine out of ten were Negroes; and among them four questionable houses were found. Such an environment, with the change from former surroundings and conditions, does not always work out satisfactorily; the higher cost of living, the severe struggle for existence, the sudden transition from oppression to freedom, often have a deteriorating influence. They result in cases of wife-desertion, in laxity of religious observances, in gambling sessions at the coffee-houses, in occasional moral lapses, and in contempt for the ideals, customs, and beauties of the traditional family and religious life of the old country. Yet, as a whole, we know the people of these blocks, and of the hill, as immigrants who have suffered oppression and borne ridicule; who in the face of insult and abuse have remained silent, but who have stamped on their countenances a look of stubborn patience and hope—always hope—and of capacity to overcome. 423APPENDIX V THE NEGROES OF PITTSBURGH [1907-08] * Helen A. Tucker Today it is the young north-bound Negro with whom we reckon in Pittsburgh. Seldom is a white-headed Negro seen on the street; but rather the man on the sand cart hard at work. That with every year there is an increasing migration from the South to our northern cities is known in a general way; but if our estimate of these newcomers is to be worth anything, it should be based upon something more than impressions gained from those we notice on the street cars (the best are too well behaved to be conspicuous), from loafers at saloon doors, and from newspaper accounts of Negro crime. Here, too often, the knowledge of white people ends. Of the industrious, ambitious Negroes, they know little; and of the home life of those who are refined, nothing at all. As a man who officially comes into daily contact with the criminal Negro said to me, “ All must bear the reproach for the doings of this police court 10 per cent.” Anyone who is sufficiently interested to desire more accurate information as to Pittsburgh’s Negroes than may be gained by a walk down Wylie Avenue will readily find signs enough of the differentiation that is rapidly taking place among the members of this race. While with the increasing influx a class of idle, shiftless Negroes is coming, who create problems and increase prejudice, a far larger number are taking advantage of the abundance of work and of the good wages, and are rapidly bettering themselves. There is here a chance, such as perhaps few northern cities give, for the industrious Negro to succeed, and he is improving his opportunity. There was a considerable Negro population in Allegheny County before the Civil War. Both Pittsburgh and Allegheny were important stations of the underground railroad, and many a man and woman sought refuge here from the nearby slave states. In Allegheny a school was founded for them before the end of the half century. The growth of the Negro population is shown by the following table: * Published in Charities and The Commons, January 3, 1909. 424THE NEGROES OF PITTSBURGH Year Number Year Number 1850 3,43i 1880 7,876 i860 2,725 1890 13,501 1870 4459 1900 27,853 a a 1910, 34,217. These figures show a steady increase except from 1850 to i860, gradually reaching the point where the Negro population doubled in a decade. The marked increases from 1870 to 1880 and 1890 to 1900 are probably due to the fact that in those periods more Negroes were able to get work in the steel mills. The percentage of Negroes in the total population of the county was 2.2 per cent in 1880, 2.4 per cent in 1890, and 3.6 per cent in 1900. Three-quarters of the Negroes in the county live in Pittsburgh* .... (and) more than half of these are males.f The principal Negro street is Wylie Avenue. This leads up to the Hill District which, forty years ago, was a well conditioned section. Now it is given over largely to Negroes and European immigrants. Forty-eight per cent of the Negroes in Pittsburgh live in wards seven, eight, eleven, and thirteen. [Old numbering.] How fast this movement is taking place is indicated by what a colored woman told me who keeps a grocery store on Wylie Avenue near Francis Street. When she opened there three years ago, there was scarcely a colored family in the district. Now there is another grocery store, a shoe store, and two confectionery stores, kept by colored people. Horton Street nearby is filled with colored people who have recently come from the South. There is a tendency on the part of the Negroes, however, to get out from the center of the city, and fully a quarter of them live farther out in wards nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one. In all, 62 per cent of the Negroes lived in 1900 in six wards. In these wards there is a large foreign element. In the seventh, eighth, and eleventh wards there are many Russian Jews. A Negro church in the eighth ward was sold last fall for a Jewish synagogue, and the Negro congregation is building in the thirteenth ward. In the twelfth ward, where many of the Negroes live who work in the mills, they have for neighbors the Poles and Slavs. The well-to-do Negroes of the city are moving out toward the East End. Two or three apartment houses have been built especially for Negroes, but in general, though living in certain localities, they are not segregated. This does not mean that there are not some Negro streets, 11910, 105.3 males to 100 females. 425 * 1910, 25,623.WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH but very often a row of from three to seven houses will be found in which Negroes are living, while the rest of the street is filled with white people. Again, a single Negro family may live between two white families. When Negroes gain a foothold in a new street in any numbers, the Americans move away; but the Jewish immigrants do not seem to object to living near them, sometimes in the same house. And this is true of more than the poorest of them. In a way the Jews have been a help to the Negroes, for they will rent houses to them in localities where they could not otherwise go. In many cases the Jews have bought or built houses, filled them with Negro tenants at high rents, and thus paid for them. But the Negroes have learned from these experiences, and many of them have started to buy homes. They have decided that they might as well buy houses for themselves as for the Jews. The poorer Negroes live in a network of alleys on either side of Wylie Avenue in the seventh and eighth wards. For years the conditions here have been very bad from every point of view. There are respectable people living here, but the population consists chiefly of poor Negroes and a low class of whites. As a result, there is much immorality in this section—speak easies, cocaine joints, and disorderly houses abound. I think I never saw such wretched conditions as in three shanties on Poplar Alley. Until a year ago many of the landlords had not complied with the law requiring flush closets, and I found old-fashioned vaults full of filth. Where the flush closets had been put in they were in many cases out of repair. In some alleys there were stables next to the houses and while the odor was bad at any time, after a rain the stench from these and from the dirt in the streets was almost unendurable. The interiors of very many of the houses in which the Negroes live were out of repair—paper torn off, plastering coming down, and windows broken. The tenants told me they had complained to the landlords and had tried to get something done, but without success. The twelfth ward near the mills also has some bad conditions. In Parke Row and Spruce Alley, on the day of my visit, the rubbish, which is removed only every two weeks, was piled high. On top of one pile was an old dirty mattress. The houses 1 visited in Parke Row were so dark that it was necessary to use a lamp even at midday. There were also depressing conditions among the Negro homes on Rose, Charles, and Soho streets. While some of the more ambitious are moving out from these unhealthy localities, many who would like to move have not the opportunity. One of these said to me, “The only place where there is plenty of room for Negroes is in the alleys.” 426THE NEGROES OF PITTSBURGH Yet even the very poorest Negro homes are usually clean inside and have a homelike air. It would surprise one who has never visited such homes to see with what good taste they are furnished. There is always some attempt at ornamentation, oftenest expressed by a fancy lamp, which is probably never lighted. Almost every family except the very poorest has a piano. The best Negro houses—usually not in Negro districts—are what people of the same means have everywhere. I was fortunate enough to visit at least a dozen of these comfortable, well furnished, attractive homes and in them I met courteous, gracious, and refined women. Only in Spruce Alley and Parke Row did I find disorder and a general indifference to dirt, and there were some exceptions even there. The hopelessness of keeping clean in such a location may have had something to do with these conditions. Compared with certain of the foreigners, the Negroes do not overcrowd their houses, but they do often shelter too many people for comfort or decency. I visited a house of three rooms where a man and a wife, five children, and a boarder were living. In another house, also of three rooms, there were a man and his wife, her mother, two children and a lodger. These I think are not unusual cases. I also found a family of ten in four rooms, and another family of seven and a boarder in three rooms. Where a house of four rooms is taken by two families, they do not often take lodgers, but if one family takes such a house it usually can not meet the expense alone. What is more serious than the number of people in a house is the carelessness in allowing young girls to sleep in the same room with men lodgers. Such a case was that reported by a probation officer of the juvenile court, of a girl of fifteen who slept in the same room with her father, two brothers, and a lodger. It was “nothing,” she told the court; the man was “an old friend of the family.” The suggestion that she occupy the vacant room in the house plainly surprised her. The low ebb of living conditions in a Negro neighborhood is illustrated by Jack's Run, a narrow deep ravine leading down to the Ohio River between Bellevue and Allegheny.* Here, during the past six or seven years, about one hundred and seventy-five colored people from the rural districts of North Carolina and Virginia have found lodgment. Engaged chiefly in domestic service and common labor, they have settled here because the rents are cheap. Mixed in with them is a class of low whites, and the standards of civilization are sucked down by immorality and neglect, for the run is practically isolated from the rest of the world. A mission Sunday school connected with the white Presbyterian church in * See also Lattimore, Florence Larrabee: Skunk Hollow, p. 124. The Pittsburgh District. 427WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Bellevue has been held there for about five years. The superintendent of this mission, who is a colored man, has endeavored to reach the children of the run. As he feels the Sunday school alone can not do this, he is working to get a day school there. To be sure, the children are enrolled in Bellevue or Allegheny, but he says they really do not attend. A long climb up the hills shuts them off, and the white children pester them when they show themselves. It is hard to know what could be done to better the conditions in a place like Jack's Run, but up to the present time, with the exception of this one man, few people have tried to find out. The run has few visitors, and these are not altruists. “I have seen a politician here," the superintendent told me, “and an insurance collector; but never a preacher." Twenty per cent of the men follow manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. Because of the abundance of work good Negro mechanics have no difficulty in keeping busy, though they have made little headway in the unions. An occasional Negro is a union member, as, for instance, four or five carpenters, a few stone masons, and a few plasterers.* Here as elsewhere, they gain admission easily only to the hardest kinds of work. The Negro hod carriers indeed make up the greater part of the hod carriers' union. In McKeesport there are but two white hod carriers. In Pittsburgh and the vicinity there are over a thousand colored hod carriers. The colored stationary engineers and firemen have a union of their own, the National Association of Afro-American Steam and Gas Engineers and Skilled Laborers, incorporated June, 1903. It was once a part of a white organization. It has three locals in Pittsburgh and it has been allied with other labor organizations and represented in central labor bodies, but it is yet rather weak. Three or four colored contractors hire plasterers and masons. Early in the 70's a few colored men found work in some of the mills. One of the first to employ Negroes was the Black Diamond Mill on Thirtieth Street. There were a few here before 1878. In that year, through a strike, Negro puddlers were put in, and since then the force of puddlers has been made up largely of Negroes. About the same time Negroes were taken into the Moorhead Mill at Sharpsburg, and also, through a strike, Negroes got into the Clark Mills on Thirty-fifth Street. Since 1892, there have been Negroes in the Carnegie Mills at Homestead. It is the prevailing impression that numbers of Negro strike breakers were imported at the time of the “big strike," but I have been told by an official of the Carnegie company, by a leading colored resident of Homestead, and by a * See Commons, John R.: Wage-earners of Pittsburgh. Pp. 120-121 of this volume. 428THE NEGROES OF PITTSBURGH Negro who went to work in the Homestead Mills in 1892, that this was not so. Word was given out that anyone could find work who would come, the Negroes with the rest. Negroes were brought up from the South at this time to take the place of strikers in the Clark Mills. . . * Unquestionably Negro strike breakers have been brought to Pittsburgh but 1 judge not in any large numbers. When the mills were last running full there were about 120 Negroes at the Clark Mills, 126 at Homestead, and about 100 in the other mills of the Carnegie company, making in all the Carnegie works 346 colored men. A conservative estimate would put those at the Black Diamond and Moorhead mills as at least 300 more. Many of these mill men are unskilled, but at the Clark Mills two-thirds, and at Homestead nearly half are skilled or semi-skilled. It is possible for a man of ability to work up to a good position. A small but increasing number of Negroes are on the city’s payroll. On the date of my inquiry there were in the employ of the city of Pittsburgh, 127 persons of Afro-American descent, or one out of every 237 of the Negro population, while a total of 635 directly profited by the $91,942 paid annually in salaries to colored persons. These city employes include laborers, messengers, janitors, policemen, detectives, firemen, letter carriers, and postal clerks, and their salaries range from $550 to $1,500 a year. The first Negroes to set up establishments of their own, dating back twenty years and more, were the barbers and hairdressers. Formerly these had much of the white patronage, but they are gradually losing it. With a few exceptions, notably the Negro barber in the Union Station, their shops are now found on Wylie Avenue and in other Negro localities, and are patronized by Negroes. The eight business enterprises listed under “miscellaneous” include an'insurance company, a stationery and book store, a men’s furnishing store, a photographer’s gallery, a real estate company, a loan company, a shoe store and repairing shop, and a manufactory of a hair-growing preparation, which has sent out 65 agents. The insurance company has 28 agents, all of whom are colored. Several of the barbers have laundry agencies and boot-blacking stands, and some have baths. There are at least a dozen men who own their horses and wagons and take contracts for hauling and excavating. One of the largest of these Negro contractors was employing 135 men. Another employs 30 men for hauling, and also works 100 to 200 men on asphalt paving. There are many more men who own * See Wright, R. R.: One Hundred Negro Steel Workers. P. 97 of this volume. Also Byington, Margaret F.: Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) 429WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH a horse or two and do general expressing. One of these told me that he spent his first $150 saved after coming to Pittsburgh for a horse, which left him with a capital of 75 cents. He now owns four horses. A Negro has had one of the stalls in the Allegheny market for many years, and there is another in the Diamond market. A partial list of Negro business enterprises,* with the number employed is as follows: No. of Firms Persons Employed Barbers 20 78 Restaurants and hotels 12 66 Groceries, poultry, etc. 8 9 T ailors 7 19 Pool rooms 6 6 Hauling and excavating 5 170 Saloons and cafes 3 15 Printers 3 19 Pharmacies 4 8 Undertakers and livery 3 *4 Confectioners and bakeries 3 2 Caterers 3 6 to 30 Miscellaneous 8 105 85 5*7-54i One of the most successful Negro business men lives in Homestead. As a small boy he moved from Virginia to Ohio, and came to Homestead in 1879. Up to 1890 he was an engineer on the river, the only Negro to hold a chief engineer's license. Then he went into boat building and built 21 river steamboats. Five years ago he organized the Diamond Coke and Coal Company, in which he is now master of transportation. There are 10 men in this company; the others are white. They own a mine, docks, and steamboats, and employ about a thousand men. This colored man owns considerable property. He lives in a large comfortable house and owns one on either side which he rents. His older son entered Penn Medical School last fall. His younger son was captain of the Homestead High School football team. His daughter, who graduated from the high school and had an additional three years at the California Normal School, is teaching in the South. She could not get a school in Homestead. * Furnished by R. R. Wright, Jr., of the Armstrong Association, Philadelphia, who investigated the Negro in Business in Pennsylvania, for the Carnegie Institution. 43OTHE NEGROES OF PITTSBURGH It is noticeable that the Pittsburgh Negroes show an encouraging variety in their independent business enterprises as well as in their general occupations. Of course, they have usually been able to go into only those that require small capital. The Negro who comes to Pittsburgh or any northern city with no capital, no business experience, and no business traditions, and succeeds even in a small way in the midst of such competition as he must face, is doing remarkably well. But the mass of the Negroes in Pittsburgh are found in the same occupations that are open to them in most northern cities, with perhaps fewer men (58 per cent) and rather more women (90 per cent) in domestic and personal service, and more men in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits than is usual. This shifting of the men's activities is due to the nature of the industries in Pittsburgh, to the fact that the city is rapidly growing, and consequently that there is much building going on in which labor can be utilized, and to the fact that Negroes gained a foothold in some of the mills during the strike periods. While the largest and best hotels no longer have colored waiters, many are still employed in hotels, restaurants, and cafes. Comparatively few Negroes are employed as porters and helpers in stores, while large numbers are employed as teamsters, probably more now than in 1900, as most of the sand wagons and other hauling carts are driven by them. There are also many coachmen and chauffeurs. While the Negro men find a varied field for their labor, comparatively few occupations are open to colored women. There is one woman who has conducted a very successful hairdressing establishment for twenty years, and a half dozen others have opened little shops. A dozen or so find work as clerks and stenographers in offices and stores of colored men, but most are working as maids or laundresses. There are about a hundred dressmakers and seamstresses. That there is not a greater variety of openings for colored women works a great hardship. In 1900 the Negroes of Allegheny County paid taxes on property valued at $963,000. Since that time wage-earning Negroes have commenced to buy homes in still larger numbers. They usually pay something down and the rest as rent until the entire sum is paid. In Beltzhoover there is a settlement of a hundred or more families more than half of whom are buying homes. To buy a house of any kind on small wages means industry and many little sacrifices. One couple whom I visited in Beltzhoover were buying a house of five rooms with a piazza and a generous sized front yard. The husband, when he was married, had saved $300, which went for the first payment. In the four years since then they had paid $800 and they had $ 1,000 more to pay. He was a 431WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH janitor getting $48 a month, while his wife made $6.00 a week as a seamstress. To increase their income, they rented out a room to a man and his wife who paid them $10 a month. They also raised and sold chickens which brought in additional money. Most of the houses which colored people of this class are buying are valued at from $2,500 to $3,300. On Francis Street, near Wylie Avenue, there is a group of five six-room houses occupied by Negroes. Three of these families were buying their houses. One of the men was a waiter, one a porter in a bank, and one owned a horse and wagon and did expressing. The following experience, told me by a Tuskegee graduate, is an example of what may be done in Pittsburgh by an industrious Negro who is ambitious to establish a home: " 1 came to Pittsburgh in March, 1900/' he said, "on a freight train, arriving about 3 a. m. I asked for the police station, but they wouldn't let me stay there when they found 1 had 50 cents in my pocket. I was turned up Wylie Avenue and finally came to a colored lodging house. All the beds were full, but they said that 1 could sit in the rocking chair for the balance of the night for a quarter. The next morning 1 started out to look for work and found it in a brick yard where I worked until August. Meanwhile I sent for my wife and child. My wife, who is a dressmaker, soon found work. She happened to sew for the wife of the manager of one of the steel mills. He asked about me and said he thought he could give me something good in the mill. I went there in August and have been there ever since. Now I am a heater. All you see here was gotten together in the last seven years. '' This man and his wife have paid $4,400 for a six-room house and have furnished it attractively. The churches have the same prominent place in Negro life in Pittsburgh as elsewhere. They include one Presbyterian, one Protestant Episcopal, one Congregational, one Roman Catholic church, ten Methodist churches and between thirty and thirty-five Baptist churches and missions. The largest is the Bethel A. M. E. church on Wylie Avenue, which has recently been built at a cost of $50,000. Colored slaters and roofers, colored plasterers, and three colored carpenters were employed in the building of it. The interior decorations were in charge of a Negro firm. The building, together with the land, is valued at not less than $110,000. The people give liberally to the churches; Bethel raised over $10,000 in ten months toward paying off its mortgage. But there is a large number not reached by the church in any real sense. Though the new Bethel church is in a district where the alleys and all the bad conditions they imply are numerous, the pastor's plans for the year as he outlined them were: first, to pay the debt on the church, 432THE NEGROES OF PITTSBURGH second, to have a revival to fill it up. Not a word was said of the great need for active social work at its very doors. The rank and file of the forty or fifty Negro ministers in Pittsburgh and Allegheny have not a very high order of equipment or ethics. There are notable exceptions. 1 met one minister who seemed filled with the desire to work for the betterment of the Negroes of his neighborhood. In connection with the new church which he was building he was planning to have a day nursery and kindergarten and, if possible, a gymnasium. He hoped to have a deaconess to visit the homes and was also trying to organize a colored Young Men's Christian Association. At a meeting last fall in his church, the following subjects were discussed: “What is the influence of the Sunday school on the children?" “Is the church accomplishing the desired end toward the masses?" “Practical education and character making for the masses." Some of the laymen among the colored people, especially the women, are working in similar directions. In 1880, in a small six-room house, a group of these started a Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Women. The present beautiful home on Lexington Avenue was built in 1900 at a cost of $42,500. It contains 21 rooms, six bathrooms, and a hospital room. The furnishings cost about $28,000. Several rooms were furnished by the different Negro women's social clubs. The home is attractive, cheery, clean, and well managed. The Working Girls' Home was similarly started three years ago by some colored women who realized how much it was needed. Girls coming to the city not only found it difficult to get boarding places, but they were sometimes directed to undesirable houses. The State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, formed five years ago, is raising money to establish a colored orphan's home in New Castle, Pennsylvania.............A colored auxiliary to the Juvenile Court Association was formed in 1906 to care for colored boys and girls between nine and twelve years of age who are brought to the court. The auxiliary also pays board for a group of colored children who are in institutions outside the state. One member is a faithful volunteer at the juvenile court. More than twenty-five social clubs are formed of colored women. The leading social organization for men is the Loendi Club. Besides this and other private associations there are many such orders as the Odd Fellows, Masons, Elks, Knights of Pythias, and True Reformers. Since 1874, when separate schools for Negroes were abolished, the colored children have attended the public schools with the white children, and all the educational agencies of the city are open to them. I was told that while a few stood well in their classes, the majority lacked concen- 28* 433WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH tration. One principal attributed this to the impoverished home conditions, lack of food and housing; while another principal to whose school came many of the children from the alleys, laid their backwardness largely to their irregular attendance and immoral tendencies. It was agreed that the average colored child required about two years longer than the white child to finish the grammar grades............... In writing of the Negroes of Chicago, Mr. Wright says “What Chicago Negroes need is a great industrial school to teach Negroes domestic science and the skilled trades.” Greater Pittsburgh has a school that should do this work. As early as 1849, Charles Avery, a Methodist minister of Quaker descent, who was much interested in the colored people, established for them in Allegheny the Avery College Trade School. At his death he left the institution an endowment of $60,000 which has since increased in value, and it has also received a yearly appropriation from the state. The school is controlled by a board of trustees, of whom six are colored, three white. The principal and teachers are colored. The courses which have been offered include millinery, dressmaking, tailoring, music, some English courses, and some domestic science. Last spring, a hospital department was organized under separate charter and offers a training course. There is no doubt that the Avery school is not fulfilling the purpose for which it was founded. It is inferior in equipment and in methods and does not employ trained teachers. It is not reaching the colored boys and girls of Pittsburgh and giving them the up-to-date training which they so sorely need in those trades in which they can earn a livelihood. It should be crowded and would be if it were offering what the people want. Instead, the enrollment at the end of the school year is about one-third what it was at the beginning. There is no difficulty in placing responsibility for success or failure, for the superintendent is also secretary and treasurer. The colored people have brought many complaints to the trustees in regard to the management of Avery but no action has been taken. Here is a clear cut illustration of a badly managed trust fund.* * The situation has not materially changed in five years. In 1913, the legislature discontinued its appropriation. Last September, the institution began its school year with an enrollment of 140. It closed the year with a daily average of 61 during the month of June. The same superintendent continues as secretary and treasurer of the board, which is composed of nine directors, six of whom are colored and three white. Conditions in the dormitories were reported to be deplorable by an investigator who visited the school in July, 1914. There are 41 separate bedrooms in the dormitory, each containing a little more than enough space for a bed and a chair. In 20 of these rooms entered, only one had a window. The general condition of the whole institution, dormitories, class rooms, and hospital, was reported insanitary.—Editor. 434THE NEGROES OF PITTSBURGH Of the 1,124 cases brought before the juvenile court in 1906, 168 (14.9 per cent) dealt with colored children. The court records show most miserable conditions in the homes from which such children come. Usually both mother and father are working away from home all day, so that out of school hours there is no one to look after the children. They stop going to school and begin to stay out late at night, and the descent to petty thieving and other offenses is swift and easy. The percentage of commitments among the adult Negroes (14 per cent) is all out of proportion to their percentage in the population (3.6). Women are most commonly arrested for disorderly conduct;* men for fighting and cutting, petit larceny, and for gambling, of which craps is the favorite form. There is much drunkenness. For some time the police department of Pittsburgh has been warring against the sale of cocaine. To the mind of the warden of the Allegheny County jail the greatest single cause of crime committed by Negro men and women is the use of this drug. It is evident that the Negroes of Pittsburgh are making commendable progress along industrial lines. Some few have been conspicuously successful, while many more are earning a comfortable living and attaining property. Negroes of this class present no special problems, for they are usually good citizens and are educating and training their children to be good citizens likewise. Their needs are the needs of the rest of the community. They would be benefited by better housing, better schools, better sanitation, and a clearer atmosphere. But the problems in connection with the poor, ignorant, incompetent, or vicious Negroes are many and pressing. We have seen the need for eradicating the sale of cocaine, which drags men under; and we have seen the need for rousing and equipping the ambitious among them through industrial training, comparable to that offered the southern Negro by Tuskegee and Hampton. A few of the more obvious needs of the people who live in the alleys are day nurseries to care for the babies of mothers who must go out to work; some sort of supervised play after school hours, either in connection with the schools or at playgrounds; for the older children of these same families, settlements; and most pressing of all, a building on lower Wylie Avenue for social purposes with free baths, club rooms, a gymnasium, and other amusements as a counteracting influence to the saloons and pool rooms that abound in this neighborhood. There is now no place in Pittsburgh where a young colored man, coming a stranger to the city, as so many are coming * See Forbes, James: The Reverse Side. P. 355 of this volume. 435WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH every year, may find innocent diversion and helpful companionship.* It is becoming increasingly clear that these needs must be met by the Negroes themselves. A few, singly or in small groups, are already working for social betterment, but so far there has been no concerted, organized action. Left to themselves the Negroes are slow or unable to organize, but until they do, much of their efforts as individuals will be wasted and but little definite good can be accomplished. If the white people who have had greater experience in dealing with civic and social needs realized this and extended to them their co-operation, the community as a whole, no less than the Negroes, would be richly repaid. * A colored branch of the Y. M. C. A. has been opened in the Hill District. In gymnasium and other facilities it is as yet inadequate, but the residence building in which it is housed affords the nucleus of a promising social center.—Editor. 436APPENDIX VI THE COST OF LIVING IN PITTSBURGH AND IN OTHER AMERICAN CITIES COMPARED, 1909 In Pittsburgh the cost of living is high, not only as compared with the wages received by the workers, but as compared with the cost of living in other American cities. A study of rents and retail food prices in certain cities in the eastern, central and southern parts of the United States was made, in 1909, by representatives of the British Board of Trade.* The point of view from which rents and prices were considered was that of typical workingmen's families. In presenting the results of this inquiry the Board of Trade compared the returns for different cities by means of index numbers. These index numbers show rents or retail food prices for each city as percentages of rents or retail prices in the city of New York. In the tabulation which follows the series of index numbers for rents is given; City Index Numbers for Rents City Index Numbers for Rents St. Louis .... IOI New Orleans 72 • Savannah 7* New York 100 Louisville 71 Chicago . . . . 70 Pittsburgh 94 Milwaukee . 66 Lawrence 64 Memphis 93 Cleveland 64 Cincinnati 93 Paterson 62 Brockton 8? Providence . 59 Boston .... 82 Augusta .... 58 Birmingham . 81 Detroit .... 57 Philadelphia . 79 Fall River . 55 Newark .... 78 Baltimore 54 Minneapolis-St. Paul . 77 Lowell .... 52 Atlanta .... 76 Muncie .... 44 * Cost of living in American towns. Report of an inquiry by the Board of Trade into working class rents, housing and retail prices, together with the rates of wages in certain occupations in the principal industrial towns of the United States of America. 437WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH It will be noted that rents were higher in Pittsburgh than in any of the other cities included in the Board of Trade's study except New York and St. Louis. The index numbers for retail food prices are given in the table which follows: City Index Numbers for Retail Food Prices City Index Numbers for Retail Food Prices Atlanta .... 109 New York 100 Newark .... 106 Paterson 100 Brockton 106 Cleveland 99 Boston .... 105 Louisville 99 Lawrence 105 Muncie .... 98 Savannah 104 St. Louis 97 Augusta .... 103 Providence 97 Birmingham . 102 Baltimore 97 Philadelphia . 96 Pittsburgh 102 Duluth .... 96 Minneapolis-St Paul . 95 Lowell .... 102 Chicago .... 94 Fall River 101 Milwaukee 93 Memphis IOI Cincinnati 92 New Orleans . IOO Detroit .... 91 In but seven of the 28 cities for which statistics are presented in the table were retail prices higher than in Pittsburgh. The highest figure for any city, that for Atlanta, is 109 and the lowest, that for Detroit, is 91. The relative figure for Pittsburgh is 102. This figure is higher than the figures for the large cities New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cleveland, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Milwaukee. Of the cities for which the relative figure is higher than for Pittsburgh three, Atlanta, Savannah, and Augusta, are southern cities. The index numbers of the table on the following page represent rents and retail food prices combined. 438COST OF LIVING COMPARED City Index Numbers for Rents and Retail Food Prices Combined City Index Numbers for Rents and Retail Food Prices Combined Atlanta .... IOI Cincinnati 92 Brockton 100 Louisville 92 Augusta .... 92 New York 100 Philadelphia . 92 Minneapolis-St. Paul . 9i Pittsburgh 100 Paterson 9i Cleveland 90 Boston .... 99 Fall River 90 Memphis.... 99 Lowell .... 90 Newark .... 99 Chicago .... 88 St. Louis .... 98 Providence 88 Birmingham . 97 Baltimore 86 Savannah 96 Milwaukee 86 Lawrence 95 Muncie .... 85 New Orleans . 93 Detroit .... 83 Of the 27 cities included in this table only one, Atlanta, has a higher index for rents and food prices than has Pittsburgh. The figures for Brockton and New York are the same as the figure for Pittsburgh. 439APPENDIX VII ADVANCE IN THE COST OF LIVING IN WORKINGMEN'S FAMILIES SINCE 1907 Wages in a number of trades in Pittsburgh have risen since 1907. The amount of the advance in the money wages of common labor in the steel mills from 190710 1913 has been shown.* In judging what these changes in wages have meant to the wage-earners it is necessary to allow for changes in the cost of living. Retail prices are much higher today than in 1907. The course of the retail prices of foods of the sort consumed in workingmen's families is shown by “index numbers” compiled by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.! An index number is a device for presenting statistics in relative figures: thus, prices for a series of years may be represented as percentages of prices in some one year or of average prices for a group of years. Index numbers for retail food prices are published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the United States as a whole and for each of the principal geographical divisions. The figures for the United States, for the north Atlantic states and for the north central states, for the years 1907-13, inclusive, are given in the following table: Period Index numbers for the United States North Atlantic States North Central States Average for the years 1890-99, inclusive 100.0 100.0 100.0 1907 .... 125.9 123.9 126.0 1908 .... 130.1 126.5 131-5 1909 .... 137.2 131.2 139.1 1910 .... 144.1 135.2 147.0 1911 .... 143.0 134.9 144.4 1912 .... 154.2 148.7 157.6 1913 .... 163.4 156.2 167.8 * See Commons, John R.: Wage-earners of Pittsburgh. P. 119 of this volume. f Bulletins of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retail Prices and Cost of Living Series: No. 13, pp. 11 and 15. 440THE ADVANCE IN COST OF LIVING The relative figures of each series presented in the table show retail food prices in the years 1907-13 inclusive, as percentages of average prices for the years 1890-99 inclusive, in the territory to which the series relates. It will be seen that, from 1907 to 1913, prices advanced in the country as a whole from 125.9 t0 163.4, in the north Atlantic states from 123.9 to 156.2, and in the north central states from 126.0 to 167.8. These figures indicate an advance in prices, during the period of six years, of 30 per cent for the United States as a whole, of 26 per cent for the north Atlantic states, and of 33 per cent for the north central states. While Pennsylvania is counted, in most statistical classifications, as one of the north Atlantic states, the city of Pittsburgh has, in its location with respect to markets and sources of food supply, more points of resemblance to the cities of the middle west than to those of the north Atlantic seaboard. This is significant in view of the fact that the rate of increase in retail food prices has been appreciably higher in the north central states than in the north Atlantic states. The cost of food is but one of the factors that determine the cost of living. In workingmen's families it is, however, the most important factor. A larger proportion of the total income is spent for food by families having small incomes than by families more comfortably situated. 441APPENDIX Vili STATISTICS FROM PITTSBURGH INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION Using the census of 1910 as a basis, the Pittsburgh Industrial Development Commission has put out a series of pamphlets setting forth the claims of Pittsburgh as an industrial center. The census bureau recompiled its 1910 figures to show the population and manufactures for a territory with a ten miles' radius for each of the larger industrial centers. This recapitulation gives the population of the Pittsburgh metropolitan district as 1,042,855, the fifth such district in point of numbers in the country, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston only outranking it. The following table from the same source shows the number of establishments, capital, wage-earners, wages, and value of products of the industries employing 5,000 men or over within the Pittsburgh metropolitan district: Industries No. of Establishments Capital Wage- earners Average Number Total paid in Wages Value of Products District total . 2,369 $642,527,046 139,285 $90,115,842 $578,815,493 Cars and general shop construction and repairs by steam railroad companies . 16 8,684,822 9.438 6,605,681 16,804,878 Electrical machinery, apparatus and supplies. 18 48,184,808 8,030 4,760,067 20,260,163 Foundry and machine-shop products 218 70,585,128 18,454 12,780,152 52,411,013 Glass 27 20,795,023 6,942 3,648,952 8,765,900 Iron and steel blast furnaces *3 100,116,105 5.565 4,217,097 85,584,235 Iron and steel, steel works and rolling mills 54 234,689,014 51,156 35,925,008 237,186,077 442APPENDIX IX INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS IN PENNSYLVANIA Figures drawn from annual reports Department of Factory Inspection* State of Pennsylvania, 1903-12 Fatal Accidents Non-fatal 1903 . 160 856 (367) (2,406) 1904 . . . 158 417 1905 . 162 923 1906 60 844 (227) (2,136) 1907 . . . • • 59 689 (295) (2,364) 1908 . . . 114 1,256 1909 • >47 2,345 1910 . 188 2,494 1911 I 76 2,702 1912 203 2,866 Statistics for accidents are presented in such different ways in the different reports that these figures may or may not be comparable. Figures for 1903 are for those “which ordinary prudence and a proper concern for the safety of employes might have prevented.” Those for 1906 and 1907 are entered only as accidents “over which this department has jurisdiction.” The figures in parentheses for these years include all accidents reported to the department; whether the figures for other years are or are not inclusive does not appear. The classification as to seriousness of injury varies in different reports, and in the above all non-fatal accidents are lumped together as such. For the first time, the 1910 report carried a table of accidents classified by cause and nature of injury; but not by industries or counties, nor whether they befell men, women, or children; in 1911 there was another and more meager classification; in 1912 a third kind.f An act of July, 1913, requires (under penalty of $100) all employers to make report of accidents to employes to the new Department of Labor and Industry, setting forth “the name, address, and nature of the business of the employer; name, address, sex, age, nationality, and occupation of the employe; date, day of week, hour, place, and character of the accident, and the nature of the injury, and the duration of the disability, or probable disability, as far as the same can be ascertained. Such employer shall, also, upon request of the Department of Labor and Industry, make such further report as may reasonably be required by it.” * Kelley, Florence: Factory Inspection in Pittsburgh. P. 197 of this volume. f See Eastman, Crystal: Work-Accidents and the Law, p. 111. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) 443APPENDIX X PUBLIC REPLY FROM THE STATE FACTORY INSPECTOR A large part of the material incorporated in Mrs. Kelley's report was published in Charities and The Commons, March 6, 1909. As a public reply the following letter was given to the press nine months later by the chief factory inspector: Pittsburgh, Pa., Dec. 15, 1909. Mr. J. C. Delaney, Chief Factory Inspector, Harrisburg, Pa. Dear Sir:— Having carefully audited my report cards and reviewed “Remarks” on same, I would respectfully submit for your consideration the following observations and deductions. I find in the 464 factories and mills visited an average of 90 per cent good as against a perfect plant. The general conditions throughout were very satisfactory. Safety appliances were carefully looked after and the sanitary conditions as regards ventilation, toilets, dressing rooms, and dining rooms were especially good in our larger factories and mills. The employes, both females and minors, are not oppressed and seem very contented with their duties. In the glass factories, and where the greatest number of children are employed, the firms are careful as to securing affidavits and conform to the requirements of the law as to hours, literacy, and so forth. In the reports where no affidavits have been found fifteen were employed to deliver papers and circulars after school hours, others had been recently employed, claiming their affidavits were with former employers, some few through carelessness had not been asked to supply them. In 176 bakeries the average was 75 per cent good. Of course, the larger and more modern shops are practically perfect, the low percentage applying mainly to the foreign shops and those conducted in cellars where light and ventilation are usually poor. In some of these places I have found some very objectionable features. In places where permits were not found some had been issued, but through careless- 444REPLY FROM STATE FACTORY INSPECTOR ness or lack of knowledge as to the importance of them had been mislaid or lost entirely. The larger and higher class factories manufacturing cigars are very good. Some in old buildings manufacturing cheap grade are not up to the standard. Department stores, hospitals, and homes are very good as far as I have inspected, also the laundries and dairies; one of the latter when improvements are completed along hygienic lines will be ideal of its kind. I have found the blanks overlooked in many cases, in some places no instructions as to the printed matter required by factory law having been given. I would particularly mention the accident card, and the poster for employes under sixteen years of age; more attention should be given to its revision. I trust this will prove a satisfactory summary of my six months’ services. Very truly yours, (Signed) Margaret A. Winans. APPOINTMENTS UNDER THE ACT CREATING A DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND INDUSTRY, 1913. See P. 446 Governor Tener appointed as commissioner John Price Jackson, dean of the engineering school of the state college. Dr. Jackson selected as chief factory inspector L. R. Palmer, an electrical engineer in charge of the new safety work of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company, and originator of the National Council of Industrial Safety. In January, 1914, Governor Tener appointed to the industrial board, with Commissioner Jackson as chairman, Mrs. Samuel Semple, president of the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women; George S. Comstock, past president of the Engineers Society of Pennsylvania; Frank S. Cronin, president of the Philadelphia Central Labor Union, and George W. McCandless. Mr, McCandless retired and Major John P. Wood, wool manufacturer and vice-president of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association, was put in his place—to make good, it is stated, the governor’s promise that one member of the board would represent the association. Mr. Wood is identified with the interests which defeated the child labor law before the legislature of 1913. Francis Feehan, former president of District No. 5, United Mine Workers of America, was appointed supervising inspector, with headquarters at Pittsburgh, in the fall of 1913. Offices were opened, but under the appropriation available, the inspection force has to date (July, 1914) been limited to five men and two women, without laboratory equipment or adequate clerical force. In addition to routine inspections, five industries have been made the subject of special investigations—bakeries, the tobacco workrooms, foundries, hotels, and mattress factories. Eighty prosecutions were entered in the first three months and orders issued to every foundry in the District to install washrooms and toilets under an act of 1911, hitherto unenforced. 445APPENDIX XI AN ACT CREATING A DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND INDUSTRY, 1913* Creating a Department of Labor and Industry; .... establishing an Industrial Board; . . transferring the pou'ers and duties of the Department of Factory Inspection to the Department of Labor ond Industry, and abolishing the Department of Factory Inspection; .... etc. Section i. Be it enacted, &c., That there is hereby established a Department of Labor and Industry, the head of which shall be a Commissioner of Labor and Industry, who shall be appointed by the Governor, by and with the consent of the Senate, and who shall hold office for the term of four years from the date of his appointment, appoint, and may at pleasure remove, all officers, clerks and other employees of the Department of Labor and Industry, except as herein otherwise provided. Section 2. The Commissioner of Labor and Industry shall forthwith appoint, upon entering upon the duties of his office, one Chief Inspector of the Department of Labor and Industry, and who shall, during the absence or disability of the Commissioner of Labor and Industry, possess all the powers and perform all the duties of the said commissioner, except the power to make appointments, and who, in addition to his duties prescribed by this act, shall perform such other duties and possess such other powers as the Commissioner of Labor and Industry shall prescribe. Section 3. The office force of the department, excluding that of the different bureaus shall be a chief clerk, two copying clerks, a stenographer who shall be a typewriter, and a messenger. Section 4. The Department of Labor and Industry shall be divided into three bureaus, as follows:— 1. Bureau of Inspection; 2. Bureau of Statistics and Information; 3. Bureau of Arbitration,— together with such other bureaus as the Commissioner of Labor and Industry may deem necessary, and shall, with the consent of the Governor, from time to time, establish. Section 5. The Commissioner of Labor and Industry shall establish and maintain branch offices in the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and in such other cities of the Commonwealth as he may deem advisable. Such branch offices shall, subject to the supervision and direction of the Commissioner of Labor and Industry, be in immediate charge of such officers or employees as the said commissioner may designate; and the reasonable and necessary expenses of such offices shall be paid as are the other expenses of the said Department of Labor and Industry. Section 6. The Attorney General shall have authority to employ, and may at pleasure remove, an attorney of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, who shall represent the Department of Labor and Industry, and shall take charge of and assist in the prosecution of actions and proceedings brought by or on behalf of the said Commissioner, or of the said Department, and who shall act, generally, as legal adviser to the said commissioner. The Commissioner of Labor and Industry shall have further power to employ attorneys and counsellors at law, to be designated by the Attorney General, to assist the counsel in special actions or proceedings, or generally in performance of his duties. The said Commissioner of Labor and Industry may purchase such supplies and materials as may be necessary in carrying on the work of his department. * For appointments under the act, see preceding page. 446DEPARTMENT OF LABOR ACT OF I913 Section 7. The Bureau of Inspection, subject to the supervision of the Commissioner of Labor and Industry, shall have charge of all inspections made pursuant to the provisions of this act, and shall perform such other duties as may be assigned to it by the Commissioner of Labor and Industry. The said bureau shall be under the charge of the Chief Inspector, hereinabove provided for, subject to the supervision and direction of the Commissioner of Labor and Industry. There may be in the said bureau fifty-eight inspectors, divided into four grades, as follows:— 1. Inspectors of the first grade,—of whom there may be fifty in number, and not less than five of whom shall be women, and such additional inspectors as the commissioner may deem necessary and proper to appoint, from time to time. 2. Inspectors of the second grade,—of whom there shall be two in number, and who shall act as Supervising Inspectors, with offices at the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, respectively. 3. Inspectors of the third grade,—of whom there shall be two, one of whom shall be a woman, and both of whom shall be physicians, duly licensed to practice medicine in Pennsylvania, and who shall act as Medical Inspectors. 4. Inspectors of the fourth grade,—of whom there shall be four, one of whom shall be a physician, duly licensed to practice medicine in the State of Pennsylvania, and who shall be Chief Medical Inspector; one of whom shall be a mechanical engineer, and expert in ventilation and accident prevention; one of whom shall be a chemical engineer; and one of whom shall be a civil engineer, and expert in fire prevention and building construction. Section 8. The Commissioner of Labor and Industry shall, from time to time, divide the State into districts, and shall assign to such districts such inspectors and supervising inspector as may, in his judgment, appear expedient; and shall, from time to time, assign and transfer such inspectors from one district to any other district, or to special duty in any bureau of the said department; and may assign an inspector to inspect any special class of factories or establishments, and may assign one or more of them to act as clerks in any office of the department. The Commissioner of Labor and Industry shall visit and inspect, or cause to be visited and inspected, during reasonable hours and as often as practicable, every room, building, or place, where and when any labor is being performed which is affected by the provisions of any law of this Commonwealth or of this act, and shall cause to be enforced therein the provisions of all such existing laws and of this act, and the rules and regulations of the Industrial Board hereinafter provided for. The Commissioner of Labor and Industry and all inspectors may, in the discharge of their duties, enter any such place, building, or room, whenever they have reasonable cause to believe that any such labor is being or will be performed therein. Section 9. The inspectors of the third grade shall, together with the Chief Medical Inspector, hereinabove provided for, inspect all rooms, buildings, and other places subject to the provisions of this act, throughout the State, with respect to the conditions of work affecting the health of persons employed therein, and shall perform such other duties and render such other service as the Commissioner of Labor and Industry shall direct. Section 10. The inspectors of the fourth grade shall constitute a division of industrial hygiene, which shall be under the immediate charge of the Commissioner of Labor and Industry. The members of the division of industrial hygiene shall make special inspections of factories and mercantile establishments, and all rooms, buildings or other places subject to the provisions of this act; and shall conduct special investigations, throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, relative to industrial processes and conditions. The members of such division shall prepare material for leaflets and bulletins, calling attention to dangers in particular industries and the precautions to be observed to avoid them, and shall perform such other duties and render such other services as may be required by the Commissioner of Labor and Industry. Each member of said division shall make 447WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH an annual report to the Commissioner of Labor and Industry, which shall be transmitted to the Legislature as part of the annual report of said commissioner. BUREAU OF STATISTICS AND INFORMATION Section ii. The Bureau of Statistics and Information shall be under the immediate charge of a chief of the bureau, subject to the direction and supervision of the Commissioner of Labor and Industry. There shall also be in the office of said bureau an assistant; one statistician; one filing clerk and one copying clerk; and three collectors of statistics. It shall be the duty of said bureau to keep in touch with labor in the Commonwealth, especially in relation to commercial, industrial, physical, educational, social, moral, and sanitary conditions of wage-earners of the Commonwealth and to the productive industries thereof; also to collect, assort, publish, and systematize the details and general information regarding industrial accidents and occupational diseases, their causes and effects, and the methods of preventing and remedying the same, and of providing compensation therefor; also, to make inquiry and investigation into the condition, welfare, and industrial opportunities of all aliens arriving and being within the State, and to gather information with respect to the supply of labor afforded by such aliens, and ascertain the occupations for which aliens may be best adapted, and to bring about communication between the aliens and the several industries requiring labor; and to collect, assort, and publish statistical details and general information relative thereto. The chief, or duly authorized deputy, shall have power to issue subpoenas, administer oaths, and take testimony in all matters relating to the duties herein required of said bureau. Any corporation, firm, or individual doing business within the Commonwealth, who shall neglect or refuse for thirty days to answer questions by circular or upon personal application, or who shall refuse to obey the subpoena and give testimony according to the provisions of this act, shall be liable to a penalty of one hundred dollars, to be collected by order of the Commissioner of Statistics in an action of debt, in which the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania shall be plaintiff. This Bureau shall also be required to collect, compile, and publish annually, the productive statistics of manufacturing, commercial, and other business interests of the State. INDUSTRIAL BOARD Section 12. There is hereby created and established in the Department of Labor and Industry an Industrial Board, to consist of the Commissioner of Labor and Industry, and four additional members, to be appointed by the Governor, by and with the consent of the Senate,—one of whom shall be an employer of labor, one a wage-earner, and one a woman. The said additional members shall be designated by the Governor to serve until the first day of January in the years one thousand nine hundred and fifteen, one thousand nine hundred and sixteen, one thousand nine hundred and seventeen, and one thousand nine hundred and eighteen, respectively. Upon the expiration of each of the said terms, the term of office of each associate member thereafter appointed shall be four years, from the first of January. The Commissioner of Labor and Industry shall be the chairman of the said board. Vacancies shall be filled by appointment, for an unexpired term, in the same manner as provided for the appointments of the previous holders of the office in which said vacancy occurs. The Commissioner of Labor and Industry shall receive no additional compensation for services as member of the said board. The four associate members shall each receive a compensation of ten dollars ($10.00) per day, and expenses actually and necessarily incurred while engaged in the performance of their duties. The board shall appoint, and may remove, a secretary, who shall receive a salary to be fixed by the board. The Commissioner of Labor and Industry shall 448DEPARTMENT OF LABOR ACT OF I913 detail, from time to time, to the assistance of said board, such employees of the Department of Labor and Industry as the board may require in aid of its work, and said board is empowered to employ experts for special and occasional services. The counsel to the Department of Labor and Industry shall act as counsel to the board, without additional compensation. The board shall hold stated meetings, which shall be open to the public, at least once a month during the year, and shall hold other meetings at such times and places as may be necessary. Such meetings shall be called by the chairman or majority of the board. The board shall keep minutes of its proceedings, showing the vote of each member upon every question, and records of its examination and other official action. Section 13. The Industrial Board shall have the power to make investigations concerning, and report upon, all matters touching the enforcement and effect of the provisions of all laws of the Commonwealth, the enforcement of which shall now and hereafter be imposed upon the Department of Labor and industry, and the rules and regulations made by the Industrial Board in connection therewith; and to subpoena and require the attendance in this Commonwealth of all witnesses, and the production of books and papers pertinent to the said investigation, and to examine them and such public records as it may require in relation to any matter which it has power to investigate. Any witness who refuses to obey a subpoena of the said board, as hereinabove provided for, or who refuses to be sworn or to testify, or who fails or refuses to produce any books, papers, or documents touching any matter under investigation or examination by the said board, or who is guilty of any contempt after being summoned to appear before the said board as above provided, may be punished as for contempt of court; and, for this purpose, application may be made to any court within whose territorial jurisdiction the said contempt took place, and for which purpose the courts of the common pleas of this Commonwealth are hereby given jurisdiction. In the course of such investigation each member of said board shall have power to administer oaths. Each member shall have the further power to make personal investigations of all establishments in this Commonwealth where labor is employed. Section 14. All rooms, buildings, and places in this Commonwealth where labor is employed, or shall hereafter be employed, shall be so constructed, equipped, and arranged, operated and conducted, in all respects, as to provide reasonable and adequate protection for the life, health, safety, and morals of all persons employed therein. For the carrying into effect of this provision, and the provisions of all the laws of this Commonwealth, the enforcement of which is now or shall hereafter be entrusted to or imposed upon the commissioner or Department of Labor and Industry, the Industrial Board shall have power to make, alter, amend, and repeal general rules and regulations necessary for applying such provisions to specify conditions, and to prescribe means, methods, and practices to carry into effect and enforce such provisions. Section 15. The rules and regulations of the Industrial Board, and the amendments and alterations thereof, may embrace all matters and subjects to which power and authority of the Department of Labor and Industry extends, and shall be distributed to all applicants. Every rule or regulation adopted by the board shall be promptly published in bulletins of the Department of Labor and Industry, and in such daily newspapers as the board may prescribe, and no such rule or regulation shall take effect until thirty days after such publication. Any employer, employee, or other person interested, either because of ownership in or occupation of any property affected by any such order or regulation, or otherwise, may petition for a hearing on the reasonableness of a rule or regulation. Such petition for hearing shall be by verified petition, filed with the said Industrial Board, setting out specifically and in full detail the rule or regulation upon which a hearing is desired, and the reasons why such rule or regulation is deemed to be unreasonable. All hearings of the board shall be open to the public. Upon receipt of such petition, if the issues raised in such petition have theretofore been adequately considered, 29 * 449WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH the Industrial Board shall determine the same by confirming, without hearing, its previous determination; or, if such hearing is necessary to determine the issue raised, the Industrial Board shall order a hearing thereon, and consider and determine the matter or matters in question at such time as shall be prescribed. Notice of the time and place of such hearing shall be given to the petitioner, and to such other persons as the Industrial Board may find directly interested in such decision. Section 16. Every person who violates any of the provisions of this act, or any of the rules or regulations of the Industrial Board, or who resists or interferes with any officer or agent of the Department of Labor and Industry in the performance of his duties in accordance with the said rules and regulations, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor; and shall, upon conviction thereof, be punished by a fine of not more than one hundred dollars ($100.00), or by imprisonment not exceeding one month, or both, at the discretion of the court. Section 17. There shall be created in the Department of Labor and Industry a Bureau of Mediation and Arbitration, the head of which shall be a chief of bureau. Section 18. Whenever a difference arises between an employer and his employees, which cannot be readily adjusted, the chief of the bureau shall proceed promptly to the locality thereof, and endeavor by mediation to effect an amicable settlement of the controversy. If such settlement cannot be effected, the dispute may be arbitrated by a board composed of one person selected by employer, and one person selected by employees, and a third who shall be selected by the representatives of the employer and the employees; and such third member of the board shall be selected and appointed within a period of five days after the matter has been submitted for arbitration, and, in the event of any such appointment or selection not being made within a period of five days, then the Chief of the Bureau of Mediation and Arbitration shall constitute the third member of the board, and be the chairman of the board; and if such third representative is chosen, by the two representatives of the employer and employee, within five days, then a chairman of the board shall be established by the board itself. A submission to the board shall be made in writing, and the parties thereto shall agree to abide by the determination of the board. Said board shall render a written decision within ten days after the completion of the investigation, one copy thereof to be filed in the bureau, and a copy to be furnished each party to the controversy. The chief of the bureau shall make an annual report of his work, containing such information as the Commissioner of Labor and Industry may request. Section 19. The Commissioner of Labor and Industry may assign to this bureau, from his department, such clerical assistance as, from time to time, he may think necessary. Section 21. Upon requisition of the Commissioner of Labor and Industry, the Board of Public Grounds and Buildings shall furnish suitable accommodations in the State Capitol building for the use of this department. *****♦#* Section 23. All of the powers and duties now by law vested in and imposed upon the Department of Factory Inspection, which is hereby abolished, are now hereby vested in the Department of Labor and Industry. Section 24. This act shall take effect on and after the first day of June, one thousand nine hundred and thirteen. Section 25. All acts or parts of acts inconsistent herewith be and the same are hereby repealed. The 2d day of June, A. D. 1913. JOHN K. TENER. 450APPENDIX XII OCCUPATIONAL DISEASES ACT SUBSTANCE OF ACT PASSED BY PENNSYLVANIA LEGISLATURE, 1913 For the protection of employes exposed to lead dusts, lead fumes, or lead solutions, while engaged in the manufacture of lead products, the employer shall provide properly ventilated and lighted rooms, separated from other rooms, with floors that may be washed. All floors shall be cleaned daily by wet methods or by vacuum cleaner. Where there are fumes or dust arising from machinery or handling, the employer shall furnish proper hoods and covers for machines, connected with dust collecting system. Employer shall provide washrooms, separate from workrooms, equipped with lavatory basins, at least one basin for each five employes. Employer shall furnish nail brushes, soap, and at least three clean towels a week for each employe, free of cost; he shall also allow at least ten minutes before lunch hour and before closing time and must furnish a shower bath for each ten employes and shall furnish soap and two clean towels a week for each employe for use in connection with shower bath. Time allowance of at least ten minutes twice a week shall be allowed for bath, and record shall be kept of each time bath is taken, which record shall be open to state inspection. Employer shall provide dressing room with double sanitary locker for each employe and shall provide separate eating room. No employe must be allowed to take food or drink into workroom. Employer shall furnish sufficient drinking fountains. The employer shall furnish a clean suit of overalls and pair of jumpers each week, and shall furnish at all times an effective respirator for each employe. Each employe must use the washing facilities as often as time is granted; must use eating room, and must wear at all times while engaged at work a suit of clothes provided, and remove same before leaving, at close of day, keeping his street clothes and work clothes in separate 451WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH lockers. Employes must also keep respirators clean and use same when at work. Employer shall post in all rooms a notice of the known dangers of occupation, as provided by Department of Labor and Industry. Employer shall cause examination once a month by a physician, of each employe, for symptoms of lead poisoning, time allowance being made for each employe at employer's expense. Physician shall keep record of all cases of lead poisoning in employer's office, which record shall always be open to state inspection, and within 48 hours must send duplicate of report to the State Department of Health, Harrisburg, and Department of Labor and Industry, blanks for which shall be furnished by Department of Health. Employer must within five days discontinue such employe from employment where he is exposed to lead fumes, dust, or solutions.—Digest by Department of Labor and Industry, Harrisburg. 452APPENDIX XIII WOMEN WORKERS AND SOCIAL AGENCIES Miss Butler's Women and the Trades,* presents a review of the social work carried on among wage-earning women, inside and outside their places of employment in 1907-08. It remains true in 1914 that only a small fraction of them are reached by outside agencies aside from the churches. Gains, however, are to be recorded. In its new and well equipped central building the Young Women's Christian Association carries on evening classes in sewing, millinery, gymnastics, and so forth; religious meetings at noon time in factories; a stamp savings system in the same; and a vacation camp. The association has yet to reach the rank and file of girl wage-earners, especially factory employes. The Council of Jewish Women carries on a vacation camp at Bradford Heights, where 100 working girls go in a season, those earning more than $7.00 a week paying $2.00 a week; those earning less, free. The various settlements have working girls' clubs, and in summer they join in the parties which go out to Lillian Home, the country place of Kingsley House. The Council of Jewish Women and, more recently, the Catholic Woman's League are active in securing employment, and as result of investigations conducted by Miss Annie E. McCord, vocational guidance work is carried on under the Central Board of Education. The Western Pennsylvania Association of the National League for Women Workers, started in 1910, has built up a membership of 300 in nine evening clubs for girls. These are self-governing and aim at self-support. The association has conducted a vacation house at Pennsville for three years. The Women's Trade Union League has not been able to get a foothold in Pittsburgh, although an unsuccessful effort was made at the Oliver works. The Child Labor Committee and the Consumers' League of Western Pennsylvania are the channels through which the ebb and flow of public interest in factory legislation and enforcement, affecting women's and children's labor, expresses itself. It is to be noted that there is no corresponding public organization whatever actively interested in the conditions of men's labor. Only those retail houses which comply with the following conditions in regard to their women and minor employes are eligible to the White List of The Consumers' League: * Butler, Elizabeth Beardsley: Women and the Trades. (The Pittsburgh Survey.) 453WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH A minimum wage of $6.00 a week must be paid to adult saleswomen with one year’s experience. A weekly half-holiday must be given during two summer months. Hours of work must not exceed ten. Overtime must be compensated. The requirements of the Pennsylvania state laws governing women and minor employes must be observed, and one week vacation with pay after one year’s employment. WHITE LIST The Consumers' League recommends the selling conditions in the following retail houses: McCreery and Company, Joseph Horne and Company, Boggs and Buhl, Meyer Jonasson and Company, Paulson Bros., J. G. Bennett and Company, The Malley Company, W. W. Wattles and Sons, Hardy and Hayes Company, Geo. K. Stevenson and Co., The Presbyterian Book Store, United Presbyterian Board of Publication, Kurtz, Langbein and Swartz. APPENDIX XIV LABOR UNION HYGIENE FOR BREWERY WORKERS (Hygienic provisions embodied in contract signed April 1, 1914, between the brewery workers' unions of Pittsburgh, and the breweries of the District.) Following precautions shall be taken for sanitary and healthful protection : (a) A lunchroom with seating capacity for every employe; same shall be properly heated and ventilated. (b) A separate wash-stand for every ten (10) employes, soap and towels to be furnished by employer at necessary intervals. (c) A separate locker shall be provided for every employe. (d) Toilets shall be sanitary and separated from the lunchroom. (e) Drinking water shall be provided for, under sanitary condition. (f) Every shop shall contain the necessary emergency supplies for accidents, etc. In addition, local No. 22 inserted this provision: "No employe shall be forced or required to work at varnishing without the necessary safety appliance and precautions being furnished and utilized." And local No. 144 (Bottling House Employes): "Men employed at the bottling machines and Pasteurizers shall be provided with goggles, to be furnished by the employer." 454APPENDIX XV SURGICAL ORGANIZATION OF THE CARNEGIE STEEL COMPANY Wm. O'Neill Sherman, M. D. Surgeon-in-chief, Carnegie Steel Company The primary object of first aid is to furnish an aseptic dressing that will prevent infection of the wound; its further activities are to supervise the removal of the injured to the home or hospital and to render appropriate assistance in cases of shock, heat prostration, gas poisoning, freezing, and so forth. The perfection of a surgical organization of a large corporation is dependent upon three factors: First, properly equipped and organized emergency. Second, the intelligent co-operation of all employes. Third, education of the individual. Surgeons and assistant surgeons are appointed by the Carnegie Steel Company in the towns in which the works are located. Their work was in 1909 brought under a chief surgeon. It is the aim of the company to secure the services of the best men in their respective communities. A yearly salary is paid which is commensurate with services rendered. In works employing 1,200 men or more, the surgeon has an assistant whose duty is to respond at such time as the surgeon in charge should request. The doctors are subject to call at any time, the company having an option upon their services. They are constantly within telephone communication. It is the duty of the plant doctor to give first-aid lectures and instructions, to make visits to the injured in their homes, and to render the surgical attention necessary. The Standard Emergency Hospital is a building 40 by 60 feet in size, divided into the following rooms: waiting room, redressing room, operating room, ward room, bathroom, nurses' room, laboratory, and X-ray room. The Standard hospital is the type used in all plants employing 1,800 men or more. For the smaller plants, units of the large hospital are used, as the case may require. These hospitals have the same equipment found in the most modern hospitals. The redressing room is used to treat the cases as they report. Dressing hours are set apart on three days of the week, at which time the cases for redressing report for treatment. The operating room is used to perform minor operations and 455WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH to treat the more serious accidents. A ward room of three beds is used only for emergency purposes, that is, shock, hemorrhage, heat stroke, cramps, or illness of any kind in which the patient should be kept at rest before being moved. The bathroom contains a specially designed bathtub, so that the patients can be entirely immersed in either hot or cold water, as the case may necessitate. The nurses' room is so arranged as to afford the greatest comfort and privacy to the nurses on duty. The laboratory consists of a complete X-ray apparatus, microscope, and other necessary equipment for scientific examination of blood, secretions, and so forth. The surgeons at the emergency hospital are assisted by graduate nurses (female) who are constantly in attendance. These nurses are selected according to their special fitness and ability. It is their duty to render treatment in the minor injuries (small scratches, burns, and so forth), to assist the doctor, and to supervise in the general cleanliness and operation of the hospital, under the doctor's directions. The co-operation of employes is essential if best results are to be secured. A circular letter is given to each employe as follows: TO THE EMPLOYES OF THE CARNEGIE STEEL COMPANY It is the earnest wish and desire of the company that every man injured report at once to his foreman, who will issue an order on the company doctor. Every case, no matter how slight the injury, should be given thorough surgical treatment. In the past, many cases of a serious nature have resulted from the failure to report to the company surgeon, by whom every effort is being made to render the most efficient treatment and remove many of the complications which have occurred from the failure of patients to comply with the rules. Do not make any attempt to put anything on injured parts, or to treat them in any way; go to the doctor at once, follow his directions to the word; never remove a dressing, and report to the hospital only when told to by the company surgeon. The application of poultices, ointments, and greases to the wound often result in blood poisoning. Always remember that slight injuries often cause the most serious complications, even to the loss of limbs and life. Finally, be guided by the instructions of the surgeon in charge. Failure to comply with these rules will be dealt with by the superintendent or general superintendent. The following letter was issued to the foremen relative to the use of a “foreman's card," which is self-explanatory. TO THE FOREMAN:— The enclosed new form is to be used in issuing an order on the company surgeon in all future accident cases. Every man before he can be treated at the Emergency Hospital must receive this form, signed and filled out by the foreman. Before he can return to work it must be signed by the attending surgeon. This will prevent many cases of blood 456EMERGENCY HOSPITAL EQUIPMENT Carnegie Steel Company Emergency Hospital. Clairton Works Office and Store Room Redressing Room 'Operating TaoomRemoving a Foreign Body from the Eye Nurses at the emergency hospital of the Edgar Thomson Works Automobile Ambulance Hospital Ward Standard Emergency Hospital, Carnegie Steel Company. Here patients suffering minor injuries are treated; and those suffering from shock, hemorrhage, or more serious injury are cared for until they can be removed to the central hospitalSURGICAL ORGANIZATION poisoning and serious complications which have occurred in the past from injuries which were not promptly and properly attended to. Under no conditions shall the foreman allow the return to duty of the injured employe without the signature of the company surgeon. Any violation of the above rules shall be dealt with by the general superintendent. The “foreman’s card” is an official order on the doctor to render surgical attention. Should the case be of a trivial character, the card is signed and handed to the foreman, allowing the man to return to work. Should the injury be of such a nature as to necessitate the patient being taken to the hospital or his home, the card is held until such a time as the attending surgeon thinks is safe for the injured man to resume work. Instructions written in seven languages are printed on the back of the card, so that employes shall have a perfect understanding. Should the men be unable to read, the system is explained to them by the foreman or an interpreter. FOREMAN’S CARD: FOREMAN WILL RETURN THIS CARD TO TIME OFFICE WHEN MAN RESUMES WORK Case No..... Plant.............Date............Hour...........A. M....... P. M...... To Company Surgeon: Please attend to Mr................................... Check No.......Department.......... Residence No............ Street.........................Witness...................... Check No.......................Address Witness.............. Foreman. Kindly allow Mr........................................to return to work Date.......................... ........................................ Company Surgeon. Every employe when injured should report at once to the foreman in charge, who will direct injured man to the hospital for treatment. All injuries are to be attended to by the company surgeon and his directions followed. This order must be signed by the surgeon before the injured man can return to work. Any bills incurred for doctors other than company doctors will not be paid by the company. Any violation of the above rules will be taken up for consideration by the general superintendent. Approved by General Superintendent. 457WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Upon the arrival of the patient at the Emergency Hospital the case is attended by the company surgeon. An immediate report of the accident is made out, four copies being made, one of which is sent to each of the following: company surgeon, general superintendent of works, casualty department, and chief surgeon. A report is made out in every case, regardless of the character of the accident. Upon the recovery of the patient, a final report giving necessary data is filled out, the same procedure being followed as in the preliminary report. This gives a brief history of the case and gives all the information necessary. Records are kept and notes made upon the back of the immediate accident report by the plant surgeon, giving the date of surgical attention and notes as to the progress of the case. The education of the employe in first aid is accomplished by the organization of first-aid squads throughout the works. The revised American Red Cross Text Book on first aid is used as a standard work. Each class is given twelve lectures and demonstrations. . Competitive meets, at which prizes are given to winning crews, are held to stimulate and maintain interest in first aid. The system, as at present organized, can be best illustrated by following the different steps in the treatment and care rendered injured employes. If an injury occurs it is immediately reported to the foreman in charge, who makes a written request to the works doctor to render treatment. If the injury is a minor one, the patient is taken to a conveniently located stretcher box, where a first-aid package (sealed and aseptic) is kept. This package contains one ampule of aromatic spirits of ammonia, one triangular bandage, one roll gauze bandage, and one gauze compress. The necessary dressings are applied by the captain of the first-aid squad, and the patient is directed to the Emergency Hospital for treatment. Should the injury be of such a character as to render the patient unable to walk, a Reeves stretcher is obtained from a stretcher box, and the patient is wrapped in a blanket and taken to the Emergency Hospital by the first-aid squad. The patient is given the necessary treatment by the attending doctors and nurses, after which he is either sent to his home or to a general hospital, where the case is placed under the care of the chief surgeon. Special arrangements are made whereby private accommodations are provided for all cases. Operating room nurses, ward nurses, surgeons, and a special trained anesthetist are in charge of the patient, thereby assuring the best of attention and ultimate results. When the patient recovers sufficiently to be discharged, he is referred to the works doctor. Automobile ambulances are used to trans- 458First Aid Class Company surgeon instructing class of workmen and foremen at the Homestead works of the Carnegie Steel Company. This is done five days a week with a different set of men each day. At a later date they are examined as to their efficiencyStretcher Drill First aid crew letting a stretcher down from a crane runway in the yards of a steel works Stretcher Drill First aid crew applying dressings to fractured limb before carrying to the emergency hospitalSURGICAL ORGANIZATION port patients from places of injury to the hospitals, and from the hospitals to their homes. The advantages of a surgical organization must be obvious to all those familiar with large industrial corporations. This will be readily observed by a comparison of antiquated methods formerly in use with those of the present day. Employes have been educated so that they now willingly go to the Emergency Hospital to have their minor injuries treated. Many of the serious complications in the past have had their beginnings in minor injuries which were not scientifically treated, the consequence being infection (blood poisoning) of the part, resulting in permanent disability, loss of the injured part, or death. An investigation of the records during the past four years, 1910-14, shows that there should be but one infection in a thousand cases, providing the injuries are promptly treated. Under conditions which existed in the past, it was not uncommon to have from 5 to 60 per cent of the cases infected. At the present time, practically all the infections are due to carelessness on the part of the injured and failure to report promptly for treatment. The advantage of having the injuries heal without infection can be readily seen when we remember that it takes three and a half times as long for an infected wound to heal as it does a non-infected wound. Serious eye complications frequently result from the crude attempts of unskilled fellow-employes to remove foreign bodies from the eye. As a result of the strict enforcement of a rule prohibiting this practice, the number of foreign-body cases has greatly increased because all the cases are now reported for treatment; however, in a series of 6,800 cases there was not one with serious complications. While the “safety organization” is playing an important part in the general uplift of working conditions on railroad and in other hazardous employments, and will, doubtless, materially reduce the number of accidents, we may not even hope to reach a point where the heavy machinery and equipment of today can be made proof against bodily injury, or as someone has rather tersely expressed it—“fool-proof. ” From the present outlook, we feel constrained to believe that there will always occur a certain number of accidents resulting from ignorance, carelessness, and other conditions over which the employer can exercise no reasonable control. Where the safety and preventive measures have not been entirely effective, the physician or surgeon steps in; he has heretofore been regarded with almost negligible consideration in most industrial organizations—to be consulted only where extreme conditions demanded the employment of his services. But now the economic value of safety appli- 459WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH ances, which is becoming so apparent to everyone, is exerting an educational influence upon employers, many of whom have already seen the further advantage that may be attained by the addition of a surgical force to their organizations. My own opinion is that every large industrial enterprise should have a properly equipped emergency hospital, together with such surgeons, nurses, and other attendants as conditions may seem to warrant. While the surroundings and the character of the employment will always, to a certain extent, determine the number of injuries, the results of these injuries can be greatly reduced in seriousness by prompt and skilful treatment. The failure to properly administer first aid, and the subsequent lack of efficient surgical attention, has in the past added to the death list many whose lives might have been saved, and has steadily recruited the army of the maimed and crippled, with which the streets of our large cities are so familiar. 1 might emphasize here that efficiency in surgical attention is the keynote—the fate of the injured man frequently depending wholly upon the intelligence and skill of the individual who applies the first dressing. It will thus be seen that to get the best results there should be a complete surgical organization; and this organization should work in harmony with officers and subordinates, as the co-operation of all is essential to the success of the movement. Where the number of accidents is large, a chief surgeon should be in responsible charge of the work; and in surgical matters he should not be subjected to the handicap of the restrictions of well meaning lay officials, who sometimes have decided opinions of their own upon subjects entirely foreign to them. The pioneering in this field for the present is being left to some of the larger corporations, but the stupendous benefit that is already apparent from their operations is beginning to act as a leaven among the smaller manufacturing interests, and in the near future a general improvement may be expected in the present conditions. 460Visiting Nukse. Homestead In six mill towns the Carnegie Company has added nurses to the regular works organization. The nurse visits the homes and gives advice in nursing, care of children, housekeeping, and sanitation West Penn Gymnasium Since 1909 the Carnegie Steel Company has centralized its major surgical work in special private wards at the West Penn Hospital, Pittsburgh, where modern equipment is installed. Exercising machines are shown here for the relief of injuries to joints, bones, and muscles, thereby reducing the convalescent time of mill patientsOxygen Helmet Repair man equipped against gas poisoning ready to enter a blast furnace. The equipment used is that developed in mining, applied to furnace work by the Carnegie Steel Company since 1911 Vanadium Steel Bone Plate and Screws Employed to hold badly displaced bones in the serious fractures which occur in the tonnage industries. In 181 cases this method has been successfully employed. This procedure has materially reduced the extent of permanent disabilityAPPENDIX XVI APPLICATION BLANKS AND FORMS, WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY Form P-1542—Rev. 1 Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company East Pittsburgh, Pa. APPLICATION Application for position as Name............... Age................ Nationality........ Height............. General Education... Technical Education Special Education.... Special Experience... Can begin.......... Address j..... Married or single ....Weight..... Where.....Y ears attended.... Degree.... Minimum salary expected PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE WITH PLACE CHARACTER OF WORK DATES FROM TO SALARY References Reasons for desiring new position Notes 461WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH To be filled out in applicant’s own handwriting and returned to.... Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company Pittsburgh, Pa. Application for position as....Date..................191.... Name..................... ... f ........................... Address ^ Age...................... I ............................... Country of birth...When naturalized, if of foreign birth... General education.......................................... Technical education........................................ Line of special study...................................... Date of graduation from technical school................... Now employed?......Could begin work...days after engagement. Reason for wishing to make a change........................ Salary expected............................................ PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE WITH THE FOLLOWING FIRMS WHERE KIND OF WORK DATES RATES OF PAY FROM TO (Under the head “Kind of Work” state whether engineer, apprentice, tracer draftsman, machinist, helper, etc. If in charge of work, state in what position Give a statement of commercial experience, as well as technical.) Reference as to ability and character as follows: (If there is not sufficient room above for any statement which the applicant desires to make, they may be continued on the other side) 462WESTINGHOUSE BLANKS AND FORMS Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company Location M 191 Gentlemen :— M..... for a position as by you as a... M............. from......... ....has applied to this Company stating that ^ was employed ......under the supervision of during a period of. to. In order that the Westinghouse Electric & Mfg. Co. may be fully informed as to my personal character and qualifications for the position for which I have made application, I refer to each of my former employers and request and authorize each of the said Companies or employers for whom I have formerly worked to give to the above named Company all information they may have in their possession, whether shown by my personal record or otherwise, as to my personal character and also my qualifications for the position for which I have herein applied, and the reason why I was discharged or quit service, upon any inquiry that may be made of them, or either of them, by said Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company. Applicant’s Signature Applicant’s Signature Yours truly, (Signature) (Title) Note:—Your reply will be considered confidential. be given attention. Employment Agent Similar inquiries will The above named applicant was employed as a................ from....................to...................., the cause for leaving being.............................................. While in our employ his her services satisfactory and we ! him He .............; -re-employ her . She of labor organizations.............. Remarks :—.......................... a member Date Signature Title....... 463WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Form 6158-D RECORD OF EMPLOYMENT 1 hereby certify that the following statements are true to the best of my knowledge and belief, and agree to give five days notice when leaving the company’s employ. FULL NAME EMPLOYEE'S SIGNATURE Place of Birth City Country Date of or State Birth Have you ever worked for the W. E. & M. Co.? Have you ever worked for any other DEPARTMENTS Westinghouse Co.? Address No. Street 0«ty State a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a (( a a Commenced Work Witness Form 1418—Rev. 2 ADVICE OF WORKMEN REQUIRED To the Employment Dept. Date..........191 Help as follows is required in Sec..........Dept. To the Employment Dept. Date..........191 Help as follows is required in Sec..........Dept. Number Occupation This must agree with record form 6151 Approximate Rate Cancel all previous requests for above occupation. Please send for.............................., whose address is No..........Street...............City........ State............... Night Turn—Day Turn Unless the address is given the man will call at the Employment Department. In case the above-named fails to report within three days substitute another name. ......................... ....................... Foreman Gen. Foreman 464WESTINGHOUSE BLANKS AND FORMS Form P-1386 ADVICE OF WORKMEN SUPPLIED Î9Î Mr..................... General Foreman Mr..................... Foreman ' Sec. Dept. engaged as a has been ......at per hour, to fill your order of. Assistant Superintendent If Workman fails to Report for Work, this Slip Must be Returned to Employment Dept. Form 5400-C ADVICE OF ENGAGEMENT AND HOURLY PAY RATE OF WORKS EMPLOYEES FULL NAME Sec. Dept. Check No. Date * Name mast agree with workman's signature OCCUPATION DATE RATE Pay Ending Pay Rate Pay Ending Pay Rate Pay Ending Pay Rate Jan. July Jan. << u ü Feb. Aug. Feb. u Mar. i< ü Sept. Mar. u it ü Apr. Oct. Apr. FOREMAI GENERAI si ii ü _ FOREMAN May Nov. May NOTED BY TIME DEP T << it ü June Dec. June ILS. Eng. Germ’y Austria Hungary Scotland () << ii ü 1 QUIT QUIT WITH NOTICE WITHOUT NOTICE .. DISCHARGED REASON Year of Birth What Dep’ts 30* 465WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Form 870 Rev. 2 ADVICE OF EMPLOYES QUIT OR DISCHARGED RUSH NOTICE GIVEN.......191.. WORKMAN SEC. ADDRESS OCCUPATION CHECK NO. QUIT WITH-WITHOUT NOTICE. DISCHARGED. COLLECT CHECK-YES-NO DATE.............191...........A- REASON ...................... WOULD (NOT) RE-EMPLOY. (NO) OBJECTION TO RE-EMPLOYING IN ANOTHER DEP’T. WORKMAN FOREMAN CHIEF COST CLERK GENERAL FOREMAN EMP. DEPT. RATE DEPT. HAS (NO) TOOL ACCOUNT. VALUE OF TOOLS NOT ACC'TD FOR $............ (DETAIL IN INK ON BACK.) ......................................... TOOL DEPT. IS (NOT) MEMBER OF RELIEF. R. D. NO. DUES $ SUPT. RELIEF DEPT. 466WESTINGHOUSE BLANKS AND FORMS Form 199U—Hey. 5 ADVICE OF TRANSFER OF WORKS EMPLOYEES RELIEF NAME DEPT. INO. TRANSFERRED FROM TRANSFERRED TO SEC. DEPT. SEC. DEPT. CHECK NO. RATE CHECK NO. RATE OCCUPATION CLASS OCCUPATION CLASS FOREMAN FOREMAN Noted GEN. FOREMAN Cost Dept. Noted GEN. FOREMAN Cost Dept. Tool account adjusted Tool Dept. Date of Transfer '9' Noted Pay Roll Div. Noted Employ Dept. Foreman to whom transfer is made must not accept this card until tool account has been adjusted. (over) 467APPENDIX XVII RELIEF DEPARTMENT,* WESTINGHOUSE AIR BRAKE COMPANY GENERAL 1. The “Relief Department” is a department of the Company’s service in the executive charge of a Superintendent, whose directions in carrying out its Regulations are to be complied with subject to the control of the General Manager, except in such matters as are under the control of the Relief Committee or the Treasurer of the Company. 2. Wherever in these Regulations the following words occur without qualifications, they will have the meaning defined as follows: “Company” will mean The Westinghouse Air Brake Company; “General Manager,” “Board of Directors,” “Treasurer,” and “Relief Department” or “Department,” will mean the General Manager, Board of Directors, Treasurer and Relief Department, respectively, of said Company; “Relief Fund,” “Workmen’s Compensation Fund,” “Relief Committee” or “Committee,” “Superintendent,” “Medical Examiner” and “Actuary” will mean the Relief Fund, Workmen’s Compensation Fund, Relief Committee, Superintendent, Medical Examiner and Actuary respectively of said Relief Department. 3. The object of the Department is the continuation of a trust fund known as “The Relief Fund,” for the payment of benefits to employees contributing thereto, who are to be known as members of the Relief Department, when under these Regulations such benefits are awarded for total disability due to causes other than accident arising out of and in the course of their employment by the Company and for the payment of benefits to their dependents, next of kin or beneficiaries designated by them with the approval of the Superintendent when under the Regulations such benefits are awarded on account of death due to causes other than such accident; and the creation of a further trust fund to be known as “The Workmen’s Compensation Fund,” to consist solely of contributions made by the Company and the earnings by investment thereof, for the payment of compensation to employees of the Company when under these Regulations such compensation is awarded for total or partial disability due to accident arising out of and in the course of their employment by the Company and for the payment of compensation to their dependents or next of kin when under these Regulations such compensation is awarded on account of death due to such accident. * Established May 1st, 1903; effective June 1st, 1903; amended regulations effective January 1st, 1914. 468WESTINGHOUSE RELIEF DEPARTMENT Also to perform such other duties and functions as are prescribed in these Regulations or may be imposed by the Board of Directors. 4. The Company shall have general charge of the Department; guarantee the fulfillment of its obligations; have the custody of all moneys and assets belonging to the Relief Fund and the Workmen’s Compensation Fund and be responsible for their safekeeping and investment; pay into the respective fund interest at the rate of four per cent per annum on monthly balances in its hands and all interest or other earnings derived from investments of moneys of the fund; supply the necessary facilities for conducting the business of the Department; and pay all operating expenses thereof. 5. The Superintendent shall have charge of all business pertaining to the Department. He shall employ such clerks and other assistants as may be necessary, prescribe the forms and blanks to be used, certify all bills and pay-rolls of the Department, sign all orders for payment of benefits, furnish to the Committee such reports as they may require, decide all questions properly referred to him, and exercise such other authority as may be conferred upon him by the General Manager or the Committee. 6. There shall be one or more Medical Examiners, appointed by the General Manager who shall, subject to the control and approval of the Superintendent, have general supervision of the Medical affairs of the Department. 7. The Medical Examiner shall make the required physical examination of applicants for membership in the Relief Department; prepare applications; report the condition of sick or injured members; pass upon when members are disabled and the cause and extent of disability and upon when they are able to work; pass upon proofs of the fact and cause of death; certify bills for medical and surgical treatment, medicines, hospital charges and appliances; and perform such professional and other duties as may be required by the Superintendent. 8. Medical Examiners shall not personally give surgical or medical attendance except as prescribed by rules of the Company and shall not accept fees for such service. 9. The fiscal year of the Department shall begin with the first day of January of each year. THE RELIEF FUND 10. The “Relief Fund” will consist of contributions from members of the Relief Department, income derived from investments and from interest paid by the Company and of appropriations by the Company, when necessary to make good deficiencies. 11. The moneys received for the Relief Fund shall be held by the Company in trust for the members of the Department and their dependents, next of kin or other beneficiaries, to whom benefits have been or shall be awarded against such fund. The Committee shall provide for the investment, and any changes therein, of money which is not required for immediate use. All checks must be countersigned by the Treasurer. All compensation awarded against the Relief Fund is hereby declared to be a Spendthrift or Alimentary Trust for the support of the cestuis que trustent. No assignment, mortgage, pledge or anticipation of the same 469WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH or of any payments to become due thereunder will be recognized or bind the Fund or be valid thereagainst. 12. The Company being the Trustee and Guarantor of the Relief Fund, the investments shall be in such securities as shall have been approved by the Company and shall be in the name of the Company “in trust for the Relief Fund.” 13. If the amount contributed by members of the Relief Fund with interest and other income shall not be sufficient to provide the benefit awarded, and ample to secure their prompt payment in full as they become due, the Company shall advance from its own funds whatever sums may be necessary for this purpose, reimbursing itself out of surplus only when the contributions of members with interest and other income are more than sufficient therefor. 14. If at any time there shall be a surplus after making due allowance for liabilities over and above what is required to provide for the full and prompt payment of all benefits and a reasonable contingent fund, such surplus may be applied to increase the benefits to members in such manner as may be determined, upon advice of the Actuary, by a vote of two-thirds of the Committee, approved by the Company. 15. The condition of the Relief Fund at the close of each fiscal year shall be audited and reported on by a competent person or persons selected for that purpose by the members of the Committee who represent the members of the Relief Department and all payments due or to become due, upon death and disability benefits awarded by or claimed from the Relief Department, shall be valued by the Actuary. THE WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION FUND 16. The “Workmen’s Compensation Fund” will consist of contributions made solely by the Company out of its own funds, income derived from investments and from interest paid by the Company, and special, further appropriations by the Company, when necessary, to make good deficiencies. 17. The moneys paid into the Workmen’s Compensation Fund shall be held by the Company in trust for the employees of the Company and their dependents, next of kin or other beneficiaries to whom compensation shall be awarded against such fund. The committee shall provide for the investment, and any changes therein, of money which is not required for immediate use. All checks must be countersigned by the Treasurer. All compensation awarded against the Workmen’s Compensation Fund is hereby declared to be a Spendthrift or Alimentary Trust for the support of the cestuis que trustent. No assignment, mortgage, pledge, or anticipation of the same or of any payments to become due thereunder will be recognized or bind the Fund or be valid thereagainst. 18. The Company being the Trustee and Guarantor of the Workmen’s Compensation Fund, the investments shall be in such securities as shall have been approved by the Company, and shall be in the name of the Company “in trust for the Workmen’s Compensation Fund.” 19. The Company shall contribute each year to the Workmen’s Compensation Fund sufficient to provide the benefits awarded and to secure their prompt payment in full as they become due and to make good all deficiencies of such Fund. 470WESTINGHOUSE RELIEF DEPARTMENT 20. The condition of the Workmen's Compensation Fund at the close of each fiscal year shall be audited and reported on by a competent person or persons selected for that purpose by the Committee and all payments due or to become due, upon death and disability compensation awarded by or claimed from the Workmen’s Compensation Fund, shall be valued by the Actuary. 21. The Company reserves the right to withdraw the Workmen’s Compensation Fund from the Relief Department, to set it up in a new Department or to discontinue the same except as to compensation theretofore awarded. RELIEF COMMITTEE 21. There shall be a Committee composed of eight members and a Chairman to be known as the Relief Committee constituted as follows: (a) The General Manager of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company shall be ex-officio a member and Chairman of the Committee. (b) The other members of the Committee shall be chosen annually in December, to serve one year from the first day of January next succeeding, or until their successors are chosen and shall qualify, as follows: (c) One-half shall be chosen by the Company and one-half by the employees who are members of the Relief Department from among themselves on basis of membership in the different districts as provided in the following section. 22. The members of the Committee chosen by the members of the Relief Department shall be elected by ballot, one member to be elected by the members employed in the iron and brass foundries, to be designated “ District No. ione by the members employed in the store-keeping, account and drafting departments to be designated “ District No. 2;” and two by the members employed in all other departments, to be designated “ District No. 3,” the vote being taken and certified under oath by tellers selected by the Committee. The member receiving the highest number of votes so cast in each district shall be declared elected. 23. In balloting for members of the Committee each member of the Relief Department shall be entitled to cast one vote. 24. For the Committee to serve during the fiscal year, 1914, the members elected in May, 1913, shall continue in office until January 1, 1915. 25. In the event of termination of the service of any member of the Committee, or of his withdrawal or loss of membership in the Relief Department, his membership on the Committee shall thereupon terminate. 26. Any vacancy among the members elected by the contributing employees shall be filled by the succession to the position of the employee who received the next highest number of votes of members of the same district from which the retiring member was elected. 27. Any vacancy among the members chosen by the Company shall be filled by appointment by the General Manager. 28. The Superintendent shall be Secretary to the Committee. 29. The Committee shall have general supervision of the operations of the Department and see that they are conducted in accordance with these Regulations. 30. The Committee shall hold stated meetings once in three months, at such 471WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH time and place as they shall determine, and shall meet at other times at the call of the Chairman. 31. It shall be the duty of the Chairman to call special meetings of the Committee upon the written request of three of its members. 32. Amendments to the Regulations of the Department may be proposed to the Committee at any stated meeting, by any member of the Committee. Amendments so proposed may be acted upon only at a subsequent stated or special meeting; but no amendment shall be operative unless adopted by a vote in the affirmative of a majority of the whole Committee, approved by the Board of Directors, and duly promulgated by the Superintendent; and any amendment so adopted, approved and promulgated shall be binding upon the Company and the members of the Relief Department and all persons claiming through them from the date specified in the promulgation of the same, except as regards benefits awarded prior thereto. APPLICATIONS 33. Membership in the Relief Department shall be based upon an application in the following form: APPLICATION FOR MEMBERSHIP IN THE RELIEF DEPARTMENT OF THE WESTINGHOUSE AIR BRAKE COMPANY To the Superintendent of the Relief Department: I, of in the County of and State of , now employed by the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, do hereby apply for membership in the Relief Department of said Company, and consent and agree to be bound by the Regulations of said Relief Department and by any other Regulations of said Department hereafter adopted and in force during my membership. I ALSO AGREE, That the said Company, by its proper agents, and in the manner provided in said Regulations, shall apply as a voluntary contribution, and I hereby authorize it, so to deduct and apply, from any wages or salary earned by me under said employment the sum provided in the Regulations of the Relief Department for the purpose of securing the benefits provided in the Regulations for a member of the Relief Department, in receipt of my then regular salary or wages. Unless I shall hereafter otherwise designate in writing, with the approval of the Superintendent of the Relief Department, death benefit or compensation after providing for my burial at an expense not exceeding $100.00, shall be payable to my wife, if I am married at the time of my death, or, if I have no wife living, then to my children collectively, each to be entitled to an equal share or, if there be no such children living, then to , if living, and if not living, then to my father and mother jointly, or to the survivor, or, if neither be living, then to my next of kin, payment in behalf of such next of kin to be made to my legal representative or if there be no such next of kin the death benefit or compensation shall lapse, and the amount thereof shall remain as a part of the Relief Fund or the Workmen’s Compensation Fund, as the case may be, without claim for the same. I expressly stipulate that my marriage shall at any time, ipso facto, have the effect to substitute my wife in the place and stead of any beneficiary theretofore designated to receive said death benefits or compensation in the event of my death, if she be then living. Any funeral or other expenses incident to my death, which shall have been paid by the Superintendent of the Relief Department in accordance with the Regulations, shall be held to be in part payment of said death benefit or compensa- 472WESTINGHOUSE RELIEF DEPARTMENT tion and shall be deducted from the total amount thereof before payment to the person or persons entitled to receive the same. I FURTHER AGREE that in consideration of the contributions of said Company to the Relief Department, and of the guarantee by it of the payment of the benefits aforesaid, the acceptance of benefits from such Relief Feature, for injury or death, shall operate as a release of all claims against said Company for damages by reason of such injury or death which could be made by or through me, or by any beneficiary or beneficiaries (except a right, if any, to claim under the Regulations of the Pension Department of the Company) and that the Superintendent may require as a condition precedent to the payment of such benefits, that all acts by him deemed appropriate or necessary to effect the full release and discharge of the said Company from all such claims, be done by those who might bring suit for damages by reason of said injury or death; and also that the bringing of such a suit by me, my beneficiary or legal representative, for the use of my beneficiary alone, or with others, shall operate as a release in full to the Relief Department of all claims by reason of my membership therein. I ALSO AGREE, That this application, upon approval by the Superintendent of the Relief Department, shall make me a member of such Department on and from the date specified in such approval and constitute a contract between myself and the said Company, governed in its construction and effect by the laws of the State of Pennsylvania, and that the same shall not be avoided by any change in the character of my service, or locality where rendered, while in the employment of said Company, not by any change in the amounts applicable from my wages or salary to the Relief Fund, and that the agreement that the above-named amounts shall be appropriated from my wages or salary shall apply also to any other amounts which may become payable under the provision of said Regulations, by reason of changes of Class owing to changes in my regular wages or salary and shall constitute an appropriation and assignment in advance of such portions of my wages or salary to the said Company in trust for the Relief Fund, for the purpose of maintaining my membership in the Relief Department, which assignment shall have precedence over any other assignment by me of my wages or salary or of any claim upon them on account of liabilities incurred by me. I ALSO AGREE, For myself and those claiming through me, and for my beneficiary or beneficiaries, to be especially bound by Regulations Nos. 109 and 110 providing for final and conclusive settlement of all claims for benefits or controversies of whatsoever nature by reference to the Superintendent of the Relief Department and an appeal from his decision to the Committee, with the privilege of resort to the Courts only when these remedies shall have been exhausted and as set forth in Regulation No. 110. I ALSO AGREE, That any untrue or fraudulent statement made by me to the Medical Examiner, or any concealment of facts in this application, or any attempt on my part to defraud or impose upon said Relief Department, or my resigning from or leaving the services of the said Company, or my being relieved or discharged therefrom, shall forfeit my membership in said Department and all benefits, rights or equities arising therefrom except that such termination of my employment shall not (in the absence of any of the other foregoing causes of forfeiture) deprive me of any benefit or compensation to which I may be entitled by reason of disability beginning and reported before and continuing without interruption to and after such termination of my employment, as provided in said Regulations. I CERTIFY that I am years of age, am correct and temperate in my habits and that, so far as I am aware, I am now in good health, and have no injury or sickness, constitutional or otherwise, except as shown on the accompanying statement made by me to the Medical Examiner, which statement shall constitute a part of this application. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have signed these presents at in the County of , State of , this day of , 473WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH A. D. 19 , this application to take effect A. D. 19 , or on such subsequent date as may be designated by said Superintendent; provided, however, that if I become disabled before said date and continue disabled beyond said date this application shall not take effect until the first day after my recovery. The following changes were made before execution. Signature of Applicant. Witness............................................. The foregoing application is approved at the office of the Superintendent of the Relief Department at in the County of , State of this day of , A. D. 19 , to take effect the day of A. D. 19 . Superintendent of the Relief Department. 34. The last application in the foregoing form which shall have been made by an employee, shall be known as his principal application. 35. Upon the approval of the principal application by the Superintendent, he shall be a member on and from the date specified in such approval, and the Superintendent shall issue to him a certificate of membership attached to a copy of the Regulations then in force. 36. If any applicant for membership has physical defects which would preclude the approval of his application if presented unconditionally, his application may nevertheless be approved, provided he executes an agreement in writing satisfactory to the Superintendent, to the effect that he shall not be entitled under his membership to any benefits for disability caused by, arising from, or growing out of such defects, such agreement to be attached to and made part of his said application, and such modification of the foregoing prescribed forms of the Principal Application is hereby authorized. 37. If an employee, entitled to become a member upon passing a satisfactory medical examination, and who has not previously been examined and rejected, shall have executed a prescribed form of “Preliminary Application,” but shall not have had opportunity to be examined before the date specified thereon for his application to take effect, he shall be protected by such preliminary application, under and in accordance with the terms of the prescribed form of Principal Application from said date until he shall have had opportunity to be examined; provided, however, that he shall only be entitled to benefits payable on account of injury or death caused solely by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment and if his Principal Application is not approved, his rights and obligations in the Relief Department shall cease from the time of medical examination; and if he shall refuse or neglect to be examined when opportunity for examination is offered, his rights and obligations in the Relief Department shall thereupon cease. 38. An applicant, protected in accordance with the foregoing against accident only, shall not be required to contribute. 39. Employees of the Company now in its employment may become members of the Relief Department, without regard to age or health, in their respective, appropriate classes, by making application for admission, in the form prescribed, 474WESTINGHOUSE RELIEF DEPARTMENT prior to January i, 1914; after which day, no applicant will be admitted at an age beyond 50 years or without a medical examination. 40. Every present member of the Relief Department shall continue to be a member of the Relief Department; but if not heretofore a member of the class therein corresponding to his regular wages or salary, he must enter such class and become entitled to enjoy the benefits thereof and be required to make the contribution specified therefor in these Regulations in order to be eligible to enjoy for himself and his family the privileges and benefits of the Pension Department. The class of every member shall be determined by the Superintendent. Consent to such transfer shall consist in the acquiescence of such member in the deduction of the appropriate contribution from his wages, salary or benefit. MEMBERSHIP 41. All employees of the Company, who, under the Regulations, shall contribute to the Relief Fund, shall be designated as “members of the Relief Department.M 42. In referring to employees of the Company the word “service” shall mean employment by this Company, and the service of any employee shall be regarded as continuous for the time during which he has been continuously in the employment of this Company. 43. There shall be five classes of members. The class in which an employee shall be a member, shall be determined by the amount of his ordinary regular monthly wages or salary, omitting from consideration overtime or occasional loss of time, as follows: Monthly Pay Class Less than $35.00..........................................1st $35.00 or more, but less than $55.00.........................2nd $55.00 or more, but less than $75.00.........................3rd $75.00 or more, but less than $95.00.........................4th $95.00 or more ................................5th 44. No employee shall be required to become a member of the Relief Department; but preference in laying off and taking on employees will usually be given to such members or persons offering to become such. 45. The class of a member shall be determined in case of claim for benefit or compensation by the contribution made by or for him immediately prior to the disability or death. 46. An employee cannot remain a member in a class higher than that allowed by his pay. 47. The Superintendent has authority and the duty to change the class and contribution of a member when his wages or salary call for it. If a member declines to permit such change, the Superintendent shall have authority to cancel his membership. 48. Any member may withdraw from the Relief Department at the end of any month upon giving notice to the Superintendent before the twentieth of that month on the prescribed form of withdrawal notice, which will be furnished upon request. 475WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH 49. The Committee, on recommendation of the Superintendent, shall have authority to cancel the membership of any member upon receiving reliable evidence of habitual or frequent drunkenness, disreputable or unlawful conduct at any time, or for persistent disregard of the Regulations by such member while disabled. Written notice of such cancellation of membership shall be given the member, and refund of contribution, if any due, shall accompany the notice and be specifically mentioned therein. 50. Any member who is furloughed, suspended or otherwise temporarily relieved from the service for a specified time, may retain his membership during such absence by paying his contributions in advance. His Foreman or Head of Department shall notify the Superintendent at the beginning of such absence, specifying the time set for return to duty, and if at that time the member does not return to duty his membership in the Relief Department shall thereupon terminate, unless otherwise previously arranged by him with the Superintendent. Any person who shall, in accordance with these Regulations, be awarded compensation for partial disability due to accident arising out of and in the course of his employment by this Company and who is re-employed by this Company may continue his membership in the Relief Department in the Class in which his reduced wages or salary shall place him. 51. When a member resigns from the service, or leaves the service without notice, or is relieved or discharged theiefrom, his membership in the Relief Department shall terminate with his employment, and he shall not be entitled to claim any benefits thereafter, except such as he may be entitled to by reason of disability beginning and reported before, and continuing without interruption to and after such termination of employment. 52. Any member of the Relief Fund who became a member of The West-inghouse Air Brake Company Employes* Beneficial Association previous to August 28, 1895, and has held continuous membership since that date in that Association, and in the said Relief Fund, may continue membership in the Relief Department after leaving the employ of the said Company, provided he resides in Allegheny or Westmoreland Counties; but shall in such event continue his membership in the first class only, and shall contribute therefor in advance at the rate of 60 cents per month. 53. When a member absents himself from duty for a period of six days without the permission of his employing officer previously obtained, or without giving reason for absence, satisfactory to his employing officer, he shall be held to have left the service without notice, and his membership shall be held to have terminated on the day preceding such absence. If such member be reinstated in the service he may also be reinstated in membership upon approval of the Superintendent. 54. If a member is relieved from service and is afterwards re-employed, he may again become a member of the Relief Department, although then over fifty years of age, upon application at the time of re-employment, upon passing a satisfactory medical examination in which his physical condition at the termination of former employment will be given due consideration, and upon approval of his application by the Superintendent. 476WESTINGHOUSE RELIEF DEPARTMENT 55. When a member is in arrears for three months, his membership shall thereupon cease. (See also Regulations Nos. 63 and 91.) 56. If a member resumes work for the Company with the approval of the Medical Examiner and the Superintendent, before he has been in arrears three months, he shall be protected from the time of resuming work, and the arrears shall be paid on the next pay-roll. 57. Members shall keep their Foreman or Timekeeper informed of their addresses. 58. A member’s place of residence when on duty shall be held to be the last address given to his Timekeeper or Foreman. CONTRIBUTIONS OF MEMBERS 59. The word '‘contributions” wherever used in these Regulations shall be held and construed to refer to such designated proportions of the wages or salary payable by the Company to an employee, as it is provided in these Regulations that the Company shall apply, for the purpose of securing the benefits of the Relief Fund, or to such cash payments as it may be necessary for a member to make for said purpose. 60. Contributions shall be made monthly in advance at the following rates: 1 st Class, wages less than $35 per month.......................$ .$0 2nd Class, wages $35 to $55 per month.............................75 3rd Class, wages $55 to $75 per month...........................1.00 4th Class, wages $75 to $95 per month...........................1.25 5th Class, wages $95 and over per month.........................1.50 61. Contributions for each month will be due on the first day of that month, and will ordinarily be deducted from the member’s wages or salary on the first pay-roll of the preceding month. 62. If deduction of a member’s contribution from his wages or salary is omitted in error, the fact that such deduction has not been made shall not debar him or his beneficiary from benefits to which they otherwise would be entitled, but such deduction shall be made from wages or salary payable thereafter. 63. When a member has no wages or salary due to him, any contribution due from him must be paid in cash in advance to the Superintendent; otherwise he will be in arrears. (See also Regulations Nos. 55 and 91.) 64. No member will be permitted to fall in arrears for contributions while drawing benefits from the Relief Fund for disability. A sufficient amount will be withheld from benefits to protect dues for one month in advance during the continuance of disability for which benefits are payable, provided an insufficient amount is due the member for wages or salary on the Company pay-roll. 65. No deduction on account of contribution to the Relief Fund shall be made from the pay of an applicant for membership, and no increase of deductions shall be made for increase of class without instructions from the Superintendent, and any deduction made to the contrary shall be held to have been made in error, and shall be due the applicant or member as a refund. 66. In determining contribution for a part of a month, the amount for each 477'WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH day shall be one-thirtieth of the amount for one month, and the amount for any other part of a month shall be determined by multiplying the amount for one day by the number of days in such part, adding to make even cents when fractions occur. 67. In determining the number of days in the part of a month for which contribution is to be collected, the actual calendar days shall be computed, beginning on the day on which the application takes effect. 68. When a member’s service terminates, there shall be due him as a refund any excess of contribution he may have made above what is necessary to adjust his account up to, but not including, the last day of service; but no refund shall be due in the month in which a member dies. 69. Any refund of contribution due a member or applicant for membership shall be payable upon application therefor by such person, if made within twelve months after termination of membership, and shall be made by warrant or otherwise, in conformity with the financial methods of the Company. DISABILITY 70. Wherever used in these Regulations the word “disability” shall be held to mean physical inability to work, by reason of sickness or injury, and the word “disabled” shall apply to members thus physically unable to work; the decision as to when members are disabled, the cause and extent thereof and when they are able to work, shall rest with the Medical Examiner, subject to review by the Superintendent and the Committee. 71. Whether disability at any time shall be classed as due to accident arising out of and in the course of the member’s employment by this Company or to other causes, shall be passed upon by the Medical Examiner, who shall transmit the same with his recommendations to the Committee which shall make final determination. Pending such determination the Superintendent shall order benefits (or compensation) to be paid from such fund as upon the facts before him may seem liable and, if upon final determination, any sum or sums shall prove thus to have been paid from the Relief Fund which should have been paid from the Workmen’s Compensation Fund the former shall be reimbursed out of the latter. 72. In considering the question of disability, subjective symptoms or alleged feelings will be given due weight, but these themselves, unsupported by objective and discoverable symptoms, shall not entitle a member to be considered disabled. 73. When a member becomes disabled, he shall notify his timekeeper or foreman immediately, or cause him to be so notified. In reporting disability the member shall also give his house address. If he fails to give notice until he recovers, no benefit shall be payable unless he proves his disability to the satisfaction of the Superintendent, and gives satisfactory reason for failure to give notice. If he gives notice during his disability, but delays in so doing, he shall not be considered disabled before the day on which notice is given, unless he proves his disability before that day to the satisfaction of the Superintendent, and gives satisfactory reason for delay in giving notice. 478WESTINGHOUSE RELIEF DEPARTMENT 74. When a member becomes disabled it shall also be his duty, unless incapacitated therefrom by his disability, to report immediately in person to the Medical Examiner at his office during office hours. It shall also be the duty of a disabled member not confined to the house by disability, to report at the Medical Examiner’s office from time to time as requested, and to keep any other appointments made by the Examiner. Members who avoid the Medical Examiner, or neglect to report or keep appointments as herein provided, shall not be entitled to benefits. 75. If a member who has been reported by the Medical Examiner as able to work, is not able to work on the day set, he shall immediately notify his employing officer to that effect and shall immediately communicate with the Medical Examiner, reporting to him in person if possible; otherwise he shall not be considered disabled on or after the day set for his return to work. 76. When a member becomes disabled during suspension, furlough or other leave of absence, and while away from his usual place of residence when on duty, he shall not be entitled to benefits, unless, in addition to reporting his disability immediately as required by the regulations, he proves his disability while absent to the satisfaction of the Superintendent. 77. When a disabled member wishes to absent himself for any length of time from his usual place of residence when on duty, he shall first see the Superintendent and the Medical Examiner and obtain written approval of absence for a specified time; he shall furnish to the Medical Examiner satisfactory certificates of disability during absence, keep him informed of his address and report to him immediately upon his return. If such disabled member goes away and remains away without previously consulting the Medical Examiner and obtaining written approval of absence for a specified time, he shall not be entitled to benefits or compensation for any time of absence unless he proves his disability while absent to the satisfaction of the Superintendent, and gives satisfactory reason for failure to consult the Medical Examiner before leaving. BENEFITS AND COMPENSATION 78. A member shall be entitled to receive from the Relief Fund benefits continuously after the first week during any total disability due to causes other than accident arising out of and in the course of employment by the Company, but not beyond the day when such disabled employee shall be awarded a service pension by the Company under the Regulations of its Pension Department; and any employee from the Workmen’s Compensation Fund like benefits as compensation from the first day during the entire duration of his total disability due to such accident. Benefits or compensation to disabled members in receipt of the same on January 1st, 1914, shall be payable from said day as provided in this paragraph. 79. After a member has sufficiently recovered from a disability for which benefits or compensation have been paid, to resume work, he shall be restored to full membership, if he is re-employed by the Company. 80. A member who has drawn benefits or compensation for total disability 479WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH shall not be required to make contribution until restored to full membership; except as the same is deducted from his benefit. 81. A member shall not be entitled to benefits or compensation for total disability alleged to be due to any cause, while still so disabled from a preceding cause. 82. While wages or salary is received from any source whatsoever during disability, a member shall not be considered totally disabled within the meaning of that term as employed in these Regulations, and no benefits or compensation for total disability shall be paid; provided that, after such total disability shall have been established, the earnings of not more than one-sixth the amount shall not be deemed to terminate such total disability. 83. Should a disabled member decline to accept benefits or compensation he shall not thereafter make contribution or retain title to benefits or compensation. Should such member afterward accept the benefits or compensation to which he is entitled, a proper adjustment of contribution shall be made. 84. In any case of grave injury or chronic weakness where the member desires to accept a lump sum in lieu of the benefits or compensation which might become due to him or on his account, and in full of all obligations of the Department or the Company arising from his membership, the Superintendent shall have authority to recommend full and final settlement with such member for such amount and on such terms as may be agreed upon in writing. All such proposed settlements shall be based upon computation of commuted value of the benefits by the actuary; and shall not be effective until approved by the Committee after ten days’ written notice setting forth in detail what the benefit or compensation is, the proposed commutation and the reason therefor. 85. In computing benefits or compensation, the time of disability shall be considered as beginning upon the first day upon which no wages or less than one-half day’s wages are paid because of disability, and this day shall be called “ First day wages not paid.” 86. Benefits and compensation shall be paid in conformity with the financial methods of the Company, and on warrants drawn by the Superintendent (or in his absence by other persons authorized by the General Manager) upon his receiving satisfactory certificates respecting the claims and such releases as may be required by him. 87. Benefits or compensation on account of continued disability will be paid monthly; on account of short periods of disability as soon as the amount due can be ascertained. 88. Benefits or compensation payable on account of total disability shall be payable only to the member or employee or in accordance with his written order when approved by the Superintendent, or to his legal representative; but payment for medical or surgical treatment may be made to the attending physician or surgeon. 89. When in the opinion of the Superintendent, a disabled member or employee is mentally incompetent, disability benefits or compensation due him may, at the discretion of the Superintendent, be paid to his wife or to some member of his 480WESTINGHOUSE RELIEF DEPARTMENT family, or to some other person in law charged with or in fact assuming his care and custody for the use and benefit of the member, and such payment shall be a bar to any subsequent claim on part of the member or his legal representative for the amount so paid. 90. Disability benefits shall not be payable out of the Relief Fund for disability directly, indirectly or partly due to intoxication or to the use of alcoholic liquor as a beverage, or to immoderate use of stimulants or narcotics, or to unlawful acts or immoralities or venereal disease however contracted, or to the results thereof, or to urethritis, orchitis, epididymitis, stricture or to glandular swelling, or abscess in the groin, however caused, or to fighting, unless in self-defense against unprovoked assault, or to injury received in any brawl or in any liquor saloon, gambling house or other disreputable resort. Compensation shall not be payable out of the Workmen’s Compensation Fund for death or disability due to accident solely caused by the member’s intoxication, or by his willful or reckless act. During such disability members who keep the Superintendent informed of their addresses and furnish him satisfactory evidence of continued disability, retain title to death benefit; otherwise their membership shall be held to have terminated. 91. Benefits or compensation shall not be payable on account of disability beginning or death occurring while a member is in arrears. (See also Regulations Nos. 55 and 63.) 92. Members or employees shall not be entitled to benefits or compensation if they decline to permit the Medical Examiner to make, or to have made by any other physician, such examination or examinations as he may deem necessary to ascertain their condition. 93. Disabled members or employees must take proper care of themselves and have suitable treatment; benefits or compensation will be discontinued if they refuse or persistently neglect to comply with the recommendation of the Medical Examiner of the Relief Department as to proper care and treatment. 94. Claim for disability benefits or compensation must be made within sixty days from the time when such benefits or compensation began to accrue, and claim for death benefits or compensation must be made within one year from death. 95. A person claiming benefits or compensation for time after termination of service shall not be entitled to such for a disability arising from any cause occurring after such termination nor in any case unless directly due to a cause which arose out of the disability existing at the time of such termination. 96. Members will be entitled to benefits or compensation as follows: Benefit Wages or Salary Contribution Total Disability Death Class per month per month Weekly One Sum I Under $35 .... ■ $ -50 $5.00 $150.00 II $35.00 to $55.00 •75 7.50 150.00 III $55.00 to $75.00 i.00 10.00 150.00 IV $75.00 to $95.00 1.25 12.50 150.00 V $95.00 or over . 1.50 15.00 150.00 97. No member shall be entitled to disability benefits for sickness, nor shall 3i* 481WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH death benefits be payable for death resulting from sickness, unless said sickness begins at least 30 days after date of formal acceptance as a member. 98. Payment of benefit shall be made for each week and fraction of a week of total disability not due to accident arising out of and in the course of the employment of the member by the Company (except for the first week of such total disability) during the period of such disability, but not beyond the day when the disabled employee shall be awarded a service pension by the Pension Department under its Regulations. Payment of compensation for total disability due to such accident shall be made for each week and fraction of a week of total disability. 99. To establish a claim for benefit for disability due to sickness there must be positive evidence of acute or constitutional disease sufficient to cause disability. 100. In case of relapse in event of disability which lasted one week or more, the first seven days shall not a second time be deducted in computing time of disability benefits; and where such immediately preceding disability lasted six days or less, the number of days to be deducted shall be seven, less the number of days of such preceding disability. 101. Death benefit shall not be payable in case of death due directly or indirectly to unlawful acts or at the hands of justice. 102. Death benefit, or compensation, together with any unpaid disability benefits or compensation, shall be payable to the beneficiary of a deceased member upon proof of claim and execution and delivery of the necessary releases. 103. A part of the death benefit or compensation, not to exceed $100.00, may, at the discretion of the Superintendent, be paid before final settlement, to meet funeral or other urgent expenses incident to the death of a member. 104. No benefit shall be payable for partial disability due to cause other than accident arising out of and in the course of employment by the Company; compensation for partial disability due solely to such accident shall be claimable from the Workmen’s Compensation Fund in an amount based upon the compensation which would be claimable by the member for total disability, proportionate to the extent of the disability as determined by the impairment of the earning power. If such impairment is temporary or, when permanent, is at least 40 per cent ot the earning power, such partial disability compensation shall be paid in the same manner and at the same times as are prescribed by these Regulations for the payment of compensation for total disability. If such impairment is permanent and less than 40% of the earning power, compensation may, at the discretion of the Superintendent, be paid in a lump sum, equal to four years’ payments of compensation at the rate corresponding to such degree of impairment. 105. Should the Company re-employ the partially disabled member, compensation for partial disability shall be fixed at a proportion of the compensation which would have been claimable, had the disability been total, corresponding to the reduction (if any) in wages or salary. Such re-employment shall be upon the basis that the Company reserves the right to suspend or discharge such employee at its pleasure but in event of such suspension or discharge he shall be entitled to a review by the Committee of the determination and award of compensation for partial disability. 482WESTINGHOUSE RELIEF DEPARTMENT 106. Should a partial disability through any cause improve or should it increase through the cause which was originally responsible for it, the amount of the compensation shall be subject to review on motion of either party by the Committee in order to fix the proper amount to be paid thereafter; and, on motion of the claimant, upon a showing of mistake of fact or of newly discovered evidence. 107. All compensation for disability or death due to accident arising out of and in the course of the employment shall be paid from the Workmen’s Compensation Fund contributed by the Company and no part thereof from the Relief Fund; and if by error or oversight any such payment of compensation shall be made out of the Relief Fund, it shall be reimbursed out of the Workmen’s Compensation Fund. 108. In any controversy, claim, demand, suit at law or other proceeding between any member, his beneficiary or legal representative and the Company or the Relief Department, the Certificate of the Superintendent as to any facts appearing in the records of the Relief Department or of the Company, or that any writing is .a copy taken from said records of any instrument on file in said Department, or with the Company, or that any action has or has not been taken by the Committee or Board of Directors of the Company, shall be prima facie evidence of the facts therein stated. 109. All questions or controversies of whatsoever character arising in any manner, or between any parties or persons, in connection with the Relief Department or the operation thereof, whether as to any claim for benefits or compensation preferred by any member or employee or his legal representative or his beneficiary or any other person, or as to the construction of language or meaning of the Regulations, or as to any writing, decision, instructions or acts in connection with the operation of the Department, shall be submitted to the determination of the Superintendent, whose decision shall be final and conclusive thereof, unless an appeal shall be taken to the Committee within thirty days after notice of such decision to the parties interested. 110. When an appeal is taken to the Committee it shall be heard by said Committee without further notice at the next stated meeting, or at such future meeting or time as they may designate and shall be determined by a vote of a majority of a quorum or of any other number not less than a quorum of the members present at such meeting, and the decision arrived at thereon by the Committee shall be final and conclusive upon all parties without exception or appeal; except that it shall be reviewable by a court of competent jurisdiction by an action brought within 30 days after notice of the decision of the Committee, as to the right of any party to recover a benefit or compensation. hi. The action of the Board of Directors in establishing the Relief Department, in adopting these Regulations and in making contributions shall not be held to create a contract between the Company and any employee or other persons or vest in him or any of them any interest, prior to or other than an actual award of benefit or compensation or to confer upon any such employee a right to be retained in the service of the Company or to oblige the company to continue the Relief Department, the Relief Fund or the Workmen’s Compensation Fund or to make 483WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH further contributions for the benefit of persons other than those to whom benefits or compensation shall have been awarded; provided that no such discontinuance shall affect the Company’s liability as trustee or guarantor of the Relief Fund or Workmen’s Compensation Fund as regards benefits or compensation awarded, except that the Company may at any time be released from further liability thereunder by : 1. Nominating, by and with the approval of a Judge of a Court of Allegheny County, State of Pennsylvania, of competent jurisdiction, a trustee for the Relief Fund, the Workmen’s Compensation Fund or both as the case may be, to hold and administer the same as herein provided for the benefit of all persons to whom benefits or compensation shall have been awarded and transferring to such trustee funds and securities at least equal in value to all benefits or compensation awarded and then in force, as determined by the Actuary of the State Insurance Department of Pennsylvania; or 2. Purchasing annuities for all persons to whom such benefits or compensation shall have been awarded and shall then be in force for amounts equal to such benefits or compensation and payable for the same terms, from a life insurance company licensed to do business in the State of Pennsylvania. In either of such cases, the remainder of the Workmen’s Compensation Fund, and in any case when valuation shall disclose a surplus of that Fund, over all requirements, the surplus may be withdrawn by the Company and under like circumstances, the remainder or surplus of the Relief Fund may be distributed equitably among its then members. 484APPENDIX XVIII PENSION SYSTEM,* WESTINGHOUSE AIR BRAKE COMPANY Pursuant to action taken by the Board of Directors of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company at their meeting held September 17, 1908, and at subsequent meetings and to action taken by the shareholders at their meeting held October 1, 1912, for the purpose of providing Service Pensions for faithful employees who, after rendering long and efficient service, may be retired by reason of age and for the purpose also of providing for the dependents or next of kin of employees of the Company who die as the result of accident arising out of and in the course of their employment by the Company and of such of the employees of the Company as come within these Regulations who die in consequence of any other cause, the Company has created a Pension System and hereby creates a Pension Department for the administration of the same and adopts the following Regulations to carry such Pension System into effect and to provide for such administration. Wherever in these Regulations the following words occur without qualification, they will have the meaning defined as follows: “Company " will mean the Westinghouse Air Brake Company; “Board of Directors/' “Pension Department" and “ Relief Department " will mean the Board of Directors, Pension Department and Relief Department of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company; “Pension Fund" and “Actuary" will mean the Pension Fund and actuary of such Pension Department; and “Relief Fund" and “Workmen's Compensation Fund" will mean the Relief Fund and Workmen’s Compensation Fund of such Relief Department. “Wages or salary" means the ordinary average earnings of the employee by service to the Company, without deduction for occasional loss of time or extra pay for overtime, as determined by the Pension Board. I. PENSION FUND A. The sum of $110,000, with all additions thereto and accumulations thereof, which has already been set aside in the custody of the Treasurer of the Company, is hereby declared to be held in trust for all persons who are or may become pensioners of this Department, to provide for the payment of all pensions awarded to them. B. In addition to the above-named fund, the Company will in each year contribute to such fund from the income of trusts created or to be created for the purpose, and from its other funds such further sum or sums as may be required to * Established September 17, 1908; amended regulations effective January 1, 1914. 485WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH provide all Pensions, awarded because of superannuation or of deaths during such year or to restore and make good any impairment of such fund below an amount at least sufficient to provide all pensions. C. The Company absolutely guarantees the solvency at all times of the Pension Fund and the payment promptly and in full of all pensions awarded thereunder, subject to these Regulations. D. No right or title shall vest in any person to any pension or against the Pension Fund in any respect unless and until a pension shall actually have been awarded to, and accepted by, him or by his legal representative or committee, in accordance with these Regulations. E. All contributions by the Company are so far voluntary that at any time the Board of Directors may repeal these Regulations in respect to all persons who might thereafter have become entitled under them to make claim to awards of pensions, and thereafter the Company shall be bound only as respects pensions already awarded. F. No contribution to the Pension Fund shall be required or be received from an employee of the Company. II. ADMINISTRATION A. The Pension Department shall be managed by a board, to be known as the Pension Board, consisting of five persons, appointed by the Board of Directors and acting during the pleasure of the Board of Directors. B. The Pension Board shall elect a Chairman and appoint a Secretary, and, subject to approval, as submitted or with modifications, by the Board of Directors, may adopt by-laws, not inconsistent with these Regulations. C. A majority of the members of the Pension Board shall constitute a quorum for all purposes. D. The Pension Board shall, subject to this or further action by the Board of Directors, have full control over and management of the Pension Fund and the power and duty: (1) To award pensions in conformity with these Regulations. (2) To authorize the payment of all sums becoming due under pensions so awarded. (3) To determine all questions that may arise, in or in respect to, the Pension Department. E. The affirmative vote of at least three members of the Pension Board shall be requisite in all cases. F. The compensation, if any, of members of the Pension Board and of officers and employees of the Pension Department shall be fixed by the Board of Directors and paid, together with all other operative expenses of the Pension Department, by the Company as a part of its general expenses. G. The Pension Board shall be under the immediate direction of the Board of Directors to which it shall render reports of its transactions and condition annually as of December 31st of each year. It shall also render such other and further reports to the Board of Directors as such Board may require. 486WESTINGHOUSE PENSION DEPARTMENT H. The Pension Board shall employ an actuary who shall make valuation as of December 3 ist of each year and perform such other services as the Pension Board may direct. I. All acts of the Pension Board shall be valid as to all proceedings thereunder until disapproved by the Board of Directors; when so approved, they shall become conclusively binding upon the Company. 111. SERVICE PENSIONS A. All employees of the Company (except general officers) shall be retired upon attaining the age of 70 years and shall not thereafter be re-employed, except by order of the Board of Directors. B. All such employees who shall at the time of such retirement be members of the Relief Department in the class to which their respective wages or salaries allocate them, as determined by the Superintendent of the Relief Department under the Regulations thereof, shall be granted a Service Pension. C. Any employee so qualified may be retired on a Service Pension at any time after attaining the age of 6$ years, by order of the Pension Board, if deemed for the best interests of the service. D. Six months’ notice shall be given to every employee prior to his retirement, naming the date of the same and the amount of the Service Pension awarded if any. E. The amount of the Service Pension shall be determined by: (1) The average monthly salary or wages during the last 10 years of continuous service. (2) The number of years continuously in the service. (3) The character and quality of the service. The Service Pension shall be one per cent (1%) of the average salary or wages during the last 10 years of continuous service, for every year of continuous service. The minimum Service Pension shall be $20.00 per month and the maximum, $100.00 per month. The Pension Board may, with the approval of the Board of Directors, increase by not to exceed one-fourth the Service Pension, so computed, in an exceptional case of specially meritorious service; provided that in no case shall the pension when so increased, exceed $100.00 per month. F. Should the employee, upon reaching the retirement age, be in receipt of compensation from the Workmen’s Compensation Fund or from the Company under any obligation created by law or by contract or from insurance paid for by the Company, for permanent partial disability due to accident arising out of and in the course of employment by the Company, the computation shall be based upon his salary or wages prior to said accident at the rate of 1% thereof for each year of continuous service and the pension awarded shall not be for a larger amount than will, together with the compensation for permanent partial disability, be equal to the sum, so computed; the intention being that the pension awarded shall not bring the total income of the employee from compensation and pension above the 487WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH pension that would be awarded on the basis of salary or wages receivable before the accident. G. Employees who shall, upon reaching the retirement age, be in receipt of benefit for total disability from the Relief Fund, shall be eligible for Service Pension the same as if still in the employment of the Company; and upon the award of such Service Pension the payment of further benefits from the Relief Fund shall cease, in accordance with the Regulations of the Relief Department. H. Time during which an employee is in receipt of benefit for total disability from the Relief Fund shall be counted the same as service, in computing the amount of Service Pension, which shall in such case be based upon his wages or salary just prior to such total disablement at the rate of i% thereof for each year of continuous service. I. The Pension Board may deny or withhold a Service Pension in any case of criminal or grossly immoral conduct. J. A retired employee to whom a Service Pension has been awarded may, without forfeiting such Pension, engage in other employment or business unless advised by the Pension Board that the same is deemed prejudicial to the interests of the Company; but he will not be re-employed by the Company. K. No Service Pension shall be allowed or paid to any person who shall have enforced or sought to enforce against the Company any claim for personal injury, other than under the Regulations of the Relief Department against the Workmen's Compensation Fund because of any personal injury received within five years prior to date of retirement. L. Service shall be deemed to be continuous from the date of last employment. Leave of absence, suspension for cause, lay-off (not exceeding one year) on account of dull business or dismissal followed by reinstatement within one year shall not be deemed a break in continuity of service, but such time out of service shall be deducted in computing the period of continuous service. M. The period of continuous service shall be reckoned from the date of last employment to the date of retirement, eliminating in the result any fraction of a month over. N. Retirement shall be from the first day of the month next following the month in which the retirement age is reached, provided the six months’ prior notice has been given, as required; otherwise from the first day of the calendar month next succeeding the expiration of the six months’ notice. O. Service Pensions will be awarded only to employees who have been employed for their entire time and services by the Company and not to employees of subsidiary companies. Time in the service of a subsidiary company shall not be reckoned in computing the period of continuous service. P. Employees who were continuously in the service of the Company prior to July i, 1908, for two years or longer, shall be deemed to have an unbroken period of service from their first employment by the Company to said date; provided, in each such case, the aggregate absence from the service from such first employment to said date does not exceed two and one-half years. In every case, however, all absences shall be deducted in computing the period of continuous service. 488WESTINGHOUSE PENSION DEPARTMENT IV. PENSIONS TO DEPENDENTS A. Upon the death (a) From any cause, of any person in receipt of a Service Pension from the Pension Fund of the Company; or (b) If caused by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment by the Company, of any employee whose dependent or dependents or any other person or persons, if any, who might be legally entitled to claim, shall release the Company from all other liability, if any; or (c) If not caused by such accident, of any member of the Relief Department who comes within Regulation 111B, who has been such for at least two years and who is, at the time of his death in the employment of the Company or in receipt of total disability benefit from the Relief Fund or of any person in receipt of total disability compensation from the Workmen's Compensation Fund; Pensions to Dependents shall be awarded as follows: (1) The sum of $i 50.00 payable immediately upon receipt of proof of death. (2) To the wife or dependent husband of the deceased employee (if married to the deceased before totally disabled or at least five years before awarded a Service Pension) until death or remarriage (with two years' pension upon remarriage) 30% of the average wages or salary of the deceased employee prior to his total disability, or 80% of his Service Pension, as the case may be, plus 10% thereof additional for the support of each of his children under the age of 16 years until such child shall have attained such age. (3) If no such wife or dependent husband survive, then 15% of such wages or salary or 50% of the Service Pension of the deceased for the support of each of his children under the age of 16 years until such child shall have attained such age. (4) To each of the (a) grandchildren, (b) parents and (c) grandparents of the deceased employee, in each case only if actually and principally dependent upon him for support, 10% of his such wages or salary or 50% of his Service Pension during continuance of such dependency. Should pensions for the support of children together with pension (if any) to wife or dependent husband, exceed 60% of his wages or salary or 100% of his Service Pension, the pension for the support of each child shall be reduced pro rata so that the total pensions payable shall not exceed such 60% or 100%, as the case may be. If pensions to other dependents, together with pension (if any) to wife or dependent husband and pensions for the support of children, exceed 60% of his such wages or salary or 100% of his Service Pension, the pension to each other such dependent shall be reduced pro rata so that the total pensions payable shall not exceed such 60% or 100%, as the case may be. If the pensions for the support of children and the pensions (if any) to wife or dependent husband aggregate 60% of his such wages or salary or 100% of his Service Pension, no pension shall be payable to any other dependent. B. Excess of wages or salary over $100.00 per month shall not be taken into account in computing Pensions for Dependents. 489WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH C. Should any person to whom otherwise a Pension for a Dependent would be awarded, be a resident of any country other than the United States or Canada, the award may, at the discretion of the Pension Board, be for four years’ pension (but not exceeding the maximum aggregate, were the pension paid monthly) of the amount computed as directed in Sub-section A of this section, payable in one sum. GENERAL RULES AND REGULATIONS A. Every person to whom a pension has been or shall be awarded, must notify the Secretary of the Pension Department of any and all changes of residence or of post-office address; and must furnish, as a condition precedent to the payment of each sum due on account of pension, proof that he survives and is otherwise entitled. B. Every person claiming a pension as a Dependent must furnish proof of fact and date of marriage or of relationship, of dependency and of all other facts that may be required to establish his right to claim. C. Every person, claiming a Pension as a Dependent, must, as a condition precedent to receiving any payment under any award, execute and offer and be ready to deliver and actually deliver upon notice of such award a full and complete release, in such form as the Company may require, of all liability (if any) of the Company because of the death of the employee or pensioner, other than for the payment of the pension so awarded. D. All pensions awarded heretofore or hereafter against the Pension Fund are hereby declared to be Spendthrift or Alimentary Trusts, created and maintained for the support of the cestuis que trustent and secured by the Pension Fund held in Trust by the Company. No assignment, mortgage, pledge or anticipation of any such pension or of any payments to become due thereunder will be recognized by the Pension Department or the Company, or in any way bind or be valid against the Pension Fund. E. Every employee who leaves the service of the Company, whether voluntarily or in consequence of dismissal or discharge forfeits entirely his eligibility for Service Pension and the eligibility of his wife, dependent husband, children, and other dependents for Pensions to Dependents. F. The action of the Board of Directors in establishing the Pension Department, in adopting these Regulations, and in making contributions to provide for the payment of pensions shall not be held or construed to create a contract with any employee or other person, prior to the actual award of a pension to him, or as conferring upon any officer, agent or employee of the Company a right to be retained in its service or a right to enforce any claim to a pension except for a pension duly awarded under these Regulations or as creating an obligation upon the Company to continue the Pension Department or Pension Fund or to make contributions thereto, for the benefit of persons other than those to whom pensions shall have been awarded. The Company reserves its right and privilege to discharge at any time any officer, agent or employee as the interests of the Company may in its judgment so require, without incurring any liability because of any pension, not actually awarded; and also reserves its right to amend, alter or repeal at any time these 490WESTINGHOUSE PENSION DEPARTMENT Regulations or any of them as regards all persons who might otherwise become entitled to claim thereafter an award of pension thereunder, but not so as to affect the right of any person to whom a pension shall have been awarded to receive all payments of the same promptly and in full or the obligation of the Company as trustee of the Pension Fund and guarantor of the sufficiency thereof and of the prompt and full payment of every pension awarded thereagainst. H. These Regulations may be amended, altered or repealed at any special meeting of the Board of Directors, called for the purpose; but no such amendment, alteration or repeal shall affect pensions theretofore awarded or the liability of the Pension Fund or of the Company in respect thereto, except that the Company may at any time be released from further liability thereunder by: 1. Nominating, by and with the approval of a judge of a court of Allegheny County, State of Pennsylvania of competent jurisdiction, a trustee for the Pension Fund, to hold and administer the same as herein provided for the benefit of all persons to whom pensions shall have been awarded and transferring to such trustee funds and securities at least equal in value to all pensions awarded and then in force, as determined by the actuary of the State insurance department of Pennsylvania; or 2. Purchasing annuities for all persons to whom such pensions shall have been awarded and shall then be in force for amounts equal to such pensions and payable for the same terms from a life insurance company licensed to do business in the State of Pennsylvania. In either of such cases, the remainder and in any case when valuation shall disclose a surplus of the Pension Fund over all requirements, the surplus, may be withdrawn by the Company. 491APPENDIX XIX ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE WORKING GIRLS Charles C. Cooper Resident Director, Kingsley House, Pittsburgh During the settlement season, 1910—11, a card index of the membership of Kingsley House was inaugurated. This was in addition to the regular book registration always kept at the settlement. During the succeeding year this card index disclosed the fact that while the number of girls remained the same a decided shift in the personnel took place. To find the cause, a study of the girls who did not come back was made and the results published in the Kingsley House Record (April, 1913). Various causes for the shift were found, notably a change in residence; but one cause was not anticipated. Card after card was returned by the investigator with the information that the girl was working and “too tired to come to the settlement.” Some 15 per cent of the girls attributed their non-attendance at the settlement house to the fact that they were working. A further study of these working girls was therefore made the following season, by Mabel Vogleson of the Kingsley staff. The group does not represent any one class of girl workers nor the workers in any one department store, factory, or trade. They were neighborhood girl workers in various occupations. Some 125 cases were studied and the results tabulated. In no sense has this investigation been made with any purpose of painting the shadows dark or of obtaining special data for legislative fights; it represents a study by the settlement house made with reference to its own routine work, the startling results of which were not anticipated. While it is not safe to generalize for the whole city from this one study, nevertheless it seems fairly well established that in one of the poorer sections of Pittsburgh, the Hill District, many working girls are not receiving a living wage and are working longer hours than is safe for those who are to become the mothers of the future citizens. 492ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE WORKING GIRLS The tables which follow show hours and wages in connection with the ages and occupations of the 125 girls. Age Number °) girls Hours worked per day Wages per week Longest Shortest Average Highest Lowest Average 14 • 7 10 7 8 Vi $4.00 $3.00 #3-34 15 21 \o}4 8 9 , 7.00 2.00 4.04 16 28 12 a 8 8A 7.50 2.50 5.12 17 24 9lA lA 9 , 8.50 2.50 5.36 Over 17 45 9-12 b iV* 10.00 4.00 5.69 Total 125 io}4 7 8H $10.00 $2.00 $5.09 a One girl works 13^ hours on Saturday. h One girl works from nine to 12 hours per day; next highest, 10 hours. Occupation Number of girls Hours worked PER DAY Wages per week Longest Shortest Highest Lowest Wrapper 11 9 8 $3.00 $2.50 Sales girl 24 12 a 8 10.00 h 3.00 Cash girl 4 8 4.50 2.50 Sewer . 10 a-12 c 8 8.50 5.00 Stock girl 6 9 8 6.00 3.00 Office worker 7 9 8 5.00 3.00 Stogie worker 25 to# 7 8.00 3.00 Miscellaneous 38 10 7 10.00 d 2.00 All girls . 125 12 7 $10.00 $2.00 a One girl works 13^ hours on Saturday. h Only one received $10, the two next highest received $7.00; the rate of pay then dropped to $6.00, and lower. c One worked from 9 to 12 hours per day, next highest 9^ hours, d Only one received $10. 493APPENDIX XX BUREAU OF SAFETY, SANITATION, AND WELFARE, UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION (From statements supplied by C. L. Close, Manager) The Bureau of Safety, Sanitation, and Welfare of the United States Steel Corporation has been in operation since 1911. This Bureau acts as a central station in obtaining information and disseminating it among the subsidiary companies. It carries on the administrative work of both the Committee of Safety and the Committee on Sanitation. It distributes to the subsidiary companies comparative statements on accident prevention, compiled from reports sent in by them periodically, so that they may benefit by each other's experience. The Bureau is constantly in communication with municipal, state, and national authorities, with other employers of labor, and with various persons engaged or interested in this work. From many sources it obtains information of value on these subjects, and keeps the subsidiary companies informed of the latest and best methods in accident prevention and welfare work. In this way the Bureau aids materially in coordinating the efforts made by the subsidiary companies to improve the conditions of their employes. It was realized from the start that cooperation between those carrying on this work is one of the most essential features. With this in mind, there has been established in the Bureau, located at 71 Broadway, New York City, a museum of safety appliances, together with photographs showing the improved conditions under which employes of the subsidiary companies work and live. Although this Bureau was installed primarily for the benefit of the subsidiary companies of the United States Steel Corporation, many other employers of labor have written for information or have visited the Bureau. Safety Work Outline of Safety Organization of the United States Steel Corporation /. United States Steel Corporation Committee of Safety. Casualty managers of all subsidiary companies called together May, 1906, to discuss accident prevention. Subsidiary companies actively took up safety work by detailing special men for the work. 494SAFETY, SANITATION, AND WELFARE Committee of Safety organized in March, 1908. An officer of the Steel Corporation acts as chairman and seven other members represent the larger subsidiary companies. Meets quarterly, either in New York or at one of the plants or mines. Conducts inspections by having an inspector from one company inspect another company’s operations. Also makes inspections personally. Studies all serious accidents and makes recommendations against further occurrences, not alone to the company in whose works the accident happened, but to all companies. Passes upon safety devices and makes recommendations as to their use. Subsidiary Company, Safety Committees II. Central Safety Committees. Organized shortly after the Steel Corporation Committee. Made up of important officials from each of the plants, mines or railroad divisions. Meet monthly. Duties similar to the Steel Corporation Safety Committee, but each with reference to its particular company only. Conducts inter-mill inspections. III. Plant Safety Committees. Organized shortly after Steel Corporation Committee. Made up of important officials of the plant. Meet monthly and in some cases daily. Make regular inspections of the plant. Duties similar to those of the Central Safety Committee, but each with reference to its particular plant only. IV. Department and Special Committees. Organized shortly after Steel Corporation Safety Committee. Made up of foremen, master mechanics and skilled workmen. Meet weekly or monthly as the case may be. Make periodical inspections of the plant. Make special investigations of particular problems. Safety committees have been organized for practically every operation throughout the subsidiary companies of the United States Steel Corporation; 4,678 employes were members of these committees during 1912. The personnel of these committees, especially those made up of workmen, is changed periodically in order to extend the individual interest in safety. In an endeavor to eliminate accidents due to the carelessness of the workmen, a very active compaign of education was started by all of the subsidiary companies some time ago. Entertainments are given at the different plants or mines. All employes and their families are invited. 495UNITED STATES STE'EL CORPORATION. CHART SHOWING COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF ACCIDENTS AND RELIEF-1906 TO 1913 INCLUSIVE VO isoep 1907 f| 1908J 1909P 191 Of 1911 P 191 2 P 1913 P ZT3 Full fin© shows % decrease in serious accidents per employe, using 1906 as a basis. Dotted line shows increase in total casualty expense per employe, using 1906 as a basis (not including amount spent for safety.) A change in the system of reporting accidents made January 1,1911, resulted in more, accidents being reported and classed as serious than formerly was the case. 532-1907 783-1908 1,236-1909 2,215-1910 2,012-1911 2,023-1912 132,273-1913 11,074 Saved from serious Injury In .seven years WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGHSAFETY, SANITATION, AND WELFARE NATIONAL TUBE COMPANY CHART SHOWING INCREASES AND DECREASES IN SERIOUS AND FATAL ACCIDENTS 1909 TO 1914 INCLUSIVE, USING YEAR 1909 AS A BASE. 1 1 9 1 1 911 WÊma—m^Êimmmmm—m-ÊmÊÊÊÊ—m—ÊÊmmÊÊm 1 912mmÊÊÊmmmmmÊÊÊÊm—mmimmÊÊÊÊÊÊmmÊÊÊm^mmmÊm 1 9 1 1914(5 MONTHS ONLY) NATIONAL TUBE COMPANY CHART SHOWING INCREASES AND DECREASES IN TOTAL TIME LOST ACCIDENTS 1909 TO 1914 INCLUSIVE, USING YEAR 1909 AS A BASE* 1909i 1910i 1911i 1912i 1 913i 1914' (5 MONTHS ONLY)WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Typical unsafe practices in contrast with the proper and safe method of doing the work are shown. Motion pictures and lantern slides are employed and are relieved by music and other things of an entertaining character. Twenty-one such entertainments were given by one company this year. Many other plans have been inaugurated, the most recent of which is the giving of monthly prizes to each man in the departments having the best records for safety; one company has established a bonus plan which applies to all foremen. Cash bonuses, based upon the per cent of reduction in accidents in each particular department, are paid at the end of the year to each foreman. In some companies, suggestion boxes are located at convenient places throughout the plant for the benefit of all employes who are not members of committees but desire to make suggestions. Prizes are awarded periodically to those making the best suggestions. The cost of safety work in 1913 was $660,593.00. Serious accidents per 1,000 employes are now 38^ per cent less than in 1906, when this work was first taken up by the Corporation. This means that 2,273 men, who might have been injured under earlier conditions, were saved from serious injury during the year. Sanitary Work The work in sanitation has been organized in a manner almost identical with the safety organization, except that the Sanitation Committee is chosen from among the presidents of the subsidiary companies, with an officer of the United States Steel Corporation as one of its members. This committee administers the work through a sub-committee composed largely of technical representatives from each of the subsidiary companies designated by the presidents of their respective companies. In this work trained sanitary engineers and experts from outside the United States Steel Corporation organization are employed as occasion arises, and in some cases have been attached permanently to the organization of certain of the subsidiary companies. The committee selected for first attention the purification of drinking water and the disposal of fecal matter. Each subsidiary company had an analysis made of all water used for drinking purposes, about 2,300 analyses having been made. In cases where the water was found impure, the source was abandoned and a new supply obtained. These analyses are now made twice each year and oftener where there is any question as to the purity of the supply. In the mining towns where springs and wells 498SAFETY, SANITATION, AND WELFARE are used, extra precautions are taken to avoid pollution by surface water or otherwise. The common drinking cup is rapidly being replaced with sanitary drinking fountains; 482 such fountains were installed during 1912. The investigation of water supplies and the installation of drinking water systems alone cost jjt 130,000.00 during 1913. Where there are no sewerage systems, especially in mining camps, special types of out-door closets have been installed, arranged and designed with the idea of preventing soil pollution and flies from coming in contact with the excrement. Interchangeable and removable cans are used, and are collected periodically and hauled in a specially constructed wagon to a point where the feces is disposed of by incineration or in septic tank. 910 new closets were built during the year 1912, and 1,762 old ones were remodeled and made sanitary. Water Closets, Wash and Locker Rooms During 1913, there were installed in the operations of the subsidiary companies, 1,193 wash basins, 210 showers, 15,471 lockers. There were also installed 223 separate urinals in addition to a large number of water closet installations. The cost of providing washing facilities for 1913 was $ 141,000.00. The total cost for sanitary work in the United States Steel Corporation's companies last year was $564,977.00. While these figures cover the entire Steel Corporation, a large proportion of it was in the Pittsburgh District. This is the extension of work started in earlier years, and while all plants and operations are not equipped up to our present standards in these respects, all of them are equipped in some manner to meet the entire needs of the employes. Restaurants for the employes have been installed at a few of the Pittsburgh plants. This work is still in the experimental stage. General specifications have been prepared by the committee, covering the general sanitary requirements for water closets, urinals, and drinking fountains. These are to be followed by all subsidiary companies when putting in new installations or making repairs to old installations. The committee is now making a special study of the following subjects: 1— Fly prevention. 2— Malaria prevention. 3— Proper ventilation and light in plants and houses. 4— Provisions for proper heating systems in plants. 5— Provisions for regulation of milk supply at company houses or camps. 6— Provisions for dust removal at plants, including roadways and pavements. 7— Provisions for sterile ice, storage and distribution. 499WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Pension Fund On Jan. i, 1914, there were 2,092 active pension cases under the United States Steel and Carnegie Pension Fund. The 425 employes retired in 1913 are classified as follows: Compulsory Retirement.........................54 (12.7%) Retirement at Request of Employe . . 259(61.0%) Retirement at Request of Employing Officer . 37 ( 8.7 %) Permanent Incapacity..........................75 (17.6%) Total . For these 425 cases the Average age was Average service was Average pension was 425 (100%) 63.73 years 28.82 years $20.85 It may be of interest to know that 49 (11.5 per cent) of those retired in 1913 had served more than forty years, and nine of them for periods ranging from forty-five to fifty-two years. The amendment to Rule No. 7, effective January i, 1913, reducing the service requirement from twenty years to fifteen years, for cases of permanent total incapacity, permitted the Fund to place twenty-six of these distressful cases on the pension roll. Without that generous provision it is likely that about half of this number could never have participated in the benefits of the Pension Fund, because of insufficient service. In a few other cases of permanent total incapacity, due, in most instances, to tubercular infection, rest and specialized treatment were suggested, with the result that in two cases, at least, the employes recovered sufficiently to be able to return to the service. In two or three others the progress of the disease seems to have been arrested and it is hoped that a result, similar to that in the other cases, will be achieved. Employes* Stock Subscription Plan On December 31, 1913, more than 35,026 employes were stockholders under this Plan. Their aggregate holdings amounted to more than 146,462 shares of stock. Voluntary Accident Relief Plan There has been practically no change in the Voluntary Accident Relief Plan since its adoption in May, 1910. A year later, or in May, 1911, the maximum relief per day for married men was changed from $2.00 per day to $2.50 per day. The amount paid to and for injured workmen in 1913 was $2,564,839. The accompanying charts show comparatively accidents and relief for the entire Steel Corporation, years 1906 to 1913 inclusive; and for one of the large plants of the Pittsburgh District. 500APPENDIX XXI THE PITTSBURGH MORALS EFFICIENCY COMMISSION Rudolph I. Coffee In 1912 came a further* and more radical turning point in public policy toward prostitution in Pittsburgh,—the fifth distinct stage in twenty years. The results of each have stood out so clearly that Pittsburgh's experience should be of practical value in the present country-wide study of the problem. I. Twenty years ago Pittsburgh was known as a “wide open" town; and it was so in every sense of the term. II. Then through a decade or more prostitution flourished less brazenly under the cover of police regulation, which had in view only the suppression of disorder and the removal of disorderly houses from residence districts. And because it was kept out of the public eye, vice grew steadily and was able to intrench itself strongly in a business way. The power for evil of the underworld under police supervision and protection was the same in Pittsburgh as in every other city where similar methods are in force. It had the same corrupting influence not only on the community but on the police and in politics. III. In 1906 came the administration of Mayor George W. Guthrie, who realized that the solution of the entire question was too big for any one administration, but whose clear-cut policies of regulation are set forth by Mr. Forbes. At the end of his term the superintendent of police estimated that 334 houses had been closed. There was thus established a new standard which Pittsburgh did not forget when the reaction came. Mayor Guthrie permitted the police to enforce their regulations by raids. From time to time a small army of police would surround a district and carry hundreds of men and women to the station houses. This method had the effect of driving many prostitutes to the residence districts, where they lived in apartments and carried on their trade quietly. No effort was made by the police to follow them there. Subsequent experience *See Forbes, James, op. cit. P. 305 of this volume. 501WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH has shown that raids were unnecessary. Because almost every act in the life of a prostitute is a violation of law, a simple police order, with honesty of purpose and public opinion back of it, is enough without raids to enforce any regulation. If this fails, the criminal courts can be resorted to for drastic remedy. IV. Following Mr. Guthrie's administration from 1909 to 1911, under another mayor, Pittsburgh again was a “wide open" town. With it came all of the attendant evils, debauching the community, corrupting the police, and tainting politics. Conditions became so intolerable that the citizens at large revolted. The Voters' League, the same organization that put an end to graft in Councils by locking up more than a hundred members of that body, led the fight. It appeared before the state legislature and made the question of public morals one of the chief demands for the new charter which gave Pittsburgh a new Council. The league early in 1912 forced the trial before this new Council of the director of the department of public safety, charging him with malfeasance in office and mismanagement of his official duties. He was convicted of mismanagement. The league had the substantial backing of the leading churches. On one Sunday its charges were read and discussed from more than two hundred pulpits. The value of the churches' co-operation in this movement can not be over estimated. In fact, it would have failed utterly without such support. V. More important, these exposures and this trial so stirred the people of Pittsburgh that they, in 1912, were ready to take up actively constructive work in dealing with prostitution. At the instance of a few citizens, a bill was introduced in Councils asking for the appointment of twelve members to serve without pay on a Morals Efficiency Commission. The time was most opportune. Certain councilmen believed it politically expedient to remove the police from politics before the campaign for mayor in 1913. Others voted for the bill as a forward step in municipal affairs. Mayor Magee signed the bill, appointed twelve citizens of standing, and supported the commission loyally throughout its work. The commission organized on May 1, 1912, by electing Dr. Frederick A. Rhodes, president, and George Seibel, secretary. Three of the members were women. All three great religions were recognized, and the personnel included two physicians, three lawyers, one professor, one minister, one social worker, two women club workers, and one business man. The commission had no definite powers. It merely made suggestions to the police department, but these were carried out by the superintendent of police. A careful survey of the city, including both Allegheny 502MORALS EFFICIENCY COMMISSION and Pittsburgh, disclosed 247 houses of prostitution, on 34 streets, with 247 madams, and approximately 1,000 girls. At the end of eighteen months of activity by the commission, this number has been reduced to 71 houses, on six streets, with 71 madams, and 333 girls. The commission set to work with an open mind. Without passing on the question of segregation, it adopted the practical method of proceeding step by step, choosing as a motto “ gradual restriction leading to ultimate elimination.” It first recommended to the police department that all houses of prostitution in residential sections of the city should be eliminated as soon as possible, particularly in the streets where the poorer people live; that commercial prostitution in tenement houses, along a street car line, near any school, hospital, or charitable institution, must be stamped out. All assignation houses were to be closed; and all houses with colored inmates receiving white visitors. No new houses were to be opened, and no new madam nor girl was to be henceforth permitted to enter a house. This rule was later extended to prohibit the return to Pittsburgh of persons who had gone elsewhere and wished to come back. No landlady nor girl was allowed to keep a pimp. Liquor and soft drinks were banished absolutely, and every form of dancing, show, or music was strictly forbidden. Minors were denied admission; peddlers were to be kept out. Every insanitary place was to be closed, and houses paying exorbitant rents were recommended for closing. These were preliminary moves. Each was recommended as soon as it was felt that it could be properly enforced. As a result, the backbone of commercialized vice was broken. If a house disregarded any rule,—admitted minors, for example, or kept liquor under cover,— it was penalized for the first offense and closed for the second. This program stripped the houses of every form of allurement and attraction other than sexual pleasure. To see that the police carried out orders, five of the nine men on the commission made frequent trips to the segregated district, and never less than once a week, two members visited it with detectives. The attempt to handle the medical end of prostitution ended in failure. The commission recommended that every girl submit to a weekly examination, but the certificate merely furnished a false sense of security to men, as the girl might become infected an hour later. The medical examination, at best, was none too careful. Therefore, the commission withdrew its original order, and merely advised the girls, for their own good, to be examined weekly. The commission looked forward to the reporting of venereal dis- 503WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH eases as a hopeful measure, but that lay outside of the powers of the municipality. Other practical measures for keeping track of the situation which it brought forward were recommendations that all transfer companies report the names of persons moving furniture, giving old and new addresses; that lodging houses be licensed; employment agencies registered; and policemen required to report daily the names of persons moving from and into their beats. It must not be supposed that the commission came to regard either legislation or enforcement a cure for the social evil but, throughout its work, laid stress on education. It endeavored to arouse the people about the dangers of venereal disease, but paid even more attention, on the preventive side, to instruction in sex hygiene. Many prominent churches of Pittsburgh were open to members of the commission; they delivered addresses before all the leading women's clubs; started a movement for instruction in the high schools; and constantly sought to awaken a deep interest in the subject throughout the city. Physicians were urged to revise their ethics with respect to patients having venereal disease, and one member of the commission wrote a play, “The Leper." It deals with the educational value of sex education, and the folly of physicians remaining silent when a word may prevent an innocent woman from marrying a moral leper. Before the first year was up the commission was ready for another drastic step, and voted in favor of closing all houses on the North Side. The 91 houses in operation there had been decreased by the various recommendations to 25, and on May 1, 1913, all of these were closed. Every house had been visited in February by members of the commission, and the girls had been spoken to individually. They were urged to save money and think of their future. Every girl in the Pittsburgh houses was similarly spoken to and told that the same recommendation might at any time be made for Pittsburgh. The results in closing Allegheny and cleansing other infested districts were so satisfactory to the commission that, had it remained in power, it would in the near future have voted to close the entire city. As a result of all these activities, we found the frequenting of houses of prostitution radically decreased the second year. With 70 per cent of the houses closed it might be imagined that the 30 per cent remaining increased their business. The reverse was true, going to show that not the desire of man but the zeal of commercializers is at the bottom of the traffic. One salutary effect was that many boys have never visited these houses owing to the strict watch for minors. The commission was convinced by its experience that the handling 504MORALS EFFICIENCY COMMISSION of the social evil can best be done by a special body, created for that purpose and co-operating with the police. While it had no real legal rights, it was backed by an authority higher even than the law itself—an aroused public opinion. To give such a body permanence, to give it power when public interest should in the future be engrossed in other community problems, and to equip it to take up problems of education as well as enforcement, the commission secured the passage, in the legislature of 1913, of a bill * providing for a Morals Bureau to consist of seven members, three of whom may be women, to serve without pay. A superintendent of morals was provided for, under the orders of the Morals Bureau, with salary of $3,000 and a staff under him to handle the work. Thus, new municipal machinery has been created to relieve the police of the responsibility for dealing with a problem which the wisest men of all ages have as yet failed to solve, and Pittsburgh is entering upon a sixth stage of public policy in dealing with the baffling evil. The law went into effect January 1, 1914, and what use is to be made of the new machinery, what policy employed, is in the hands of a new administration,—and ultimately, of the people of the city. ACT CREATING A BUREAU OF MORALS AN ACT providing for the creation of the Bureau of Public Morals in the Department of Public Safety in cities of the second class, defining its purposes, and providing for the payment of expenses incurred thereby. Section 1. Be it enacted, &c., That there shall be, and is hereby created, a Bureau of Public Morals in the Department of Public Safety in cities of the second class, for the purpose of investigating and acting upon all questions and conditions arising from sex relationship which affect public morals. Section 2. That the bureau, hereby created, shall be governed by a board of seven (7) directors, three (3) of whom may be women, appointed by the mayor of the city, and confirmed by the council. The directors shall elect from without their own body a superintendent, who shall give his entire time to the work of the bureau, and shall receive therefor a salary of not exceeding three thousand ($3,000) dollars per year. The directors shall be appointed for the term of four years, and shall be subject to removal at the pleasure of the mayor. Vacancies * A second bill was introduced making a health certificate a prerequisite in granting marriage licenses but was passed only in a compromise form. A third bill, to report venereal diseases as any other communicable disease is reported, was defeated and will be presented again at the next session. 505WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH in their offices shall be filled in the same manner as the appointments are made. Section 3. The board of directors shall have full power to direct the work and operation of the bureau; they shall have power to investigate all conditions growing out of sex relationship affecting public morals; and they shall have full power to enforce all laws, and prosecute all violations of law, in matters of sex relationship; and for that purpose they shall exercise such police power as may be necessary. The business and policies of the board shall be determined by a majority vote of the whole board. Section 4. For the purpose of carrying out the operation of the bureau, there shall be detailed such policemen and detectives as the board may require and select for its purpose from the regular police and detective forces, subject to the approval of the director of said Department of Public Safety, and during the time that they are so detailed they shall be subject to the orders of the board of directors, exercised through its superintendent, and shall be responsible to said board, and shall receive the regular pay as provided by law. The board of directors may, from time to time, appoint and employ such additional investigators as they may deem necessary. Section 5. The board of directors shall elect from its own number a chairman, and employ whatever clerical help may be necessary to enable it to carry out the purposes of this act. Section 6. All acts or parts of acts inconsistent with the provisions of this act are hereby repealed. Approved—The 27th day of June, A. D. 1913. JOHN K. TENER. 506APPENDIX XXII STATISTICAL EXCERPTS FROM THE REPORT OF THE PITTSBURGH MORALS EFFICIENCY COMMISSION, 1913 Investigations conducted by the Commission showed that about 600 prostitutes in Pittsburgh had come in equal proportion from almost everywhere, the greatest number being from the nearest points. Pittsburgh gave birth to 154 out of 611; surrounding cities to 29; Philadelphia to 10; the remainder of Pennsylvania to 151; a total of 344. From Arkansas came 1; California, 2; Colorado, 2; Connecticut, 1; Georgia, 1; Illinois, 4; Indiana, 2; Iowa, 1; Kansas, 1; Kentucky, 5; Louisiana, 2; Maryland, 7; Massachusetts, 2; Michigan, 2; Missouri, 2; Nebraska, 1; New Jersey, 4; New York, 34; North Carolina, 1; Ohio, 49; Tennessee, 4; Texas, 7; Virginia, 7; Vermont, 1; West Virginia, 22; a total of 157. There were no foreigners—from Austria, 51; Canada, 2; Denmark, 1; England, 3; Germany, 16; Holland, 1; Ireland, 3; Italy, 9; Russia, 18; Scotland, 3; Sweden, 2; Switzerland, 1. Many of them are virtually female vagrants with criminal tendencies. Our inquiry as to the previous occupation and income of 506 prostitutes revealed that 169 had been in domestic service at wages from $1.50 to $7 a week; 53 had worked in factories at from $2 to $10 a week; 51 had been clerks at from $3 to $8; 50 had been waitresses at from $3 to $7; 14 had been seamstresses at from $3 to $10; 14 had worked in laundries at from $3 to $6; 10 had been nurse girls at from $1.50 to $4; 5 had been telephone operators at $3.50; 4 had been flower girls at $4 to $5; 4 had done office work at from $2 to #15; 3 had been milliners at $6; 3 had been cashiers at $6 to $12.50; 2 were chorus girls at $10 to $12; one had been a manicure at $5, one an actress at $40, one a governess at $5, one a canvasser at $4, one a fur maker at $4, and one a music teacher, income not given. But 118 had come directly from homes, having never engaged in any gainful employment. Low wages are an indirect factor as they produce an unattractive home life, parental neglect, a taste for cheap amusements and strong stimulants, and similar elements in the psychology of poverty. From this point of view the low wages of men are as much to blame as the low wages of women. 507WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH Ten women gave their average weekly income as from $5 to $8; 26 from $9 to $10; 81 from ¡¡Si 1 to $15; 129 from ¡¡Si6 to $20; 93 from $20 to $25; 30 from $25 to$30; 36 from $35 to $40; 25 from $45 to$50; 17 from $55 to $75; 8 from $80 to $100. The prostitute will rarely acknowledge her full income, but fairly dependable reports from 458 in Pittsburgh at the beginning of 1913 show their share of the traffic amounted to about $10,000 weekly. As the share of the keeper of the house is the same, that would mean $1,040,000 annually as a tribute to the social evil, or about $2,500,000 (excluding the equally huge drink bill), when there were over 200 houses and about 1,000 inmates, a tax of $5 on every man, woman, and child in the city. Out of 558 Pittsburgh women 406 had never had any children; out of the 152 who had, there were 66 who had one child living, 19 who had two living, and five who had three or four living. Of 260 women both parents were dead, of only 87 both were living. The mothers of 103 and the fathers of 72 were living. Two came from wealthy families, 10 were well-to-do, 152 in moderate circumstances, and 254 poor. Out of 474 Pittsburgh women 1 entered a house at fourteen, 1 at fifteen, 2 at sixteen, 8 at seventeen, 44 at nineteen, 75 at twenty, 113 at twenty-one, 162 at twenty-two, 64 at twenty-five to twenty-eight, and 15 at twenty-nine to thirty-five. It will be seen that 257 entered at the age of eighteen to twenty-one, and only 217 at all other ages. It is a corollary of this that most of the women entering this life are single; there were 359 such in the above enumeration, 119 who had been married but were separated or divorced from their husbands, and 84 who were widows. While earlier marriage would, undoubtedly, check the tendency to prostitution in a large measure, its bonds are by no means a guarantee of virtue. Out of 345 fallen women in Pittsburgh, 95 were seduced by married men, and 250 by single men. Nor do the churches appear as any restraining influence. There were found 272 Protestants, 188 Catholics, 67 Jewesses, 1 Dunkard, 1 Spiritualist, 1 Freethinker and 1 Agnostic. They came from all walks of life. There were 135 daughters of laborers, 70 of farmers, 29 of miners, 21 of clerks, 18 of carpenters, 17 of contractors, 13 of mechanics, 11 of engineers, 10 of merchants, 8 of tailors, 8 of painters, 8 of blacksmiths, 7 of firemen, 6 of mill workers, 6 of stone masons, 6 of machinists, four each of shoe makers, pumpers, plumbers, and brakemen, three each of saloon keepers and officers, two each of bookkeepers, school teachers, florists, cooks, milkmen, bakers, attorneys, hotel keepers and mill superintendents; one each of a postmaster, a real estate agent, a driver, a physician, a conductor, a waiter, a broker, a rabbi, a plasterer, a pattern maker, a bar- 508EXCERPTS MORALS EFFICIENCY REPORT tender, a cigar maker, an oil driller, an attorney, an editor, an actor, a manager, a glazier, and a glass worker. Eighty-five did not even know their fathers' occupations, indicating how largely lax family ties are responsible for female delinquency. Out of 518 Pittsburgh prostitutes, aged from twenty-one to forty-eight, there was 1 aged twenty-one, 41 were twenty-two, 73 were twenty-three, 89 were twenty-four, 57 were twenty-five, 40 were twenty-six, 43 were twenty-seven, 39 were twenty-eight, 28 were twenty-nine, 32 were thirty, 21 were thirty-one to thirty-two, 24 were thirty-three to thirty-four, 12 were thirty-five to thirty-six, and 6 were thirty-nine to forty-eight. Over half, or 261, were under twenty-five years of age, and they looked older. Only 113 were found who had been in the business over five years; only 18 who had been in it over nine years; only one who had been in it for twenty years. Out of a total of 491, 15 had been prostitutes from six to eight months; 133 from one to two years; 76 from two to three years; 68 from three to four years; 76 from four to five years; 52 from five to seven years; 47 from seven to ten years; 5 from ten to thirteen years; 8 from fourteen to eighteen years. 509APPENDIX XXIII RECORDS OF REPEATERS POLICE COURT, JAIL, AND WORKHOUSE RECORDS OF A GROUP OF PETTY OFFENDERS IN PITTSBURGH, SHOWING THE ENDLESS ROUND OF SHORT TERM SENTENCES Compiled by Frederick A. King RED McHUGH* County Jail Record June, 1910-June, 1907 Committed 29 times Served a total of 7 months, 13 days 1910 Days 1909 Days May 11 . . 10 Jan. 2 . 10 May 1 . . 5 roo8 1909 Dec. " 28 . 2 Dec. 11 . 10 Nov. 12 . . 10 Dec. 1 . 10 Nov. 6 . 5 Nov. 26 . 5 Aug. 3 • 10 Nov. 18 . 5 June 10 . 3 Nov. 6 . 10 May 3i • 5 June 27 • 10 Jan. 5 • 10 June 16 . 10 1907 March 9 • .... 3 Dec. 26 . 10 March 3 • . . 5 Oct. 14 . 10 Feb’y 20 . 10 Oct. 3 • 10 Feb’y 4 • 10 Aug. 16 . . 15 Jan. 29 . 5 June 26 . 0 Jan. 16 . . 10 June D • . $ Central Police Court Record June, 1910-June, 1909 Arraigned and discharged 5 times 1910 June 23 24 arrested drunkenness discharged Nov. 3 4 arrested drunkenness May 9 10 arrested drunkenness discharged July 15 l6 arrested drunkenness 1909 Nov. 15 16 arrested drunkenness discharged * Names fictitious. discharged discharged 510RECORDS OF REPEATERS Red McHugh (Continued) Workhouse Record 1910-1870 92 Terms of Imprisonment Served a total of 13 years, 8 months 1910 Charge Days 1898 Charge Days May 21 vagrancy . 30 April 20 disorderly conduct 30 1909 Jan. 1 it ti 90 March 12 vagrancy . 30 1897 1908 Nov. 26 a it 30 Nov. 28 drunkenness . . 30 Sept. 21 tt it 30 Oct. 7 vagrancy . 30 July 7 vagrancy 30 Sept. 3 disorderly conduct . 30 April 9 disorderly conduct 30 April 3 drunk . . 30 Feb’y 3 drunkenness . 30 Jan. 15 vagrancy . 30 1896 1907 May 17 vagrancy 30 July 10 drunkenness . . 30 March 22 exposing person . 30 1906 Jan. 8 disorderly conduct 30 Sept. 24 vagrancy • 30 1893 June 7 u • 30 Nov. 14 tt u 30 April 11 a . 30 July 7 vagrancy 30 1905 June 1 disorderly conduct 30 Aug. 25 disorderly conduct . 30 1894 June 9 vagrancy . 30 Nov. 29 vagrancy 90 April 5 tt . 60 June 3 a 90 1904 Jan. 23 it 90 Nov. 11 it . 90 1893 July 30 disorderly conduct . 60 Dec. 22 tt 30 April 17 a u . 90 Nov. 11 drunkenness . 30 1903 Months Oct. 5 vagrancy 30 May 15 vagrancy . 6 Aug. 24 it 30 Days July 6 disorderly conduct 30 April 1 drunkenness . . 30 March 23 suspicious person 30 1902 Jan. 20 vagrancy 60 Aug. 13 disorderly conduct . 90 1892 June 10 vagrancy . 30 Dec. 4 drunkenness . 30 1901 Oct. 26 vagrancy 30 Sept. 27 disorderly conduct . 60 Sept. 21 it 30 Aug. 21 vagrancy . 30 Months May 15 it . 30 Jan. 29 tt 6 March 22 tt • 30 1891 Days Feb’y 16 it . 30 Oct. 20 tt 90 1900 Aug. 30 ft 30 Dec. 30 it . 30 May 17 disorderly conduct 30 Sept. 13 it . 90 1886 July 10 it . 30 Jan. 7 ft tt 90 1899 Months 1885 Nov. 18 it . 6 Dec. 5 tt ft 30 Days Sept. 22 ft ft 30 Aug. 18 it . 90 Jan. 26 drunkenness . 30 June 23 disorderly conduct . 30 1884 Feb’y 4 a it . 90 Aug. 20 disorderly conduct 90 1898 June 17 interfering with officer. 30 Dec. 1 vagrancy . 30 May 12 suspicious person 30 Aug. 9 exposing person . . 30 1883 July 6 suspicious person . 30 July 16 u ti . 30 511WAGE-EARNING PITTSBURGH 1883 Charge Months March 28 vagrancy . 90 1882 Oct. 4 44 . 90 Jan. 31 assault and battery • 30 1881 Sept. 29 vagrancy 90 April 21 suspicious person • 30 Feb’y 9 disorderly conduct 30 1880 Aug. 4 44 44 • 30 1879 Aug. 9 vagrancy Months . 6 April I disorderly conduct Days . 90 1878 Charge Days Nov. 26 vagrancy . 90 Oct. I disorderly conduct . 30 April 26 44 44 . 90 187 7 Months June 6 44 44 . 6 1876 Days Aug. 12 4 4 4 4 . 90 1874 June 10 1870 April 30 vagrancy • 30 disorderly conduct . 90 March 23 • 30 Jan. 16 313, 35°j 358, 37L 386, 406, 501, 502 “H— henchman,” 316 Hang-outs. See Yeggs Harbison and Walker Brick Refrac tories Company, 418 544INDEX Hardy and Hayes Company, 454 “Harrigan,” 331 Harrison, Shelby M., 9 Hayes, Gertrude, 352, 358 Hazelton— Ages of children in, leaving school in 1907, 208 Health— Labor conditions inimical to, 27; public, Pittsburgh’s foregone asset, 14, IS Health, bureau of— Deaths from work-accidents not shown by reports of, 25; development of sanitary service and, protection of city, 14; garbage removal contract engrossed two-thirds of appropriation of, 14; in hands of politician, 15; in hands of skilled sanitarian in 1908, 14, 15; lodging house licenses issued by, 341; lodging houses closed by, 345; new adequate departmental organization and trained sanitarian, 15; no annual report of, for five years, 14; no physician at head of, until Guthrie administration, 14; only one-half of appropriation free for general health purposes, 14; power of, to vacate, 20; reorganization of food inspection service of, recommended by New York Bureau of Municipal Research, 19; report on work of, by New York Bureau of Municipal Research, 15, 16; Sharpsburg, inadequate care of poor, 282, 283, incomplete records, 282, lax disinfection by, 282, 283, laxness in reporting contagious cases, 283, 284; subordinate bureau up to 1909, 14 Health certificate— Legislation making, prerequisite in granting marriage licenses passed in compromise form, 505 Health conference, Western Pennsylvania, 11 Heinz Bottle Works in Sharpsburg— Improvement of atmospheric conditions by, 201 35* Heinz Glass Company, 219, 224, 229, 230, 231, 236, 250, 255, 258, 259, 264, 272, 295, 296 Helpers— Housesmiths, 152 Herr, President, 142 Heyl-Patterson Company, 150 Hod-carriers— Unionism, 120; wages, 120 Hoisting and Portable Engineer’s Union, 153 Hoisting engineers, 153,154; apprenticeship of, 145, 153, 154; employers’ association, 153; hours of, 154; licensing of, 153,154; unionism among, 153; wages of, 154 Holdsworth, Professor— Economic survey by, 19 Holland, 372 Home building— Premium on, in Boston, 21 Home conditions— Effect of, of immigrant wage-earners on crime, 52, 53 Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Women, 433 Homes— Sharpsburg, 281-283 Homestead, 106, 236, 261; housing conditions in, 22, 23; mills, 228; overcrowding in, 23; privy vaults not prohibited in, 23; riots, 276; strike of 1892, 113; water supply in houses, 23 Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town, 19, 28, 47, 55, 96, 429 Horne and Company, Joseph, 130, 132, 454 Hospital— Ambulance service not systematized in 1914,12; ex-policeman superintendent of, for insane, 12; municipal tuberculosis, 11, no general municipal, in 1914, 12 545INDEX Hospitals— At Essen, 6; lack of co-ordination between, io, n, in 1914, 12; recent additions to specialized, n; subsidized, difficulty in getting patients accepted in, 12 Hotels— Investigation of, by new factory inspection department, 445 Hours— Adult male wage-earners, 203; agitation by workers to shorten, met with reprisal, 29; bakers, 129, 135; blacksmiths, 144; boiler makers, 143, 144; brewery workers, 137, 138, 184; bricklayers, 146, 147, 148; bridge and structural iron workers, 150,151, 152, I53> building trades, 146, 166, 184; building trades day labor, 184; carpenters, 154, 155; child labor law relating to, 208; city day labor, 121, 184; closing, for women and girls, 214, in Indiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska and New York, 214; day labor, 184; effect of long, on citizenship, family life, and morals, 27, 28, 29; effect of long, on restlessness of labor, 117; electrical workers, inside wiremen, 155, 156; electrical workers, linemen, 157; elevator constructors, 158, 159; for women and girls, 213, 214; girls under eighteen, legislation affecting, 132; girls worked in 1913, 204; hoisting engineers, 154; housesmiths, 153; in 1914, 28; in laundries, 204; in United States Steel Corporation, 395-399; law regulating, in Ohio, 202; machinists, 140, 141, 142; masons, 146, 147, 148; metal trades, 139,184; mine workers, 167, 168, 170, 172, 173; mine workers compared with steel workers, 178, 179; molders, 143; of 125 settlement girls, (Table) 493; of Sharpsburg children in glass-houses, 298, in metal trades, iron mill, 292, in metal trades, shovel factory, 293, in metal trades, tube mills, 294; painters, decorators, and paperhangers, 159, 160; pattern makers, 143; plasterers, 161; plumbers, 146, 162; printers, 133,184; railway and runs, 125,126,127,128,184; railway, restricted by federal legislation, 126, 128; recommendations of report on factory inspection concerning, for women and children, 212, 213; 546 retail clerks, 129, 130, 131, 132, 184; retail clerks, legislation affecting, 132, 214, 260, shortened through efforts of Knights of Labor, 129, women, 184; rivermen, 122; sheet-metal workers, 165; shortened to safeguard employes, 254; slate and tile roofers, 165; state day labor, 121; steamfitters, 146,164; street railway, and runs, 123, 124, 184; summary showing effect of unionism on, 184, 185; teamsters, 121, 122; telephone operators, 214, 259; tile layers and helpers, 166 House building— Promoted by industrial corporations, 21 Household demonstrators— Resident, 259 Household needs, 17-20 Housekeeping— Co-operative, among immigrant wage-earners, 47 Houses— Shortage of, 20, 21, 22, 23, 45, 59, 117, 281; tenement, census of, 20. See also Overcrowding Housesmiths, 152,153; affiliated with structural iron workers, 152; apprenticeship of, 152; employers’ agreement with, 152, 153; hazards of, 153; helpers allowed to fitters or journeymen, 152; hours of, 153; sympathetic strikes, 152; unionism among, 152; wages of, 153 Housing— Immigrants in underworld districts, 307; in Essen, 5, 6; mine workers, 174, 175; mine workers and steel workers compared, 179; Negro steel workers, 101; non-enforcement of, laws and ordinances, 406; the immigrant wage-earner, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 55, 59, 60 Housing Committee of Chamber of Commerce, 410 Housing conditions— At Marianna, 262; improved, shown by photographs in Museum of Safety Appliances, 494; in mill towns, 23; in Sharpsburg, 23, 280, 281, 282; insanitary, 20INDEX Housing of Mill Workers, Community Contrasts of 1914 in the, 406- 413 Housing of Pittsburgh’s workers, 20 Housing problem— Co-operative building scheme, 21, 22; development of constructive public policy, town planning, traction development, and modification of tax system, solution of, 21, 22 Housing Situation, The Pittsburgh District and the, 21 Hubbard’s shovel factory, 292, 293 Human conservation— Results of failure to apply principle of, to industry, 28 Human values— Lack of appreciation of, 308 Hungarians, 34, 42, 54, 86, 261, 351 Hunkies, 280,319,334 Icemen. Stz Teamsters Illinois— Enforcement of labor laws crippled by employers, 190 “Illinois Jimmy,” 331 Immigrant children. See Sharpsburg Immigrant day labor— Wages in steel companies, 119 Immigrant labor— Effect of, on improvement of mining processes, 169 Immigrants— Housed in underworld districts, 307; Pittsburgh as a destination of, 36; Society for the Protection of Italian, 51; the Jewish, of two Pittsburgh blocks, 419-423; training, for one task, 220, 221; Young Men’s Christian Association work for, in the Pittsburgh District, 60, 414-418. See Lodging houses; Wage-earners, immigrant Immigration— Causes for, of Slavs, 62, 63; effect of, on conditions of mine workers, 167, 168, 169, 170, on development of employes, 268; encouraged by steel industry, 276; higher wages a reason for, 36, 37, 40; per cent of Slavs in present, 61 Immorality— Among immigrant wage-earners, 48, 49 Indiana— Closing hour for women and girls in, 214; segregation of confirmed felons in, 372 Industrial accidents in Pennsylvania, 443. See also Work-accidents Industrial advance— Made by immigrant wage-earners, 40, 41, 42, 43 Industrial board— Duties and powers of, 216, 448, 449; membership of, 445; outcome of, to be seen, 216. See also Industries; Labor Industrial center— Attractions of, for professional criminal, 366; generating social renegades in an, 366, 367; new, in Essen, 5; workingmen resource of, 24, 28 Industrial centers— Social progress in, during last five years, 29, 30 Industrial conditions— Recapitulation of, 180-188 Industrial corporations— Promoting house building, 21 Industrial development— Of community, as affecting crime, 366-369 Industrial Development Commission of Pittsburgh, 19, 115; statistics, 442 Industrial district— Area of, 115,116 Industrial efficiency— Of immigrant wage-earners, 38, 40, 42, 43 547INDEX Industrial factor— Negro as an, 108, 109 Industrial government— Contest between employers and unions for supremacy in, 273; cooperation between employer, employe, and public in, of garment trades in New York, 273, 274 Industrial hygiene— Companies selected for investigation of, 217; conclusions as to, 274-278; development and stability of employes, 255-274; division of, in factory inspection department, 216; improvement in, dependent on managerial and financial heads, 275, 277; of the Pittsburgh District, 27, 217-278; physical equipment of plant as it affects the comfort and convenience of employes, 223-240, 274; principles forming basis for analysis of, 217; recent improvements in, 259, 260, 275; recruiting of employes, 218-223; safeguarding employes against accident and disease, 240-255, 274. See also Working conditions Industrial management— Desire of wage-earners to have voice in, 188; evolution of, compared with that of political government, 273. See also Labor management Industrial problem of 1914, 30 Industrial prosperity— Sharpsburg officials satisfied with, 304 Industrial supremacy— Efforts necessary to retain, 278 Industrial town— Midland a modern, 413 Industrial unions. See Unions Industrial workers— Drifting into underworld, 317, 318; preyed upon by underworld, 307, 317, 318, 319,320 Industrial Workers of the World, 142, 188 Industries— Community responsibility to, 24; dependent on immigrant wage-earn- ers, 59; effect of panic of 1907-08 on, 118; expansion of, other than steel, 277; independent of rank and file, 117; relation of wage-earners to, 7 Industries, pig iron— Quick response of, to depression or prosperity, 118 Industry, 113-188; the drift from, 317, 318; the social challenge to, 24-28 Infant mortality— Effect on, of overcrowding in Homestead, 23 Initiative— Development of employes through encouraging, 267, 268 Insane— Ex-policeman as superintendent of hospital for, 12; provisions for care of, in 1914, 12 Insurance. See Workingmen’s insurance Insurance societies— Founded by priests, 58; of immigrant wage-earners, 56 International Association of Bridge and Structural IronWorkers, 150 International Association of Machinists, 140,141 International Association of Police Chiefs, 375 International Association of Steam-fitters and Steamfitters’ Helpers of America, 162 International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths, 181 International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Stablemen and Stablemen’s Helpers, 122 International Longshoremen, Marine and Transport Workers’ Association, 122 International Molders’ Union, 142 International prostitution, 352, 353 548INDEX International Union of Elevator Constructors, 158 Intoxication. See Drunkenness Invalidity funds— At Essen, 6 Irish, 33, 34, 37, 54, 280, 284, 310, 351 Iron— Output of, 115 Iron Age, 115 Iron and Steel Roll Hands* Union, 106 Iron City Central Trades Council, 181 Iron mills— Sharpsburg children in. 2qi, 292; Sharpsburg children’s opportunity for advancement in, 292 Irwin— Mine workers, 167 Italians, 33, 34, 37, 39, 4°, 43, 48, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 79, 119, 120, 121, 135, 261, 280, 281, 283, 284, 287, 297, 299, 302, 320, 350, 351, 355, 368. See also Wage-earners, immigrant Jackson, John Price, 445 Jenkinson Stogy Factory, 230, 231, 259 Jerome, District Attorney, 315 Jewish Bakers* Union, 129 Jewish Immigrants of Two Pittsburgh Blocks, The, 419-423 Jewish women. See Women, council of Jewish Jews, 35, 129, 135, 136, 187, 280, 350, 351, 355, 360, 368; educational work of J. W. Anthony among, 51 “Jocker.** See Yeggs Jones, John H., 262 Jones and Laughlin, 45,119,173,178, 215, 233, 248, 261, 445 Juvenile delinquents— Recommendations made by New York Bureau of Municipal Research affecting, 520 “K. C. Red,** 331 Kelley, Florence, 13, 132, 189-216, 225, 231, 245, 258, 443 Kellogg, Paul U., 3-30, 43, 53, 71 Kelts, 33, 34, 40, 43 Kennard, Beulah, 10, 52, 60 Kerr, Allen H., 12, 377, 378 King, Frederick A., 388, 510-515 King of Second Avenue, 315 Kingsley House, 51,132,363,453,492 Knights of Labor, 129, 143, 162, 181; Salespeople’s Assembly, No. 4907,130 Kohler, Chief, 387 Koukol, Alois B., 36, 61-77 Krupp, 3, 5, 6 Krupps— Mobilization of workmen by, 5; remarkable labor force of, 6; sickness or disability of skilled workmen an economic loss to, 5; welfare work of, from standpoint of American employer, 6, from standpoint of American workman, 6. See also Essen Kurtz, Langbein and Swartz, 454 Labor— Causes and effect of restlessness of, 117; effect of Balkan war on, 118; lack of effort to attract higher class of, 268; mobility of, compared with immobility of capital, 116, 117, evidenced by panic of 1907-08, 118; mobilization of, by Krupps, 5; restlessness of, 116, 117, 169, 290, 291, 296, 300; scarcity of electrical workers, 145; scarcity of elevator con- 549INDEX structors, 145,157; scarcity of skilled, 274; situation in 1914, 118. See also Day labor; Wage-earners Labor and Industries Department— Act creating, 446-450, appointments under, 445; factory administrative service of state reorganized as, 215; inadequate appropriation under, for supervising factory inspector’s office at Pittsburgh, 13; includes bureau of statistics, factory inspection, and arbitration, 215; John Price Jackson, commissioner, 445; legislation making report of work-accidents to, obligatory, 443; outcome of work of, to be seen, 216. See also Factory inspection; Industrial board Labor conditions— Report on, by Stockholders’ Committee United States Steel Corporation, April 15, 1912, 395-405. See also Working conditions Labor conventions— Work-accidents to miners, subject of complaint at, 175. See also Unions Labor laws— Affecting women and children, amended in 1913, 213, 214, includes all women subject to partial exemptions, 213; California, and enforcement, 215; enforcement of, duty of factory inspection department, 202, elements in, 207, in Illinois crippled by employers, 190, inefficient, 190; enforcing authority of, unchanged up to 1913, 215; improvement of, 213; improvement of working conditions through, 258; limiting working week ior women not enforceable, 203; Massachusetts, and enforcement, 215; New York, and enforcement, 215; no, regulating ventilation in industrial plants, 226; non-enforcement of, by factory inspection department, 191, 204, 205, 206, 211, 212, 249, in stogy factory, 201, 202; Ohio, and enforcement, 202, 215; opposed by steel industry, 276; Pennsylvania, in 1913 excelled by only four states, 214; recommendation that English, be made basis of a code, 213; regulating hours of women retail clerks, 184, 214; violation of, governing hours of work, 203, 204; Wisconsin, and enforcement, 215. See also Child labor law; Legislation, mining law Labor legislation— Defeated by employers in Massachusetts, 190 Labor management— Beginnings of scientific, 255; effect of, on development of employers, 268; problem of, 256, 257; technical men unprepared for duties of, 225, 226 Labor market— Pittsburgh’s reputation in the, 277 Labor Union Hygiene for Brewery Workers, 454 Lamont, Philip, 323 Lang, Director, 310,335 Langfitt, Dr., 249 Latins, 366 Latrobemine workers, 167 Lattimore, Florence L., 12, 427 Laundries— Friday a fifteen-hour day in, 204; labor conditions in, 27; reports of factory inspection department concerning employment of women and children in, lacking, 194 Law— Administration of, 389; cases cited showing reason for contempt of, held by Slavs, 71, 72, 73; non-enforcement of housing, 406; police demoralized by non-enforcement of, tolerated by corrupt administrations, 370, 371. See also Courts Law breaking— Capitalizing, and selling protection, 359 Lawrence Park, 236 Laws as to women’s labor in 1913, 213-216 Laws, civil rights— Scrutiny of, needed, 381, 382 “Leadville Jimmy,” 331 550INDEX Legislation— Affecting hours of retail clerks, 132, 214, 260, of women, 184, 213, 214, of girls under eighteen, 132, 213, 214; affecting mining operations, 176, 177; affecting non-support, 381; affecting probation, 380, 381; affecting working conditions of women and girls, 214; aiming to prevent mine workers’ accidents, 176, 177; amendments to compulsory education, give local authorities jurisdiction over employment of children under fourteen and illiterate under sixteen, 209; bill providing for report of venereal diseases defeated, 505; “Blower,” 201, 250; child labor, in Massachusetts, 207, in New York, 207, in Pennsylvania, 207, relating to hours, 208; compulsory education, 207, 279, 292, 301; concerning school census, 213; concerning the issuing of work certificates to children, 213; Consumers’ League accomplished enactment of labor, in 1913, 214; creating Bureau of Public Morals, 363, 505, 506; creating Department of Labor and Industries, 446, 450; effort by employers to defeat labor, and enforcement, 190; enabling local school authorities to open classes for adult immigrants, 52; establishing county court of concurrent jurisdiction, 52, 53; establishing workingmen’s compensation, or state insurance, enacted in 22 states, 200; failure to enact, providing for voluntary workingmen’s compensation system, 44; federal, restricting hours of railway men, 126,128; making health certificate prerequisite in granting marriage licenses passed in compromise form, 505; making obligatory report of work-accidents to Labor and Industries Department, 443 ; proof of age, 279; providing for state commission to investigate work-accidents, 44; requiring construction of fire wall, 245; requiring fire drills, 244; restricting night messenger service defeated, 213; tariff, 114; to prevent occupational diseases, 201, 249, 250, 451, 452; workmen’s compensation, 213. See also Labor laws; Child labor laws Legislative action— Concerning employer’s liability and workingmen’s compensation bill, 200 Leiserson, William M., 113-188, 273 Liberty Avenue Mission, 343 Library— Branches and substations, 11; for Sharpsburg children lacking, 303 Library, The Public : A Social Force in Pittsburgh, n, 52 Licensing— Hoisting engineers, 153, 154 Light— In industrial plants, 223, 224. See also PlantSy physical equipment of Lillian Home. See Kingsley House Lippincott, Miss, 55 Liquor— Effect of prohibiting sale of, in houses of prostitution, 312, 358, 359, 361, 362; law strictly enforced under reform administration, 312; profits from sale of, in houses of prostitution, 358, 359; sale of, 385, in Marianna, 263. See also Drinking Lithuanians, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 52, 53, 55, 56, S7,S8,6s Livelihood. See Earnings Living conditions— Among immigrant wage-earners, 43-60 Living, cost of, 18,19, 20; advance in, 55, 119, 440, 441; effect of, on restlessness of labor, 117; for unmarried immigrants, 46, 47; market garden possibilities in reducing, 19 Living, The Advance in the Cost of, in Workingmen’s Families Since 1907,440, 441 Living, The Cost of, in Pittsburgh and in Other American Cities Compared, 1909,437~439 Lockers— * In industrial plants, 232, 274; in United States Steel Corporation, 497. See also Plants, physical equip-ment of 551INDEX Lodging house— Ordinance providing for operation of municipal, vetoed by Mayor Magee, 346 Lodging houses, 339-348; assault and battery in immigrant, 47; Bethel Home, 343, 344; Chicago municipal, 347; class seeking shelter in, 339, 340; “ Clem ’ ’ Hackenberger conducting, for rivermen and market men, 344; closed by bureau of health, 345; comparatively small number of, 339; five- to twenty-five cent, 341, 342, co-operation between police and health bureau needed for regulation of, 383; immigrant, 87, 88, congested, 46, 47, 48, 59, moral conditions in, 48, 49, sanitary conditions in, 46, 47, 59; ineffective oversight of private, 348; investigation of, by local committee, 345; kept by “ Q—341,342, 345; kept by “Rev.” R—, 343, 344; Liberty Avenue Mission, 343, 345; Liberty Mission enjoined, 345; licenses for, issued by board of health, 341; lodging-house resort, 345; lodging-house types, 346, 347, the moral bankrupt, 346, 347, the old railroad yardmaster, 346; men allowed to sleep on chairs at Rescue Mission, 345, 346; municipal provision, 340, 347, 348; New York municipal, 347; newsboy, 348; Philadelphia municipal, 347; Poor-Man’s Tavern, 344; Providence Mission, 345; rivermen’s houses, 344; Salvation Army conducting, 343; Salvation Army, enjoined, 345; Salvation Army Industrial Home, 345; Salvation Army Shelter, 345; the “Mission,” 340, 341, 342, 343; tripledeckers and sanctimony, 343, 344; Volunteers of America conducting, 342, 345 Lodgings— Municipal provisions at police stations for, 347, 383; no, provided by city except police station or work-house, 340; police station, eleven-year-old boy seeking, 347, 348, number of, 347, underlying evil of, 348 Loendi Club, 433 Long turn, seven-day week and— Report of Stockholders’ Committee 552 United States Steel Corporation, 395-398. See also Overwork “Los Slim,** 331 Lunch facilities— In industrial plants, 214, 228-230, 274. See also Plant, physical equipment of Machinists— Apprentices of, 141; character of work of, 140; employers’ agreement with, 140; employers’ association, 140; hours, 140, 141, 142, number of, 139; strike in 1907, 141; strike in 1910, 141; strike on Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 142; strike on Pennsylvania Railroad, 142; unionism among 140, 141, 142, 187, affected by panic of 1907-08, 141, affected by specialization in Westinghouse shops, 140; wages of, 140, 141, 183 Magee, William A., 19, 124, 346, 362, 363 Magistrates* courts. See Courts, magistrates' Magyar, 33, 35, 37, 7° Malley Company, The, 454 Management. See Industrial management; Labor management Manheimer, W. A., 236 Mann act, 353 Manufacturers* Association of Pittsburgh, 140, 141. See also National Metal Trades Association Marianna, 176; borough government at, 203 ; development and stability of employes at, 262, 263. See also Pittsburgh-Bujfalo Coal Company Market garden— Possibilities of, in reducing cost of living, 19 Marshalsea, 12, 370 Masons. See Bricklayers and masons Massachusetts— Child labor legislation in, 207; closing hour for women and childrenINDEX in, 214; farm colony for drunkards in, 388; labor laws and enforcement, 214; labor legislation defeated by employers, 190; safeguarding employes against tuberculosis in, 250 Master and servant law, 264 Master Brick Contractors’ Association, 148 Master Builders’ Association, 154 Master House Painters’ and Decorators’ Association, 159 Master Housesmiths’ Association, Ï52 Master Plumbers’ Association, 162 Matthews, William H., 363 Mattress factories— Investigation of, by new factory inspection department, 445 “Maxey the Fixer,” 315 “Maxey the Mixer,” 359 McCandless, George W., 445 McClintic-Marshall Construction Company, 150 McConnaughey, H. A., 414, 418 McCord, Annie E., 453 McCreery’s, 132, 225, 231, 259, 454 McKeesport— A “percentage-burg” for the underworld, 321, 322; housing conditions in, 22; recreation grounds, 236; worked by underworld at Old Home Week, 319 McKees Rocks strike. See Strikes McQuaide, Thomas, 311, 335 Mechanics— Wages of, 183 Medical inspection— In schools a forward step, 16; in Sharpsburg schools, 283, 284 Messenger service— Bill to restrict night, to boys eighteen or older, defeated, 213 Mesta Machine Company, 221, 222, 229, 238, 248, 261 Metal trades, 139-144; employers’ association, 139; hours in, 139, 184; racial make-up, 139; reports of factory inspection department concerning employment of women and children in, lacking, 194; Sharpsburg children in, 291-295; Sharpsburg children’s opportunity for advancement in, 292; unionism in, 139; unionism in, affected by specialization, 139; wages in, 139, 183. See also Blacksmiths; Boiler Makers; Machinists; Molders; Pattern Makers Metal Trades Section, 182 Mexicans, 331 Mexico, 3 Meyer Jonasson and Company, 132, 454 “Mickey G—,”331 Midland, 21, 261, 410-413 Midland Improvement Company, 410-413 Milk- Clean, as a bountiful commodity, 19; dairy inspection since 1907, 18; deaths caused by impure, 18; insanitary condition of dairies, 18, 19; municipal, dispensaries, 18; wider area covered by, inspectors since 1907, 8 Milk and Ice Association, 18 Mill towns, 260-263 Mine explosions— Station for investigation of, established under United States Geological Survey, 177 Mine operators— Attitude of, toward unionism, 179, 180 Mine workers, 167-177; agreement of, not to sue for wages, 170; and steel workers compared, 178-180; at Colorado, 167; at Connellsville, 167, 168, 173; at Greensburg, 167; at Irwin, 167; at Latrobe, 167; at West- 553INDEX moreland County, 167, 168; at West Virginia mines, 167; biennial interstate conventions of, and employers, 170; check-weighing system of, 170, 173,174; coke region affected by outcome of unionism among, in Westmoreland, 168; company houses for, 1:74, 175; company stores for, 174, 175; district conferences of, 170; effect of immigration on conditions of, 167, 168, 169, 170; employers’ agreements with, 170, 171, 174, 179, 180; H. C. Frick, 168; hours of, 167, 168, 170, 172, 173; hours of, compared with steel workers, 178,179; housing, 174; housing of, compared with steel workers, 179; life-saving demonstration by bureau of mines, 177; number of, 167; overtime work of, 173; payment to, for “dead work,” 170, 173 ; percentage of immigrant, 169; racial make-up of, and steel workers similar, 178; rents paid by, 174; Slavic, 167, 168, 169, 170; strike of, in 1897, 179; strikes of, 167, 168; unionism among, 29, 167, 168, 169, 170, 173, 174, 175, 177, 179, 180, 182, 186; unionism among, compared with steel workers, 179, 180; Uniontown, 168; Vesta No. 4,173; wages of, 167, 168, 170, (Table) 171, 172, 173; wages of, compared with steel workers, 178, 179 Mine workers1 accidents. See Work-accidents, miners Mine workers* wages— Check-weighman’s wages and office expenses deducted from, 174; union dues deducted from, 174 Mines— Work-accident prevention in, 14, 177 Mines, Federal Bureau of— Established under Department of the Interior, 13, 14, 177; safety work of, 177 Mining districts— Town planning in, 262; Young Men’s Christian Association work in, 418 Mining industry— Movement of unions for work-accident prevention in, 177 Mining law, bituminous— Amendments to, urged by miners, 176; commission appointed to revise, 176, 177; commission appointed to revise, report and recommendations, 177; revision of, recommended by James Roderick, passed in 1911, 177. See also Labor laws Mining operations— Legislation affecting, 176, 177 Mining processes— Effect of immigrant labor on improvement of, 169 Minnesota— System of reporting work-accidents in, 197 Minsk, 62 Mobility of labor. See Labor, restlessness of Molders, 142, 143; employers’ association, 142; hours of, 143; number of, 142; piece-rate system opposed by, union, 143; unionism among, 142, 143, in Westinghouse Machine Company, 142; wages affected by panic of 1907-08, 142, by trade depression, 142; wages of, 142,143,183 Monroe, James, 323 Moore, Miss Sarah, 51 Moorhead, 291, 292 Moracovick, Dr., 48 Morality— Of community affected by inflow of immigrant wage-earners, 34 Morals— Effect of employes’ benefit associations on, 264, 265; effect of overwork on, 28, 29 Morals, Bureau of Public, 363, 371; act creating, 505, 506; co-operation of police needed by, 526; the sixth stage of public policy in dealing with prostitution, 505 Morals Efficiency Commission, 363, 371, 372, 501-506; appointment of, 502; educational campaign against prostitution by, 504; frequenting of 554INDEX houses of prostitution decreased under activities of, 504; houses of prostitution on North Side closed by, 504; medical examination of prostitutes recommended by, 503; minors protected from prostitution by activities of, 504; number of houses of prostitution disclosed by survey of, 503; organized, 502; personnel of, 502; rules for police in dealing with prostitution laid down by, 503, 504; statistical excerpts from report of, 507-509 Moravia, 63, 65 Morin, J. M., 325 Mortality statistics— Comparison of, in river wards and East End, 23, 24. See also Death rates Mortar mixers— Unionism among, 120; wages for day labor, 120 Mother-tongue statistics. See Population Motormen. See Street railway employes Mt. Alto, 11 Municipal civil service law, 310 Municipal hospital— For tuberculosis, 11; no general, in 1914, 12 Municipal lodging houses, 340, 347, 348; ordinance providing for, vetoed by Mayor Magee, 346 Municipal ownership— Linemen favor, 156 Municipal progress— Compared with industrial, 7, 8 Municipal prosperity— Cramped by housing shortage, 22 Municipal Research, Bureau of. See Bureau of Municipal Research, New York Municipality— Improvement of working conditions through, 258; operating effici- ency of, 16; social bookkeeping of, 16. See Community Museum of safety appliances— And photographs of improved housing and working conditions, 494 Muzhiks. See Russian Naomi Mine, 176 National aspect— Of underworld, 324, 326; of Yeggs, 326, 330, 33 L 332 National Biscuit Company, 135, 187 National Child Labor Committee, 213 National Council of Industrial Safety, 445 National Croatian Society— Report of, showing number of fatal and disabling work-accidents and deaths from tuberculosis among members, 73, 74 National Erectors’ Association, 146, 150, 151, 152, 153, 187; “principles and working rules” of, 150,151 National Founders’ Association, 142 National Lead and Oil Company, 249 National Metal Trades Association, 140, 141. See also Manufacturers’ Association 0} Pittsburgh National mines, 178 National Mining Company, 172 National Slovak Society, 56 National Tube Company, 44, 201, 225, 227, 233, 238, 245, 246, 249, 271, 272, 295 Nebraska— Closing hour for women and girls in, 214 Negro— Ability of, 108; as an industrial factor, 108, 109; percentage of,INDEX population, 33; percentage of, teamsters, 121, plasterers, non-union, 160 Negro population— By age and sex, (Table) 102; excess of males in, 103; small proportion of aged persons in, 103; small proportion of children in, 103, 108 Negro prostitutes, 355, 356 Negro steel workers— Ages of, (Table) 97; and Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, 105; and Associated Brotherhood of Iron and Steel Heaters, 106; and Iron and Steel Roll Hands’ Union, 106; and Sons of Vulcan, 105, 106; and the union problem, 107; and the unions, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108; attitude of white union men toward union, 106, 107; attitude toward President Roosevelt’s action at Brownsville, 107; attitude toward socialism, 107, 108; attitude toward unionism, 104, 106, 107, 108; birthplaces of, 98; character and quality of work of, 105; children of, 101,102,103,108; church life of, 104; clothing of, 101; community life of, 103-105; conjugal condition of, 102; connection with unions unsatisfactory, 105, 106, 107; drinking among, 104; earnings, 100, 101; earnings, average daily, (Table) 101; education of, 98; food of, iox; farmers’ employment of, 98; housing of, 101; in Black Diamond Mill, 106, 428, 429; in Clark Mills of the Carnegie Steel Company, 96, 106, 107, 428, 429; in Homestead, 106, 428, 429; in non-union mills only, 106; insurance carried by, 103; last attempt to unionize, 107; no labor union among, 104; output of mill not limited because of, 108; per cent of, 96; Pittsburgh’s debt to the South for, 109; politics of, 107; positions held by, 96; prosperity of, 108; rents paid by, 101; savings of, 103; secret societies of, 103; strikebreakers, 428, 429; union white men refused to work with union, at Beaver Falls, 106; working under Negroes, 108; working up from unskilled labor, 99; working with white men, 104, 105, 108; years in city employ, 429, of employment in mill work of, no, (Table) 97, 98 Negro SteelWorkers, One Hundred, 96-109 Negroes, 20, 28, 54, 96-109, 121, 160, 280, 283, 331, 341, 35o, 35U 355, 356, 360, 368; as property owners, 431, 432; business enterprises of, 429, 430, 431; crime among, 435; in Moorhead Mill, 428,429; in the church, 43 2,433; industrial school needs of, 434; social and civic needs of, 435, 436; social clubs and homes for, 433; unionism among, 428; Young Men’s Christian Association for, opened, 436. See also Avery College Trade School Negroes of Pittsburgh, The, 424-436 Nernst Lamp Company, 243, 244 Newark, 4 New Haven— Typhoid death rate in, 17 New Jersey— Argument for, system of workingmen’s compensation, 200 “New Orleans Ray,” 331 New York— Arrests in, 387; attempt to reform police force, 309, 310; child labor legislation in, 207; child labor statute compared with Pennsylvania law, 204; closing hour for women and girls in, 214; co-operation in garment trades in, 273, 274; fire protection in, 244; labor laws and enforcement, 215; municipal lodging houses, 347; official transcript of birth certificates or religious records, methods employed by, in checking child labor, 209; psychopathic pavilions in, 388; system of reporting work-accidents in, 197; “turning point” for “wireless wire tapping,” 314, 315 New York Bureau of Municipal Research. See Bureau of Municipal Research New York Central lines. See Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad New York mendicancy squad, 338, 339, 389, 390 556INDEX New York State Factory Investigating Commission, 244 Newsboy’s lodging houses, 348 Non-support cases. See Probation officer North, Lila Ver Planck, 9, 52, 58, 213 Nurses— Association of, in 1914, 12; lack of co-ordination between associations of, 11 ; visiting, 12, 259 Occupational danger— Of Sharpsburg children in metal trades, iron mills, 292, in metal trades, shovel factory, 293, in metal trades, tube mill, 294, 295; opportunity of factory inspector to reduce, 198, 199. See also Work-accidents Occupational disease act, 451, 452. See also Safeguarding employes Occupations— Injurious, 198; injurious effects from overwork in certain, 198 Officials— Strength of underworld through venal alliances of, 314, 315, 316 Ohio— Labor laws and enforcement, 215; law regulating hours of work for girls, 202 Ohio banker— “Trimmed” by underworld, 314 Oil operator— “Trimmed” by underworld, 314, 3i5 Olcott, Francis J., n, 52 “ Old Age at Forty”— Report of stockholders’ committee, United States Steel Corporation, on statement contained in article entitled, 395-405 “ Old Baldy,” 331 Old Believers. See Russians Oliver, Mrs. Henry W., 235 Oliver Steel Works, 45, 235, 453 Open shop. See Unionism Operating efficiency— Importance of, 217; men greater factor than mechanical equipment in obtaining, 217, 226, 239, 267 Organized labor. See Unionism Orient— American prostitutes in the, 352 Oseroff, Abraham, 406-413 Output— Bonus system designed to increase, 268, 269; efforts for increased, 274; not limited because of Negro steel workers, 108; of allied foundry and machine shops, 115; of industries, 115, 442. See also Tonnage Overbrook— Blind beggars from, 3, 337, 338 Overcrowding— Cases cited of, 20; in Homestead, 23. See also Houses Overtime, 27, 28, 39, 40, 68, 74, 122, 123,126,130, 131, 134,137, 141, 143, 144, 148, 149,151, 152, 153,154, 155, 158,159,160,161, 164,166, 173,178, 184, 185, 201, 202, 204, 292, 293. See also Sunday work Overwork— Effect of, on citizenship, family life, and morals, 27, 28, 29, on restlessness of labor, 117; in United States Steel Corporation, 395-399; injurious effects of, 198, hours worked by 125 girls showing, (Table) 493 Padrone— Standard Oil Company’s contract with Americanized, 120; wages under Americanized, 120 Painters, decorators, and paper-hangers, 159, 160; apprenticeship of, 160; employers’ agreement with, 159,160; hours of, 159,160; seasonal unemployment of, 160; unionism among, 159, 160; wages of, 145, 159, 160 557INDEX Painter’s Row— Demolished, 21 Palmer, L. R., 248, 445 Panic of 1907-08, 118, 119, 133, 135, 141, 142, 144, 146, 147, 150, 166 Parish schools. See Schools, parish Parole law. See Probation Patriarch of Constantinople— Slavs subject to, 5 7 Pattern makers, 143; hours of, 143; number of, 143; unionism among, 143; wages of, 143 Pattern Makers’ League, 143 Paulson Brothers, 454 Pennsville— Vacation house, 453 Pennsylvania— Child Labor Association, 215; Child Labor Committee, 216; child labor legislation in, 207; Manufacturers’ Association, 445 Pennsylvania Railroad, 68, 125, 321, 333; machinists’ strike, 142 Pennsylvania Shop Employes’ Association, 142 Pensions— At Essen, 6; United States Steel Corporation service requirements for, reduced in 1913, 498, stockholders’ report on, 402, 403; Westinghouse Air Brake Company, 485-491 Pensions and relief— Employes’ development through, 263-266 Perkins, George W., 267, 268 Philadelphia— Child labor law compared with New York, 204; municipal lodging houses, 347 Physical examination— Effect on police of, of applicants, 375. See also Employes, recruiting of Physical possibilities— Of immigrant wage-earners, 34, 60 558 Piece work— Bricklayers and masons, 148; elevator constructors, 158; immigrants, 42; molders, 143; printers, 133; sheet metal workers, 165; tile helpers and layers, 166; stockholders’ report United States Steel Corporation on, 399, 400 Piekarski, Attorney Frank A., 57 Pierce, Lyman L., 414 Pig iron. See Iron Pimps. See Prostitution Pinkertons— Description of Yeggs by, 326 Pitcairn— Housing conditions in, 22 Pittsburgh: An Interpretation of Its Growth, 8 Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, 221, 222, 224, 226, 237, 248 Pittsburgh-Buffalo Coal Company, 170, 174, 176, 264, 266. See also Marianna Pittsburgh Coal Company, 176 Pittsburgh Construction Company, 150 Pittsburgh District— Definition of term, 116 Pittsburgh exhibit— Death calendar of the, 25 Pittsburgh Railways Company, 119, 120, 123, 124-128, 230, 264 Pittsburgh Steel Construction Company, 44, 150 Pittsburgh Tuberculosis League, 11 Pittsburgh Valve and Construction Company, 238 Planning— Large scale, 9 Plant, improvements in— Not generally directed toward betterment of conditions for employe, 274INDEX Plant, physical equipment of— Act passed in 1913 affecting, 451, 452; affected by brewery workers’ 1914 trade agreement, 454; as it affects the comfort and convenience of employes, 223-240, 274; cleanliness, 232-236, 274; drinking water, 226-228, 274, analysis of, 228, and common cup as centers of danger, 228, bucket brigade system, 227, distributing system in American Steel and Wire Company, 227, distributing system in Carnegie mills, 226, 227, distributing system in Homestead mills, 228, distributing system in National Tube Company, 227, distributing system in United Engineering and Foundry Company, 226, 227, filtered and distributed through sanitary fountains, 227, from springs and driven wells, 227, 228; facilities for changing and drying clothing, 231, 232; facilities for controlling temperature, 224, 225, in Brace Brothers’ Laundry, 225, in Central District Telephone Company, 225, in laundries, 225, in McCreery’s department store, 225, in National Tube Company, 225, in office building of H. K. Porter Company, 225, in Reymer Candy Factory, 225, in Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company, 2 25, in Westinghouse Foundry at Trafford City, 225; heating facilities, 224, 225; heating facilities in foundries, 2 24; insanitary privy vaults, 238, 239, of the United States Glass Company, 239; light, 223, 224, artificial, 223, at H. J. Heinz Company’s factory, 224, clean windows, 223, effect of unequal, on health, 224, in food factories, 224, in new buildings, 223, in old buildings, 223, “ white' blacksmith shop” of Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, 224, white-washed walls, 223; lockers, 231, 232, 274; lockers for men in machine shops, 232, metal, in Armstrong Cork Works, 232; lunch facilities, 228-229, 274, as a rival to nearby saloons, 229, 230, in administrative buildings but not in works, 229, in H. J. Heinz Company, 229, in Mesta Machine Company, 229, in United States Glass Company, 229, in Westing-house Electric and Manufacturing Company, 228, 229; recent improve- ments in, by United States Steel Corporation, 496,497; rest and emergency folding cots in wash room of the Armstrong Cork Company, 231, 232, of Brace Brothers’ Laundry, 232, of Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, 231; rest, 230, 231; rest and emergency rooms, 231,232, in Central District Telephone Company, 231, 259, in H. J. Heinz Company, 231, in McCreery’s department store, 231; rest, backless stools affording no, 230, 231; rest for women at work in American Sheet and Tin Plate Company, 230, in Armstrong Cork Works, 230, in H. J. Heinz factory, 230, 231, in Jenkinson cigar factory, 230, 231, in McCreery’s department store, 231, in Rauh Brothers’ clothing factory, 230, in United States Glass Company, 230, 232; rest, no seats provided for, 230; rest stools for motormen in Pittsburgh Railway Company, 230; studied by bureau of safety, relief, sanitation and welfare in United States Steel Corporation, 232,494-498; ventilation, 225, 226, no legislation regulating, 226, system of Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, 226; washing facilities, 232-236, 274, at Marianna, 262, bath houses near Oliver works, 235, condition of, in Armstrong Cork Works, 234, essentials of adequate, 234, hot water, 234, 274, in Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company 233, 235, in Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company compared with those of Eastern competitor, 235, inadequate, 232, 233, installation of, ordered by factory inspection department under law of 1911, 235, not provided by A. Garrison Foundry Company, 233, not provided by Allegheny County Light Company, 233, not provided by Brown and Company, 233, not provided by Carnegie steel mills, 233, not provided by Jones and Laughlin Company, 233, not provided by United Glass Company, 233, pools, 235, 236, pools, danger of transmitting disease through, 236, pools, frequency of changing water in, 236, pools in Carnegie library at Braddock, Duquesne, and Homestead, 236, pools in H. J. Heinz Company,INDEX 236, pools in Lawrence Park, 236, pools in McKeesport recreation grounds, 236, pools in Turkish Bath Natatorium, 236, pools in Westing-house Air Brake Company, 236, pools in West Park, 236, pools, number of bathers in, 236, shower baths, 235, shower baths not used by men, 235, towels and soap, 233, 234, 235, 274, towels, roller, 234, wash bowls, 233, 234, washing in the boshes, 232; water-closets, 236-240, 274, apparent method pursued by employers in regard to, 236, economy of providing an attendant to care for, 237, in American Sheet and Tin Plate Company, 238, in American Steel and Wire Company, 238, in Carnegie Mills, 237, in H. K. Porter Locomotive Shops, 237, in Mesta Machine Company, 238, in National Tube Company, 238, in Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad shops, 237, in Pittsburgh Valve and Construction Company, 238, in Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company, 239, 240, in United Engineering and Foundry Company, 238, in Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, 238, loafing in, 237, segregation of men and boys, 238. See also Atmospheric conditions; Working conditions Plants— “Work-out” preparatory to abandonment, 275, 277 Plasterers, 160, 161; apprenticeship of, 161 ; employers’ agreement with, 161; Negro, non-union, 160; racial make-up, 160; seasonal unemployment of, 145, 161 ; unionism among, 146,160,161; wages of, 145,146,161; working without specifications prohibited by union, 161 Playground— And camp work of Young Men’s Christian Association, 417, 418 Playground Association May festivals, 60 Playgrounds— For Sharpsburg children lacking, 303; in mill neighborhoods, 259; school, lacking, 283, 284 Plumbers, 161-163; apprenticeship of, 145, 162; employers’ agreement with, 161, 162; hours of, 146, 161, 162; racial make-up of, 161; strike in 1903, 162; unionism among, 146, 147, 161, 162; wages affected by unionism during panic of 1907-08, 147; wages of, 147, 162 Plymouth— Ages of children in, leaving school in 1907, 208 Pneumonia— In river wards and East End, 24 Polacks, 319 Poles, 35, 37, 40, 44, 53, 55, 56, 57, 66, 76, 82, 136, 283, 284, 298, 321, 351, 355 Police— Accessories to crime, 309; appointments, 521; bodies on call to assist, in preserving law and order, 311,312; changing administrations requiring of, divergent policies of social control, 308; confidence of, in new administration, 311 ; co-operation of, needed by Morals Bureau, 526; courts and the, 375-380; criminal vocabulary of, 374, 375f criminals working upon business basis with local, 309, 370; criticism of, 308, 309; demoralization of, by double standard of law and enforcement, 370, 371; desirability of courses on elemental social ethics and social needs for, 375 ; detective bureau brought under control of superintendent of, 311 ; detective chief discharged, 311 ; detective division of, 523, 524, 525; development of, neglected, 384; division of criminal identification, 525; effect of extension of civil service on, 310, 311, 375; effect of physical examination of applicants on, 375; effect of political reform on, 370; effect of reform administration on rank and file of, 312, 370; effect of underworld alliances on, 370; efficiency and self-respect of, under new leadership, 310; elimination of organized crime by, 384, 385; enforcement by, of outward decency, 310, of Sunday observance laws on saloons and hotels, 310; face outward taboo and secret toleration of com- 560INDEX mercialized prostitution, 371; graft in protecting prostitution, 361, handling of habitual criminals by, under reform régime, 312; inadequacy of, records and reports, 526; influence of, 308; lack of information fundamental defect of, administration, 517; lessening the number of arrests, 387; New York’s attempt to reform, 309, 310; no buying protection that protected during reform administration, 312, 315; number on roster of, 310, 311 ; opportunity for social, work, 338, 384, 385; opportunity of, for prevention of crime, 383, 384; organization of, 311; part of social and governmental*machinery, 369; pensions, 523; “percentage jobs” of crime, 309; Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Force, 310-312; Pittsburgh under old, control a mine for the cunning criminal, 310; Pittsburgh under reform administration no place for “wireless wire tapping,” 315; policy of, in dealing with organized crime and individual offenders, 385; political reform and the, 369-370; potentialities of, for good or evil, 308; presenting “deadwall” against reforms from without, 309; pressure on, to relax under reform administration, 312; problem of social control in hands of, 308; promotions, 522; public policy and the, 370-373; publicity and the, 373-375; recommendation that, be required to report suspicious places, 526; regeneration of, from the top, 309; reorganization plan recommended by New York Bureau of Municipal Research, 517; report by New York Bureau of Research on, 311, 516-526; repression under reform, 312, 313; salaries of, 311; selfprotection of, from scheming politicians and bureaucrats posing as reformers, 309; social, 366-369, responsibility of, 386, compared with almshouse, 390; social make-up of, 374; socialization of, 375; suppression of vice by, 525, 526; systematic grafting by, stopped under reform administration, 312; tenure of office of, 310; test of efficiency of, 309, 366, 369; Thomas McQuaide, 311; tolerate raids by outside gun mobs, 322; training school for, recommended by New York Bureau of Municipal Re- 36* search, 521; trials of delinquent, 522, 523. See also Courts, magistrates Crime; Repeaters Police station— Lodgers, study of, recommended, 526; lodging at, 340, 347, 526; padded cell, 388, 520, 521. See Lodgings Police, The, An Organism, 308-313 Policeman, ex---- As superintendent of hospital for insane, 12 Polish National Alliance, 56 Political— Factory inspectors, appointees, 191; power of underworld, 314, 315, 316, 322, 323, 324, 325, 370; reform and the police, 369, 370 Politicians— Graft in protecting prostitution, 361; self-protection of police from, 309 Politics— Immigrant wage-earners in, 50, 56, 57; of Negro Steel workers, 107; wages of day labor affected by, 120, 121 Poor Man’s Tavern, 344 Poor, Society for the Improvement of the, 55 Population, 13, 115, 116; of Austrian, Hungarian, Italian, and Russian nativity, 1900 and 1910, (Table) 35; increase in, 35; mother-tongue statistics, (Table) 32, 35; percentage of foreign born, 33, 34, 35; percentage of Negro, 33; racial make-up of, (Table) 35; Sharpsburg, 281. See also Negro population Porter Company, H.K., 222, 225, 237, 267 Porter, H. F. J., 21, 27, 43, 116, 119, 200, 201, 205, 217-278 Postal Savings Deposits and Depositors by Race and Country of Birth of Depositors, (Table) 54 Presbyterian Board of Publication, United, 454 561INDEX Presbyterian Book Store, 454 Pressed Steel Car Company, 42, 59,168, 219,334,418 Prevention of accidents. See Safeguarding employes; Work-accident prevention Prevention of crime. See Crime Pribich, 63 Priests. See Wage-earners, immigrant Principles of Sanitary Science and Public Health— By Wm. T. Sedgwick, 234 Printers, 132-134; advantages of, employed on newspapers, 129, 130, 133; agreement of 1914, 133, I34J apprenticeship of, 134; effect of panic of 1907-08 on, 133; employers’ agreement with, 133, 134; hours of, 133, 184; piece work, 133; strike in 1907, 132, 133; unionism among, 132, 133, 186; wages of, 133, 134, 183, 184 Privy vaults. See Vaults Probation— Adult parole law of 1911, 380, 381; beginnings of, 380-383; constructive, work needed, 382; reconstructing the potential citizen through, 389 Probation officer— Constructive work of, 389; in Court of Quarter Sessions, 381; nonsupport cases handled by, 381; opportunity of, for social work, 384; plea of, for assistance to carry probation into community, 382; prisoners from jail and workhouse paroled to, 381 Probationers— Payments for costs and restitution made in instalments by, 381 Professions— Immigrants in the, 53 Profit on investment— Early owners satisfied with fair, 275 Profit sharing— Development of employes through, 266, 267 Proof of age. See Child labor law Property depreciation— In neighborhoods occupied by Slavs, 46 Property owners— Immigrant wage-earners as, 53, 59 Prosperity— Of immigrant wage-earners, 53, 54, 55, 59 Prostitutes— Ages of, at entrance, 508, at time of investigation, 509; average weekly income of, 508; birthplaces of, 507; “body snatchers,” 357, among Negro, 355; business of fathers of, 508, 509; cadets, professional recruiters of girls to, 364; colored girls from the South, 355, 356; families of, 508; fifty-cent houses of, 351; Gertrude Hayes murdered in Hong Kong, 352, 358; medical examination of, recommended by Morals Efficiency Commission, 503, 504; number of years, 491, had been in business, 509; previous occupations and wages of, 507; religious belief of, 508; scientific treatment of, 388; suicides among, 357; tuberculosis and the Negro, 355, 356; typical Negro, in Hill District, 355, 356 Prostitution, 348-365; adequate wages for girls as an aid in eradicating commercialized, 364, 507; American girls in houses of, in Shanghai, 353; appointments and entertainments at houses of, 352; beneficial results of defined districts for, 350; business proposition, 359, 360; business ramifications back of, shown by case of “Maxey the Mixer,” 359; cadets and the brass check system, 360; cadets arrested for vagrancy under reform administration, 362; cadets driven from city under reform administration, 312; cadets or pimps, 360; capitalizing law-breaking and selling protection, 359; Chicago Vice Commission’s recommendations concerning agencies to deal with, 383; clean centers of recreation as an aid in eradicating commercialized, 363, 364; commercialized, an educational center in unnatural vices, 364, 365, catering to esthetic sense, 363, Pittsburgh center for, 348, recreation, 363, 364; distribution in community of 562INDEX proceeds from, 358; duty of unionism in stamping out, 349; economic pressure a source of, 353, 507; education as a cure for, 373, 504; effect of prohibiting sale of liquor in houses of, 312, 358, 359, 361, 362; efforts of American cities to cope with, sporadic, 371; Federal Immigration Commission exposed international aspects of, 353; five-dollar houses of, 351; houses of, frequenting of, decreased under activities of Morals Efficiency Commission, 504, on North Side closed May, 1913, 504; removal from car lines under reform administration, 312; inadequacy of fine in dealing with, 387; increasing extent of, 365 ; industrial position of patrons of houses of, 351; legislative and executive powers involved in elimination of, 372, 373; minors protected from, by Morals Efficiency Commission’s activities, 504; moral jeopardy of shops leading to, 353, 354; Negresses working as maids, cooks, or laundresses in houses of, one source of Negro prostitution, 355; not single active dominant power in underworld, 361; number of houses of, 350, disclosed by survey of Morals Efficiency Commission, 503; owners of property used for purposes of, 359; penal laws affecting, and municipal enforcement, 359; police and politicians’ graft in protecting, 361; police face problem of outward taboo and secret toleration of, 371; power to blackmail keepers of houses of, curtailed under reform administration, 361; profits, 358, 359; profits from sale of liquor in houses of, 358, 359; profits of commercialized, depend on victimizing boyhood as well as girlhood, 363; prosecutions under Mann act, 353; public policy in dealing with, 501, five distinct stages of, in Pittsburgh, 501, 502, sixth stage of, morals bureau, 505; publicity needed to eliminate, 373 ; racial makeup of active promoters in business of, 359) 3^0, of inmates of houses of, 351, of patrons of houses of, 351, 355; reform administration tolerated, in defined districts, 361; regulations governing houses of, under reform administration, 361, 371; repression of, not an adequate policy, 363; re- 563 striction, 361, 362; rules laid down by Morals Efficiency Commission looking to ultimate elimination of, 371, 372, 503, 504; Saturday night in, district under reform administration, 363; situation of, districts, 349, 350; social aspect of, 365; social situation leading to, 348, 349; source of recruits to, 353, 369; sources of, international, 352, 353; ten- and fifteen-dollar houses of, 351 ; the street walk-er) 357) 358; twenty-five-cent houses of, 351; two- and one-dollar houses of, 351; two extremes in the social scale of, 358, 365; types of houses, 351-352; under Mayor Guthrie’s administration, 501, 502, Mayor Magee’s administration, 362, 502; venereal diseases spread by, 365 ; vice and disease, 364, 365; Voters’ League leaders in fight against, 502; wages for men adequate to establish home as an aid in eradicating commercialized, 364; woman in the alley, the, 356, 357; women of the underworld, 352, 353; world-wide aspects of, 352. See also Morals Bureau; Morals Efficiency Commission Protection— Benefits from, 114. See Tariff Protestant mission work— Among Slavs and Italians, 57 Providence Mission, 345 Psychopathic pavilions— In New York, 388 Public policy— And the police, 370-373 Public safety. See Morals, Bureau of Public Publicity— And the police, 373-375 Pullman car shops in Chicago, 327 “Q—,” lodging-house keeper, 341, 342, 345 Race studies, 33-109 Racial antipathies— Effect on unionism of, among immigrant wage-earners, 40, 59; sunk in strike of Westinghouse employes, 30INDEX Racial consciousness— Of immigrant wage-earners, 56 Racial make-up— Bakers, 135; inmates, houses of prostitution, 351; metal trades, 139; mine workers, 178; mother-tongue statistics, 35; patrons of houses of prostitution, 351, 355; plasterers, 160; plumbers, 161; population, 32, 35; promoters in business of prostitution, 359,360; railway employes, 125; Sharpsburg inhabitants, 280; Sharps-burg schools, 283, 284; steel workers, 178; teamsters, 121. See also Population, percentage of foreign born Railroad. See Railway Railroad car shops— Output of, 115 Railroad facilities— Supplementing river transportation, 114 Railroad rebates— Fostered by steel industry, 276 Railroads— Deaths due to operation of, 25 Railway— Character of, employes, 125; duties of, employes, 124, 125; employes, 124-128; hours restricted by federal legislation, 126, 127, 128; number of, employes, 124, 125; racial make-up of, employes, 125; unionism among, 29, 125, 128; wages, day labor on, 119, 120; wages on, 125, 126, 127, 128. See also Street rail- way Rauh Brothers* Clothing Factory, 230, 259 Rea, Mrs., 235 Real estate man— Leader in underworld posing as, 3i4 Rebates. See Railroad rebates Recidivists. See Crime Recreation— Clean centers of, as means of eradicating prostitution, 363, 364; community should provide clean, for immigrant wage-earners, 50, 60; Sharpsburg’s facilities for, 303 Recruiting employes, 218-223 “Red McHugh,” 388 Reed, Anna, 419-423 Reform administration— A period of abeyance throughout the underworld, 362; antagonism of underworld to, 313; bunco games in hotels checked under, 312; cadets of prostitutes arrested for vagrancy under, 362; cadets of prostitution driven from city under, 312; city council antagonistic to, 313; confidence of police in, 311; council-manic graft under, 313; district attorney’s office antagonistic to, 313; effect of, on police alliances, 370; effect of, on rank and file of police, 312, on underworld, 307, 313, 321, 322, 323, 325, 326; efficiency and self-respect of police under, 310; gambling houses and pool rooms closed under, 312; handling of habitual criminals by police under, 312; houses of prostitution removed from car lines under, 312; intermunicipal alliances of underworld held in abeyance during, 325,326; limited activities of underworld under, 3 21 ; liquor law strictly enforced under, 312; no buying protection from police during, 312, 315; Pittsburgh no place for “wireless wire tapping” under, 315; power to blackmail keepers of houses of prostitution curtailed under, 361; pressure on police under, to relax, 312; regulations governing houses of prostitution under, 361; repression under, 312, 313; Saturday night in prostitution district under, 363; systematic grafting by police stopped under, 312; “ take-a-chance” men under, 322, 323; tolerated prostitution in defined districts, 361 Reforms— Underworld potential force against, 307 Rehabilitation— After panic of 1907-08, 119INDEX Relief— Report of stockholder?’ committeee United States Steel Corporation on, plan, 402; voluntary accident, 498; Westinghouse Air Brake Company, department, 468-484 Relief and pensions— Employes’ development through, 263-266. See also Bureau of Safety, Relief, Sanitation and Welfare Religious element— In immigrant wage-earners, 57, 58,59 Rents— At Marianna, 262; discrimination against immigration in price of, 45, 46, 55; in Essen, 6; in Midland, 411; paid by mine workers, 174; paid by Negro steel workers, 101; regulated by number of boarders, 46 Repeaters— Records of, 510-515; scientific treatment of, 388, 389 Repression of the men— Report of stockholders’ committee United States Steel Corporation on, 400 Rescue Mission, 345, 346 Resources— Natural, 113, 114 Rest and emergency rooms— In industrial plants, 231, 232. See also Plants, physical equipment of Rest facilities— In industrial plants, 230-232. See also Plant, physical equipment of Restlessness of labor. See Labor Retail clerks, 130-132; employers’ agreement with, 130, 131; hours of, 129, 130, 131, 132, 184; Knights of Labor able to shorten hours of, 129; legislation affecting hours of, 132, 214, 260; legislation interference to prevent excessive hours of female, 184; stores employing, on Consumers’ League “white list,” 132; strike of, in 1905, 131 ; unionism among, 129, 130,131,132; wages of, 130,131,132, 182,185 Retail Clerks* International Protective Association. See American Federation of Labor Retail stores— Labor day not a holiday in, in 1908,132 “Rev.” R—, 343, 344 Reverse Side, The, 305-391; beggars, 336-339; lodging houses, 339-348; police, an organism, 308-313; prostitution, 348-365; the underworld, 313, 326; Yeggs, 326-335 Reymer Candy Company, 201, 225, 266,267 Rhenish-W estphalia, 3 Rhodes, Dr. Frederick A., 502 Rice, W. C., 21, 410-413 Ridgway, 310 Riots of 1877, 113 Riter-Conley Manufacturing Company, 150 River district. See Water shed River improvements— Aid to transportation, 114; by government, 114; by private capital, 114 River wards— Comparison of mortality statistics in, and East End, 23, 24 Rivermen, 122, 123; drunkenness among, 122; hours of, 122; strike in 1907, 122, 123; unionism among, 122, 123, 128; wages of, 122, 182 Rivermen’s lodging houses, 344 “Riverside Slim,” 331 Roberts, Peter, 28, 33-60, 62, 71, 73, 261, 378, 414 Roderick, James, 177 Roman Catholic parish schools. See Schools, parish Roman Catholic wage-earners, 57 Roofers. See Sheet metal workers; Slate and tile roofers 565INDEX Roosevelt, President— Attitude of Negroes toward, action at Brownsville, 107 Roumanians, 35 Russelltown, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90 Russia, 92 Russia in the Pittsburgh District— Mediaeval, 78-95; modem, 96 Russian “muzhiks,” 79, 91 Russians, 4, 34, 40, 42, 44, 47, 48, 55, 57, 62, 63, 66, 77, 78-95, 355, 357-See also Slavs Russians, Old Believers— American’s snapshot knowledge of, 79; appearance of, 81, 82; bathing habits of, 88; boarders and keepers, 87, 88; converting, to American citizenship, 94, 95; desirability of, as citizens, 93, 94; drinking among, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, 91, 94; “efficiency” of, 91, 93; fight for cars, 91; heater-boss, 91, 92; hospitality of, 80, 86, 87, 89, 90; in Cokeburgh, 83, 84, 85, 86; in Essen, No. 1, 79; in Russelltown, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90; in Russia, 92; in Siberia, 92; in the steel mills, 92, 93; industry of, 91; knowledge of English, 82; lack of desire to become American citizens among, 94, 95; living pictures of, 78, 79; lodging houses, 87, 88; non-unionism among, 93; photographing the, 90; priests, 93; self-dependency of, 93; sketch of, and their religion, 80, 81, 82, 83; strikebreakers, 93; success among, 91, 92; traits of, as seen by Texan cowboy, 89, 90; women, 85 Ruthenians, 35, 37, 42, 44, 45, 46, 53, 55, 64, 71, 75 Sadowski, Dr. Leon, 48 Safeguarding employes against— Accident and disease, 240-255, 274; alcoholism, 250-253, 275, by improving working and social conditions, 252, 253, by paying a bonus for punctuality and regularity, 251; fatigue, 253, 254, by shortened time schedule, 254, by the “preventive clinic,” 254, 255, in telephone service, 566 254; fire, 240-245, at the Armstrong Cork Company, 242, at the Nernst-Lamp Company, 242, 244, by extinguishers, 242, by fire-escapes, 241, 242, 244, by the fire brigade, 242, 243, by the fire drill, 241, 242, 243, 244, by the fire wall, 244, 245, in the steel mills, 29, 240, the alarm, 242, 243; occupational diseases, 248-253, 274, 275, by American Steel and Wire Company 248, by making use of wash and lunch rooms obligatory, 249, by National Lead and Oil Company, 249, by National Tube Company, 249, by Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad Company, 248, by Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company, 249, 250, by United States Steel Corporation, 252, caused by dust, 201, 249, 250, 275, caused by poisons, dangerous fumes, etc., 248, 249, 252; tuberculosis, 250, in Heinz factory, 250, in Massachusetts, 250 Safeguarding employes— Moral responsibility of manager for, 248; through the shop clinic, 254, 255, in Armstrong Cork Company, 255, in Central District Telephone Company, 255, in Heinz Company, 255. See also Work-accident prevention Safeguarding injured employes— At Carnegie Steel Mills, 12, 246, 247, 455-480; at Jones and Laughlin Mills, 248; at Mesta Machine Company, 248; at United States Steel Corporation, 29, 246, 247; by expert study of mill injuries, 247; by immediate antiseptic treatment, 246; by local emergency hospitals and city hospital care, 246, 247; by medical supervision after re-employment, 247; by preventing premature reemployment, 247; by surgical organization of Carnegie Steel Company, 12, 455-460; results from casualties less serious by, 247; trivial arrangements for, in many shops and factories, 247, 248 Safety appliances— And hospital care, 245-248; at Carnegie Steel Company, 455; at Marianna, 262; museum of, 494. See also Safeguarding employes; Work-accident preventionINDEX Safety committee— Of National Tube Company, 245, 246; of United States Steel Corporation, 29, 43, 232, 245, 494-498, report of stockholders’ committee, 401. See also Bureau of Safety Safety educational campaign, 495, 496 Safety expert— Of Jones and Laughlin Company, 248; of National Tube Company, 245 Safety organization— Of the United States Steel Corporation, 494, 495 Safety provisions in the United States Steel Corporation, 29, 245. See also Safety Committee Safety, public. See Morals, Bureau of Public Safety specifications— Code of standard, 246 St. Joseph’s Parochial School, 284, 285, 286 St. Louis— Death rate, 14 St. Mary’s Parochial School, 284, 285 St. Petersburg, 65 Salaries— Police, 311 Salespeople. See Retail clerks Salespeople’s Assembly No. 4907. See Knights of Labor Salvation Army, 343, 345; Industrial Home, 345; Shelter, 345 Sanitary control— Forward movements in, 20 Sanitary facilities— In Essen, 5, 6 Sanitary inspection force— Jurisdiction of, 8, 9 Sanitary neglect. See Housing, nonenforcement of, laws Sanitary standards— In brewery workers’ 1914 trade agreement, 138, 258 Sanitary work— In United States Steel Corporation, 496 Sanitation. See Bureau of Safety Sanitation and welfare— Report of stockholders’ committee United States Steel Corporation on, 403 Savings— Of immigrant wage-earners, 53, 54, 55, 59 School— Camp, for immigrant wage-earners, 51, 52; children leaving, for work, 208; evening, courses at Carnegie Technical Schools, 51; industrial, for Negroes, 434, 435; legislation enabling, authorities to open classes for adult immigrants, 52; medical inspection in, a forward step, 16; ward, system in Baltimore, 9, system in Boston, 9, system in Chicago, 9, system in Cleveland, 9 School authorities— Unconcern of, whether children are at school or work, 211 School board system, centralized— Work accomplished by, in one year, 10 School board system, sub-district— Effect of, on housing and equipment, 10 School census, 285, 286; hodge-podge scheme of taking, 210; legislation concerning, 213 School law— Provision in, permitting abridgment of school attendance, 212 School officials— Educational test of new child labor law in hands of, 211 School records— Lack of uniformity in, 285 School System, The New, 10, 52 567INDEX School truancy— Inadequacy of, staff, 211 Schools— No compulsory enrollment in Sharpsburg, 285, 286; Pittsburgh, 9; truancy in Sharpsburg, 285, 286, 287, 289, 290, 291, 297, 299 Schools, evening— For immigrant wage-earners lacking, 51; in Sharpsburg, 303; made integral part of educational system in 1912, 52 Schools, parish— Attendance in Sharpsburg, 284; children vaccinated in Sharpsburg, 284; erected and maintained by immigrant wage-earners, 58; gymnasiums in Sharpsburg, lacking, 284; housing Sharpsburg, 284; in Sharpsburg, 284, 285; lack of records of children working, 284; libraries in Sharpsburg, 285; medical inspection in Sharpsburg, 284; no reports of contagious cases to, from Sharpsburg board of health, 284; not inspected by board of health or city physician, 284; playgrounds, 284; racial make-up of Sharpsburg, 284; tuition fees in Sharpsburg, 284 Schools, public— Gymnasiums in Sharpsburg, lacking, 283; high school class in Sharpsburg, 283; houses in Sharpsburg, 283; housing Sharpsburg’s, 283; in Sharpsburg, 283, 284; lack of cooperation between factory inspector and, in Sharpsburg, 283, 284; lack of co-operation between medical authorities and, in Sharpsburg, 283; medical inspection in Sharpsburg, lacking, 283; Negroes in, 433, 434; number of pupils in Sharpsburg, 283; playgrounds, 283; racial make-up of, 283; Sharpsburg, board, 283 Scotch, 315 Scotch-Irish— Early settlers, 366 “ Scranton Jimmy,” 332, 333 Seasonal unemployment— Bricklayers, 145, 147; bridge and structural iron workers, 150; building trades, 145; masons, 145, 147; painters, decorators, and paperhangers, 160; plasterers, 145, 161; Sharpsburg children in glass-houses, 295, 299, 300; slate and tile roofers, 166 Sedgwick, Professor Wm. T., 234 Seibel, George, 502 Self-culture societies— Of immigrant wage-earners, 56 Semple, Mrs. Samuel, 445 Servia, 53 Servians, 35, 42, 44, 45, 46, 49, 55, 57 82 Sesquicentennial celebration, 60 Sessions of Trial Board secret, 370 Seven-day week and long turn— Report of stockholders’ committee United States Steel Corporation on, 395-398. See also Overwork; Sunday work Sewage disposal— System, 9; water-shed problem, 8,9 Sharpsburg: A Typical Waste of Childhood, 279-304 Sharpsburg— Child labor, an extravagant tool, 301,302; conservation of children unrecognized problem of, 304; Glass House Row, 282; homes of, 281-283; houses, number of, 281, shortage in, 281; housing conditions in, 23, 280, 281; industrial aspect of, 279, 280; lost children, 285-287; obligation of, to children unfulfilled, 303, 304; officials satisfied with industrial prosperity, 304; outside hydrants for family water supply, 282, in 1914, 283; outside privy vaults, 282, in 1914, 283; physical aspect of, 279; population, 281, character of, 280, racial make-up of, 280; recreative and amusement facilities of, 303; refusal of county poor relief physician to assist, 282; work places, 290, 291 Sharpsburg board of health— Inadequate medical care of poor by, 282, 283; incomplete records of,INDEX 282; lack of effort to safeguard health of people by, 282, 283; lax disinfection by, 282, 283; laxness of, in reporting to school authorities contagious cases among school children, 283,284 Sharpsburg children— Class in English for Italian, conducted by Protestant church, 302; club life for, lacking, 303; educational need, 303, 304; free night schools for, lacking, 303; immigrant, not admitted to Young Men’s Christian Association, 302; leisure hours of, 302-304; mental and emotional poverty of, 303; placed in industries as alternative of school for physically and mentally handicapped, 299; playgrounds for, lacking, 303; problem of meeting needs of, made more i difficult by day and night shifts, 304; public library for, lacking, 303; social need, 304; social work by Catholic churches for, 302, 303; vocational training need, 303, 304; Young Men’s Christian Association, as a social center for, 302, educational courses open to pay members only, 302 Sharpsburg city physician— Cases turned over to county poor relief physician by, 282; contagious diseases among children unreported by, 283 ; failure of, to report to board of health, 282; one in name only, 283; vaccination by, of children in parish schools, 284 Sharpsburg schools— Ages of 806 children in, (Table) 286; census of assessor of little value, 285, 286; German Lutheran, 284; lack of uniformity of records in, 285; night, 303; no compulsory enrollment in, 285, 286; parish, 284, 285, 286, age of children leaving, 284, 285, attendance, 284, children in, vaccinated by city physician, 284, course of study in, 284, 285, gymnasium in, lacking, 284, housing, 284, lack of records as to children working, 284, libraries in, 285, medical inspection in, lacking, 284, no report of contagious cases to, from board of health, 284, not inspected by board of health or city physician, 284, playgrounds, 284, 569 racial make-up of, 284, tuition fees, 284; public, 283, 284, gymnasiums lacking in, 283, high school classes, 283, hours, 283, housing, 283, lack of co-operation between school and medical authorities, 283, lack of cooperation between school authorities and factory inspectors, 293, medical inspection in, lacking, 283, no reports received by school authorities of children at work, 283, 284, number of pupils, 283, playgrounds, 283, racial make-up of, 283, reporting contagious cases in, lax, 283, school board, 283; truancy cases cited, 286, 287, 289, 290, 291, 297, 299; truancy in, 285, 286, 287; truant officer failed to compare registration fist with school enrollment, 286 Sharpsburg working children, 287-290; ages at time of beginning work of 177, under seventeen, found at work in 1908, (Table) 288; ages of 41, under fourteen, found at work in 1908, (Table) 288; boys at work in city, 291; case cited of restlessness of girls, 290, 291; educational and industrial equipment of 177, found at work in 1908, 301, 302; in the glass-houses, 295-301, ages of, 296, as alternative for boys unable to attend achool, 299, at Glenshaw, number employed, 296, bi-weekly premium for faithful, steady service, 298, certificates of minors, 296, day and night shifts, 298, death of boy hastened by conditions of work, 298, H. J. Heinz Glass Company, 295, 296, hours of, 298, instability of, 296, lure of the industry, 297, moral effect of alternate day and night shifts and seasonal occupation, 299, 300, nature of the work, 297, 298, permitted by legislation to work on night shift, 295, physical condition of, 298, 299, physical effect of alternate day and night shifts, 299, 300, restlessness of, 296, 300, slight chance for apprenticeship, 300, 301, Tibby Brothers, 295, Tibby Brothers, number employed by, 295, Tibby Brothers, seasonal occupation at, 295, wages, 298, without certificates while enrolled at school, 296, 297, working double time, 299; in the metal trades, 291-295; in the metal trades iron mill, ages of, 291, 292,INDEX chain boys, 291, hours of, 292, Moorhead plant, 291, 292, no opportunity for advancement, 292, occupational risk of, 292, on alternate day and night shifts, 292, pull-up boys, 291, shear boys, 291, wages of, 291; in the metal trades shovel factory, ages of, 292, 293, hours of, 293, Hubbard’s, 292, 293, nature of work, 292, 293, occupational risk, 293, opportunity for advancement, 293, overtime, 293, wages of, 293; in the metal trades stove foundry, 292, ages of, 292, opportunity for advancement, 292; in the metal trades tube mill, ages of, 294, hours of, 294, nature of work, 294, occupational risk, 294, 295, on day and night shifts, 293, 294, Spang, Chalfont and Company, 293, 294, 295, wages of, 294, work-accidents, 294, 295; interchange of, between Pittsburgh and Sharpsburg, 290; minimum legal age for, 288; on day and night shifts, 292, 293, 294, 295, 298, 299, 300, 304; sentiment in enforcing law with respect to, 289; six-teen-year-old illiterate girl working at home with nine boarders, 281; status of fathers of 177, found at work in 1908, (Table) 289; tendency of girls to restlessness and irregularity of work, 290; wages of fathers of, 289; wholly or partially simporting family, 289; work place 01 117, found at work in 1908, (Table) 290 Shaw, Ira D., 418 Sheet metal workers, 164, 165; apprenticeship of, 165; definition of, 164; employers’ agreement with, 164, 165; hours of, 165; piece work of, prohibited, 165; sub-contracting prohibited, 165; unionism among, 164, 165; wages of, 165 Sherman, William O’Neill, 246, 455-460 Shop Clinic, The, 254, 255 Short-term sentences. See Repeaters, records of Shovel factory— Sharpsburg children in, 292, 293; Sharpsburg children’s opportunity for advancement in, 293 Siberia, 92 Siberians, 353 Sickness insurance societies^— Founded by priests, 58 Sickness relief. See Employes’ benefit associations Singing contest— All nations, 417 Skunk Hollow, 427 Slate and tile roofers, 165, 166; apprenticeship of, 145, 165; employers’ agreements with, 166; employers’ association, 165; hours of, 165; seasonal unemployment of, 166; strike in 1903, 165; unionism among, 165, 166; wages affected by unionism during panic of 1907-08, 166; wages of, 145, 165, 166 Slate Roofers’ Association, 165 Slaughter houses— Output of, 115 Slav— Case of slow, showing that qualities of constancy, honesty, and sobriety are unappreciated, 68, 69; spirit of, 61 Slavic Fellow Citizens, Our— By Emily Greene Balch, 69 Slavs, 33, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 5i, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, bo, 61-77, 78, 79, 81, 84, 92, 93, 94, 119, I2o, 121, 135, 169, 170, 178, 320, 351, 355, 366, 368; attitude of, toward America, 61, 62, ^5, 67, 70, toward native land, 67, 70, 71; cases cited showing causes of immigration, character of, attitude of, and effect of American conditions on, 62-70, showing how work-accidents have handicapped, 73-76, showing reasons for contempt for American law held by, 71-73; cause of immigration, economic, 62, 63, knowledge of Pittsburgh industries, 63, political oppression, 63, solicitation of transportation companies, 62, 63; characteristics of, 61; effect of living conditions on, 62; effect of working conditions on, 62; greatest sufferers 57OINDEX from work-accidents, 73, 74; injustice accorded, in aldermanic court, 71, 72,73; misunderstood by Americans, 61; per cent of, in present immigration, 61 ; readiness of, to help countrymen in distress, 76, 77; reasons for settling in Pittsburgh, 64, 65; report of National Croatian Society showing effects of work-accidents and tuberculosis among, 73, 74; Slovaks most ambitious of, 69, 70. See also Russians Slav’s A Man for A’ That, The, 61-77 Slovaks, 35, 37/40, 42, 44, 45, 53, 55, 56, 57, 63, 64, 67, 69, 70, 79 Social— Aspect of prostitution, 365; bookkeeping of municipality, 16; building erected by Heinz Company, 259; center, at Marianna, 262, Young Men’s Christian Association as a, for Sharpsburg children, 302; centers of Carnegie Steel Company, 261; control, problems of, in hands of police, 308; cost of typhoid fever, 17; cost of work-accidents, 24-27; institutions, haphazard development of, 7; machinery, efficiency tests of, 16; need of Sharpsburg children, 304; organizations of immigrant wage-earners, 56; organizations of Negroes, 103, 104; police, 366-369; police work, opportunity for, 338, 384, 385, 386; problem of 1914, 30; progress and back-set currents in, 366-369; progress in industrial centers during last five years, 30; responsibility of, police compared with almshouse, 390; significance of underworld preying upon work people unrecognized by court, 321; situation leading to prostitution, 348, 349; tests, 16-18; the challenge to industry, 24-28; work of Catholic churches in Sharpsburg, 302; 303 Social, anti— Recruiting the, forces of a community, 316, 317 Social-economic schemes— In Great Britain, 3 Socialism— Effect of defeat of unions on, 188; Negroes’ attitude toward, 107, 108 Socialist vote— Increase in, following defeat in economic struggle, 188 Societies, secret— Among Negroes, 103 Soho— Needless delay in cleaning up, 20 Soho Hillside, A, 406-410 Sokoloff, Alexis, 28, 79-95 Sons of Vulcan, 105, 106 Spang, Chalfant and Company, 293, 294, 295 Specialization— Effect of, on restlessness of labor, 117; not allowed among union linemen, 156; unionism affected by, 139, 140 Specifications— Plasterers working without, prohibited, 161 Speeding of the workmen— Report of stockholders’ committee, United States Steel Corporation, 399, 400 Speeding-up— Effect of, on operatives, 27, on restlessness of labor, 117; through the bonus system, 220, 399 Standard Oil Company— Contract with Americanized padrone, 120 Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company, 225, 239, 240, 249, 250, 261, 264 “ Star Kid,” 328, 329 State— Eight-hour day under, 121; hours of day labor, 121; wages for day labor, 121 State Federation of Colored Women^ Clubs, 433 State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, 445 State insurance— Or workingmen’s compensation legislation enacted in 22 states, 200 571INDEX Steamfitters, 163, 164; apprenticeship of, 145, 163, 164; employers’ agreement with, 163, 164; hours of, 146, 164; unionism among, 146, 147, 162,163; use of non-union machinery, tools or material by, not prohibited, 163; wages affected by unionism during panic of 1907-08, 147; wages of, 147, 164 Steel— Description of process of rolling, 99, 100; output of, 115 Steel industry— Effect of, on other industries, 277; era of combinations in, 276; fastened opposition to labor laws, 276; “good times” in, following period of combinations, 277; immigration encouraged by, 276; labor conditions in, 276; outline history of, 275, 276, 277; per cent of fatal work-accidents in, 197; per cent of unskilled immigrants in, 117; promoted “gentlemen’s agreement,” 276; railroad rebates fostered by, 276; removal of, out of town, 277; supported high tariff movement, 276; town planning in, 261; unionism fought by spy system, 276; unionism in, 276; violation in, of laws reducing hours of women and children, 202, 203; work-accidents in, 25 Steel workers— Employers’ agreement with, 180; hours of mine workers compared with, 178, 179; housing of, compared with mine workers, 179; per cent of Negro, 96; racial make-up of mine workers and, similar, 178; unionism among, 180; unionism among mine workers compared with, 179, 180; wages of, 183; wages of immigrant day labor, 119, of mine workers compared with, 178, 179. See also Negro steel workers Steel workers and mine workers— A comparison, 178-180 Steel Workers, The— By John A. Fitch, 27, 117, 178, 252 Stevenson and Company, George K., 454 Stock distribution plan— For employes United States Steel Corporation, 498, report of stockholders’ committee on, 403-405 Stockholders* committee— Report on labor conditions, United States Steel Corporation, April 15, 1912,395-405 Stogy factory— Lack of factory inspection in, 201, 202; physical effect of working in, on young girls, 201, 202; Wisconsin statute regulating employment of children in, 202. See also Tobacco trade Stool pigeons, 374 Stove foundry— Sharpsburg children in, 292, 293; Sharpsburg children, opportunity for advancement in, 292 Strategic position of Pittsburgh, 113 Street development, 9 Street railway— Low fare, in Cleveland, 22. See also Traction Street railway employes, 123, 124; employers’ agreement with, 123, 124; hours and runs of, 123, 124, 184; strike in 1909, 124; unionism among employes, 123, 124, 128; wages of, 123, 124, 128, 182, in process of arbitration (July, 1914), 124 Street walker. See Prostitution Strikebreakers— Russian, 93 Strikes— Bakers, 136; blacksmiths, 142; bricklayers and masons, not allowed by union unless sanctioned by committee, 148, 149; bridge and structural iron workers, 150,152; electrical workers, 155, 156; garbage collectors in 1913, 122; Homestead, 113, 276; housesmiths, 152; machinists, 141, 142; marine engineers in 1914, 123; McKees Rocks, 188, 219, 312; mine workers, 167, 168, 179; plumbers, 162; Pressed Steel Car Works, 42, 59, 219; printers, 132, 133; retail clerks, 131; rivermen, 122, 123; slate and tile roofers, 165; street rail- 572INDEX way, 124; teamsters, 122; tile layers and helpers, 166; Westinghouse, at Turtle Creek in 1914, 30, 142, 168, 188, 269, 312, 380. See also Riots; Unionism Structural iron workers— And housesmiths affiliated, 152. See also Bridge and structural iron workers Stuart, Governor, 214 Sub-contracting— Sheet metal workers, 165 Suggestion system— Development of employes through, 270-272 Suicides— Among prostitutes, 357; attempted, scientific treatment of, in New York, 388 Sullivans of New York, 314, 324 Sunday law. See Police Sunday work, 27, 28, 39, 40, 68, 74, 122, 123, 126, 130, 131, 134, 137, 141, 143, 144, I49> 151, 152, i53, i54, i55, 158, 160, 161, 164, 166, 178, 184, 292, 395-398. See also Overtime Supply trades, 129-138; unionism among, 129. See also Bakers; Brewery workers; Printers; Retail clerks Surgical organization of the Carnegie Steel Company, 455-460 Survey— Inquiry into work-accidents by, 24; Pittsburgh the year of the, 7; study of fatal work-accidents by, 43 “Swedish Clara,** 331 Swimming Pools, The Menace of the, 236. See also Washing facilities Switchmen. See Railway employes Switchmen*s Union of North America, 125, 128 Switzerland, 372 Sylvester, Mayor, 375 Syrians, 355 Tammany Hall— Demolished, 21 Tariff— High, supported by steel industry, 276; legislation, benefits from, 114. See also Protection Tax system— Changes in, 21, 22 Taxation in Pittsburgh, The Disproportion of, 9 “Tea**West, 331 Team play. See Unity Teamsters, 121, 122; duties of, 121; employers’ agreements with, 122; hours, 121, 122; per cent of Negro, 121; racial make-up, 121; strike in 1905, 122; unionism among, 122, 128; wages of, 122, 182 Technical education— Effect of bonus system on, 269 Telephone service— Fatigue in, 254; legislation affecting women operators in, 214; recent welfare work among women in, 259 Temperature— In industrial plants, 224, 225. See also Plant, physical equipment of Tenement house census, 20 Tener, Governor, 215, 445 Teutons, 33, 34, 40, 43, 95. See also Germans “Texas Red,” 331 Tibby Brothers, 295 Tile Dealers* Association, 166 Tile layers* helpers, 166; apprenticeship of, 145, 166; employers’ agreements with, 166; employers’ association, 166; hours of, 166; piece work prohibited by union, 166; strike in 1907, 166; unionism among, 166; wages of, 166 Tile Layers* and Helpers* Union, 166 Time studies— To develop speed, 220 573INDEX Tobacco industry— Delaney amendment to child labor law affecting, enacted, 202; investigation of, by new factory inspection department, 215; labor conditions in, 27. See also Stogy factory Toledo— Reducing number of arrests in, 387 Tom Lee, 331, 332 Tonnage, 115, 276; pace in mill, set by Andrew J. Carnegie, 276. See also Output Topography, 113 Town planning— An element in solution of housing problem, 21,22; in the coal industry, 262; in the steel industry, 261 Toy land. See Midland Traction development, 9; an element in solution of housing problem, 21,22; lack of, obstructing community development, 22 Trade agreements— Advantage of, to employers, 186; blacksmiths, 144, between employers and bakers, 135, bridge and structural iron workers, 151, 152, brewery workers, 136, 137, 138, 454, building trades, 166, 183, 184, carpenters, 154, electrical workers, 155, elevator constructors, 157, 158, 169, house-smiths, 152, 153, machinists, 140, mine workers, 170, 171, 174, 179, 180, painters, decorators, and paperhang-ers, 159, 160, plasterers, 161, plumbers, 161, 162, printers, 133, 134, retail clerks, 130, 131, sheet metal workers, 164, 165, slate and tile roofers, 166, steamfitters, 163, 164, steel workers, 180, street railway employes, 123,124, tile layers and helpers, 166; competitive conditions for employers equalized by, 186; hygienic provisions in 1914, brewers, 454; union working code in place of, enforced among bricklayers and masons, 148, 149 Trade unions. See Unions Transportation— Effect of improved, on freight rates, 114; national facilities for, 113, 114; 574 railroad facilities supplementing river, 114; river improvements aiding, 114; work, 121-128 Transportation trades— Unionism among, 128. See Railway employes; Rivermen; Street railway employes; Teamsters Truancy. See Schools Trusts— Effect of, on unionism, 186, 187, 188; struggle between, and unions, 187,188 Tube mill— Sharpsburg children in, 293-295 Tuberculosis— A menace, n, 12; and Negro prostitutes, 355, 356; death rate, 14; municipal, hospital, n; Pittsburgh, League, n; provisions for, patients in 1908, 11, 12; report of National Croatian Society showing number of deaths among members from, 73, 74. See also Safeguarding employes Tucker, Helen A., 97, 106, 424-436 Turkish bath natatorium, 236 Turtle Creek Valley strike. See Strikes Twelve-hour day— Report of stockholders’ committee United States Steel Corporation on, 398, 399. See also Overwork Typhoid fever— Among immigrant wage-earners, 48; death rate, 14, 17, in Cleveland, 17, in Columbus, 17, in New Haven, 17, in Washington, 17; decrease in, after opening of filtration plant, 17, 20; endemic, 17; in river wards and East End, 24; social and economic cost of, 17 Typhoid Fever Commission, 23 Typhoid, Thirty-five Years of, 17 Underworld, The, 313-326; affiliations of, counting for immunity, 324; alliance between courts and, 377, 378,INDEX 379; American Order o Eagles holds conclave in Pittsburgh, 325, national organization of, 324, 325; antagonism of, to reform administration, 313; “band-box” on Grant Street, 316, 325; “Big Sam” Strosnider, 323; bunco games in hotels checked under reform administration, 312; business agent of the, 315; cases cited showing strength of, through venal alliances with officials, 314, 315, 316; “Chappie Moran,” 322; conviction of expert Pittsburgh swindler secured by Pennsylvania Railroad detective, 321; convictions secured by District Attorney Jerome, 315; “Doc,” industrial worker, bartender, prize fighter, and sanitary policeman, 318; effect of, affiances on police, 370; effect of reform administration on, 307, 313, 321, 322, 323, 325, 326, 370; effective confederacies among interests of, 324, 326; “fixed” case bill ignored by grand jury, 314; friendliness and welcome of, to the down and out, 317; gambling houses and pool rooms closed under reform administration, 312; gambling houses reopened under administration of Mayor Magee, 362; Grady of the, 325; immigrants housed in, districts, 307; inadequacy of imprisonment in dealing with, 387, 388; industrial classes preyed upon by, 307, 317, 318, 319, 320; industrial workers drifting into, 317, 318; influence of, in alder-manic court, 316, in county court, 316; inter-municipal affiances of residents of, held in abeyance during reform administration, 325, 326; J. M. Morin, president local aerie of American Order of Eagles, 325 ; James Monroe, 323; John Considine, 324; leader in, operating small factory, 314, posing as real estate man, 314; limited activities of, under reform administration, 321; McKeesport a “percentage burg,” 321, 322; McKeesport at Old Home Week worked by, 319; national aspects, 324-326; New York “turning joint” for “wireless wire tapping,” 314, 315; outside invaders, 322, 323; Philip Lamont, 323; political power of, 314, 315, 316,322,323,324, 325,370; potential force against reforms, 307; powers in the, 314; preying upon work people, 312-321; raids by outside gun mobs tolerated by police, 322; recruits of crime, patrons of liquor and vice resorts, 317; reform administration a period of abeyance throughout the, 362; restricted administrative area playing into hands of, 8; rise of “H-henchman” typical of lesser lights of, 316; social significance of, preying upon workingmen, unrecognized by court, 321; striking out from the city, 321, 322; Sullivans of New York, 314, 324; “sure thing men,” 314; “take-a-chance” residents of, under reform administration, 322, 323; “trimming” of an Ohio banker by the, 314; “trimming” of wealthy oil operator by the, 314, 315; victims’ fear of publicity makes convicting swindlers difficult, 32r; women of the, 352, 353; workingmen tricked by tin box, handkerchief, or pocketbook game, by “ wheel of fortune,” by “strong joint” and by “thimble ringer,” 319, 320. See also Crime; Yeggs Union— Dues, deducted from mine workers’ wages, 174; dynamiting conspiracy of national officers of, 150; label, bakers’, 129, unionism among brewery workers strengthened by, 129, 136; strikes of bricklayers and masons not allowed by, unless sanctioned by committee, 148, 149; working code in place of employers’ agreements enforced among bricklayers and masons, 148, 149 Union, anti— Effect of, policies on development of employes, 268 Union Ironworks of San Francisco, 327 Union, non— Use of, tools by steamfitters, 163 Unionism— Affected by employers’ association, 139, 140, 150, 153, panic of 1907-08, 118,141,146,150, specialization, 139, 140; among bakers, 129, 134, 135, 187, blacksmiths, 144, 181, boiler makers, 143, 144, brewery workers, 129, 136, 137, 138, 182, 186, brick-INDEX layers, 146, 147, 148, 149, bridge and structural iron workers, 149, 150, 151, 152, building trades, 146, 147, 186, building trade day labor, 120, 121, carpenters, 146, 154, day laborers, 184, electrical workers, 155, 156, electrical workers, inside wiremen, 155, electrical workers, linemen, 156, elevator constructors, 146, 147, 157, 158, 159, hod carriers, 120, 428, hoisting engineers, 153, housesmiths, 152, machinists, 140, 141, 142, 187, masons, 146, 147,148,149, metal trades, 139, mine workers, 167, 168, 169, 170, 173» I74» 175» 177, 179» 180, 182, 186, mine workers compared with steel workers, 179, 180, molders, 142, 143, mortar mixers, 120, Negroes, 428, painters, decorators, and paperhang-ers, 159, 160, pattern makers, 143, plasterers, 146, 160, 161, plumbers, 146, 147, 161, 162, printers, 132, 133, 186, railway employes, 125, 128, retail clerks, 129, 130, 131, 132, river-men, 122, 123, 128, sheet metal workers, 164, 165, slate and tile roofers, 165, 166, steamfitters, 146, 147, 162, 163, steel workers, 180, street railway employes, 123,124,128, supply trades, 129, teamsters, 122, 128, tile layers and helpers, 166, transportation trades, 128; at Marianna, 263; attitude of mine operators toward, 179, 180, United States Steel Corporation toward, 179, 180, 400; coke region affected by outcome of, in Westmoreland, 168; duty of, in stamping out prostitution, 349; effect of competition on, 186, national corporation or trust on, 186, 187, 188, on progressive improvement in industrial conditions, 185, 187; effect of racial antipathies among immigrant wage-earners on, 40, 59; hygiene for brewery workers, 454; in steel industry, 276; influence of, in hard times, 185, on non-union employers, 185; summary showing effect of, on hours, 184, 185, on wages, 182, 183, 185; trade autonomy versus industrial group in, 136; wages affected by, 146, during panic of 1907-08, 144, 147, 166; wages of day labor affected by, 120, 121 Unionism, non— Among Old Believers, 93 ; effect of, on restlessness of labor, 117 Unions— And the Negro steel workers, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108; combined membership of, 181 ; conditions which have built up strong, 186, 187; contests between, and employers for supremacy, 273; defeat of, leads to increase in socialistic vote, 188; form of organization of, 181, 182; movement of, for work-accident prevention in mining industry, 177; policies developed to secure strength for, 187; struggle between, and large corporations, 187, 188. See also Employers’ association Uniontown, 168 United Association of Plumbers, Gas and Steamfitters, 163 United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, 154,181 United Coal Company, 176 United Engineering and Foundry Company, 226, 227, 238 United Labor League, 181 United Mine Workers, 167, 168, 179, 349» 445 United Presbyterian. See Presbyterian United States— Census, 35, 115, 281; competition with foreign nations, 3, 4; death rate from mine workers’ accidents in, 175 United States Brewers1 Association, 138 United States Commissioner of Immigration in Pittsburgh— Employers besieging, for help, 38, 39 United States Geological Survey— Station for investigation of mine explosions established under, 14, 177 United States Glass Company, 229, 230, 232, 233, 239 United States Steel Corporation, 26, 28, 29, 40, 43, 44, 51, 52,119, 150, 168, 178, 179,180, 187, 200, 232, 245, 246, 247, 252, 261, 264, 266, 267, 271, 275» 395-405. See also American Bridge Company 576INDEX United States Steel Relief Pension Fund, 266 Unity. See Co-operation University of Pittsburgh, 19 Vacate— Power of bureau of health to, 20 Vacation— With pay in telephone company, 259 Valley Supply Company, 174 Vandergrift, 261 Vaults, privy, 20; in industrial plants, 238, 239; in Sharpsburg, 282, 283; in Soho, 408, 409; not prohibited in Homestead, 22, 23. See also Plants, physical equipment of Vegetable farm— Land loaned to employes for, 261 Venereal diseases— Bill providing for report of, defeated, 505. See also Prostitution Ventilation— In industrial plants, 225, 226. See also Plants, physical equipment of Vesta Mines, 173,178 Vice. See Reverse Side, The Vice and disease, 364, 365 Vocational training— Needed by Sharpsburg children, 303,304 Vogelson, Mabel, 492 Voluntary accident relief plan. See Relief plan Volunteers of America, 342, 345 Voters’ League— A Agitation against vice led by, 363, 502; district attorney’s office in conjunction with, exposed councilmanic graft, 313; instigated survey of county by New York Bureau of Municipal Research, 17 37* Votes— Polled by immigrant wage-earners, 56,57 Wage-earners— Desire of, to have voice in management of industry, 188; hours of adult male, not limited by statute, 203; number of, in Greater Pittsburgh, 116; relation of, to community and industries, 7. See also Industrial workers; Labor; Mine workers; Negro steel workers; Wage-earners, immigrant Wage-earners, immigrant, 33-60; adaptability of, 36, 40, 42; amounts paid by unmarried, for room and food, 46, 47; as property owners, 53, 59; assimilation of, difficult, 56; bank and postal savings deposits of, 53, 54; betterment of, requires aggressive work, 60; boarding bosses, 46,47, competence accumulated by, 55; camp school for, 51, 52; celebration of Columbus Day by Italian, 60; change in type of, 33, 34, 35; classes in English for, 260, 261; colonization of, 44, 45, 56; community should provide clean recreation for, 50, 60; compensation for work-accidents to, 44, 59; compensation for work fatalities to alien families of, 44; conditions of work among, 43; cooperative housekeeping among, 47; crime among, 50, 51, 52, 53; dominance of Magyar, Slav, and Lithuanian among, 33, 34, 35; drinking among, 49» 5°) 52; earnings, expenditures, and savings of single, 55; economic position of, 33-43; educational work among, 51, 52; effect of home conditions of, on crime, 52; effect of inflow of, on moral and religious life of community, 34; effect of panic of 1907-08 on union and non-union, 118; effect on unionism of racial antipathies among, 40, 59; evening schools for, lacking, 51 ; expenditures of married, 55; former, in business and the professions, 53; fraternal orders of Slavic, Lithuanian, and Italian, 56; housing conditions of, affected by shortage of houses, 45, 59; housing the, 45~49) 55) 59) 60; immorality among, 48, 49; industrial 577INDEX advances made by, 40-43; industrial efficiency of, 38,40,42,43; industries dependent on, 59; inflow and outflow of, 36; insurance societies of, 56; living conditions of, 43-60; lodging houses, assault and battery in, 47, congested, 46, 47, 48, 59, moral conditions in, 48, 49, sanitary conditions in, 46, 47, 59; majority of, Roman Catholics, 57; means of recruiting, 3d, 37, 39; meeting religious needs of Slavic, forward problem of church, 59; money sent to home countries by, 53; money sent to Servia by, 53; parish schools erected and maintained by, 58; participation of, in sesqui-centennial celebration in 1908, 60; per cent of criminal, unmarried, 52, of police court cases among, from Southeastern Europe, 50, 52, of unskilled, in steel mills, 117; physical and cultural possibilities of, 34, 60; physique of, 37, 38, 40; Playground Association May festivals for social development of, 60; political clubs of Croatian, 57, of Lithuanian, 57, of Polish, 57; political leaders among, 5d, 57; political leaders among Italian, 56, among Polish, 56, 57; political power of, 57; prejudice and contempt for, in courts, 44, 52, 53, 71, 72, 73, 368; priests of, character, activities, and influence of, 58, founders of building and loan associations, 58, founders of insurance societies against sickness and accident, 58; property depreciation in neighborhoods occupied by Slavic, 46; pros-perity of, S3, 54, 55, 59; Protes-tant mission work among Slavic and Italian, 57; races of, performing hardest and most dangerous work, 45; racial consciousness of, 56; reasons for immigration of, usually economic, 36, 37, 40; religious element in, 57, 58, 59; rent sometimes regulated by number of boarders, 46; rents paid show discrimination against, 22, 45, 46, 55; Russian, Greek Orthodox, 57; Russian (Greek Orthodox), Slavic, and Italian, preferred by employers, 39, 40; schools for adult, 51, 52; self-culture societies of Polish, 56; Slavic and Lithuanian, in aldermanic courts, 52; Slavic, seldom apply for aid, 55, subject to Patriarch of Constanti- nople, 57; social organizations of Slavic, Lithuanian, and Italian, 56; special prey of unscrupulous aider-manic court judges, 52; study of, in 1907, 34; tendency of Italian, to construction work, railroad work, and mines, 33; Teutonic and Keltic, displaced by races from Southeastern Europe, 33, 34, 35, 43; typhoid fever among, 48; votes polled by Italian, 56, 57, by Polish, 56, 57; wage standard affected by inflow of, 33, 34, 40, 4i, 42, 43, 59; wages, piece and day work, 42; willingness of skilled, to do menial work, 41; women exposed to danger, 49; work-accidents to, 43. See also Immigrants; Overtime; Russians; Slavs; Sunday work; Work-accidents Wage standard— Affected by inflow of immigrants, 33,34, 40, 41,42, 43, 59 Wages— Adequate, as an aid in eradicating prostitution, 353, 364; affected by unionism, 146, during panic of 1907-08, 144, 147,166; affecting employes’ development and stability, 263; bakers, 129, 135, 136, 183, 185; blacksmiths, 144; boiler makers, 143, 144; brewery workers, 137, (Table) 138, 182, 183, 184; bricklayers, 145, 147, 148; bridge and structural iron workers, 146, 150, 151, 152; building trades, 120, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 166, 182, 183, 184; building trades day labor, 120; carpenters, 146, i54, J55; city day labor, 131; contractor day labor, 119, 120; day labor, affected by knowledge of English, 121, affected by politics, 120, 121, affected by unionism, 120, 121, in 1913 and 1914, 119, in United States Steel Corporation, 41, 119; effect of low, on restlessness of labor, 117; higher, usually reason for immigration, 36, 37,40; electrical workers, inside wiremen, 145, 147, 155, 156, linemen, 145, 156, 157; elevator constructors, 147, 158, 159; fathers of Sharpsburg’s working children, 289; hod-carriers, 120; hoisting engineers, 147, 154; housesmiths, 153; immigrant day labor, in steel companies, 119; Jones and Laughlin, 119; machinists, 140, 141, 183; masons, 145,INDEX 147, 148; mechanics, 183; metal trades, 139, 183; mine workers, 167, 168, 170, (Table) 171, 172, 173; mine workers compared with steel workers, 178, 179; molders, 142, 143, 183; mortar-mixers, 120; painters, decorators, and paper hangers, 145, 147, 159, 160; pattern makers, 143; pattern makers at Westinghouse Machine Company, 143; piece and day work, of immigrants, 42; plasterers, 145, 146, 147, 161; plumbers, 147, 162; printers, 133,134,183,184; railway day labor, 119,120; railway employes, 125, 126, 127, 128; retail clerks, 130, 131, 132, 182, 185; river-men, 122, 182; Sharpsburg children, in glass-houses, 298, in metal trades, iron mill, 291, in metal trades, shovel factory, 293, in metal trades, tube mills, 294; sheet metal workers, 165; slate and tile roofers, 145, 165, 166; state day labor, 121, steamfitters, 147, 164; steel workers, 183; street railway employes, 123,124, 128, 182, in process of arbitration, 124; summary showing effect of unionism on, 182, 183, 185, under Americanized padrone, 120, United States Steel Corporation, 119, 178; teamsters, 122, 182; tile layers and helpers, 147, 166. See also Earnings Washing facilities— In Carnegie libraries, 236; in industrial plants, 232-236, 274; in Lawrence Park, 236; in McKeesport recreation grounds, 236; in Turkish Bath Natatorium, 236; in United States Steel Corporation, 497; in West Park, 236. See also Plants, physical equipment of Washington— Raising standards of police in, 375; typhoid death rate in, 17 Water-closets— In industrial plants, 236-240, 274; in United States Steel Corporation, 497. See also Plants, physical equipment of Water, drinking— In industrial plants, 226-228, 274, Midland, 413, United States Steel Corporation, 496, 497; legislation providing for pure, for working women and girls, 214. See also Plants, physical equipment of Water shed— Co-operation throughout, needed to solve water and sewage problem, 9 Water supply— Family, in Sharpsburg, 282, 283, no ordinance in Homestead requiring adequate, 23; filtration plant, decrease in typhoid fever after operation of, 17, 20; pure, a water-shed problem, 8,9 Wattles and Sons, W. W., 454 Wealth— Pittsburgh gigantic in creation of, 113; principles applied to distribution of, 117; titanic in contests tor division of, 113 Weights and Measures, Bureau of, 383 Welfare work— Development of employes through, 257—259; land loaned to employes for vegetable farm, 261; of Ambridge Works of American Bridge Company, 261; of Central District Telephone Company, 259; of department stores, 259, 260; of Krupps, 6; of Mesta Machine Company, 261; of Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company through Young Men’s Christian Association, 261; United States Steel Corporation, 403; resentment of American employes aroused by, 258; term, being dropped in Westinghouse Air Brake Works as inappropriate, 258. See also Bureau of Safety, Relief, Sanitation and Welfare Welsh, 33, 317, 366 West Park, 236 West Virginia— Mine workers, 167 Western Pennsylvania Association of the National League for Women Workers. See Women workers Westinghouse Air Brake Works, 236, 258, 264, 266, 414, 417, 468-491 Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, 30, 142, 143, 579INDEX 168, 188, 219, 220, 221, 228, 229, 231, 233, 235, 238, 243, 244, 260, 269, 312, 380, 461-467 Westinghouse Foundry at Trafford City, 225 Westinghouse Machine Company, 140, 142, 143 Westinghouse plants in East Pittsburgh, 327 Westmoreland County— Mine workers, 167,168; strike, 312 Wet mines. See Russelltown White slavery. See Prostitution “Whitey O,” 334, 335 Whitlock, Mayor, 387 Wilkinsburg, 260 Wilmerding, 260, 414, 417 Wilson, Robert, 363 Wing, Frank E., 17, 20, 48 Wisconsin— Labor laws and enforcement, 214; statute regulating employment of children in tobacco trade, 202 Wohlfahrts-Einrichtungen, 257 Woman’s League, Catholic, 453 Women— Council of Jewish, 453; factory inspection department reports lack of statistics concerning employment of, in glass factories, laundries, and metal trades, 193, 194, 195, 196; hours of, retail clerks regulated by law, 184; immigrants exposed to danger, 49; labor law for, amended in 1913, 214, as amended includes those subject to partial exemptions, limits hours of work, provides for lunch and rest period, pure drinking water, seats, separate lunch rooms, wash and dressing rooms, 213, 214, duty of factory inspection department to enforce, 202, limiting working week not enforceable, 203, requiring “ suitable seats” for, violated, 204; recommendations of report on factory inspection concerning hours of work for, 212, 213; Russian, 85; social agencies securing employment for, 453; vacation homes and camps for, 453; violation of law limiting hours of work for, 203, 204; work of outside organizations among, 258, in 1914, 453) 454J Young Women’s Christian Association work among, 453. See also Girls; Rest facilities Women and the Trades— By Elizabeth B. Butler, 27, 49, 132, 194, 204, 279, 354, 453 Women of the underworld, 352, 353 Women’s Trade Union League, 453 Women workers and social agencies, 453, 454 Women Workers, Western Pennsylvania Association of the National League for, 453 Wood, Major John P., 445 Woodlawn, 261 Woods, Robert A., 8 Woods Run, 51 Work-accident funds— At Essen, 6 Work-accident prevention, 26, 198-206; activities of National Tube Company, 295, Pittsburgh Steel Company, 44, United States Steel Corporation, 26, 29, 43, 44, 199, 200, 245, 275; appeal to employers, engineers, foremen, and workmen to promote, 25; at Marianna, 262; by Bureau of Safety, Sanitation and Welfare, United States Steel Corporation, 494; company safety expert for, 198, 199; duty of factory inspection department in studying processes for purpose of, 13; employers lack incentive to promote, because of absence of workingmen’s compensation system, 26, 27, 199, 200; factory inspection and, 198, 199, 205; factory inspection department lacks power of company safety expert in getting action on recommendations for, 199; in mines, 14,175,176,177; movement of unions for, in mining industry, 177; non-enforcement by factory inspector of statute providing for, 198,199; num-INDEX ber of orders given for guarding machinery for, 198; publicity as an aid in, 25, 26; recommendation in report on factory inspection concerning, 212; removal of nearby saloon as, 229. See also Safeguarding employes; Safety committee Work-accident statistics— No local or state compilation of, 44 W ork-accidents— And old liability law, 25; assumption of risk theory, 25, 26; cases cited showing how, have handicapped Slavs, 73, 74, 75, 76; chief factory inspector’s characteristic remark concerning, 197, 198; commissions appointed to investigate, 200; compensation for fatal, to alien families of immigrant wage-earners, 26, 44; compensation for, to immigrant wage-earners, 44, 59; deaths due to operation of cranes, 13, 25; deaths from, not shown by reports of bureau of health, 25; discrepancy between state factory inspector’s report and coroner’s records in reporting fatal, 197; distribution of economic cost caused by, 26, 27; due to non-enforcement of statute providing for guarding of machinery, 198, 199; duties of factory inspection department concerning, 196,197,198; fatal, 14, 25; fatal, in mines and mills, 1908-1913, as shown by coroner’s records, (Table) 25; fatal, of children, 199; in Pennsylvania, 443; in river wards and East End, 24; in steel industry, 25; inquiry into, by Survey, 24; inspection and prevention, 198-206; legislation making obligatory report of, to Department of Labor and Industry, 443; legislation providing for state commission to investigate, 44; number of, reported by chief factory inspector, 197; per cent of fatal, in steel industry, 197; reduction of, by safety work in United States Steel Corporation, 496; report of National Croatian Society showing number of fatal and disabling, among members, 73, 74; reports of factory inspection department lack adequate statistics concerning, 194, 196, 197, 199; Sharpsburg children in tube mills, 294, 295; Slavs greatest suf- ferers from, 73, 74; social and economic cost of, 24, 25, 26, 27; state commission appointed to investigate, 24, 25, 177, law drafted by, defeated, 177; study of fatal, by Survey, 43; system of reporting, in America compared with European countries, 197, in Minnesota, 197, in New York, 197; to immigrant wage-earners, 43; United States Steel Corporation action for relief of, 200; victims of, as beggars, 337. See also Occupational danger Work-Accidents and the Law— By Crystal Eastman, 25, 43, 73, 175, 197, 198, 199, 200, 245, 264,443 W ork-accidents, miners’— Death rate from, in Belgium, 175, in France, 176, in Great Britain, 175, in United States, 175; deaths from, in Allegheny County, 175, 176; fatal, as shown by coroner’s records, 25; measures for prevention of, taken by operators, 176; no adequate measure for prevention of, 175; preventable, 175, 176, 177; pre- ventive legislation, 176, 177; station for investigation of mine explosions established under United States Geological Survey, 177; steps taken by federal government for prevention of, 14, 177; subject of complaint at labor conventions, 175 Work people— Preying upon, 307, 312-321 Working conditions, 274; among immigrant wage-earners, 43; betterment of, 27, 29; brewery workers, 137,138, 258, 454; effect of, on Slavs, 62; effect of unionism on progressive improvement of, 185, 187; improved, shown by photographs in museum of safety appliances, 494; improvement of, through borough and city governments, 258, through factory legislation and enforcement, 258, through outside agencies, 258, through welfare work, 257-259, through Young Men’s Christian Association, 258; in America, 28; in Pittsburgh in 1914, 29, 30; in steel industry, 29, 276; inimical to health, 27. See also Atmospheric conditions; Industrial hygiene; Plant, physical equipment ofINDEX Working Girls’ Home (Colored), 433. See also Girls Workingmen— Resource of industrial center, 24, 28, 29 Workingmen’s compensation, 26, 27; bill killed in 1913, 216; Delaney argues for New Jersey system of, 200; effective factory inspection necessary because of lack of provision for, 199; employers, lack incentive to prevent accidents because of absence of, law, 199, 200; failure to enact legislation providing for voluntary, system, 44; legislation or state insurance legislation enacted in 22 states, 200; Pennsylvania last to enact, legislation, 26, 200; state commission appointed to investigate, 24, 25, 177, law drafted by, defeated, 177, legislature of 1915 to consider report based on investigation of, 177. See also Employers’ liability; Relief and pensions Workingmen’s insurance— In Essen, 6; in Germany, 3 Works committees— Employes’ development through, 270, 271, 272 Workshop and Community, 3-30 Wright, Jr., R. R., 96-109, 429, 430 Yardmen. See Railway employes Yeggs, 326-335; Allegheny City hangouts closed after annexation, 335; Allegheny City harboring, who “worked” elsewhere, 327; Allegheny City termed by, “The Fence,” 327, 334) 335; author’s introduction to, in Pittsburgh, 329; “Baldy Callahan” or “Cleveland Jim,” 330; Baldwin Locomotive Works, Union Iron Works of San Francisco, Pullman Car Shops in Chicago, Westinghouse plants in East Pittsburgh, as fields of operation for, 327; “best works in which to make a pitch” according to, 327; “Billy Kid,” 331; “Burly N,” 333, 336; “Chi Slater” and the “Star Kid,” 328, 329; common phases of typical life of, in its na- tional aspects, 330, 331, 332; continued presence of, indication of existence of hang-out, 327, 335; “cripple factory,” 334; Cross-country “Jumps,” 330-332; “Denver Shine,” 331; description of operations of two, 329; earnings of, on pay day at Pressed Steel Car Works, 334; fake cripples closely akin to, 334) 335; fake cripples’ headquarters rendezvous for, 335; few, found in Pittsburgh in 1908, 333, 334; field of operations of, 326, 327; hang-outs of) 327, 334, 335; “Harrigan,” 331; “Illinois Jimmy,” 331; “jocker,” and crippled boys, 328, 329; “K. C. Red,” 331; “Leadville Jimmy,” 331; “LosSlim,”331; “MickeyG.,” 331; national characters, 326; national ramifications of, 331; “New Orleans Ray,” 331; “Old Baldy,” 331; on the “Main Stem” 329, 330; Pinkerton’s description of, 326; Pittsburgh a “Hostile Town,” 332-334; rendezvous for, at “Whitney O’s” in Allegheny City, 334, 335; “Riverside Slim,” 331; saloon opened by “Scranton Jimmy” frequently raided and finally closed by him, 332, 333; slayers of “Swedish Clara,” 331; statement of Morton Ellis as to Pittsburgh conditions and operations of, 327, 328, 329; “Tea West,” 331; “Texas Red,” 331; “Tom Lee,” 331, 332; “working” local Pennsylvania Railroad trains, 333, “working” the factories, 327- 329 Yellow Row— Razed during Mayor Guthrie’s administration, 21, 350 Young Men’s Christian Association, 51, 258, 260, 261, 302; all nations’ singing contest held by, 417; at Wil-merding, 260, 414; at Preston, 418; classes in civics, 416, 417, in English, 415, 416; for Negroes opened, 436; in Harbison and Walker Refractories Company, 418; in mining districts, 418 ; out-of-door lectures, 4x6; work for immigrants in the Pittsburgh District, 60, from 1909 to 1914, 414-418 Young Women’s Christian Association— At Wilmerding, 261RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION PUBLICATIONS THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY* Findings in six volumes, edited by Paul U. 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