EDITORIAL GRIST
JOHN A. FITCH
JOHN A. FITCH
JOHN A. FITCH
JOHN A. FITCH
The United States Steel Corporation, in the annual meeting of its stockholders, held in Hoboken, N. J., April 21, took a step which may tend to cause a reaction among that part of the public which had come to believe, on account of the frequent pronouncements by the corporation of its kindly intent toward its employes, that it would take any reasonable and logical step that it might to improve labor conditions.
To make this clear it is not necessary to go back to the addresses in this vein that have been delivered from time to time by executive officers of the corporation before the American Iron and Steel Institute and elsewhere. It is sufficient to refer to the committee of stockholders, appointed by Judge Gary in the fall of 1911, who made a report on labor conditions to the stockholders meeting of 1912. Their report declared that 25¾ per cent of the employes of the corporation were working twelve hours a day. This figure included all employes in mines and quarries, as well as in mills and furnaces. The committee made it clear that “this schedule of work was found in the largest proportion in its departments which are more or less continuous, such as rolling mills, open hearths, and blast furnaces, where the percentage of work for the twelve hours varies from 50 to 60.”
Speaking of the effects of the twelve-hour day, the committee said:
“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....
“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.”
As a result of this recommendation, the finance committee of the Corporation appointed a subcommittee of its members, “to consider what, if any, arrangement with a view to reducing the twelve-hour day, in so far as it now exists among the employes of the subsidiary companies, is reasonable, just and practicable.” Their findings are published in the annual report of the corporation for the year 1912, which has recently been issued. The committee calls attention to the fact that the stockholders’ committee found that “only about 25 per cent of the total number of employes” were working twelve hours a day. This, in spite of the fact that the committee distinctly reported that 50 to 60 per cent of actual steel workers were twelve-hour men. But as to relieving the situation, the report reads “it is believed that unless competing iron and steel manufacturers will also enforce a less than twelve-hour day, the effort to reduce the twelve hours per day at all our works will result in losing a large number of our employes, many of them preferring to take positions requiring more hours of work per day.”
The report then points out that a considerable number of men during the past year have left the employ of the Steel Corporation because they have enforced the six day week, and have gone to the employ of other companies where they could work seven days, and expresses the fear that the same thing would happen if an eight-hour day were adopted by the corporation.
Of course, nothing is said in this report, nor was anything said at the stockholders’ meeting of April 21, as to the real reason why workers leave their positions when hours of labor are shortened. The inference to be drawn from the report is that steel workers are so consumed with a passion for work that they do not desire to leave it, even for one day in seven.
The facts are that the cost of this reform was borne by the men. The Steel Corporation did not pay its men their old earnings for their new six day stint. It would be interesting to know the actual wages received by the larger proportion of those who left the employ of the Corporation in order that they might work seven days a week for other companies. We should then be able to draw our own conclusions as to whether it was a passion for work or a desire to support their families in decency and comfort that led them to look elsewhere for work when their earnings were reduced by one-seventh.
But the Steel Corporation found itself, according to its own testimony, in a quandary. A committee of its own stockholders had recommended an abolition of the twelve-hour day. The finance committee had considered the matter carefully and reported back that because its competitors had not changed from the twelve-hour day, they could not. It was a practical difficulty and they intimated that they were unable to solve it. It was to cut this Gordian knot that Charles M. Cabot, the Boston stockholder who was responsible for the investigation conducted last year by the stockholders’ committee headed by Stuyvesant Fish, went to the meeting on April 21 with this resolution:
“Voted, that in view of the Finance Committee’s report that the change from the twelve to the eight-hour day in continuous twenty-four hour processes in our mills and plants is impracticable unless similar action is taken by our competitors; and, further, in view of the fruitful results which followed the appointment by the American Iron and Steel Institute at the instigation of officers of our Corporation of a committee on seven-day labor, which action has led to the very general establishment of the six day week in the steel industry of the United States; that the stockholders request the directors to enlist the co-operation of the steel manufacturers of the United States in establishing the eight-hour day in continuous twenty-four hour processes.”
The purpose of this resolution was to provide the quickest, most efficient manner of solving the dilemma in which the Corporation found itself, and to provide a way whereby there could be restored to the workers such a working schedule, as would not sap their vitality or prevent them from having what the stockholders’ committee thought was necessary time for relaxation and for association with their families. That this resolution was tabled with the consent of the officials of the Corporation, will undoubtedly be interpreted by many as an indication that the Corporation was not sincere in its plea that its hands were tied in trying to meet the demand of the Fish committee for a reduction in hours.
Yet Mr. Cabot performed in offering this resolution possibly his greatest service since he began his campaign to improve the labor conditions in the steel industry even though it was an achievement that he did not have in mind. He forced the Corporation to show its hand; he gave it an opportunity to prove whether or not it really desired, as it was on record as desiring, a fundamental reform. The Corporation gave him an unmistakable answer.
It would have been better if they had not forgotten the wise counsel of William B. Dickson, their former vice-president, when he said, in a speech advocating one day of rest in seven, that if the steel companies themselves did not institute this reform, they would be compelled by law to institute it, and that the law would be far more drastic than the manufacturers of steel would find comfortable.