Wednesday, May 18th, nearly all of the brick manufacturers in and
adjacent to the city shut down their yards to not resume the manufacture
of brick until there was a settlement of the labor troubles. Their
action threw out of employment six thousand brickmakers, helpers,
yardmen, and teamsters. This action was precipitated by the fact that
there was a supply of brick on hand which could not be delivered until
building operations were resumed, and the manufacturers saw nothing in
the situation that made it necessary for them to make brick when their
product could not find a market. They did not desire to invest large
sums of money in making brick to store at a large expense, and few of
them had an outside demand for their product. In nearly every yard in
the vicinity of Chicago there had been strikes, and others were
threatened. The feeling of uncertainty and insecurity was so prevalent
that the brick manufacturers were more ready than ever to co-operate
with the movement of the Master Masons in order to be placed in a
position to begin anew on whatever basis might be adopted for a
settlement of the labor question. They wanted to run full time when they
did run, and not be regulated by the "gang" rule as to what should
constitute a day's work for a machine and the attendant man. When a
machine was guaranteed to make 50,000 brick in a day they objected to
shutting it off at 35,000, and calling that number a day's work. Such
rules were regarded as too arbitrary, and as the brickmaking season was
limited to from 120 to 150 days it necessarily shortened the crop and
prevented a fair income on the capital invested in machinery and
grounds.