religious inclinations and a church member. He regrets the twelve-hour
day now chiefly on the ground that it keeps the young men away from
church. If he had not become a church-member when he had an eight-hour
day, he doesn't see how he ever could have become interested in
religious matters. He lives in a comfortable home which he owns and
where he spends most of his time when not in the mill. After supper he
sits down to read for a short time before going to bed, but he told
me with considerable regret that he was unable to do any systematic
reading. A few years ago he read several of Shakespeare's plays, but
he had to force himself to do it, he gets sleepy so soon after supper.
Since that time he has not attempted anything more serious than the
daily paper.
Of course, the question of organized labor suggests a number of other
considerations. The old union attitude towards employers is not of
consequence now in Pittsburgh, for most of the steel mills of the
district have been non-union for ten or fifteen years. This fact,
however, makes it all the more worth while to consider the present
attitude of the men as individuals.
Jim Barr is a man thirty-five years old who came from England when he
was a small boy. It has been only during the last ten years or so that
Barr has worked in a steel mill, but he has lived in the steel district
longer than that. He occupies a skilled position in one of the mills
where he works every day but Sundays from seven in the morning until
six in the evening, and on alternate Sundays he has the long turn of
twenty-four hours. This Sunday work, he told me, came in after the union
had been driven out, and the twelve-hour day is more general now than it
was under unionism.
[Illustration: _Drawn by Joseph Stella._
PITTSBURGH TYPES.
OF THE OLD TIME IRISH IMMIGRATION.]
"Tell me, how can a man get any pleasure out of life working that way?"
Barr asked me almost with a challenge. We were sitting before the grate
in his comfortable and tastefully furnished parlor. There were pictures
on the wall, a carpet on the floor, and the piano in the corner spoke
of other things than endless drudgery. He seemed to interpret my swift
glance about the room, for he went on, "I've got as good a home here as
a man could want. It's comfortable and I enjoy my family. But I only
have these things to think about, not to enjoy. I'm at work most of the
day, and I'm so tired at night that I just go to bed as soon as I've
eaten supper. I have ideas of what a home ought to be, all right, but
the way things are now I just eat and sleep here."
Barr works in a position where he encounters considerable heat, and
he says that alone is very exhausting even when a man does not do
hard physical labor. There is great danger, too, in the sweat that
keeps a man's clothing wet all of the time. If he gets into a draught
he is likely to contract a cold or pneumonia. Working under such
conditions shortens a man's life, to Barr's mind, and although he is but
thirty-five years old he tells you he feels a decline in his strength.
The men find that it costs more to live, too, when working in the mills,
for they need the best of food and the warmest clothing in order to
keep going. The little chance for recreation leads them to the saloons
as the natural place for relaxation. They go there much oftener, in his
opinion, than they would if they had more time for social enjoyment;
and of course there is a good deal of money spent there that is needed
for other things. He says that men frequently spend twenty dollars in a
single night after payday. But the thing on which Barr seems to have the
strongest convictions is the plan of the United States Steel Corporation
of issuing stock to employes.
"The men have been fooled by this proposition," he declared, "and they
really believe that the corporation wants to do big things for them in
offering such liberal dividends. But let me tell you something that
maybe you haven't noticed. The first stock issued in 1903 was followed
by a slashing cut in wages in 1904, and it amounted to a lot more than
the extra dividends. It's only a scheme to fool the men. They take away
in wages more than what they give in dividends and they will do that
every time, so that the corporation is always ahead of the game. But
that isn't the only thing; it ties the employes down to the corporation.
They've got to stay in its employ at least five years from the time
of getting the stock in order to enjoy all of the benefits, and even
then they won't get the extra dividends unless they have shown what the
corporation calls a 'proper interest' in its affairs. It's a fine scheme
for keeping out unionism and keeping the men from protesting against bad
conditions."
Now, just by way of contrast, listen to the story of George Hudson, who
occupies a position similar to that of Barr, and has been in mill work
about the same length of time. After having tried another line and found
it unsatisfactory, Hudson came to the mills at about thirty years of
age. He did what American young men dislike very much to do,--he took
a common laborer's position along with the "Hunkies." Being a man of
perseverance and some education, he worked up very rapidly until he now
occupies a skilled position.
"The Steel Corporation is a fine one to work for," said Hudson to me
with enthusiasm. "It gives every man a chance for promotion, and listens
to every workman who has a plan for improvement. All the intelligent men
are satisfied. If you can find any dissatisfied men, you will find that
they are men who would be discontented anywhere you put them. Take the
way they loan money to men who want to build homes. A good many men have
their own cottages now just because the company helped them. The company
has a savings department too, and it pays five per cent on all deposits,
and that is more than the savings banks pay. Then, on the other hand,
it charges only five per cent interest on the money that is loaned, and
that is a lower rate than you can get anywhere else. The company owns
houses which it rents to employes at thirty per cent or more below what
other people charge. I pay twenty-five dollars rent, and I've got a
friend in a company house which is better than mine, and he only pays
eighteen." Hudson is ambitious and he was very proud that his department
during recent months had succeeded in beating all previous records known.
To turn to the second question raised by Smith in our talk before his
fire,--if number of organizations is any criterion the churches in the
mill towns must be strong. I found a considerable number of loyal church
members among the steel workers. Those of them who have to work on
Sunday chafe under the necessity that drives them to such a disregarding
of the Sabbath.
Especially does this bear heavily on the wife who must attend church
alone, while her husband is in the mill or at the furnaces. A Scotch
Presbyterian mother at a home where I called one afternoon just as the
man was preparing to go to the mill for the night, spoke regretfully
of having left Scotland. They might not have been able to live so well
there, but "Oh, man, we could have brought up the children in the fear
o' God and in a land where men reverence the Sabbath." There are men
like Smith, too, who fear the effect of twelve-hour work on the lives of
the boys.
In spite of this religious sentiment that exists among the workers there
is, on the other hand, a good deal of feeling that the churches do not
understand the needs of the workingmen. Frank Robinson, for instance,
believes that the churches are not interested in some problems that are
to him very real.
"There are a good many churches in this borough," he said to me one day,
"and they are supported generally by the women. The preachers don't have
any influence in securing better conditions for the men,--they don't
try to have. They never visit the mills, and they don't know anything
about the conditions the men have to face. They think the men ought to
go to church after working twelve hours Saturday night. The preachers
could accomplish a lot if they would try to use their influence in
the right direction; let them quit temperance reform until they get
better conditions for the men. It's no time to preach to a man when
he's hungry; feed him first, then preach to him. The same thing with a
workingman; get a decent working day with decent conditions, then ask
him to stop drinking. Let the preachers go into the mills and see the
men at work in the heat, and outside the mills let them notice the men
with crushed hands or broken arms or with a leg missing. If they would
stop their preaching long enough to look around a little they could do
something for us, if they wanted to try."
There seems to be some reason for such a feeling. I talked with
ministers in some of the mill towns who knew very little of the problems
of the workingmen or of the conditions under which they work. Some of
them said that they had never been inside the mills, and, of course,
such men cannot be entirely sympathetic. Of a different sort was another
minister whom I met who had been a mill-man himself. He had gone into
mill work as a boy and had worked up through a common laborer's position
to a skilled job before he left the mill to go to college. I have met
few men with more understanding and sympathy for the working-men's
problems.
Unionism is not entirely dead in the mill towns; at least the spirit
of it is to be found among the men, though the form is absent. Some of
them expect to see an organization in the mills again. Others have given
up hope of gaining shorter hours or higher wages through collective
bargaining, and are looking for government interference and a legal
eight-hour day. There is considerable variety of opinion as to how this
is to be brought about. Pittsburgh steel workers are traditionally
republican in politics; Speaker Cannon himself does not fear "tinkering"
with the tariff more than they. The majority of them have been hoping
that their representatives would get time after a while to consider and
pass the labor legislation that the workingmen desire. However, there
has been much loss of faith in the last few years.
A good many men in the mills are socialists at heart, and though they
still vote the republican ticket, they would vote with the socialists
if that party were to manifest strength enough to give it a chance at
carrying an election. A considerable number of others have gone the
whole way and are active working socialists. One of these is Ed. Jones,
a skilled steel worker. He was left an orphan, came to Pittsburgh from
New York as a boy of eighteen years, and worked for a short time as a
laborer in one of the mills. After trying his hand at several unskilled
trades he went back to a small mill in New York, where his wages were
$1.25 a day. He was determined to work up in the industry, and after
a year or so as a laborer he found himself in a semi-skilled position
with wages correspondingly better. A year or two later he returned to
Pittsburgh and became a full fledged skilled man at $5 a day. Since
then, in spite of reverses, he has worked up slowly until now he holds
one of the most important positions in his mill. Jones has never been a
union man. He says he does not believe in unions because they accomplish
things only in prosperous times, and go to pieces in a panic. "It is no
use for them to try to regulate wages, anyhow," he says, "for labor is a
commodity and its price is regulated by supply and demand. The only way
out for the laboring men is to get together in a labor party,"--and this
to him means the socialist party.
"We must go back to the condition when workmen owned their own tools,"
declares Jones. "We must own the instruments of production. Labor is
now the helpless victim of capital, and capital must be overthrown. The
workman is given enough to buy food and clothes for himself, and no more
if the capitalist can help himself. They keep these workmen employed
twelve hours a day at some work, while if every man in the country
would work two hours a day, all the labor that would be necessary to
support the population of the country could be performed. Now all of
this excess, these ten hours over the necessary amount, goes to the
employer in profits, and many people throughout the country are living
in idleness because other people are working overtime for them."
Jones is in comfortable circumstances himself; he owns his house and
he owns some United States Steel stock, but he says he is one out of
thirty-eight men in his whole plant who could have done as well.
One of the near-socialists who hopes for both unionism and for
governmental relief, gave me a statement of his belief one Sunday
afternoon as I sat in a comfortable chair in his little parlor. "I think
there will be a labor organization in the mills again," he said. "It may
not come in our day, but it is bound to come; the men will be driven to
it. There would be a union now but for the foolishness of the men. They
begin to talk as soon as a movement is started, and of course the news
reaches the ears of the bosses before the organization is really on its
feet. Then the men, who are not in a position to resist, are threatened
with discharge. That has happened in this very mill. It may be that
political action will be necessary before a union will be possible.
There are two things that we've got to have: an eight-hour day and
restriction of immigration. I think that we will have to get together
in a labor party. I'm not a socialist, myself, though quite a good many
of the mill men are, and there are a good many things about socialism
that I like, all right. I would vote with them if I thought they were
going to win and there are others who feel the same way. I used to vote
the republican ticket, but I'm tired of it. They haven't done much for
the workingmen when you consider the length of time they've been in
power. I'm disgusted with the whole thing and I haven't voted at all for
several years."
Several of the men had said to me: "Go to see Joe Reed; he can tell you
more about the mills than anyone else." So one day I climbed the hill
to his home, and found him. I had been led to expect a good deal and was
not disappointed, though he was just recovering from an illness and was
unable to talk as much as I had hoped. Reed is just the man that one
would pick as a leader,--six feet tall, broad shouldered, with strong
intellectual features,--and he was in truth a leader of the Amalgamated
Association years ago, before the steel mills became non-union. He took
a prominent part in a strike that was of considerable importance in the
steel district. He is a skilled man and if he had cast his lot with
the company in the dispute, it is quite likely that he would have best
served his own interests. But he stayed by the men and when the strike
was lost, Reed left the steel district. He might have had his former
position again, but he was too proud to ask for it, and lived away from
Pittsburgh until the bitterness engendered by the struggle had begun
to die out. After several years he came back and got a job again in a
Pittsburgh steel mill. It is a non-union mill and of course Reed is a
non-union man.
Reed told me some of his experiences and how during the strike he had
received letters of encouragement from all over the country, from men
prominent in many walks of life. I asked him what he had done with them.
He shook his head. "I burned them," he said, "when I came back to the
mills. I have nothing in my possession now which would suggest in any
way that I ever had connection with the union. When I came back here,
I knew I was coming to a non-union mill and I took a job in good faith
as a non-union man. That is a chapter in the history of my life that is
ended. The whole matter of unionism is a thing of the past and as an
employe in this mill, I have no part in it." This fine sense of honor in
conforming to the new regime is not so unusual among this class as one
might expect.
So these are the steel workers. I have not chosen extreme cases;
on the contrary, it has been my aim to select men who are typical
of a class,--the serious, clear-headed men, rather than the
irresponsibles,--and with one exception, each case is fairly
representative of a large group. The exception is the man whom I called
Hudson. Not over three men out of the hundred and more with whom I
talked at length indicated like sentiments, and he is the only one who
gave them such full expression. It should be understood that these
are the skilled men,--it is only among the skilled that opinion is so
intelligently put forth.
The number of positions requiring skill is not large, relatively
speaking, and competition for them is keen. The consequence is that
the skilled workers are a picked body of men. Through a course of
natural selection the unfit have been eliminated and the survivors
are exceptionally capable and alert of mind, their wits sharpened by
meeting and solving difficulties. Such a disciplinary process has
developed men like John Jarrett, consul at Birmingham during Harrison's
administration; Miles Humphreys, for two terms chief of the Pennsylvania
Bureau of Industrial Statistics, one-time nominee of the Republican
party for mayor of Pittsburgh, and now chief of the fire department of
the Smoky City; M. M. Garland, collector of customs for Pittsburgh,
under both McKinley and Roosevelt; A. R. Hunt, general superintendent
at Homestead; and Taylor Alderdice, vice-president of the National Tube
Company.
In telling about their fellows who are numbered to-day among the rank
and file, I have tried to introduce the leading types,--the twelve-hour
man with the eight-hour man, the embittered man and the contented man,
the man who is at outs with the church, the union man and the socialist.
There are many others who talk and think like Flinn and Smith and
Robinson, and I could furnish examples of much more radical thought and
speech. These are typical cases representing different degrees of skill
and different shades of opinion. It is highly significant that there
are such men as these in the Pittsburgh mills. In a discussion of the
labor problem in the steel industry, it must be borne in mind that these
men are more than workers; they are thinkers, too, and must be reckoned
with.
[Illustration: _Drawn by Joseph Stella._
PITTSBURGH TYPES.
BRITISH BORN.]
THE TEMPER OF THE WORKERS UNDER TRIAL
CRYSTAL EASTMAN
MEMBER STAFF PITTSBURGH SURVEY
To study industrial accidents from the "home" side has been my business
for a year. To acquaint myself daily with households doubly disabled
by sickness and loss of income, to see strong men, just learning to
face life maimed, to visit home after home, where sudden death has
visited,--a dreadful business, you might say. Yet it has left with me
impressions of personality, character, and spirit, which make the year's
work a precious experience.
The first thing brought home to me was that working people do not have
"the luxury of grief." The daily tyranny of hard work in their lives,
leaves little time for pondering the unanswerable "Why?" of sorrow.
For instance, Mrs. Dennison, the widow of a brakeman who was killed on
the Pennsylvania Railroad, spent no quiet days of solitary mourning. She
was left with six children, the oldest eleven. All the money she had was
$500 from the Railroad Relief Association,[8] to which her husband had
belonged, $450 which the men on her husband's division raised, and $30
which his own crew gave. The company gave her $20 toward the funeral.
[8] The company pays the running expenses of this association.
With some of this money she rented and stocked up a little candy and
notion store, using the three rooms in the back to live in. Here she
tended store, and cooked, and sewed, and ironed, for herself and the
six. She would have done her own washing too, she told me, but she
couldn't leave the store long enough to hang her clothes up in the yard.
She made a reasonable success of the enterprise, enough to pay for rent
and food, until the hard times came. After that she steadily lost money.
So now she has put in her application for a chance to clean cars for the
railroad at $1.21 a day. For this privilege she must wait her turn among
the other widows; and when she gets it she must leave her children in
one another's care from six in the morning till six at night. They are
now two, four, six, eight, ten, and twelve, respectively. Mrs. Dennison
will not have time to sit down and grieve over the death of her husband
for many years to come.
One mother, whose thin face haunts me, has been able to endure her
tragedy only through this necessity of work. She had a daughter, just
seventeen, who was employed in the dressmaking department of one of the
big stores in Pittsburgh. This girl, Ella, was eager and gay, with a
heart full of kindness. She was everybody's favorite in the workroom; at
home she meant laughter and good will for them all. To her mother, Ella
was joy and gladness,--life itself. One morning this little dressmaker,
after leaving her wraps on the eleventh floor, found that she was a few
moments late. She ran for the elevator to go to her workroom above. The
elevator was just starting up, with the door half closed. Ella tried to
make it, slipped, and fell down the shaft.
This tragedy demoralized the working force of the store for two days.
In the hunted, suffering eyes of the mother one reads that she cannot
forget, night or day. She feels that Ella's employers were generous
in giving her $500, but it would make no difference "if they gave
her the whole store." In the back of her mind are always two visions
alternating,--the merry girl who sat eating her breakfast at a corner
of the kitchen table that morning, laughing and teasing her mother,
and then, as she ran out to take the car, looked back to smile and say
goodbye,--this is one. The other,--that unthinkable fall down eleven
stories and the crash at the bottom of the shaft. I felt that nothing
but the daily insistence of work,--cooking and washing for her husband
and two grown sons, and caring for the two younger children,--had saved
this mother's reason.
Another striking instance of the pressure of work in poor people's lives
was in the family of Harry Nelson. They lived on the South Side, near
the Jones and Laughlin Steel Works, where the father and two grown sons
and Harry, who was nineteen, were employed. Two younger boys were in
school. One Sunday night, on the way home after his twelve hours' work,
Harry said to his father that he'd "give a lot" not to go back to the
mill that night. (There was another twelve hours' work to come before he
could sleep, for this was Harry's "double shift.") He didn't tell his
mother he was tired, because he knew she would beg him not to go back
to work. Harry was ambitious; he was an electrician's helper, getting
fifteen dollars a week, and he did not want to lose his job. At 7:30 he
was back in the mill, and at 8:00 he was up on an electric crane, making
some repairs. When he was through he started along the narrow run-way
of the crane to a place where he could climb down. The air was full of
steam; some say that he was blinded by this; others, that he must have
been a little dizzy. At any rate, to steady himself, he reached for an
electric wire that was strung along there. He happened to touch a part
that was not insulated, got a slight shock, and fell thirty-five feet to
the floor of the mill.
After Harry was killed, the two older boys left the mill and looked for
work in another city. But the father had no choice; he was too old to
find new work. His fifteen a week was all the more indispensable now
because Harry had given all his money to his mother, and the two older
boys had paid generously for board. In three days the father was back
in his old place at the cold saw, within sight of the place where Harry
fell.
Thus work may be a cruelty as well as a blessing. But in any case it
leaves the workers little time to dwell upon their misfortunes. When
they do speak of them, it is almost always in a "matter-of-course" way.
This is not, I think, because they lack feeling, but because they are so
used to trouble that the thought of it has ceased to rouse them.