Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1909-03-20

HOURS LONGER;
WAGES LOWER
CONDITIONS IN STEEL FAC
TORIES PR0BED
TWO YEARS STUDY REVEALS
SURPRISING FACTS
Seven Days at Higher Speed Is Rule
In Pennsylvania, Mills, Where
Scales Are Daily Re-
duced

twelve-hour speeding. That is the gis
of the Pennsylvania steel district, &C
cording to the Pittsburg Survey.
What Is the trend of life and labo
in American industrial communities
Overwork by everybody, when the mill
are running full, is the dominating rae
tor in the life of the wage-earners o
Pittsburg.
The final group of reports of TIN
Pittsburg Survey--those dealing will
labor conditions, includes the findings
of staff of lawyers, sanitarians, en-
gineers, social workers, physicians ant
interpreters. 1t has been a piece o
national cooperation to gauge tn
trend of conditions in American indus
trial districts generally.
The labor reports are by Prof Johi
r. Commons, secretary of the Ameri
can Association for Labor Legislation
John r. Fitch of the University of Wis
consin. Florence Kelley, former stat
factory inspector of Illinois; e. b. But
ler member of the investigating stat
of the Russell Sage Foundation; M. +
Byington, former district agent of thu
Boston Associated Charities; Lila V
North of the Woman's college, Balti
more, and c. C. Eastman of the New
York bar.
Prof. Edward Z. Devine, editor o
Charities and the Commons, speaking
of normal times when mills are goint
full, gives the gist of the findings al
follows:
Gist of Findings
1. An altogether incredible
amount OF overwork by everybody,
reaching its extreme in the twelve
hour shift for seven days In the
week in the steel mills and the rail-
way switchyards.
II. Low wages for the great ma
jority of the laborers employed by
the mills. not lower than other large
cities, but low compared with the
prices--so low as to be inadequate
to the maintenance of a normal
American standard of living; wages
adjusted to the single man in the
lodging house, not to the responsible
head of a family.
III. Still lower wages for women,
who receive for example in one of
the metal trades, in which the pro-
portion of women is great enough to
be menacing, one-half as much as
unorganized men i'm the same shops
and one-third as much as the men
In the union.
w. An absentee capitalism, with
bad effects strikingly analogous to
those of absentee. landlordism, of
which Pittsturg furnishes notewor-
thy examples.
v. A continuous inflow of immi-
grants with low standards, attract
ed by a wage which is high by the
standards of southeastern Europe,
and which yields net pecuniary
advantage because of adnormally
low expenditures for food and shell
ter, and inadequate provision for
the contingencies of sickness, acci-
dent and death.
vi. The destruction of family
life, not in any imaginary or mys-
teal sense, but by the demands or
the days work, and by the very
demonstrable and material method
of typhoid fever and Industrial ac-
cidents; both preventable, but cost
ing in single years in Pittsburg con-
siderably more than thousand
lives. and irretrievably SCATTERING
nearly as many homes.
VII. Archaic social institutions
such as the aldermanic court, the
ward school district, the family
garbage disposal, and the unregen-
crate charitable institution, still sur
viving after the conditions TO which
they were adapted have disap-
peared.
VIII. The contrast-which does
not become blurred by familiarity
with detail, but, on the contrary,
becomes more vivid as the outlines
are filed in--the contrast between
the prosperity on the one hand of
the most prosperous of all the COM
munities of our western civilization,
with its vast natural resources. the
generous fostering of government,
the human energy, the technical de-
velopment, the gigantic tonnage OF
lie 6a nnrVl1 nI7C
capital of which the bank balances
afford an, indications: and, on the
other hand, the. neglect of life, of
health, of physical vigor, even of
the industrial efficiency of the in
diyidual, Certainly no community
before in. America or Europe has
ever had such q surplus, and never
before has a, great community APP
piled what it had so meagerly to
the rational purposes of humin life.
Not by gifts of libraries, galleries,
technical schools and parks, but by
the cessation of toll one day in
seven and sixteen hours in the
twenty-four, by the increase of
wages, by the sparing of lives, by
the prevention of accidents. and by
raising the standards of domestic
life, should the surplus come back
to the people of the community in
which it is created.
Control of Labor
Professor Commons goes into TIL
question Of labor control How do tn
employers keep in the saddle? His an
swer Is:
"Two-thirds of the steel workers ar
unskilled; thousands are as dumb a
horses in their ignorance of English
if we may judge by the kind of gee,
whoa and gestures that suffice TO
commands. BY minute specialization
of jobs, by army-like organization, b.
keeping together a staff of highly pal,
regulars at the top, the industries o
.Pittsburg are independent of the ranl
and file. Without its marvellous frame
work of organization it would be i'm
possible to convert its eddying stream
of labor into the most productive labo
power of modern industry. Enormou
rewards for brains, overseers, manag
ers, foremen, bosses, 'pushers,' AM
gang leaders; remarkable pressure to
ward equality of wages among tn
restless. movable, competitive ranl
and file-these are the results in dis
tribution of Pittsburg's supremacy il
the production of wealth."
The skilled men occupy the strategi
positions in the steel mills and, accord
ing to Mr.. Fitch, wage-cutting in tn
tonnage rates paid them has been tn
most effective thing for increasing out
puts. Reductions have often preceded
advances in output, and they hav
more than kept even with 1t. He says
Judges of Human Nature
1.-THE steel companies have been goo'
Judges of human nature in this respect
The mere possibility of greater earn
ings than any yet enjoyed would neve
have been sufficient to rouse the mel
to the degree of effort desired. Onl.
a reduction could furnish the desires
stimulus, for that made 1t necessar.