The Spokane press. [volume] (Spokane, Wash.) 1902-1939, 1909-03-31

4 ~ SANI, Ahdl I'll ISy
are talking lot down in Washing
ton about the cost of stel. Talking
about duties (not moral ones),
about cost of iron ore and coal, of
freight rates, of the cost of ma
| chinery, and labor, and buildings
and equipment.
They forget-these WELL dressed
congressman who sit over their CT
gars and tables-about the two
most important items.
Death and misery-these are the
most important parts of the cost
of stel.
Figures have just ben computed
for the first time of the cost of
stel in blood. Its cost in human
tears and desolation and agony is
beyond computation.
The cost in human life-526 men
every year. This is just for the
one town of Pittsburg. In
Youngstown, Chicago, Sharon,
Cleveland. Gary, other cities, would
show no smaller proportion-the
cost in dangerous and all-but-fatal
accidents is fully as great. Of mi
nor accidents an army of men.
Every year 526 men blotted out
within space of a second trans
formed from strong, healthy, happy
men to shapeless, crushed or burn
ed masses of flesh and bones. This
is the cost of stel. You don't read
this in the annual reports or in the
industrial poets Songs of Steel
Now they're reducing the wages
of stel workers all along the line,
from 10 to Is per cent. The most
hazardous occupation in the woyd
except coal mining-it is to be
paid less and less.
Every day the stel worker goes
to work he knows may be his last.
In the progress of a great industry
everything has been provided for
| except his safety. In that ponder
Gus machinery, those great fur
naces, those cog wheels, death
turks. At any minute the call may
come for one, two, dozen men.
There are lots of places where
you can count this cost of steel.
Be down in the stele section when
the news comes home that John or
Mike or Stanislav is never coming
back-when they break the news
to the hallow-cheeked, broken
hearted woman that that still, COW
cred form on the shutter is the
brave husband or son she kissed
goodby in the morning.
They know the cost of steel
these people who stay at home in
dread every day.
They know that cost, too, when
famine and hunger raps at the door
on the day after the funeral. When
it enters and drives the woman in
| black out to wash clOthes-or
worse. When it takes the year
old boy and the Z year old girl
who cares for child labor laws in
the steel district Ito the factories
or the mills to earn a pittance.
When it leaves the baby crying,
and dying in its cradle-dying be-
cause the rest of the family must
live--and because steel must be
made.
There are a half thousand TRACE
dies in this newly compiled Pitts
burg report. There are as many
sermons.
The investigators learned many
things that startled them. One was
that the loss of life was not paid
for. That when the wage Garner
died the rest of the family must
become wage earners, regardless
of age or sex, or the next genera
ton.
In more than half of all the
deaths, not a dollar went to tht
family-unless perhaps pittance
for the funeral. In not more than
5 per cent of the cases was there
compensation as much as the dead
mans wages for year.
The census of the dead just COM
pleted, was not easy to get. Per-
haps that is one reason why it has
never been secured before. The in
vestigators had to meet many OBJ
stacles. They had to work through
20 nationalities, through electrical
engineers, labor leaders. They had
to gather their material from a
score of sources.
Mill superintehJents do not en-
courage publicity for their CORY
death roll. The big mills have their
own hospital wards. with their own
physicians. ambulance men. under
takers. These men must keep their
own counsel, or leave the pay roll.
= In towns where the steel mills
a