Daily Arizona silver belt., 1909-05-16
CONDITION OF PROTECTED WORK
 MEN.

MEN.
 There was some discussion in the sen ats the other day about the wages paid in the steel industry. The senators en- gagged in that discussion should be in terested in the news item which comes from the Pittsburg steel district to the effect that the Steel corporation has just instituted policy of closing down its plants on Sunday. It probably is not generally known that the immense steel plants in and about Pittsburg are kept going twenty-four hours day and seven days week, so that any consid- eration of the wages paid in the steel industry must be tempered by the fact that they are adjusted to long hours and unremitting toll: Thousands of workers have no weekly hay of rest, and other thousands havs had but a brief respite between the weekly shifts from day to night or from night to day work. Of the 17,ooo men employed by the Carnegie Steel company in three of it's largest plants, but 120 men work eight hours day, and these only in those branches of the industry where conditions are so severe that longar hours are impossible. The vast major ity work twelve hours day. Of 70,000 mill workers in Allegheny county, 1t is estimated that 14,oo0 are seven-day workers.
 Of the wage conditions in the steel industry, it may be said generally that they have not in recent years tended to betterment. The authors of the Pitts burg Survey, recently concluded by number of skilled investigators, say that wages even of the highest paid em- ployes, have decreased. Unions ara practically suppressed, and the labor supply is largely drawn from foreign CTS. whose mutual hatreds and antago- nisnls are played upon to prevent or ganization. We quote from the Pitts burg Survey these pertinent observa- tions:
 ssIt is known that in the steel
 industry over GO per cent. of the
 worlxmen are urskilled ,aborers re-
 ceiying not over 1872 cents an hour.
 It would be somewhat nearer the
 truth to say that SO per cent. of the
 emuloyes receive less than S2 day
 |. A m mt r9-
 ceiye over S5, and the remaining 36
 or 37 per cent, receive somewhere
 between S2 and $5 day.
 'wage cutting, the twelve-hour
 day, tho seven-day week, abnormal
 heat conditions, relentless speeding
 these are the features in the in-
 dustrial situation that stand out
 with greatest prominence now, at
 the period of present development
 in the history of the industry.
 Singular conditions to exist in the most highly protected of American in dustries, whsre concurrently with long hours and reduced wages even weekly day of rest has been almost wiped out of existence. We hear much of the ne cessity of high tariff as protection to American labor, but it is not Aneri- can labor that is protected. See how the Carnegie Steel company recruits It's forces from the four corners of the earth: From Austria Hungary, 1o421; Russia, 2,577; the British Isles, 2,olO; Sweden, 2s7; Bulgaria, 5S; France, 52; Turkey, 26, and Roumania, 2i. These imported hordes, many of them housed by the dozen in single room, are fed like so much raw material into the nsws of the steel industry, and when worn out or irjured are cast aside as SO much refuse which it is the duty of the philanthropic to take care of. There isn't much of astarif argument in the bottom facts of the steel indus try, when the immense profits of the business are ignored for the moment to see how much better of a protected workman is than one who lacks the lux