The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-04-15
THE 24-H0UR TURN IN
 THE STEEL INDUSTRY
The Labor Policy of Unrestricted Capital-Right to Leisure Denied By 12-Hour Day-Social
 Effects of Seven Day Work
(By JOHN A. FTTCH)
 Author of The Steel Workers Exclusive Service The Survey Press Bureau)

II - (An individual stockholder of the United States Steel Corporation has tried for two years to arouse a public opinion among his fellow stockholders with respect to labor conditions and | policies in this. the largest employing | corporation in America The stock
 holder, Charles M. Cabot of Boston. | fighting single-handed to crystalize 1 support among progressive men and | women who have holdings in steel has | mailed to 15,000 stockholders a letter asking them to stand out not only for dividends but for progressive la l bor conditions.
 For something over a year the off l cials of the company delayed giving | MT. Cabot access to the company's l stock book, claiming that the state- ment he intended to mail with his letter was unfair. Finally consent | pared by John A. Fitch, author of volume " of the Pittsburgh Survey The Steel Workers. In this MT. Fitch l with MT. Cabot's approval while conn mending the corporation for it's pro- l posed elimination of seven day work. condemns sharply the twelve hour day which prevails extensively throughout I the industry. l There are dozen or more indus- | tries or occupations in America in which men work twelve hours a day l and seven days week. I think that if the public knew just what such a | schedule of work means it would not ! allow it, to continue. I am writing about the steel industry instead of the paper, cement or any other indus- ! try in which thousands of men work twelve hours day and seven days l week, for the reason that steel is the one I know something about. In 1907-9 spent eleven months in Pitts burgh and then because I wanted to 1 know whether Pittsburgh was worse l than the rest of the country, I spent l eight months in 1911-11 visiting other big steel centers in the United States. I visited Johnstown, where 1900 men | are working in the famous flOod-rav- aged valley; Steelton, close to Penn | sy1vania's capital and Bethlehem, the l old Moravian town now turned over to industry. went to Lackawanna, l Buffalo's new industrial suburb; to Gary, the wonder city; to South Chi | workers, to Pueblo, refreshing oasis in the Colorado desert; and to Birm- ingham, the industrial capital of the | New South But in every town and | in every mill, I found men working 12 hours a day and seven days week. Not all the men worked that way. In | some. places it was worse than in | others, but everywhere it was the reg ular schedule for a number of men.
 Now let's see what this means to the men in the steel industry. Steel making is continuous industry. For economical and technical reasons it operates day and night. There must be workmen on duty every hour in
 the twenty four, There may be two
 shifts, each working twelve hours or l there may be three, each working 8. The steel industry many years ago generally adopted the two-shift, twelve hour arrangement for the skilled | men not directly concerned in making steel or rolling shapes. These are shop men and day laborers and their regular day is ten hours.
 The Federal Bureau of Labor in a 1 recent report to the United States
 Senate stated that out of 173.O00 steel | workers in those branches Of the 1n-
 dustry covered in it's investigations, l about 20 per cent worked 12 hours a
 day and seven days a week. Ten
 hours and twelve hours are terms that indicate minimum, either is capable of indefinite extension and is often 1 extended from an hour or two on up to incredible lengths. Shop men are sometimes obliged to work many hours | beyond the regulation ten hours, re- pairing a break down or installing l new machinery.
 A 12 hour man, you would natur-
 twelve hours. He generally is, but have talked in the last year with IF | hour steel workers who have been obliged to work thirty-six hours at stretch because the other man did not relieve them. Such cases occur | ;~. hoo
 of a breakdown, but in the regular routine of events. It is all very sim- pie. Jones goes to work in the morn ing and works until night-twelve hours. Smith should then take his
 place, but Smiths wife is sick and
 man in a certain position and Jones stays and works the night shift. The
 next morning his own day shift be-
 gins again so he works that too, be- fore he goes home making total vf
 thirty-six hours on duty An employe
 had exactly the experience described and in October 1910 worked efty-six out of the seventy-two hours between
 Saturday morning and Tuesday morn
 ing, a period during which brick
 layer, a plumber or a compassion
 would have worked 12 hours, four o1
 them on Saturday and eight on Mon-
 day.
 These are, of course, the exceptional
 cases. But there is very large class
 of workmen in the steel industry many thousands of them through
 out the country, who work consecu- lively either eighteen hours Or twen- } ty-four hours regularly every two
 weeks. This is so because the two
 shifts alternate working nights Whe1
 the plant works only six days this
 can be accomplished easily but in the seven day plant it is made possible
 only through the institution known as the ''long turn" The general cus- tom is for the day shift to get ir line for the night men by working g
 full tweny-four hour period Sunday , and Sunday night, finishing Monday
 morning.
 The Federal Bureau of Labor inves- | tigators found that in a blast furnace plant nine-tenrhs of the employees
 work seven days a week. In 1909, 38,. l 429 wage-earnerS were employed il | blast furnaces. Nine-tenths of this l number is 34,5S6 which is the mum. l Der of men in blast furnaces who l worked either eighteen or tWenty-foul l hours once Or twice in each montf
 in 1909. But that is not all There : l were 647 open hearth furnaces in 19O! 1 with over 15S00 men tending them Many of them worked a part of every l Sunday and a considerable proportion , are regular twelve hour, seven day | workmen. If we could ascertain tht , | total number of seven day workmer
 Tn 1910, we should find it to have been
 think, we'll over 50,O0O. One-half tht