New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-08-01
POrtents of a Chronic
Labor Famine in
Pittsburgh Region.
A Dilemma the Ultimate
Solution of Which Might
Be a White Steel City.
Pittsburgh, July 25.

w &nPhec uiil"h oP"N'
New York and Pittsburgh, so much
the better. Everything will have been
taken up clean on all the fast trains,
J but there is yet slow one, avoided
like an evil by the gregarious and
impatient units of commercial socl-
ETY.. 1t letters through the night and
brings you to the spectacle Of mans
most outrageous impudicity under
conditions of marning light and wax
ing wonder which greatly enhance
its theatrical qualities.
In the first sensation there is n
recollection Of elemental terror, as
at the approach of frightful storm.
If nature had resolved at last TO
empty her wrath all in one place
upon the heads of those who scar
and torture the cuticle of the earth
in the name of industry she could
not present a more ominous aspect.
There is no western horizon. In that
direction all form is lost in a green
ish, sulphuric vapor, reaching to the
heavens. There is required an effort
of both will and imagination to be-
lieve what you know. No clysmian
event is imminent. Nothing Will
happen. Nature has no wrath. She
is helpless because man is unafrald.
He exerts himself to recomblne the
elements to his better use and liking
and casts his waste upon the sky.
Ugly, yellow sunlight strains
through in unexpected places. on
see the tops of twenty cylindrical
VOLCANOES, erupting in a row. You
cannot see the mills. They lie some
where in the hollow. The cinder-cov-
cred foreground is high and fiat,
with figures moving on 1t, some
toward the smokestacks, some tow
ard shabby little houses. propped
against the distant hillside. AS they
PASS each other there is seldom any
sign or salutation. They walk with
a slow and heavy gait, the Same IN
both directions. Here is the eco
nomic unit in its lowest form. It's
functions for the most part are auto
matte. It cannot see the world for
smoke. It knows what happens when
the stacks go out. A clearing sky is
the portent of unemployment.
But consider in how many vital
WAYS this dull, unconscious process
sion is related to the marvellous pat
tern of modern existence. So long as
there are units enough to keep it up
Pole. Lithuanian. Slav or Czech
the curves of human progress rise,
cities grow. railroads expand, ships
multiply and the Allies get the mu-
nitions of war, without which, ac-
cordng to political theory, the cause
of democracy might perish in the
Old World, whence came these very
workers. So long as the unit, for
his food. his warmth and a hut on
the hillside in which to reproduce
himself. can be trusted to keep his
place in that procession, industry
may flourish, gains may be artlcl-
pated and the unceasing social de-
mand for the means to greater
wealth may be regularly satisfied.
As a rule. the unit win. When it be-
comes indocile and won't, and when,
with the boss already needing more
men than he can get for new places,
there is no way of replacing the
units that drop out, then the omens
are bad for industry and its designs
fall into confusion.
The two materials most wastefully
consumed in the Pittsburgh region
are fuel and common labor. The ex-
haustion Of one is dimly in sight; the
limit of the other has for once been
reached. Unless way can be found
either to enlarge the supply Of labor
by drafting upon new sources or to
increase rapidly the efficiency of the
available quantity, the limit of in
dustrial expansion for the present
also has been reached. To raise
wages is Of no avail in this respect.
1t is question of supply. Means Of
increasing the productivity Of the
economic unit, mainly-that is to say,
labor-saving management and de-
vices-come into use slowly. They
cannot be imposed by force of in
tention at the peak of great ex-
panding movement. They entail
changes of habit.
Always hitherto the tide of immi
grafton has risen as the density OF
smoke has increased at Pittsburgh,
but now, owing TO the war, common
labor cannot be freely imported.
That creates situation to which
everything else must adjust itself.
Wages rise. Efficiency at the same
time declines and labor becomes stiff,
tickle and obstinate. That comes or
having suddenly more good fortune
than it can properly digest. 1t be-