The Connecticut labor news., 1921-08-05

! NlODc. He tIllllG DuSlHtSS l community of New York is to be in recently making public the start ling facts as 10 the tie-up in the steel | industry. The simple truth is that this prolonged and stubborn stand of l the steel men for impossible war prices has already inflicted such cruel injury upon the business of the en- tire country, as tragically reflected on | the Stock Exchange, and the readers of the Globe are so numerous, so in
 telligent and so potently influential in all business circles that they should certainly not be left in doubt as to the two essential points at issue, l namely-the labor cost of producing steel, and the prodigious profits which 1 all steel manufacturers have been
 In April last the steel magnates grudgingly granted trifling conces- sion in prices, and straghtway they ] inaugurated the usual newspaper campaign of emphatic talk about high wages, high labor costs, and th~ necessity of "liquidating labor" before l any further concessions could possi- ply be granted. But 10 days ago the 1 Bethlehem people finally took the
 lead in granting more substantial reduction, and this time newspaper
 readers are treated to detailed "esti- mates" of increased costs so compli
 cated that nobody but a skilled cost accountant can understand or inter pret them. All of this is camouhage, and all of it is deliberately designed
 to mislead the public and thus cover
 up the unprecedented profits which
 war prices have yielded.
 Hines Protest
 Two years ago Director-General l Hines made a most earnest and pub lie protest against paying the exorbi- tant price of $47 per ton for steel
 rails, but the rail pool was then
 strong enough to force him to pay it.,
 and to this late day they stubbornly,
 and now stupidly, stand for that absurd price. One year ago, also, the
 steel workers were striking for the
 right to organize the protest against the brutal and senseless I2-hour day, and Judge Gary met the issue effec
 lively by shrewdly granting 10 per
 cent. advance in wages-paid out of
 the fabulous profits which war prices
 were still yielding.
 But now 1t happens that all the
 buyers of steel are ''out on strike, and as a unit they have joined hands
 with MT. Hines in d determined pro-
 test against longer paying war prices. In consequence, the great steel indus try-the pivotal industry of the na- tion-is tied up as never before since
 the panic days of I8o3-o0. Fully 70
 per cent. of the Steel Corporation $
 267,345 highly paid" employees in
 1920 have been completely "liqui- dated," full 100 per cent. because they
 have been sunmarily discharged and for months of time have been idle and . wageless. The percentage of unem- :. ployment among all the independent , steel manufacturers IS even greater , than this, and down in Birmingham where the Steel Corporation captured
 principality in iron properties in I 1907, they are already raising charity funds to feed the unemployed.
 ,i Like news must soon come from , the Pittsburgh and Youngstown dis
 trict, because the Pittsburgh dispatch , es tell us that the steel men are "sav- plants Meanwhi lethe rising time of , unemployment is rapidly cutting : down the sales of every merchant who advertises in the pages of the
 Globe; the same IS true of every
 newspaper and every magazine pub , lished in every part of the country and in all lines of mechanical, con- structive, and productive industry the :, example of the steel leaders Is fast spreading uncertainty and the gravest apprehension.
 Iron the Barometer.
 It IS high time, therefore, that the living generation should learn anew 4 the lesson which five generations oi American business men have learned
 before, namely: That 1t is actual afct as well as a theory that iron is the barometer of trade" because steel is the one indispensable mater ial which enters into the manufac- ture or production of everything that n we buy, sell, an duse.
 In other words, we live in me
 Chanical age, machinery holds al
 the secrets of cheap production anc
 quick transportation, and hence stee
 forms the basis, the superstructure ; ! and the actual mechanism of all con structive enterprise and all produC n tive industry Steel making is, there | fore, the key industry of the nation the industry which must lead. AnC C just so surely as the stars shine wt
 can never hope to pull outl of this in
 dustrial depression until those stee I mills are in active operation once = l more.
 As an engineering editor l happer to have published The Complet, r Cost Keeper" by the late Horace L :. Arnold, book now out of print, be l. cause it was the first work of the kint N ever published in the engineering Q field. During the past 20 years I have also published some 4o-odo d standard works on the new science o - management, the essential basis o :. which is accurate cost accounting
 With such technical experience as |, guide it will now be an easy matte - to clear up the situation for non O technical readers by simply present . ing elemental and recorded facts.
 What Schwab Said
 l. Charles M Schwab knows as mucl 5. about the cost of producing steel a > any man alive today, and in his ia n nous and historic letter of Novembe n IS, 1899 Page SIP, History of tn d Carnegie Steel Company" by J. H 1T Bridge), MT. Schwab used these exac J. words:
 ,- 1 know positively that Englano = cannot produce pig iron at actual cos IS for less than $II.5o per ton, ever l. allowing no profit on raw materials W and cannot put pig iron into a raj
 with their most efficient works fo