The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1922-08-18
ALL PIFFLE
Says u. S. Labor Commits
sion of Wise" Talk of
Labor Inefficiency
Declares Weak Labor Is
That Imported From
Overseas and Not
American


tical subjects more discussed than |
Efficiency of American Labor" and |
there is none upon which we know
less, said Ethelbert Stewart, United |
States commissioner of labor statis- |
tics, in a recent speech, which is pub
lished in Monthly Labor Review, issu-
ed by the bureau of labor statistics.
On the one hand we hear much of
the superiority of the American work
man; on the other we hear much of
the degeneration of American labor
OF loafing on the job, of job making,
etc. When we ask for proof. for fig
ures, for output per man, per hour
or per day taken from the records
| that are the basis of pay rolls, we
are told, oh, have no figures. but
| what [ state is matter of common
knowledge
! Common knowledge can not be
tabulated. 1t can not be worked IN
into an index number nor can percent
| ages OF Increase or decrease from
year to year be worked out.
| Labor cost per unit of production
IN any industry as expressed in
money, while interesting and econom
ically important, is not illuminating
on the subject of labor efficiency. The
question as to whether the output per
man per hour in shoe factories has
| increased or decreased since 1918 can
not be determined by the labor cost
per pair of shoes.
Common labor in the United
States may be less efficient than it
was 30 or 40 years ago, but it is no
longer American. In such industries
as the iron and steel, coal mining,
railroad construction, brick making
and textile mills and a great many
other of our basic industries, immi-
grant labor, of low-grade efficiency,
was sought for and the industries in
consequence overrun by races physic-
ally weak, as, for example, the Ital-
ian, unframed in any industrial occu-
patton as was practically all of the
southwestern Europe immigration.
"You hear it said that before the
war man would lay 1900 bricks a
day, that in Chicago you could get
1000 bricks laid per man per day,
and that now 500 and $50 are all
you can get. The fact is that any
statement which does not go beyond
the number of brick laid by a man
in day does not convey any adequate
information.
1t all depends upon whether a
bricklayer was working on an 8-inch
wall, a 16-inch wall, a 2O-inch wall
or a 24-inch wall, whether he was
laying to line and filling in behind
his own work or whether he was lay
ing to a line and some one else was
filing in behind him, whether he was
laying face brick or building dead
wall
THE same man might lay 1,50O OF
1900 brick one day and lay 400 the
next day, and work harder on the
400 face brick, pointed mortar, thar
he did on the 1,500 brick. In othe,
words, without some sort of de
scription of the work Thousand
brick is not the unit of the brick
layers efficiency.
"The statements made about out
put in the bricklaying trade in the
: United States since the war, which
d have come to me, have never beer
accompanied with definite data as tx
the width of the wall and the kind o.
work being done, or with copies o:
e production or time-cost sheets tha
: would confirm the statements made