The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1923-01-19

try. Yet every reason he cites may
be correct, while the conclusion he
reaches is absolutely indefensible.
The 12-hour day in any industry is
wholly out of accord with the accepted
ideas of humanity and of civilization
today. 1t is repugnant to the con-
science of the world. If conditions
in the steel industry compel it, those
conditions are wrongful and intoler-
able and must be changed.
Judge Gary, in pronouncing against
any immediate adoption of the eight
hour day, declares that under it the
price of steel would be so high that
business would not pay it. Precisely
the same argument has been raised
against every effort to ameliorate the
condition of the working classes at
any time or in any land. Always
the world is told that better working
conditions will make for increased
costs and that business the god
of the materialist-will not stand it.
And never yet has this fear proved
well founded when courageous re-
| formers grappled with evil methods
of labor and corrected them. Time
was that English coal magnates
thought the supremacy of English
coal, and Herewith that of British
| shipping, would be sacrificed if they
were no longer permitted to employ
women and young children in the
depths of the mines. Once the south
ern states of the American union be-
lieved that without slavery the cotton
of the United States would fail to
hold it's place in the markets of the
world Not so long ago all the
states of the union thought that un
restricted child labor was essential
to their manufacturing industries.
All these evil conditions have been
corrected, and in all the industries
affected nothing save wider exten-
sion of business and greater meas
ire of prosperity has resulted.
1t is admittedly the duty of Judge
Gary to look after the interests of his
stockholders. But today there is wide
recognition of the fact that men are
not to be sacrificed to money. Divi-
dends earned by the subjection of tens
of thousands of workingmen to con-
ditions that wreck the body and ex-
tinguish the fires of the mind are
dishonest dividends. The opinion of
the worker on this subject is set forth
emphatically by one of the characters
in Charles Rumford Walkers convinc-
ing book, "Steel," recently published,
which gives a graphic picture of life
in the great steel plants.
'To hell with the money; no can
live" says the giant Pole with whom
Mr. Walker worked in one of the
mills of the steel corporation.
Judge Gary's pronouncement against
the eight-hour day is the more unfor-
tunate because he admits that because
of it the same inhuman and brutaliz-
ing system may be forced upon other
nations at present in advance of the
/ United States. Germany and France
are getting back to the 12-hour day."
he says, because they must produce
and compete with us, and there is
agitation in England to the same end"
1t is a sorry thing if the United
States, which has in SO many ways
led in all that makes for the uplifting
of man and the improvement of the
lot of the working classes, should in
this matter become the leading reac-
tionary force in the world. 1t seems
incredible that war-worn Europe
should have to abandon humane and
civilized conditions of employment in
order to compete with those enforced
in the United States, the most pros
porous of nations Christian
Science Monitor.
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