Of the

tives remained at work while the strikes were on. 83 mills involved only 31 were forced to close while 52 were able to run with the majority that remained at work.'

Thus with all odds against them, the recent immigrants speaking in sixteen different languages, have given proof of far greater cohesion than the English-speaking operatives of former years.

1 Sixteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table iv., pp. 332-355.

CHAPTER XX

THE IRON AND STEEL WORKERS

HE twelve-hour day, the twenty-four-hour shift, and integral

part of the system, have of late caused wide discussion of the iron and steel industry. The public conscience demanded to know who was responsible for those labor conditions. The offenders were easily discovered. Inasmuch as three fourths of the unskilled men working those long hours were found to be Southern and Eastern Europeans, it became evident that it was they who were to blame for accepting such intolerable working conditions. A representative of a labor constituency, speaking on the floor of Congress, declared that "in the steel mills of Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Milwaukee, where thirty years ago the so-called princes of labor used to get from $10 to $15 a day, the modern white coolies get $1.75 for twelve hours a day, seven days in the week," the change being due to the "Slavonians, Italians, Greeks, Russians, and Armenians," who "have been brought into this country by the million" and "simply because they have a lower standard of living... have crowded out the Americans, Germans, Englishmen, and Irishmen," from the mills.

Such generalizations as these represent the popular conception of the causes of long hours and low wages in the iron and steel industry. The principal fallacy underlying

'Speech of Hon. Victor L. Berger, of Wisconsin, in the House of Representatives, Wednesday, June 14, 1911. Congressional Record, pp. 2026-2030.

this interpretation has been shown in Chapter VII.: there has been no "crowding out" of American, English, Irish, or German steel workers by immigrants "brought" from Southern and Eastern Europe. The development of the iron and steel industry has been so rapid that all but a small percentage of the English-speaking workmen have been advanced to higher positions and their places have been filled with Southern and Eastern Europeans. The new immigrants do not compete with the native and older immigrant workmen, and can therefore not affect their wages.

The parallel between the "princes of labor" and the "white coolies" is equally without an historical foundation. Princes have at all times been few. "The old reputation of the steel industry as one of exceptionally high wages is false so far as the rank and file are concerned," says Mr. Fitch of the Pittsburgh Survey staff, who has made a study of the steel workers, "neither, on the other hand, should it be singled out as an unusual type, as an industry in which the majority of the men are paid at the lowest rates." The rollers, heaters, and other skilled men, whose earnings in the early days often exceeded the salary of the superintendent, were only a small fraction of the total force.

The high earnings of the few skilled men often represented profit rather than wages. In the early '80's the contract system was the prevailing method of hiring labor in the mills:

A man would contract with the company to run a single mill, from the furnaces to the piling beds of the shears, and like any other contractor he derived his profit from the margin between what the company paid him for the tonnage turned out and what he paid the men for it. The contractor, while usually known as the roller, frequently did no work at all, having two practical rollers employed on the mill. At the same time he secured a considerable income for himself by paying the men as low wages as possible, and steel workers got a reputation for being very highly paid workmen on account of the large earnings of these contractors. A statement from the proprietor of one of the "largest rolling mills in

I

John A. Fitch, "The Steel Workers." The Pittsburgh Survey, p. 150.

the District," regarding wages paid in his mill in 1881-1882, was to the effect that under the contract system one steel worker had made $25,000 in a year. A sheet shearer made $12.00 per day and paid his helper $2.00. A hammerman in charge of both turns made $17.00 per day and paid his helper $2.50.1

The proportion of employees who were paid each rate of wages in the rolling mills of Ohio in 1884, when the number of Southern and Eastern Europeans among them was negligible, appears from Table 118. The number of

TABLE 118.

CLASSIFICATION OF EMPLOYEES IN SELECTED ROLLING MILLS OF OHIO BY RATES OF WEEKLY WAGES, 1884.'

"

'princes of labor" did not exceed 57 in a total force of 2134, i. e., 2.7 per cent. On the other hand, the number of "white coolies" who were paid less than $10 a week, i. e., less than $1.75 per day, was then as high as one third of the total force, and those who were paid less than $12 a week numbered nearly one half of all employees. There is no reason to assume that the wages in Ohio materially

Fitch, loc. cit., p. 99.

Report of the Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1885, Table 51, pp. 185-186. The statistics comprise only those mills for which complete data were available.

Includes: Rollers, nailers, heaters, and puddlers.

differed from those paid at the time in other centers of the iron and steel industry.

The Immigration Commission made a comparative statistical study of the rates of wages paid by one steel company at different periods, going as far back as 1880, and reached the following conclusion:

An inspection of the wage scale paid by the steel company during the past eighteen years—the period marked by the coming of the immigrants in greatest numbers—reveals the fact that wages have risen and fallen in good and bad times equally for skilled labor, largely free from direct immigration competition, and for unskilled labor, now largely performed by immigrants.1

The wage scale appearing in the report includes no rolling mills where exceptionally high rates were earned by a few men of special skill. The highest rate appearing in the scale for 1880 is $3 per day paid to engineers; the highest in 1885 is $3.42 for brick masons. Neither of these two classes were iron and steel workers in a proper sense. The highest paid among iron and steel workers proper in 1880 were boiler-makers, whose maximum rate was $2.75. But the wages of laborers in 1880 were as low as $1.10, and in 1885 as low as $1. There was a general drop in the rates of wages at the blast furnaces and in the Bessemer department between 1880 and 1885, when immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was insignificant. There was also a drop in the rates for several occupations from 1890 to 1895, which was obviously due to the effects of the crisis of 1893. Since 1895 wages at the blast furnaces and in the Bessemer department have been on the increase, while in the mechanical department, the wages of skilled mechanics have been subject to sharp fluctuations. On the other hand, the wages of unskilled laborers, most of whom are from Southern and Eastern Europe, have steadily

• Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, p. 601.