How Steel Trust Reduces Hours
As early as 1912 the stockholders of the Steel Corporation voted against the 12-Hour Day in principle. One of the principal demands of the strikers in 1919 was the abolition of the two-shift system. So great has been the demand for the introduction of an Eight-Hour Day in steel mills that even Czar Gary has repeatedly promised to look into the matter.
On May 18, 1922, President Harding wined and entertained 40 or 50 of the leading steel barons at a White House Dinner. It was at this royal dinner that Gary, the Chief Executive of the United States Steel Corporation yielded to Harding, the Chief Executive of the United States Government, and appointed a committee of the American Iron and Steel Institute to investigate the practicability of running the whole industry on a three-shift basis.
As many expected, this Committee found it impracticable to introduce the Eight-Hour Day at present. This Committee was simply pursuing the same tactics and manoeuvres as has Gary for over a decade.
Testifying before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, investigating the 1919 Steel Strike, Gary had the brazen effrontery to say that the Steel Corporation was "reducing these hours from year to year."
As a matter of fact the hours of labor in the steel industry have been increasing steadily. In 1910 the Blast Furnace men worked 78.7 hours per week and the Open Hearth Men 75.3 hours. In 1919 they worked 82.1 hours and 76.4 hours per week respectively on an average.
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that in 57 of the 79 occupations of the steel industry the weekly hours of labor increased from a few minutes up to 14 hours in 1919 as compared to 1914.
Show Great Extent of 12-Hour Day
In a report of the U. S. Department of Labor, published May 24, 1922, we are given the latest facts and figures about the extent to which the steel workers are enslaved 12 hours.
Less than 25 per cent of the steel workers are allowed to work under 60 hours a week "altho in most industries 60 hours was regard- ed as the maximum working week" over a decade ago. About half of those waking 12 hours a day work seven days a week.
It has been pointed out in Bulletin No. 265, of the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, that the per cent of men averaging 12 hours a day in the steel industry is over twice that of those in the chemical, nearly five times of those in the anthracite fields, eight times those in the rubber industry and almost 25 times those working 12 hours a day in the bituminous coal mines.
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