bership in the Affiliated, and from all accounts they feel they're being doubly discriminated against. Now that we've given the union the encouragement of a magazine article, we've got to force them to accept reasonable terms."
Therefore the sliding scale was drawn up and submitted to the executive committee of the union, of which Tustin was chairman.
At first, appreciating the cut in earnings that it would involve for a large number of men, the committee positively declined to consider it; they declared they would never accept the sliding scale. On this point their position was quite untenable; their association had accepted the principle in almost every other mill in the country. Floyd, who conducted the negotiations personally, replied that as to the principle there could be no debate; that would be enforced or the works would be closed. Then the committee shifted their ground and fought for better terms in the scale that was submitted. The principle of the sliding scale was this: that wages should move up or down, following the advance or decline in the price of steel, but that there should be a minimum price below which they should not decline. Floyd proposed that this minimum price for steel billets should be twenty-five dollars a ton; and the men insisted that it should be twenty-six dollars. On this point, as on the principle itself, Floyd was unyielding; on what seemed the minor points, to which the committee of the steel workers retreated, he was less exacting. Prices of steel were at this time high; by the agreement that was finally made, and that was to endure for two years, the rate of wages was to be fixed by the prevailing price and was to continue for six months. Floyd had proposed a monthly adjustment, but had not held out for what seemed to him then an unimportant detail. There were other details which seemed comparatively insignificant,—provisions giving committees of the union a voice in arranging the "turns," opportunity to
