Average wages paid by the Steel Corporation to its employees during the past eighteen years have been as follows:
| 1902 | $716.88 |
| 1903 | 720.08 |
| 1904 | 677.18 |
| 1905 | 710.78 |
| 1906 | 729.86 |
| 1907 | 765.18 |
| 1908 | 729.44 |
| 1909 | 775.77 |
| 1910 | 800.95 |
| 1911 | 819.85 |
| 1912 | 856.70 |
| 1913 | 909.50 |
| 1914 | 905.36 |
| 1915 | 925.06 |
| 1916 | 1,042.41 |
| 1917 | 1,295.87 |
| 1918 | 1,684.58 |
| 1919 | 1,902.13 |
| 1920 (partly estimated) | 2,169.00 |
Although the average wage in 1914 was some four dollars less than in 1913, the average day wage to the worker, exclusive of the administrative and selling cost, was $2.88, compared with $2.85 the previous year. This is significant as indicating the policy of the Corporation to equalize as much as possible the amounts paid to different classes of workers. In instituting advances, it has always been the lowest classes of labor that have benefited most. The workers themselves have testified to satisfaction with this policy and their recognition of its essential justice.
The Steel Corporation has been subjected to occasional attacks because of its attitude toward labor unions. It neither encourages nor approves unionism. It does not contract with unions as such. It stands for the open shop. As it is plain that this biggest of all employers has not sought to crush the worker, that it has, in fact, done much to make his lot better and brighter, the question may fairly be asked why it is opposed to dealing with organized labor.
The reason is not far to seek. Unionism is opposed to efficiency, it destroys the esprit de corps that is so important in getting the best results from a large body of men. It prevents promotion according to merit. In its very essence it is antagonistic to the employer; it sets labor and capital into two distinct and constantly armed camps; it would make war between capital and labor. And the management of the Corporation believes that the only workable solution of the whole industrial problem is to bring labor and capital into friendly coöperation, to give labor a part in the earnings of industry, making the interests common.
This cannot be accomplished in a hurry. A movement of so vast a magnitude must necessarily take time. But had the Corporation’s employees been organized it is doubtful if the betterment of conditions of its workers, and consequently of the steel workers of the country, would have progressed as rapidly as it has.
The labor union, if used to help the oppressed worker, is unquestionably a beneficial factor in industry. Used as it too often is, to promote the selfish interests of its leaders, and to impinge upon the rights of the public at large, it is just as surely a great evil. The logical result of union labor as preached by its principal exponents is to cripple initiative, and to oppress the worker who prefers to stand on his own feet. And, in America at least, the majority of the workers are of this independent type. And in maintaining its policy of the open shop the Corporation has been fighting the battles of this class of workers.
The writer has tried to show that loyalty and coöperation permeate the United States Steel Corporation. That it is the result of the endeavor on the part of the big company to give to the men who make up its organization absolute justice, the square deal; its effort to make the worker, even the poorest, an independent, self-respecting citizen, and to give to every man in its mines, mills, offices, etc., an opportunity to share in the profit derived partly from his efforts. All this to promote efficiency, the “spirit of the Corporation,” to increase the value of the worker to himself, to his employer, and to the community. He believes that the facts justify the statement made in an earlier chapter that the organization of the United States Steel Corporation was the greatest step that has ever been made toward the highest form of socialism.