CHAPTER X
HUMANIZING INDUSTRY
Of all the problems with which industry is confronted none is more important or more difficult of solution than that of establishing proper and harmonious relations between the man who works with his hands and the individual or corporation who pays him his wage. Upon its solution depends to a large extent the settlement of the whole vast problem of capital and labor. And the proper treatment of the worker has been a question to which the management of the Steel Corporation has applied itself with energy almost since the organization of the big company.
To claim for the Corporation complete success would be an exaggeration. The problem is one that has been growing ever since the dawn of the industrial era and obviously cannot be settled, if at all, without many years of effort and of mutual give and take. To expect any employer, or group of employers, to achieve immediate success in solving the difficulties that naturally arise between capital and labor would be absurd.
No one questions the right of the man who works with his hands to decent living conditions, a wage that will give him the opportunity to live with a certain degree of comfort and permit him to bring up his children decently. Most, if not all, modern employers recognize this right and are willing, even anxious, to accord it to the men in their employ. But it has been by no means easy to decide just what are the best steps to be taken to attain the desired ends. And, it must be stated regretfully, the necessary coöperation on the part of the workers themselves is often lacking. There is often a tendency on the part of wage earners to regard with suspicion any steps taken for their betterment by employers.
It must be remembered that the industrial era is practically in its infancy still. It was naturally some time after the birth of the era that the evils it brought in its wake came to be recognized and steps could be taken to combat them. To-day every sound thinker on economics realizes that the welfare of the industrial worker and of industry itself are inseparably associated, and that industry cannot attain its highest development unless the worker gets a fair share in its profits and an opportunity for self-development.
It is comparatively easy for the successful employer—that is, successful from a financial viewpoint—be he individual or corporation, to spend money with a view to improving the living conditions of his workmen. It is not an easy matter to do this in a manner that will preserve the self-respect of the worker. And it is of the utmost importance that this self-respect should not be injured in any way. Paternalism, or anything that looks like it, must be studiously avoided.
About the year 1906, the Steel Corporation initiated a campaign of Safety, Sanitation, and Welfare. The enormous success that it has attained in preventing accidents and deaths in its plants is easily demonstrable statistically. The benefits resulting from its sanitation campaign are also obvious to any one visiting the steel districts. It is not so easy to point definitely to the good results from the welfare campaign, but there is no question that they are more far reaching than either of the others. The greatest of the three is welfare.
The term “welfare” is used to include practically every activity designed to make life more livable for the worker and his wife and children. It includes education, housing, club activities, and a host of other things.
While the policy of the Steel Corporation in regard to improving the living conditions of its employees is the same wherever the big company’s subsidiaries operate, the methods adopted differ in each locality with the varying conditions presented. It would be impossible in the scope of this work to give details of the multitudes of courses adopted in the name of “welfare,” but a few examples will serve to give a general idea of the work that is being attempted.