For the men who did a straight twelve hours, "six to six," for seven days, the sense of "no time off" was very strong. I worked these hours for a time on the blast-furnace, and remember that the complaint was, not so much that there wasn't some bit of an evening before you, but that there was no untired time when you were good for anything—work or play. When you had sat about for perhaps an hour after supper, you recovered enough to crave recreation. A movie was the very peak to which you could stir yourself. There were men who went further. I knew a young Croat in Pittsburgh who attended night-school after a twelve-hour day. But he is the only one of all the steel-workers I met who attempted such heroism. And he had to stop after a few weeks.
Now it should be mentioned that some of the social life that most workers find outside the mill gets squeezed somehow into it. In the spells between front-walls we used to talk everything, from scandal about the foreman to the presidential election. The daily news, labor troubles, the late war, the second-helper's queer ways passed back and forth when you washed up, or ate out of your bucket, or paused between stunts. Then there was kidding, comradely boxing, and such playfulness as hitching the crane-hooks to a man's belt. One first-helper remarked: "I like the game because there's so much hell-raisin' in it."
But this is hardly a substitute for a man's time to himself, for seeing his wife, knowing his own children, and participating in the life of larger groups. Soldiers have a faculty for taking so good-humoredly the worst rigors of a campaign, that some people have made the mistake of turning their admirable adaptability into a justification for war.
The twelve-hour day, I believe, tends to discourage a man from marrying and settling into a regular home life. Men complained that they didn't see their wives, or get to know their children, since the schedule of hours shrunk matters at home to food, sleep, and the necessities. "My wife is always after me to leave this game," Jock used to say, the first-helper on Seven. Mathematically, it figures something like this: twelve hours of work, an hour going to and from the mill, an hour for eating, eight hours of sleep—which leaves two hours for all the rest, shaving, mowing the lawn, and the "civilizing influence of children."
I have no brief to offer for the eight-hour day as a general panacea for evils in industry. I merely bear witness to the fact that the twelve-hour day, as I observed it, tended either to destroy, or to make unreasonably difficult, that normal recreation and participation in the doings of the family group, the church, or the community, which we ordinarily suppose is reasonable and part of the American inheritance.
Steel has often been described by its old timers as a "he-man's game." That has even figured as an argument against any innovation that might lighten the load of the workers in it, and against any change in the twelve-hour day itself. The industry has certainly a rough-and-tumble quality and a dangerous streak in it, that will always call for men with some toughness of fibre. But I question whether the quality of the men it attracts, and the type it moulds within its own ranks, will ever be improved by the twelve-hour day. The excessive hours, I know, operate as a check against many younger men, who would otherwise enter the industry. The inherent fascination of making steel is, I think, very great. It was for me. But the appeal is the mechanical achievement of the industry, its size, power, and importance, even its dangers. The twelve-hour day, on the other hand, tends to place a premium on time-serving and drudgery, in lieu of the more masculine qualities of adventure and initiative.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] The Three Shift System in Steel—Horace B. Drury: an address to the Taylor Society and certain sections of the Am. Soc. Mech. Engineers and of the Am. Inst. Electr. Engineers, Dec. 3, 1920.