Men and Things

by Henry A. Atkinson

A large proportion of the workers in the steel-mills are immigrants. There are Magyars, Poles, Slovaks, Croatians, Italians, as well as Austro-Hungarians, and all the other races mixed in. Many of the men are single, or if they are married they have left their wives in the old country. The wage is very largely based on the needs of a single man. Nearly all the families take boarders. This reduces the cost of living and in some of these families, the “boarding boss” as he is known, is the head of the household consisting of himself, his wife, his children, and anywhere from four to sixteen boarders or lodgers. Each lodger pays the boarding boss a fixed sum, usually two or three dollars a month for lodging, cooking, and washing. The food is bought by the boss and its cost shared individually by the members of the group. A study was made of a community in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and it was found that the food consumed was cheap beef, bread, and coffee. Some of the people used vegetables sparingly. The Italians ate only a small quantity of meat, but used large quantities of vegetables, spaghetti, bread, and olive oil. The Austro-Hungarians used vast quantities of meat.

Houses and Homes. The housing conditions among the poorly paid steel workers are invariably bad. In a part of Pittsburgh known as the “strip” the living conditions are bad almost beyond belief. The reason given for this situation is that the wages are so low no better is possible. The standard of living among all the steel workers is low. Comfort or ordinary provisions for decency are almost entirely lacking in nearly every steel-producing district. The housing conditions are congested, the children play in the streets, and only the cheapest and most dangerous forms of recreation are open to the young people. A large proportion of the workers are members of the Roman Catholic Church. The men, however, for the most part have no use for the church and rarely if ever attend. The women cling to it, since they are naturally more devout.

The children suffer from the hard circumstances in the laboring communities. The mothers have generally gone to work too early in life to give proper vitality to the child. The lack of conditions that make for decent home life brought about through inadequate incomes of the fathers and the overcrowded housing conditions taxes life heavily by infant mortality, and mortgages the future health and morals of the children, thus threatening the future efficiency of the state. Investigations conducted by the Children’s Bureau in Washington show that the chances of life for a baby grow appallingly small as the father’s earnings grow less. For instance, the cases of one thousand babies in eight representative cities were studied. The returns show that in families where the father earns less than $550 a year every sixth baby dies; while in families where the father’s income is $1,050 or more a year only one baby in sixteen dies.[2]

[2] See “Infant Mortality,” a pamphlet issued by the Children’s Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.

The church in this age of steel must preach from the text, which interpreted in modern times will be, “A man is more precious than a bar of steel.”

The Church and the Homes of the Workers. The disorganizing influence on the social and industrial life incident to the war accentuates the importance of protecting mothers and children. The churches have a remarkable opportunity here, for it is to the homes that the church makes its first and strongest appeal. Jesus set a little child at the very center of his system for regenerating humanity and saving the world.

The church must produce and train skilled leaders who can direct affairs; it must set in motion forces that will counteract the evil in these industrial communities; and must help to create public sentiment so that the city that allows bad housing to exist and the industry that forces it will be looked upon as murderers of little children. Playgrounds, recreation centers, and the strict enforcement of all the laws that protect the home must be urged upon the church as a part of its program. Without these the gospel fails.

The Church and the Workers. Another feature incident to the life in the steel-mills is the apathy that develops in the workers themselves. Their attitude toward life is characterized by a dumb, brutish fatalism. The editor of a paper in one of the steel cities when discussing this attitude of mind remarked: “A Finlander cares less about being killed in the mill than I do about having my tooth pulled.” It is almost impossible to enforce the necessary precautions. Life becomes of little value to the worker pressed as he is for production. This thing called steel looms big and human; life looks small in proportion. Jesus, appealing to the rural-minded people of his day, said that man is more precious than a sheep. The church in our great steel centers must often and persistently preach the gospel from this text which interpreted in modern times will be, “Man is more precious than a bar of steel.”

Progress Toward Justice. The process of adjustment between manufacturing, the cost of labor, and the selling price of the material is a difficult one. Labor conditions have been such, and competition so keen, that it has been very difficult to safeguard the men employed in this industry. Union labor has had a hard time to establish itself. Nearly all of the mills and factories are run as open shops. Of late years, however, it has been found that there must be closer cooperation between the management, the owners, and the workers; and certain concessions have been made and new elements have been introduced into the system which are bettering conditions. It is now possible for the workers to have shares of the common stock of the United States Steel Corporation. The workers are suspicious of this scheme as well as of all other forms of profit-sharing and welfare work because they believe that it leads to a deepening of the dependence of the worker upon the concern for which he works, and thus hinders the coming of industrial democracy. It must be said, however, for a plan which makes it possible for the employees to buy stock in the concern, that it is a step toward democracy if it is democratically carried out. The difficulty at present is that only the better paid, higher class of laborers in the steel-mills can or will take the stock. Until the wages of all the laborers are increased to the place where each one can have a decent home located in a desirable part of the city, and a degree of leisure so that he can give some time and attention to other things than the mere process of making steel, the distributing of stock will not go far toward settling the labor difficulties that so often embarrass the great steel companies.