Charities and the Commons: The Pittsburgh Survey, Part I. The People

by Various

We have seen, then, the Slavic day laborers coming into the steel district in vast numbers. Of their strength and lack of skill at the outset there is no doubt, and we have noted some of the snap judgments that are current about them; such as, that they are stupid, and submissive. All this puts us in better position to consider more in detail my first statement that it is the wages that bring them to Pittsburgh, and to see what advances they make once they have gained a foothold. The Slav enters the field at a rate of pay for day labor which is higher than that which brought the Germans and the Kelts. The lowest wage I found Slavs working for was thirteen and one-half cents an hour. The wage of common labor in the average mill is fifteen or sixteen and a half cents. The day laborer around the furnaces gets from $1.65 to $1.98 a day.

But the newcomers know nothing of a standard wage, and when work is scarce, they will offer to work for less than is paid for common labor. Such was the case of a band of Croatians who offered their services to a firm in Pittsburgh for $1.20 a day. When the superintendent heard it, he said, "My God, what is the country coming to? How can a man live in Pittsburgh on $1.20 a day?" The foreman replied, "Give them rye bread, a herring, and beer, and they are all right." [I have known a coal operator in the anthracite fields to pay Italians and Slovaks ninety cents a day, and ask neither what was the country coming to nor how they could subsist.] More, the Slavs will consciously cut wages in order to get work. A man who knows something about blacksmithing or carpentering will work at a trade for $1.65 or $1.75 when the standard wage may be $2.50. They count their money in the denominations of the fatherland and estimate its value according to old country standards. I have known foremen to take advantage of this. Again, those who are skilled will at the command of the boss render menial services without a murmur. "These fellows have no pride," said an American craftsman to me, "they are not ruled by custom. When the foreman demands it they will throw down the saw or hammer and take the wheelbarrow."

So the Slav gains his foothold in the Pittsburgh industries, and in the doing of it, he undermines the income of the next higher industrial groups and gains the enmity of the Americans. Shrewd superintendents are known not only to take advantage of the influx of unskilled labor to keep down day wages, but to reduce the pay of skilled men by a gradually enforced system of promoting the Slavs. In the place of six men at ten dollars a day, one will be employed at fifteen dollars, with five others at half, or less than half, the old rate, who will work under the high-priced man. Inventions, changes in processes, new machines, a hundred elements tend to complicate the situation and render it difficult to disentangle the influence of any one element. But this much is clear, the new immigration is a factor which is influencing the economic status of the whole wage-earning population in Pittsburgh; it is bound to be a permanent factor; and its influence will be more and not less.

My estimate is that possibly twenty per cent of these laborers from southeastern Europe now work at machines which require a week or two weeks to acquire the skill needed in their operation. To be sure, they are machines "so simple that a child could operate them, and so strong that a fool cannot break them." Many Slovaks work in the Pressed Steel Car Company in Allegheny, as riveters, punchers, and pressmen, while others are fitters, carpenters, and blacksmiths. Some Croatians and Servians are rising and are found in the steel mills as roughers and catchers. I saw Ruthenians feeding machines with white heated bars of steel. It was simple, mechanical work, but of a higher grade than that of scrap-carrier. The Poles who in recent years emigrated from Russia and Austria-Hungary are as industrially efficient as any group of immigrants and work in both mills and foundries. A foreigner who has a chance to become a machine operator generally goes into piece work and earns from $2 to $2.50 a day. But all men at the machines are not on piece work. A foreman explained this to me as follows: "If the machine depends upon the man for speed, we put him on piece work; if the machine drives the man, we pay him by the day." The man operating a machine by the day gets from $1.75 to $2. Many boys and young women of Slavic parentage work in the spike, nut and bolt, and steel wire factories. They sit before machines and pickling urns for ten hours for from seventy-five cents to $1 a day. The Slovak riveters, punchers, shears-men and pressmen in the Pressed Steel Car Company's plant are paid by the piece, and for the most part make from $35 to $50 in two weeks. Fitters, carpenters, blacksmiths and painters are getting from $2 to $2.50 by the day. Mr. Bozic, the banker, told me of Croatians and Servians who made as high as $70 in two weeks, and others who made between $3 and $4 a day—many of them in positions which once paid English-speaking workmen twice those sums. High and low are relative terms and they signify very different standards to a Slav and to an American. But it is a mistake to imagine that the Slav or Lithuanian cannot adapt himself to modern industrial conditions. There is considerable of prophecy in the thousands of them already doing efficient work in the mills. The sooner the English-speaking workers recognize this and make friends of these workers, the better. No class of work is now monopolized by Teutons and Kelts, and the service rendered by the Slav and Lithuanian will before many years equal theirs in market value.

With this rapid statement of the economic position of the Slavs, we can more intelligently approach the problem of their living conditions. But first let us bear sharply in mind that their work is often cast among dangers; is often inimical to health.

Many work in intense heat, the din of machinery and the noise of escaping steam. The congested condition of most of the plants in Pittsburgh adds to the physical discomforts for an out-of-doors people; while their ignorance of the language and of modern machinery increases the risk. How many of the Slavs, Lithuanians and Italians are injured in Pittsburgh in one year is not known. No reliable statistics are compiled. In their absence people guess, and the mischief wrought by contradictory and biased statements is met on all hands. When I mentioned a plant that had a bad reputation to a priest, he said, "Oh, that is the slaughter-house; they kill them there every day." I quote him not for his accuracy, but to show how the rumors circulate and are real to the people themselves. It is undoubtedly true, that exaggerated though the reports may be, the waste in life and limb is great, and if it all fell upon the native born a cry would long since have gone up which would have stayed the slaughter.

In the matter of compensation for injuries, the foreign-speaking are often subjected to hardships and injustice. If the widow of a man killed in a mine or mill of Pennsylvania lives in Europe, she cannot recover any damages, although the accident may be entirely due to the neglect of the company. Because of this ruling, certain strong companies in the Pittsburgh district seldom pay a cent to the relatives of the deceased if they dwell beyond the seas. I asked a leader among the Italians, "Why do you settle the serious cases for a few hundred dollars?" He replied: "We find it best after much bitter experience. The courts are against us; a jury will not mulct a corporation to send money to Europe; the relatives are not here to bewail their loss in court; the average American cares nothing for the foreigner. Every step of the way we meet with prejudices and find positive contempt, from those in highest authority in the courts down to the tip-staff. When I settle for $200, I can do nothing better."

The influence of the industries reaches still further into the lives of the immigrants. Each people has a tendency to colonize in one section of the city and work in some one mill. The Bohemians are strong in Allegheny City, but few of them are found in Pittsburgh. The Slovaks predominate in McKees Rocks and Allegheny City, and many of them are found in the Soho district of Pittsburgh. The Poles are numerous in many parts of the greater city. The Lithuanians live in large numbers on the South Side, and near the National Tube Works and the American Steel and Wire Company. Many Ruthenians work in the Oliver Steel Works, while the Croatians and Servians have worked for the most part in the Jones and Laughlin plants. My information is that foremen try to get one nationality in assigning work to a group of laborers, for they know that a homogeneous group will give best results. National pride also enters into selection. In talking to a Lithuanian of the serious loss of life which occurred when a furnace blew up, I asked, "Were any of your people killed in that accident?" He answered quickly, "No; catch our people do such work as that! There you find the Slovak." Of the grades of unskilled labor, the Slovak, Croatian, Servian and Russian (Greek Orthodox) may be said to perform the roughest and most risky, and the most injurious to health. There is, then, a more or less natural selection of peoples in the neighborhoods of the different great mills.

The geographical contour of the region has also had its influence in keeping the foreign population within certain limited districts. The two rivers, the Allegheny and the Monongahela, have cut their beds in the Allegheny range, leaving a narrow strip of land on either side of their banks which offers limited sites for dwellings, mills and factories. The lowlands were preempted long ago, and the contest for parts of them between the mills and the homes has been intense. There is an advantage to the employer, however, in having his crude labor force within easy call, and night work and the cost of carfare help keep the mass of men employed in common labor near the mills and on the congested lowlands. The deplorable conditions I found among them I shall describe, but let me say here that all the houses on the flats are not the same. I visited homes of Slavs and Lithuanians which were clean, well furnished, and equal in comfort to those of Americans of the same economic level. These foreigners have been in the country many years and their children have risen to the American standard. But our first concern is with the recent comers, who too often live in lodgings that are filthy; whose peasant habits seem to us uncouth; and whose practices are fatal to decency and morality in a thickly settled district.

Yet the foreigner pays a higher rent than does the "white man." In Bass street, Allegheny City, I found English-speaking tenants paying fifteen dollars a month for four rooms, where Slavs were charged twenty dollars. Landlords who received ten dollars and twelve dollars a month for houses rented to the English-speaking, were getting seventeen and eighteen dollars from the Slavs. On Penn avenue a Slav paid seventeen dollars for three rooms, while a family renting eight rooms in the front of the building paid but thirty-three dollars a month. As nearly as I could estimate, the average monthly rent paid by the foreigner in Pittsburgh is more than four dollars a room. I found one family paying nine dollars and a half for one large room in an old residence on the South Side; another paid ten dollars for two rooms, another sixteen dollars for three; and on Brandt street I found a man who paid twenty-two dollars a month for four. The rent is not always fixed by the landlord. Where lodgers are taken, it is sometimes regulated by the number the "boarding-boss" can crowd in, the landlord getting one dollar a month extra for each boarder. Houses of from eight to twelve rooms have in them to-day anywhere from three to six families. They were built for one family, and until the owners are forced by the Bureau of Health to install sanitary appliances, have equipment for but one. Too many landlords when they rent to foreigners have apparently one dominating passion,—rent. They make no repairs, and with the crowded condition above described the houses soon bear marks of ill usage. Whenever foreigners invade a neighborhood occupied by English-speaking tenants, property depreciates. The former occupants get out, the invaders multiply, and very often the properties pass into the hands of speculators. Houses once occupied by Slavs can seldom be rented again to Anglo-Saxons. Foreigners under stress for room use cellars as bed rooms, and it is against these that the health bureau within the last year has taken action. I saw one of these beside which a common stable would have been a parlor.