To make this clear it is not necessary to go back to the addresses in this vein that have been delivered from time to time by executive officers of the corporation before the American Iron and Steel Institute and elsewhere. It is sufficient to refer to the committee of stockholders, appointed by Judge Gary in the fall of 1911, who made a report on labor conditions to the stockholders meeting of 1912. Their report declared that 25¾ per cent of the employes of the corporation were working twelve hours a day. This figure included all employes in mines and quarries, as well as in mills and furnaces. The committee made it clear that “this schedule of work was found in the largest proportion in its departments which are more or less continuous, such as rolling mills, open hearths, and blast furnaces, where the percentage of work for the twelve hours varies from 50 to 60.”
Speaking of the effects of the twelve-hour day, the committee said:
“We are of the opinion that a twelve-hour day of labor, followed continuously by any group of men for any considerable number of years means a decreasing of the efficiency and lessening of the vigor and virility of such men.
“The question should be considered from a social as well as a physical point of view. When it is remembered that the twelve hours a day to the man in the mills means approximately thirteen hours away from his home and family—not for one day, but for all working days—it leaves but scant time for self improvement, for companionship with his family, for recreation and leisure. It is important that any industry be considered in its relation to the home life of those engaged in it, as to whether it tends to weaken or strengthen the normalness and stability of family life. By a reasonable conserving of the strength of the working population of today may we be best assured of a healthy, intelligent, productive citizenship in the future....
“That steps should be taken now that shall have for their purpose and end a reasonable and just arrangement to all concerned, of the problems involved in this question—that of reducing the long hours of labor—we would respectfully recommend to the intelligent and thoughtful consideration of the proper officers of the Corporation.”
As a result of this recommendation, the finance committee of the Corporation appointed a subcommittee of its members, “to consider what, if any, arrangement with a view to reducing the twelve-hour day, in so far as it now exists among the employes of the subsidiary companies, is reasonable, just and practicable.” Their findings are published in the annual report of the corporation for the year 1912, which has recently been issued. The committee calls attention to the fact that the stockholders’ committee found that “only about 25 per cent of the total number of employes” were working twelve hours a day. This, in spite of the fact that the committee distinctly reported that 50 to 60 per cent of actual steel workers were twelve-hour men. But as to relieving the situation, the report reads “it is believed that unless competing iron and steel manufacturers will also enforce a less than twelve-hour day, the effort to reduce the twelve hours per day at all our works will result in losing a large number of our employes, many of them preferring to take positions requiring more hours of work per day.”
The report then points out that a considerable number of men during the past year have left the employ of the Steel Corporation because they have enforced the six day week, and have gone to the employ of other companies where they could work seven days, and expresses the fear that the same thing would happen if an eight-hour day were adopted by the corporation.
Of course, nothing is said in this report, nor was anything said at the stockholders’ meeting of April 21, as to the real reason why workers leave their positions when hours of labor are shortened. The inference to be drawn from the report is that steel workers are so consumed with a passion for work that they do not desire to leave it, even for one day in seven.
The facts are that the cost of this reform was borne by the men. The Steel Corporation did not pay its men their old earnings for their new six day stint. It would be interesting to know the actual wages received by the larger proportion of those who left the employ of the Corporation in order that they might work seven days a week for other companies. We should then be able to draw our own conclusions as to whether it was a passion for work or a desire to support their families in decency and comfort that led them to look elsewhere for work when their earnings were reduced by one-seventh.
But the Steel Corporation found itself, according to its own testimony, in a quandary. A committee of its own stockholders had recommended an abolition of the twelve-hour day. The finance committee had considered the matter carefully and reported back that because its competitors had not changed from the twelve-hour day, they could not. It was a practical difficulty and they intimated that they were unable to solve it. It was to cut this Gordian knot that Charles M. Cabot, the Boston stockholder who was responsible for the investigation conducted last year by the stockholders’ committee headed by Stuyvesant Fish, went to the meeting on April 21 with this resolution: