Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/409

 HORSESHOERS' STRIKE OF PHILADELPHIA 393

the smaller shops, receive a minimum of $3 per day. Further- more, the masters agreed to employ none but union journeymen. This promise, the journeymen maintain, has not been kept by all union shops, and there has been some talk among them of adopt- ing a stamp to be used on all shoes made or put on by union men. The effect of such a stamp would be to render the mas- ters' stamp useless, for by its use the journeymen would at once be aware of the employment of non-union men in the masters' shops. They would then refuse to work on horses wearing shoes that did not bear the journeymen's stamp, regardless of whether they bore the masters' or not. Many of the masters feared that this would be the next move of the journeymen in case they should come out victorious in the strike here under consideration, and this partly accounts for the way in which the final settlement was made.

THE DEMANDS OF THE JOURNEYMEN.

The demands of the journeymen horseshoers in the present strike may be divided into major demands and lesser demands. The former are chiefly concerned with the hours of labor, upon which the journeymen refused to compromise. They demanded a nine-hour working day with a half holiday on Saturdays during the months of June, July, and August, and that the shops close at 4 P. M. on Saturday during the remainder of the year. They asked no increase in wages, but were content with their present wages at the reduced hours asked for.

Among their lesser demands they insisted that fifty cents an hour should be paid for all overtime work, for every hour or fraction thereof. They refused to do any overtime work during the hot months. Overtime work was to be allowed only during the time of "sharpening" (sharpening consists in welding sharp calks on the shoes, when ice and snow frequently render this necessary to prevent slipping). The journeymen also asked that they be allowed one day in each year (in common) as an outing day.

All that the Philadelphia journeymen demanded had already been granted to journeymen horseshoers in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus, O. And so the