Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/789

 NEW YORK BUILDING TRADES PARALYSIS OF 1903 759

The local complications date as far back as February, 1903. One of the earliest disputes, over some minor issue, occurred during the foundation work on the Hotel Belmont, which is to stand at the corner of Forty-Second Street and Fourth Avenue, opposite the Grand Central Station. This mammoth structure is to have twenty-two stories, with foundations nearly seventy feet below the level of Forty-First Street. It is to cost $4, 500,000 when completed, and about $2,000,000 of labor and material is represented in the work already accomplished to which rela- tively little has been added during the entire past year. Not to mention smaller enterprises, it is estimated that some fifty to seventy-five other giant structures either projected or partially completed were halted in the general "tie-up ;" while almost seventy- five thousand school children were put in half-time classes in September, largely owing to the delays on new school buildings under construction by the reform admin- istration.

One of the first serious disputes grew out of the practice by portable engineers, employed in steel framework construction, of charging representatives of other trades a separate and exorbi- tant price for hoisting their materials, such as plumbers' supplies, engines for other contractors, etc., often doubling their regular wages in this way without any extra labor time, simply through having control for the time being of the hoisting engines and apparatus. This custom having grown to an intolerable abuse, the Employers' Association just then forming (last spring) decided to forbid it, and the engineers struck. There- upon the Housesmiths' Union, although working under an agree- ment during the life of which they were bound not to strike, violated that agreement and struck in sympathy with the engin- eers. This Employers' Association, formed for the purpose of bringing the interminable strife and delays in the building industry to an end, then took up a plan of arbitration, formed in general on the lines of an agreement which has been in force for many years between the mason builders' association and the bricklayers. In their present form the more important items of this arbitration arrangement are as follows: