Page:Jay Lovestone - Blood and Steel (1923)).djvu/16

 hold duties is discouraged under a fortnight. Seven hundred and forty-six mothers (54 percent) remained in bed less than ten days after delivery."

5. "More than three-fifths (65 per cent) of the mothers in families in which the chief breadwinners earned less than $1,050 a year observed less than the 10 day period in bed after delivery and about one-half (51 per cent) had household help less than two weeks. When the income was $1,850 or over, 36 per cent got up before the tenth day and only about one mother in six (16 per cent) had household help less than a fortnight."

6. "The proportion of families in which the chief breadwinner's earnings were not supplemented varied according to the amount of the breadwinner's contribution. When his earnings were below $1,050, 56 per cent of the babies were found in families which had no supplementary earnings; in the next higher income group, 67 per cent; in the highest 72 per cent. In short, the more adequate the chief breadwinner's earnings, the smaller the tendency, the less need to add to them by the earnings of other members of the family. Mothers were less likely to be gainfully employed if the chief breadwinner's earnings were high, though even in the highest group 29 per cent of the mothers were employed. In the lowest income group the percentage was 41."

The Twelve-Hour Hell Shift System denies the steel worker even the slimmest opportunity for family and social life. The Twelve-Hour Day and its destructive twin brother, low wages, are responsible for the wretched housing conditions, intolerable living conditions of the mothers and an appalling infant mortality.

Applying the rules of arithmetic to the everyday life of the steel workers, the Twelve-Hour Day annually adds hundreds of millions of dollars to the capitalists, subtracts years of life from the children and wives of the workingmen, divides the laborer’s time until it is reduced to an insignificant fraction of a day for social and family life, and multiplies the workers' woes and troubles by the score.

With blaring bands the Barons of the Satrapy of Steel have advertised the so-called "labor shortage" far and wide to thwart the growing opposition to the 12-Hour Hell Shift System.

Said the May 25, 1923, Report of Gary's American Iron and Steel Institute: