Page:Jay Lovestone - Blood and Steel (1923)).djvu/18

 the State, most of the increases were very slight, or were due to seasonal influences."

Commenting on this Report the New York Times of June 15, 1923, said: "Unless the signs of the times are misleading, the industries of the country as a whole will not long be suffering from a labor-shortage." It is especially enlightening to note that, according to a report of June 2d on the steel industry in the Pittsburgh District, the only important existing shortage of help is manifested in the need of skilled hands, engaged in the cutting and threading departments of the pipe and wire lines. A New York Times Pittsburgh dispatch, discussing this condition, said on June 3, 1923: "In most cases there is ample supply of help."

For the sake of argument let us, for a moment, accept the statement of the American Iron and Steel Institute that the introduction of the 8-Hour Day would entail the employment of an additional 60,000 men. Here the Steel Corporation must answer this question: Why did it resist with assault and battery the demands of thousands of steel workers for an 8-Hour Day during the Great Strike of 1919 when it could easily have had an additional working force of thrice that number? And why was Golden-Rule Gary silent about the 8-Hour Day a little over a year ago when 6,000,000 workers were walking the streets out of work and out of hope?

However, when there was a terrific overflow in the labor market Gary did not stop at silence. In the period of 1920–1921 when the Steel Trust could, without any difficulty whatsoever, have introduced the 8-Hour Day, it discharged 67,000 men, and continued the ten, twelve, and fourteen hour shifts. In 1920 the average number employed by the U. S. Steel Corporation was 200,991. In 1921 the average was 133,663.

Testifying before the Senate Committe, in 1919, the Steel magnates admitted that one of the reasons why their industry faced a labor-shortage was, "because you can't get Americans to work the 12-Hour Day."

Then the wages. The starvation wages paid by the Steel Trust drive the workers away even further from the mills. Comparing steel wages with those prevailing for common labor in other industries, the New York Journal of Commerce said: "Even ditch diggers of the railways are receiving 41 cents per hour." The average wage paid today to common labor is 55 cents an hour—or 15 cents per hour more than that paid to the steel worker. And yet Gary and his crew who