Page:Jay Lovestone - Blood and Steel (1923)).djvu/9

 divided surplus alone, $2,239,986,669,84 for Gary's corporation at the expense of 198,383 disabled, crippled and killed.

In the decade 1910–1919, according to Bulletin No. 298, of the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the steel workers suffered the following casualties: Killed, 3,255; permanently disabled, 9,549; temporarily disabled, 412,837. Thus there were a total of 425,686 workers disabled, crippled and killed in ten years while piling up billions of dollars individends and undivided surpluses.

It is especially interesting to note the correlation between the accident frequency rates and the length of working hours. U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin No. 289 shows that 29 per cent of the blast furnace men, 17 per cent of the open hearth men and 12 per cent of those employed in the Bessemer Mills were working 84 hours per week in 1920. The number of accidents is directly dependent on the length of the working hours and the common laborers who suffer most from the 12-Hour Working Day are those who pay the highest price in physical injuries. This truth is thus forcefully brought home by Mr. Lucian W. Chaney who directed this investigation:

"Common labor occupies in these mills the same position in respect to frequency of accidents that has been noted before. The frequency rate is 220.5 cases per 1,000,000 hours' exposure as against 57.6 cases for miscellaneous occupations. This unfortunate preeminence of the common laborer is found in each of the cause groups in which it was possible to isolate such workers."

At the hearings of the Senate Committee, a worker put this situation in the following light:

THE CHAIRMAN: "What mill are you in?"

MR. COLSON: "The bloom mill at the steel works at Donora, Pa., and so far as safety conditions up there are concerned, a man has no chance, because if he ever slips, his hands are greasy, and there is no rail, and there is no chance for your life, unless you jump out of the window and kill your self."

The effect of fatigue on the intelligence of the worker is most detrimental. In "Fatigue and Efficiency" Josephine Goldmark quotes the following from the Report of the N. Y. State Factory Inspector:

"Long hours of hard manual labor destroy the mental appetite in almost every instance. The man is unfitted for reading or study—he is physically tired and his intellect is inactive. The drain upon his