Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/44

22 The above statement of 1,100 bricks laid by a man in a day is conservative. Previous to the war, m heavy wall work 200 bricks per hour was not an unusual figure.

A favorite method of making more work and wasting time and money was the allocation of tasks among the several unions. Jurisdictional disputes were a prolific cause of trouble to anyone trying to build anything or do anything. Richard Spillane in Commerce and Finance gives an illustration of this:

“In order to change a nozzle tip in the front end of a locomotive it is necessary:

“1. To call a boiler-maker and his helper to open the door, because this is the boiler-maker’s work.

“2. To call a pipe man and his helper to remove the blower pipe, because this is a pipe-man’s work.

“3. To call a machinist and his helper to remove the tip, because this is a machinist’s work.

“These same three forces must be employed to put in the new tip. Before Federal control a machinist’s helper, or any handy man, put in nozzle tips alone.”

Another example is furnished by C. F. Kelley, president of the Anaconda Copper Mining Co., who reported:

“Suppose we want to put in a little fan underground. What do we have to do? We have to get a carpenter and a helper, an electrical worker and a helper, a machinist and a helper to do a job any two men could do. If a miner should happen to lay down the timbers upon which the fan would be placed, these timbers would have to be removed and a carpenter lay them down.”