As part of the service for which this incredible sum was paid the Morgan firm agreed to the purchase of the property of the Carnegie Steel Company for $420,000,000-about twice the amount for which Mr. Carnegie had agreed to sell the same property one year before. And Mr. Carnegie has never ceased regretting that he was too modest in selling his business for $420,000,000. "I was a fool to sell at the price," he told the Stanley Steel Committee of Congress last fall. "I might have got a hundred million more."

No doubt Mr. Carnegie is right. A hundred million dollars, more or less, was

a trifle at that particular time to the iron. magnate.

According to a government estimate, the total "water" in the capital stock of the billion dollar trust amounted, all told, to about $600,000,000-more than half its total issue of securities.

During the nine years which followed its organization, the steel trust earned. profits of more than a billion dollars.

In 1910, at least 22,000 employees of the Steel Trust worked twelve hours a day for seven days in every week.

More than half of the employees of the Steel Trust earned in 1910 less than $617 -or about $50 a month.

Twenty-one per cent. of the employees of the Steel Trust earned in 1910 less than $549 a year-or about $45 a month.

Mr. Carnegie's personal share of the price paid for the Carnegie Steel Company was $207,000,000. It would take an ordinary steel workman, working twelve hours a day and seven days a week and earning $600 a year, just 350.

000 years to equal the Laird of Skibo's steel fortune. Ten thousand such workmen would toil for thirty years to raise the same amount.

These figures are taken from various official governmental reports. The figures as to hours of labor and wages are from the report of the Federal Bureau of Labor, made in 1910, and cover only 90,000 of the more than 200,000 total employees of the trust.

This report says:

Working hours were reported for 90,564; of this number 44,993 had a working week of 72 hours or over, which is, in effect, at least a 12-hour day for six days a week. Approximately one-third of all the employees had a regular working week of more than 72 hours, which practically means some work on Sunday. Over 22,000 had a working week of 84 or more hours, which means at least 12 hours every day in the week, including Sunday. Approximately three-fourths of

COPYRIGHT BY PAUL THOMPSON, N. Y.

"IT IS IDLE TO RAIL AT MORGAN
MEN WHO
KNOW DECLARE HE HAS A HIGH SENSE
OF PERSONAL HONOR."

all the employees had a working week of over 60 hours; 11 per cent. of all the employees had a working week of just 60 hours; while only 16 per cent. had a working week of less than 60 hours.

To what extent are the payment of $70,000,000 in promoter's profits and the issuance, all told, of $600,000,000 in "watered" securities-on all of which dividends must be earned-responsible for the wage policy of a company which pays to tens of thousands of its employees a less yearly wage than will buy the actual necessities of life for the average family?

To what extent are these facts responsible for making a twelve hour dayand, to a considerable extent, a seven day week-necessary to the successful operation of the trust?

To what extent are the Carnegie libraries and other benefactions actually paid for by men who work twelve hours a day to earn $50 a month?

To what extent will it benefit these

men to lower or remove the tariff on steel, so long as dividends must be earned on hundreds of millions of "water?"

In the steel industry-alone among the great industries of the United States-is

there absolutely no recognition of labor unions. The 300,000 workmen of the steel trust are entirely without union organization.

The present situation is the best possible illustration of the work of the most enlightened and most powerful capitalists in the country when they are left with a free hand to deal exactly as they please with their own employees.

Previous to 1892, the year of the great Homestead strike, iron and steel workers were pretty thoroughly organized into unions. When that strike broke out, the majority of workmen-outside of the blast furnace men-did no work on Sunday. While the twelve hour day was most nearly general, a very large number of men worked ten hours a day and there were hundreds of eight hour jobs.

After the strike of 1892 was won by the Steel mills, more and more of the men were put on a twelve hour basis. Gradually the remaining unions were weeded out. But not until 1910

249

of the United States Steel Corporation finally destroyed.

It is idle and worse than useless to rail at Morgan and Carnegie. Almost any one of their most violent critics would hail with yelps of delight an opportunity to pick fifty or a hundred million dollars off the corporation plum tree. Men who know Mr. Morgan declare that he has a high sense of personal honor. The little gray Scot has become benignity personified. They simply took advantage of conditions.

Once the steel trust was organized and its tidal wave of securities poured into the public market the real harm was done. What follows is inevitable.

Many processes in iron and steel making are necessarily continuous. The mills cannot be shut down at the end of ten hours and opened again the next morning. They must be operated-as to many departments-for twenty-four hours in

each day, if economy and organization are to gain the largest profits.

Mills running twenty-four hours each day may be manned by two shifts, working twelve hours each, or by three shifts, working eight hours each. With the necessity of earning dividends on an enormous capitalization always before them, the most humane managers can be understood when they insist on working their men twelve, rather than eight hours a day.

These managers themselves feel the stigma which attaches to them and their great industry when the twelve hour day is made continuous for seven days in a week. Nearly two years ago, W. B. Dickson, First Vice-President of the Steel Corporation, called attention to this reproach and,

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POURING THE METAL.

since that time, the steel trust and many of the independent companies have adopt

ed a plan which is intended. to give every workman one day's rest out of each week.

The twelve hour day, however, remains practically universal in the steel mills. And, year by year, as the "speeding up" process continues the process under which the payment of bonuses for "big produc tion" to superintendents and other bosses, the workmen are more and more severely driven the strain on the rank and file in the mills grows constantly greater.

The volume on "The Steel Workers" in the Pittsburg Survey, published by the Russell Sage Foundation, says:

"It is not entirely due to the marvelous ingenuity of American engineers that steel production has increased at such a remarkable pace. The speed of the men who man the plants has played its part. Devices to develop it, possibly not bad in themselves, become, in their combination, when there is no restriction in the length of the workday other than the full round of the clock dial, a