VOLUME XXVI

NUMBER FOUR

T

HE label was a noble conception in the brains of a workingman. It enables him to see that his comrades are progressing toward the goal of freedom and better living. It is a guarantee that he is getting into touch with the great world into which he has been placed as "a hewer of wood and a drawer of water." It is the mark of the free man. It represents cleanliness and sanitary conditions. It represents unity of purpose. It represents manhood and womanhood. It represents skill and the best of workmanship. But the labor organizations must control this label-it must not be put to any dishonorable use. There are evidences of a combination between the retail dealers and the manufacturers to ignore these labels in many of our cities; but a quiet insistence upon the part of the buyers for the "little jokers," or no purchase, will be productive of their adoption in due time.

HAZARDOUS EMPLOYMENT.

Amongst the strange vagaries of our industrial life is the fact that the more dangerous a man's work is the less pay he receives for his day's work, and the smaller the amount of compassion or favor with which he is looked upon by his more favored comrades and the general public. Just why this is so is one of the mysteries-from my point of view. And at the same time these vocations are just as necessary to our existence as that of the physician, the editor, or any of the professions. Our country is filled with maimed men and boys who, for a trivial amount of "wages," have sac

rificed themselves, and no provision has been made in our economic life to care for them. There should be some provisions made in our state governments for an industrial insurance wherein the "profits" are ignored, so that men employed in extra hazardous occupations could have some monetary consideration in case of accident-a state insurance, based upon actual cost.

HOURS OF LABOR.

The reduction of the hours of labor of a workday should necessarily be to the minimum. If the laborer is not to be benefited in this respect by the introduction of machinery, electricity, and steam-power, then may we well say, "What is the use?" Reduction of the hours of labor to eight per day would work no real harm upon the employer, but would produce a more contented set of employes in every department of industry. What matters it if the product per day is decimated? That would probably eliminate the "overproduction" theory which seems to involve the peace of mind of many of our statesmen and statisticians. It may be that our fellow workmen will see the utility of gradually reducing their workday. Let us reduce the hours to the rational eight-hour workday by taking off fifteen minutes at a time, on a graduated scale covering a term of years. This would not cause any extreme amount of friction with our employers, and in a short time we would have our eight-hour day. This, of course, must be done simultaneously in every trade in the entire United States, so that the cry of the employer that

"my competitor in Indiana works ten hours per day" will be eliminated from the question. There are many people who insist that "competition is the life of trade," and in order to help those people along, an eighthour (universal) day would be a Godsend; for then those particular geniuses would simply have to base their "competition" upon the line of making better wares and not upon working the souls of the workers out of their bodies in unnecessarily long days. The argument is constantly made that "if they get eight hours, then they will want six." It is more than possible that this is true. The more you want the more you will get, and if the maximum amount of the product of labor has in the past accrued to the employers of labor, it is just possible that this will be one of the means of reducing this profit to the minimum in future. Let us try the experiment of cutting off fifteen minutes from the day's work.

STRIKES.

It is often asserted that strikes are the ruination of the workingmen. It is my most emphatic opinion that the reverse of this is the truth. It is no doubt self-evident that many strikes are entered into hastily and with no proper conception by the instigators of what they are doing, but these cases are rare enough, and are in the majority of instances instigated by newly organized unions, that in reality have but a vague idea as to the principles of their organization. Strikes are very generally won or lost within ten days of their inception. The majority of strikes that have been won, as a matter of fact, have come to a culmination upon the day of their inception, or within twenty-four hours thereafter. Very few of the records that we have upon the strikes of the country take these "short strikes" into consideration. They are just as important to the seeker after "facts," however, as the one that lasts six months or a year or two. The organizations that have been in existence for many years are the ones that win a majority of their fights in the industrial arena. They examine well the issues; provide a good treasury, and take the opportune time of "the rising market." must not be supposed that this fight is entered into in a spirit of "fun" nor with the

It

idea of harassing their employer. Far from it. It means better food, better clothing, more time for recreation, more home comradeship with the wife and little ones-better conditions and a larger share in the fruits of the wealth which they have produced. Were this means of defense taken away from the workingmen and women, then indeed would their existence become that of the peons and the villeins of ancient days. The strike is labor's only weapon of offense and defense. Guard it well.

ARBITRATION.

Arbitration schemes are quite feasible,

but

The forms that are foisted upon our organizations are not what I should classify as the true features of arbitration. What we usually get is more properly to be classified as compromises. An organization that has a strike on hand is approached at the period when it has the victory within its grasp, and is skilfully led up to the point of accepting this so-called arbitration. It cheerfully bites at this bait, and then it has the chance to choose its portion of the committee in connection with the employer's half-these in turn to choose the third. Nearly all of the arbitrators are men who have no practical knowledge of the particular trade under investigation, and for that reason the workingmen get the worst of the bargain; especially is this true of the finan cial end of the settlement. The outside arbitrator, especially if he happens to belong to the clerical profession, takes no heed of what the workman produces for a day's work, but immediately grasps the amount (in dollars and cents) that is accredited to labor upon the payrolls. If this amount happens to overlap the sum that he considers ample "to support a workingman and his family," then Mr. Workingman gets the little end of the bargain. Arbitration is all right, but the labor organizations must insist upon having only members of their craft and employers of the same industry upon that board of arbitration. Then only will they be assured of getting their rights; and if compromises have to be made, they, being the beneficiaries, will know just how far to go with entire justice to their fellow craftsmen.

BEFORE this issue of THE JOURNAL

reaches its readers, local officers will have received, in pamphlet form, a revised tabulated statement of the wages received and hours worked in the jurisdictions of the typographical unions holding charters from the International Union. The annual compilation and publication of this data is provided for in our laws. Heretofore it has been given space in THE JOURNAL, but the St. Louis convention so amended the law as to provide for its publication separatelythus making it a confidential document.

On November 17, 1904, the secretarytreasurer asked all typographical unions for a corrected copy of their scales, and furnished them with a blank on which to supply other information deemed of importance to the craft. The work of collecting and compiling the data was delayed by the dilatoriness of some secretaries, and the return of incomplete reports for revision and correction. However, the pamphlet as issued by the secretary-treasurer contains fortyeight pages of tabulated matter; embraces the scales of all but thirteen typographical unions, and is so complete as to make it of great value to unions negotiating new scales. A synopsis of the reports follows:

NUMBER OF REPORTS.

Of the 650 unions asked for a report, 637 are represented in the tables. In the charters of these 637 unions, 630 cities are named. It must be remembered in this connection that a number of locals hold jurisdiction over surrounding towns, the names of which do not appear in their charters, and which are not included in the foregoing calcu lation. An estimate including them would greatly swell the list of places governed by the reported scales. The pamphlet contains the following num. ber of scales:

compiled, and are made a part of this synopsis. The first contains the hours reported for offices employing hand composition, while the second comprises those governing offices using machines. In each table the first column contains the number of hours constituting a week's work. The remaining columns show the number of unions reporting those hours for each particular class of work-morning, evening and weekly newspapers, and book and job rooms. A study of these tables demonstrates that longer hours of labor are provided by our local unions for hand compositors, and the proofreaders, floormen and admen who work with them, than are required of those employed in machine offices. The hours of labor in hand offices range from thirty-six to fifty-four per week. In machine offices they vary from eighteen to fifty-four. A gratifying increase is noted in the number of unions reporting forty-eight hours as constituting a week's work in hand offices. The comparison is shown in the following tables:

There has also been an increase in the number of unions reporting hours ranging from forty-nine to fifty-three per week.

A few locals still report hours exceeding fiftyfour per week. These are either new unions, which have not succeeded in securing satisfactory contracts, or they labor under adverse conditions. A striking feature is the report of one union which sets forth that machine operators work only eighteen hours per week on morning and twentyfour hours on evening papers. Forty-eight hours per week is the prevailing number for machine operators, and where the hours for operators are in excess of forty-eight, the tendency is to reduce them to that basis.

Though the nine-hour day is the prevailing feature of book and job offices, considerable prog

ress is shown in the direction of a shorter workday, the number of unions reporting less than the fifty-four-hour week for book and job work having increased from 134 to 175 during the past year. This has not been accomplished without opposition. On the contrary, the locals that have made gains have been compelled to contend every inch of the way, but in the end organization triumphed, as it always does.

The reports filed show conclusively that by far the greater number of employes on morning and evening newspapers are working forty-eight hours or less per week-this being especially true of machine offices. In the larger cities the eight-hour day is well nigh universal as far as newspaper work is concerned, but in some of the smaller cities and towns the floormen, admen, etc., work longer hours than machine operators. There is a decided tendency, however, in the direction of equalizing the wages and hours of newspaper employes.

The members of seventy-nine unions also enjoy the eight-hour day in weekly newspaper and book and job offices. This list comprises the following locals:

21, San Francisco, Cal. 255, Anaconda, Mont.
36, Oakland, Cal.
262, Uniontown, Pa.
49, Denver, Colo.
270, New Castle, Pa.
271, Boise, Idaho.
275, Victor, Colo.

58, Portland, Ore.

74, Belleville, Ill.

82, Colorado Sp'gs, Col. 282, Sterling, Ill.

83, New York (Hebr.). 304, Albuquerque, N. M. 86, Reading, Pa.

95, Helena, Mont. 108, Hagerstown, Md. 112, Scranton, Pa. 126, Butte, Mont. 134, Paducah, Ky. 138, Austin, Texas. 142, Olympia, Wash. 144, Fresno, Cal. 167, Schenectady, N. Y. 170, Tacoma, Wash. 175, Pueblo, Colo. 180, Sioux City, Iowa. 188, Waco, Texas. 193, Spokane, Wash. 198, Fort Worth, Texas. 199, Zanesville, Ohio. 200, Youngstown, Ohio. 201, Victoria, B. C. 202, Seattle, Wash.

207, Eureka, Cal.

306, Alton, Ill.

318, East Liverpool, O. 320, Pottsville, Pa. 321, Connellsville, Pa. 323, Hoboken, N. J. 330, Chicago (Bohem.). 335, Rossland, B. C. 337, Nanaimo, B. C.

347, Wabash, Ind. 348, Girard, Kan. 351, Sharon, Pa.

355, Whatcom, Wash. 358, Greenwood, B. C. 370, El Paso, Texas. 410, Everett, Wash. 434, Trinidad, Colo. 422, Mayaguez, P. R. 468, Yonkers, N. Y. 491, Pocatello, Idaho. 523, Tarrytown, N. Y. 550, Windsor, Ont. 573, Aberdeen, Wash.

226, Vancouver, B. C. 227, Cripple Creek, Colo. 590, Park City, Utah. 236, Ogden, Utah. 626, Manila, P. I. 251, Muscatine, Iowa.

Arrangements for the eight-hour day, to become effective on or before January 1, 1906, have also been made by thirty-nine unions. The majority of these locals have the eight-hour day in newspaper offices. After the date above mentioned the eight-hour day will apply to all members of these unions. In this list are to be found:

5, Columbus, Ohio.

260, Findlay, Ohio. 22, Dubuque, Iowa. 286, Marion, Ind. 65, Virginia City, Nev. 293, Pensacola, Fla. 76, Terre Haute, Ind. 79, Wheeling, W. Va. 102, Ottawa, Ont. 115, Salt Lake, Utah. 129, Hamilton, Ont. 143, Danbury, Conn. 146, Charleston, W. Va. 150, Elizabeth, N. J. 161, Fall River, Mass. 184, Cheyenne, Wyo. 195, Paterson, N. J. 211, Oshkosh, Wis. 213, Rockford, Ill. 214, Pendleton, Ore. 217, Murphysboro, Ill. 231, San Jose, Cal. 232, Binghamton, N. Y.

305, Newburgh, N. Y. 307, N. Brunswick, N. J. 332, Muncie, Ind. 334, Clinton, Iowa. 353, Newport News, Va. 379, Ithaca, N. Y. 388, Walla Walla, Wash. 441, Salem, Ohio. 461, Cairo, Ill. 470, Pittsburg, Kan. 476, New York (Slav.). 493, Henderson, Ky. 511, Batavia, N. Y. 513, Desoto, Mo. 515, Iowa City, Iowa. 615, Manistee, Mich.