It is plain that Gary's assertion that the Eight-Hour Shift would entail the employment of 60,000 additional workers won't hold water. The increased efficiency and production brought on by the Eight-Hour Work Day system cuts down considerably the estimated labor shortage of Gary's Committee.
Now turning to an abstract of an address delivered on December 3, 1923, by Prof. Horace B. Drury, formerly of the Economics Department of the Ohio State University, before a joint meeting of the Taylor Society, the Metropolitan and Management Sections of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the New York Section of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers we find that:
"By taking care, some manufacturers going on Eight Hours have been able to reduce the force of men 10 per cent; some more. Others have found that their rolling-mill output has gone up well toward 20 per cent or even more."
And in answer to Gary’s latest lunge into excuses for continuing the Twelve-Hour Day, Dr. Mortimer E. Cooley, President of the American Federated Engineering Societies, said:
"In practically every major continuous industry, there are plants which have increased the quantity of production per man as much as 25 per cent. In a few exceptional cases the increase has been much larger. Evidence shows also an improvement in quality of production following the reduction in the length of shifts."
Summary
In times of depression the steel barons oppose the Eight-Hour Day because there is a shortage of money. In times of prosperity, times of big profits, the Eight-Hour Day is opposed on the ground of a shortage of labor.
Investigation shows that it is the Twelve-Hour Day which is responsible for the slightest shortage of labor ever experienced by the steel industry and disproves completely the contention of Gary that the labor shortage is the cause of the continuation of the Twelve-Hour Day.
The whole history of the Steel Trust coupled with the findings of the engineers as to increased efficiency in production on the Eight-Hour basis shows that the main reason for the Steel Trust's insistence on the perpetuation of the Two-Shift System is this: The steel barons want to keep the workers in abject slavery.
They want to deny the workers every possible moment affording an opportunity for resting or thinking. They want to make impossible any condition which might, even in the most indirect and remote way, make possible a revolt of the steel workers. To insure their keeping the workers completely enslaved, the steel masters have chosen the Twelve-Hour Working Day as the best means.
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