Altogether not so bad as heavier lifting parts of the furnace job which are more hateful, together with the monotonous exposures."
This is the way Gary translates his Christianity into every day lives of the workers. This is Gary's GOLDEN RULE for the Steel Workers.
Many Casualties of the 12-Hour Day
Not all workers are able to stand Gary's RULE OF GOLD AND RUIN. Says the Federated American Engineering Societies report: "In some industry 12 hours work has been found too long for the men, and it was customary to have 'spell hands' to relieve them at intervals."
And Lieut. Walker further shows that: "Even the strongest of the Czecho-Slovaks, Serbs and Croates, who work in the American Steel Furnaces, cannot keep it up, (the 84 hour week) year, after year, without substantial physical injury."
Mr. Walker went on to say: "Another feature that impresses when you actually work under the system is the sleep you get is troubled, at best. You are compelled to go to bed one week by day, the next by night. By about Friday, I found my body getting itself adjusted to day sleep; but the change, of course, was due again Monday. The body will adjust itself to continued day-sleeping, I know: but apparently not to the weekly shifts, from day sleep to night sleep, customary in steel."
And in his address delivered May 17, 1912, at the annual banquet of the American Iron and Steel Institute, Dr. Thomas Darlington, then the secretary of the Welfare Committee of the Institute, said: "Taking the principal (steel) towns visited by the Institute excluding the large cities, the death rate averaged 19 per 1000—easily double of what it should be and at least one-third more than the rate of some cities of larger size." The death rate for the entire registration area was 14.1 per 1000.
For the same year B. S. Warren, Surgeon, and Edgar Sydensticker, of the U. S. Public Health Service, found the following death rates in typical steel towns: Johnstown, Pa., 16.9; Shenandoah, Pa., 18.9; McKee's Rocks, Pa., 16.9; Braddock, Pa., 23.2.
Their report, Public Health Bulletin No. 76, goes on to say that: "As it is generally recognized that mortality returns in localities of this type are more or less incomplete, it is safe to say that the rates cited are lower than more thorough and complete vital statistics would show."
In the year 1916–1917, while the U. S. Steel Corporation was making a net profit of $888,931,511, the workers paid in killed and wounded 80,427.
For the period 1913–1919, the steel workers earned, in total un-
— 6 —
