Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town, Volume 4 of The Pittsburgh Survey, 1910.

This text was taken from pages 35-37, from the chapter titled "WORK, WAGES, AND THE COST OF LIVING"

IF YOU are near the mill in the late afternoon you will see a procession, an almost steady stream of men, each carrying the inevitable bucket, hurrying towards the great buildings for the night's work. A little later the tide turns and back come the day men, walking slowly and wearily towards home and supper.

Thus the life of the town keeps time with the rhythm of the mill. This is brought out also by the way the town reckons dates from the year of the great strike; by the trend of its development, conditioned by dependence upon one industrial enterprise owned by outsiders; and most clearly of all by the part the mill work plays in the lives of the men themselves.

While I shall not attempt to go into the technique of steel making, the general process can be stated in a few words. The crude iron brought to Homestead in huge ladies from the "Carrie" blast furnaces across the river, is taken to the open-hearth department where it is put into the furnaces, mixed with scrap iron, ore, and certain chemicals, and brought to a melting heat. The open-hearth furnaces are then tapped and the metal is poured into ingot molds to cool. As the steel is needed for use the ingots are reheated and go to the "rolls," ponderous and wonderful machines, which turn out steel rails, sheets of plate for war vessels, beams for constructing skyscrapers.

The conditions under which the work is carried on seem to an outsider fairly intolerable. The din in the great vaulted sheds makes speech hard. Men who have worked near the engines, though their organs of hearing remain in physically good condition, sometimes become almost oblivious to ordinary sound. Some work where the heat is intense; and before the open doors

of furnaces full of white-hot metal they must wear smoked glasses to temper the glare. This heat, exhausting in summer, makes a man in winter doubly susceptible to the cold without. While for the men directing the processes the physical exertion is often not great, most of the laborers perform heavy manual toil. And everywhere is the danger of accident from constantly moving machinery, from bars of glowing steel, from engines moving along the tracks in the yard. The men, of course, grow used to these dangers, but a new peril lies in the carelessness that results from such familiarity, for human nature cannot be eternally on guard; men would be unable to do their work if they became too cautious.

The nature of the work, with the heat and its inherent hazard, makes much of it exhausting. Yet these men for the most part keep it up twelve hours a day. It is uneconomical to have the plant shut down. In order that the mills may run practically continuously, the twenty-four hours is divided between two shifts. The greater number of men employed in making steel (as distinct from the clerical staff) work half of the time at night, the usual arrangement being for a man to work one week on the day and the next on the night shift. At the request of the men, the night turn is made longer, so that they can have the full evening to themselves the other week. Their hours on the day turn, therefore, are from 7 a. m. to 5:30 p.m.; this leaves thirteen and one-half hours for the night shift. In certain departments the regular processes are continued straight through Sunday and the crews work the full seven days out of seven; this is the case, for instance, in the blast furnaces, such as the Carrie group which are practically a part of the Homestead plant. The officials claimed in 1908 that in the rolling mills only necessary labor, such as repairing, was done on Sunday. Yet my colleague, Mr. Fitch, estimated that for Allegheny County as a whole one steel worker out of five worked seven days in a week. Moreover, a majority of the men have to be on duty either Saturday night or Sunday night, thus breaking into the day of rest.*

These are the demands which the mill makes on the Homestead men. Even the details of family life depend on whether " the mister" is working day turn or night turn; and the long shifts determine the part the steel worker plays in his household and also in his community. Financially, all time is marked off by the fortnightly "pay Friday." On that night stores are open all the evening. The streets are filled with music, and the German bands go from saloon to saloon reaping a generous harvest when times are good. Beggars besiege the gates of the mill bearing pathetic signs, " I am injured and blind—my eyes were destroyed by hot steel," and the full pocketbook is opened. It is the night for settling scores, and the bills which have accumulated for two weeks are paid and a fresh household account opened.

* Mechanics, and day laborers in the yards work ten hours a day. For a full discussion of the extent of twelve-hour and Sunday work see Fitch, John A.: The Steel Workers, a companion volume in the series of The Pittsburgh Survey, p. 166 ff. For recent action of the United States Steel Corporation curtailing some kinds of Sunday work, see Appendix VIII, p. 236.