Religion: Church v. Steel

Blast furnaces are lurid enough to make striking symbols, and to many churchmen they have long been symbolic of evil. Few churchmen have ever been able to think of a blast furnace without considering how uncomfortable it would be to work near one and what long days the grimy, bemuscled thousands of the steel industry spend at their laborious, heated calling.

Some, however, do not think. Others think and discreetly do nothing. But out of the concern of a few churchmen for the welfare of tough-hided steelmen arose the war of Church v. Steel. Last week a long truce in that war was broken, and decisively broken, by the Church.

A decade ago it was common for steelmen, throughout the industry to spend at least twelve hours a day at their sweaty, appalling tasks. Thousands of them waked at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, went to work until 6 o’clock the following morning. There was a similarly industrious day shift. The seven-day week was a commonplace. In June, 1923, the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America issued a detailed, dramatic report of these conditions. The report constituted a declaration of war. After interminable skirmishing the first major victory for the Church was the abolition of the twelve-hour day in the plants of the U. S. Steel Corp. by the late great Steelman Elbert Henry Gary, who was long famed for referring to the Bible in public speeches. Mr. Gary did not say what hours would be tolerated, but remarked “it is now time to adopt the eight-hour day.”

The U. S. Steel Corp. produces about 40% of the total output of steel in the U. S. So momentous was its apparent concession, to churchly demands (“apparent”—because, of course, it was not admittedly a concession), that many happy humanitarians assumed that the issue had been settled, forgot that some 60% of the nation’s steel was being produced by steelmen whose hours were still presumably long.

But the Federal Council did not forget. Last summer it sent Emil M. Hartl and Edward G. Ernst, graduate students at the Boston University School of Theology, to spy out conditions in the land of Steel. They went to Birmingham, Pittsburgh, eastern Pennsylvania and Maryland, eastern and southern Ohio, western New York, the Chicago district. They gathered statistics on 155 plants belonging to 127 companies, read official data, charts, and records.

To the Council they brought back information which was startling and dismaying. Their statistics revealed that 132,628 steelmen, or 53.4% of the whole number investigated, were still working ten hours or more a day. Of these 16,610 worked twelve hours, 5,320 worked eleven hours, the rest worked ten hours. The seven-day week held in thrall 66,712 steelmen, or 26.9% of the total number. These figures, abrupt and impersonal, called up before the churchmen visions of a race still living with hardly any leisure save sleep, spending lives in a dark servitude scarcely more desirable than actual slavery. To the more aggressive divines it seemed that a mightier offensive than ever was necessary.

When findings of Messrs. Hartl and Ernst were made public, the firm names were concealed beneath serial numbers. Thus it was impossible to tell which employers demanded the longer hours and longer weeks, or to what extent U. S. Steel has carried the reduction of hours for which philanthropists have applauded the late great Steelman Gary.