Here is a description from the steel industry:11 "Their first working position is the cupola-charging floor, upon which the men who handle the raw materials for the cupola work. When the outside temperature was 81 degrees, the temperature of the charging floor was 117 degrees, to which temperature the men were subjected during the whole of their twelve-hour turn, except for the short periods, totaling approximately three hours, in which they were free to rest. While resting, they were still in a temperature of 104 degrees.' After giving a description of the various other occupations, the report continues: "As will be seen from the records of actual readings, the men in testing and working the heat and in repairing the furnaces are exposed to this terrific heat of upwards of 150 degrees. This exposure lasts but a short time, it is true, but the heat is exhausting even under the best of conditions. The best conception of the conditions during this work is given by the following notes of one of the agents of the Bureau:

66 'Heat conditions and amount of work done in making bottom. . . . Began work at South end at 2 P. M. Work as follows: Four men pass in regular order to dolomite pile 12 feet from furnace, get shovelful of dolomite (20 pounds), walk to furnace door, pause to see where material is needed, throw in shovelful of dolomite, walk back to pile. . .

11 "Conditions of Employment in the Iron and Steel Industry." U. S. Bureau of Labor, Government Printing Office, 1913. Vol. III, pp. 304-13.

WORKROOMS OF THE POOR AND THE RICH Men in a Pittsburgh Steel Mill are shown in the upper picture, running a 500 pound lump of white-hot metal from the furnace to the hammer. (Hine Photo Co.) Their working conditions are not so pleasant as those of the multi-millionaire whose private office is shown below. Here the sound-proof walls are panelled with rare woods. The furnishings are simple but costly and luxurious. (Courtesy of "System.")

Work regularly, but without hurry; each man averages four shovelfuls in three minutes. Exposed to extremely high temperature constantly. Gunny sacks containing magnesite, 12 to 14 feet from furnace, smoking constantly. One caught fire and blazed up. Men were in this zone during entire time they were at work. Finished at South end 2.09 P. M. Rested six minutes on bench back of charging track. All young men at this plant.' The recorded temperature under which these men were at work was 220 degrees plus. Water boils at 212 degrees."

..

The machine is exacting, implacable. Long hours and high temperatures are to it a matter of utter indifference. The machine works by night and by day under conditions that are humanly impossible, yet human beings are asked to keep the pace which the machine sets.

These are but a few of the many discomforts that surround the work of machine tenders. No mention has been made of the more vicious features of machine tending, which are an incidental and not an integral element of industrial life. The high accident rate and the industrial diseases so prevalent in some industries have in many cases been caused or intensified by the coming of the machine; nothing has been said of the child labor that the machine has made possible. Rather, it has been the aim to show that the machine is a pacemaker, shod with seven-league boots; a taskmaster, relentless and

implacable. Monotony, speed, intensity, strain, all are incident to work in which the rate is set by the power of the machine rather than by the ability of a worker to keep the pace.

The machine is the dominant factor in industry. It is expensive; it must be used to its full capacity; it is made to turn out product-take these things together, and the worker finds himself serving the machine-caught in the levers and cogs.

9. Worker and Product

The hand-craft worker, using the tool, had received an education in his trade. Apprenticeship was an efficient school, and the boy who was apprenticed at twelve to a saddler, at twenty was a journeyman who knew his trade. The years spent in drudgery and in educative work had yielded, as produce, a man who could turn out a saddle.

The apprenticeship method of trade education gave to the worker training, confidence, independence and a pride in his workmanship which is of supreme importance in the doing of good work.

The machine tender, engaged in doing highly specialized work, receives little training; he is not a craftsman, and, above all else, he is denied the pride in good work which comes only when a man makes a completed product.

The child says, "It is mine. I made it," and the ring of pride in his voice when he says, "I made it," finds an answer in the heart of every human