CHAPTER XVIII

PROBLEMS OF LABOR

I should like to record here some of the labor disputes I have had to deal with, as these may point a moral to both capital and labor.

The workers at the blast furnaces in our steel-rail works once sent in a “round-robin” stating that unless the firm gave them an advance of wages by Monday afternoon at four o’clock they would leave the furnaces.  Now, the scale upon which these men had agreed to work did not lapse until the end of the year, several months off.  I felt if men would break an agreement there was no use in making a second agreement with them, but nevertheless I took the night train from New York and was at the works early in the morning.

I asked the superintendent to call together the three committees which governed the works—­not only the blast-furnace committee that was alone involved, but the mill and the converting works committees as well.  They appeared and, of course, were received by me with great courtesy, not because it was good policy to be courteous, but because I have always enjoyed meeting our men.  I am bound to say that the more I know of working-men the higher I rate their virtues.  But it is with them as Barrie says with women:  “Dootless the Lord made a’ things weel, but he left some michty queer kinks in women.”  They have their prejudices and “red rags,” which have to be respected, for the main root of trouble is ignorance, not hostility.  The committee sat in a semicircle before me, all with their hats off, of course, as mine was also; and really there was the appearance of a model assembly.

Addressing the chairman of the mill committee, I said: 

“Mr. Mackay” (he was an old gentleman and wore spectacles), “have we an agreement with you covering the remainder of the year?”

Taking the spectacles off slowly, and holding them in his hand, he said: 

“Yes, sir, you have, Mr. Carnegie, and you haven’t got enough money to make us break it either.”

“There spoke the true American workman,” I said.  “I am proud of you.”

“Mr. Johnson” (who was chairman of the rail converters’ committee), “have we a similar agreement with you?”

Mr. Johnson was a small, spare man; he spoke very deliberately: 

“Mr. Carnegie, when an agreement is presented to me to sign, I read it carefully, and if it don’t suit me, I don’t sign it, and if it does suit me, I do sign it, and when I sign it I keep it.”

“There again speaks the self-respecting American workman,” I said.

Turning now to the chairman of the blast-furnaces committee, an Irishman named Kelly, I addressed the same question to him: 

“Mr. Kelly, have we an agreement with you covering the remainder of this year?”

Mr. Kelly answered that he couldn’t say exactly.  There was a paper sent round and he signed it, but didn’t read it over carefully, and didn’t understand just what was in it.  At this moment our superintendent, Captain Jones, excellent manager, but impulsive, exclaimed abruptly: