Up to the spring of the year 1899, all of the materials in the yard of
the Bethlehem Steel Company had been handled by gangs of men working by
the day, and under the foremanship of men who had themselves formerly
worked at similar work as laborers. Their management was about as good
as the average of similar work, although it was bad all of the men being
paid the ruling wages of laborers in this section of the country,
namely, $1.15 per day, the only means of encouraging or disciplining
them being either talking to them or discharging them; occasionally,
however, a man was selected from among these men and given a better
class of work with slightly higher wages in some of the companies'
shops, and this had the effect of slightly stimulating them. From four
to six hundred men were employed on this class of work throughout the
year.
The work of these men consisted mainly of unloading from railway cars
and shoveling on to piles, and from these piles again loading as
required, the raw materials used in running three blast furnaces and
seven large open-hearth furnaces, such as ore of various kinds, varying
from fine, gravelly ore to that which comes in large lumps, coke,
limestone, special pig, sand, etc., unloading hard and soft coal for
boilers gas-producers, etc., and also for storage and again loading the
stored coal as required for use, loading the pig-iron produced at the
furnaces for shipment, for storage, and for local use, and handling
billets, etc.
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