P. boilers by this method, while the average cost of doing
the same work on day work without an instruction card was sixty-two
dollars.
Regarding the personal relations which should be maintained between
employers and their men, the writer quotes the following paragraphs from
a paper written in 1895. Additional experience has only served to
confirm and strengthen these views; and although the greater part of
this time, in his work of shop organization, has been devoted to the
difficult and delicate task of inducing workmen to change their ways of
doing things he has never been opposed by a strike.
"There has never been a strike by men working under this system,
although it has been applied at the Midvale Steel Works for the past
ten years; and the steel business has proved during this period the
most fruitful field for labor organizations and strikes. And this
notwithstanding the fact that the Midvale Company has never prevented
its men from joining any labor organization. All of the best men in the
company saw clearly that the success of a labor organization meant the
lowering of their wages in order that the inferior men might earn more,
and, of course, could not be persuaded to join.
"I attribute a great part of this success in avoiding strikes to the
high wages which the best men were able to earn with the differential
rates, and to the pleasant feeling fostered by this system; but this is
by no means the whole cause.
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