ut it.... _John C. Van Dyke._]

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-