The Steel Trust Weathers the Depression
Lloyd, Jessie
The Steel Trust Weathers the Depression $75,000 a Year President Has Faith in Future — And Great Comfort in the Present By Jessie Lloyd M.JUEE8PORT, PA. •witHAT next?" la what MeJW...
...E. R Crawford of the McKeesport Tin Plate Co., delivered with a kindly smile, is, "I have been through many depressions, and have never seen one that did not end...
...Such patients pay $25 a week, which is about $16 less than the actual weekly cost of keeping a patient in the Institution...
...Instead of laying off, it has divided work giving half time to each worker...
...The sanatorium is not the only welfare institution maintained by the Workmen's Circle...
...For the use of their judgment and their attendance at one meeting a month, the directors are paid just what a laborer in their plant would earn by 10 hours of sweaty toll a day, six day* a week, 4* weeks a year, before the 10 per cent wage cut last Oct...
...Depression Salaries In addition, salaries are $75,000 for the president, $50,000 for the vice president, $15,000 for the secretary...
...The Workmen's Circle is the largest Jewish labor fraternal order In the world...
...Crawford gets a salary as large as that of the president of the United States, as well as a goodly share of the company's dividends through his large stockholdings, and it is imposlble to disturb his urbanity with such questions...
...Those who are sufficiently strong are encouraged to take daily strolls along the beautiful walks on the grounds...
...They are given the best medical attention and plenty of wholesome food, and taught the art of regular and healthful living...
...New earnings were $«.51 a share In 1981, compared to $8.84 in 1930...
...If the workers had borrowed the million that was put in from the outside, and paid 6 per cent interest on it, they would only have to pay out $60,000 a year to capitalists...
...it also publishes popular science books in Yiddish and during the fall and winter aranges lectures, open forums and concerts In all parts of the country...
...They are made to feel that they are in their own institution, an institution founded and wholly supported with funds for which they are regularly taxed...
...Founded in 1900 by a handful of Immigrant Jewish workers on the East Side, and chartered subsequently under the insurance laws of the State of New York, it now has 700 branches in all parts of the United States and Canada, with a combined member, ship of 72,000, most of whom are working men and women...
...Members of the Workmen's Circle are entitled to a year's stay at the sanatorium, free of charge...
...120,000 of the stockholders' money was given to the Welfare Fund in 1981—equal to less than 7c a share for each of the 800,000 outstanding...
...Its medical department In New York and other large cities, provides ailing members with medical care, including the services of specialists, at moderate rates, and in connection with that operates a large modern clinic In the metropolis (where nearly half of the members are located...
...It was a daring thing to undertake...
...In other words, by selling what the workers made, the company cleared enough over wages and costs of materials and plant to plow $16,000,000 Into bigger and better assets for the stockholders —besides paying them regular dividends each year as they went along...
...The farm not only supplies the institution with fresh eggs, milk, poultry and vegetables, but already yields about $13,000 a year from the sale of Its products...
...Mr...
...The answer of portly Pres...
...Furthermore, the Workmen's Circle subsidizes a number of hospitals and other welfare Instltu tions, while there Is scarcely a labor cause that does not receive its generous support...
...The sanatorium comprises about a dozen buildings, including three lean-tos for the accommodation of patients in the early stages of the disease, a hospital for the more advanced cases, an administration building, a central heating plant, a laundry, a hennery, a cottage housing the medical staff and several buildings in which the minor employes and caretakers live...
...and anyway, they are con...
...If the workers could run such aa industry themselves, it is clear that they would save over $1,290,-000 a year, even if they did pay 6 per cent interest on the capital actually Invested...
...And so $420 a year per capita employed goes to stockholders and high-priced executives, although the concern has already paid for Itself 16 times over...
...In case a member's Immediate relatives—his wife, children, parents, brothers, sisters, or in-laws—are stricken with tuberculosis, they are admitted to the sanatorium as paying patients...
...1. Now laborers' pay has gone down to $3.75 a day, and skilled workers who used to make $8 to $10 a day average around $6 through the forced sharing of work among the crews on the rolls...
...In the sanatorium everything possible is done for the health and comfort of the patients...
...The Steel Trust Weathers the Depression $75,000 a Year President Has Faith in Future — And Great Comfort in the Present By Jessie Lloyd M.JUEE8PORT, PA...
...The Workmen's Circle then had not much more than half its .present membership, while Its resources amounted only to about a quarter of a million dollars as •gainst nearly six million dollars today...
...McKeesport Tin Plate has done better than many companies by its 3,000 employes...
...There war* other formidable *ffh:ultles besides the financial |rowem, But undeterred by these...
...Nor Is It only their bodies that are cared for...
...This Immigrant labor order, which must depend for Its income on the moderate dues paid by its wage-earning members, spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for educational, hygienic, recreational and humanitarian purposes, besides disbursing annually over half a million dollars In sick and death benefits...
...The medical staff consists of two physicians, one of whom, Dr...
...That McKeesport Tin Plats Is no more grasping than most firms is indicated by an estimate of the American Institute of Finance, Boston, that its shares are only a "moderately profitable" buy...
...In those days the fear of tuberculosis hung like the sword of Damocles over the Immigrant Jewish workers, who rarely saw the sun or Inhaled fresh air, but passed their long working days in foul sweatshops and their weary nights in unsanitary tenement flats...
...There are frequent lectures and entertainments by lecturers and stage artists brought from New York...
...Moreover, they receive the regular weekly sick benefit ($8 a week for a period of fifteen weeks In any one year) from the order, to which must be added extra sick benefit paid in many cases by the branches out of their own funds...
...5,000 for solicitor, and $100 a month for each director...
...Of tin more than $17,000,-000 in assets, land, building, plant, etc., only about a half million was put in from the outside...
...Feeling the Depression Of course the company is feeling the depression...
...There are 2,000 unemployed right In McKeesport who have applied to the chamber of commerce for relief work alternate weeks at $3.20 a day...
...Crawford said something that throws light on it...
...It is their Idealism and social vision which have created the Workmen's Circle with . its numerous welfare and cultural institutions, whose story is part of the epic of the American labor movement...
...Yet it must bring returns from some walks of life, or the company would not do it...
...In addition, there is a considerable library with books in several languages, but chiefly in Yiddish and in English, which the patients, being Jews and therefore born readers, devour voraciously...
...la what MeJW Keeaport workers want to know...
...Bruno S. Harwood, Is the superintendent and medical director...
...4 per share is the basic rate since stocks were spilt two for one In 1928, although a year ago extras brought It to $5.60...
...The rest came from earnings...
...At the same meeting the directors voted to contribute $20,000 to the advertising campaign of the National Canners Association...
...to make it, and the whole world, a better and happier place to live in...
...to build the country, not to destroy...
...It is therefore natural that one of the first welfare institutions to be launched by this organization of and for wage earners should have been a sanatorium for victims of what has been truly called "the proletarian plague...
...Max Tashman, a noted lung specialist, serves as admitting and visiting physician...
...Its educational department maintains 108 schools for children, where the education they receive at the public schools is supplemented by courses in the language and literature of their Old World parents (thereby lessening the spiritual gulf between the two generations), as well as in Jewish history, in art and in labor ideals...
...All over the country working people are being forced to out purchasing still further—then what is going to keep business from getting worse...
...The Workmen's Circle Sanatorium is situated amid healthful and beautiful surroundings, on a hill about two miles from the town of Liberty, N. Y. Its grounds, which Include a lake, occupy 169'i acres...
...Who la going to start a new wave of buying when our wage rate* and working time keep on being cut...
...It Is a common sight to see a novel of Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, Sholom Aech Of Tolstoi on one table, a volume of Herbert Spencer or Karl Marx on another, and a play of Ibsen, Shaw, Chekov or O'Neill on a third...
...Its contributions to strike funds—whether the strike was one of cloakmakers in New York or of coal miners In Colorado—have been known to run into sums of five figures...
...It Is their toll and craftsmanship, no less than the business acumen and enterprise of the Reuben Sadowskys, which have contributed to the phenomenal growth of our great needle Industries, whose progress one of their leaders and teachers, Abraham Cahan, has described with such consummate artistry in his superb novel, "The Rise of David Levlnsky...
...The original investors only put $270,000 into this company...
...vinced that Industry is run by master minds and that they would not know how...
...We Are Very Sound" How can the company afford to be so good, in depression time...
...Advertising is wasted on them, one would think —cruel indeed to tantalize people who see only potatoes and beans on their table with pictures of juicy fruits...
...These men know ve/y well that they want to buy a lot more canned goods...
...The knowledge that his dependents are not left wholly without support, or, in the case of a single man, that he will not leave the institution penniless, contributes no little to the patient's peace of mind...
...These Jewish workers have come to America to make it their home...
...The sanatorium, one of the finest institutions of its kind in America, represents an Investment in land and buildings of over $400,000, while its maintenance costs the Workmen's Circle about $125,000 a year...
...a dentist, a laboratory man and seven nurses...
...E. It...
...But the workers are not Informed how much clear velvet comes out of their efforts...
...There was thus a crying need of an Institution for the care of tuberculous workers, and to fill this want the Workmen's Circle founded its sanatorium...
...The Birthday of a Great Labor Institution The Workmen's Circle Sanatorium Celebrates Its Twenty-second Anniversary By Maximilian Hurwitz RECENTLY the Workmen's Circle Sanatorium at Liberty, N. Y„ an institution for the care of consumptives, celebrated the twenty-second anniversary of its establishment...
...Just as things look darkest, the turn comes...
...For this dreaded disease was then more common among the foreign-born Jewish Workers, unorganized, underpaid and overworked as they were at the time, than it is today, when they are organised into some of the strongest and most progressive unions in the country, and enjoy incomes and standards of living undreamt of in 1910, the year the Workmen's Circle Sanatorium was established...
...Well, Mr...
...Let me cite two of Its many activities...
...4Jf this area, ten acres are occupied by the institution and its immediate grounds, while the rest Is used as a farm...
...In addition, Dr...
...obstacles, the Workmen's Circle proceeded with the establishment of its sanatorium, which in the twenty-two years of its existence has housed about 3,000 patients, the majority of whom were restored to health and usefulness...
...The men and women Who compose the membership of the Workmen's Circle are the same who have given America two of Its strongest and most progressive unions (the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the International Ladies' Garment Workers), who have help, ed to build up our greatest foreign-language dally (the Jewish Daily Forward), and our finest foreign-language monthly (Die Zukunft, where, among other things, the writings of Maxim Gorky were first introduced to American readers), who have created our most successful labor bank (the Amalgamated Bank), and the best cooperative apartment houses for persons of small means (the Amalgamated Cooperative Apartment Houses...
...The white plague took a heavy toll of life amqng them, robbing many a family of Its breadwinner...
...It gives no relief, except a few Christmas baskets to families of sick wage-earners, and a little coal, but It Is related that the officers helped a colored employe keep his home from foreclosure, and that it Is company policy to save homes...
...Aa It Is, $1,200,000 Is taken out of what they produce each year for dividends alone...
...We are in a very sound position," he said...
...He has faith in the future—and comfort in the present...
Vol. 13 • March 1932 • No. 13
