Paul Underwood Kellogg to Jane Addams, October 31, 1925

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October 31, 1925.

Dear Miss Addams:

It was neither Hugh, nor Dr. Richard, nor yet Philip -- but Charles M. Cabot, a broker of Boston, brother of Richard and Philip, and I suppose Hugh. Charles Cabot was a small stockholder of the Steel Corporation. We made an investigation of housing conditions as part of the Pittsburgh Survey. While the work was in process, the Chamber of Commerce had a housing committee out and wanted to draw on our investigation. We cut the knot by publishing a preliminary statement in "Charities and Commons," a year in advance of our general presentation, and the Chamber of Commerce Committee circulated it in pamphlet form locally. The only difference between our text and theirs was that we carried the names of owners.

Arthur Gleason was then one of the editors of Collier's, and he clipped out a paragraph from the article in "Charities and Commons" which described Painters' Row. Painters' Row was really five rows of houses on a hillside adjoining Painters' Mills, so I really [illegible] ↑which [owns them]↓. There were about one hundred families in the houses, and the conditions were atrocious. Painters' Mills had been bought by the Carnegie Steel Company, and the Carnegie Steel had been taken over by the United States Steel Corporation. In the process, they had renovated and brought to date Painters' Mills, but in this industry of great engineers, they had failed to drop a sewer down a hundred yards to the river, or carry water up a hundred feet into the dwellings. One yard pump, excruciating stair-climbing, dark hillside cellar rooms, rank toilets, wash water and drinking water carried up those steps by the back muscles of women -- that was the situation.

Our paragraph was only about five lines long. Gleason's editorial asked if stockholders of the Steel Corporation liked to think they got their income from this sort of thing.

Cabot wrote Judge Gary in protest. Judge Gary referred to the Carnegie Steel, and they to the superintendent of Painters' Mills; in due time Cabot was sent a white-washed report denouncing us as lairs. He called on Collier's to retract, and Collier's called on us to come through to sustain their editorial.

It happened that our housing investigation was made in Pittsburgh by Miss [Elisabeth] Crowell under Mr. Lawrence [Veiller]. Miss Crowell had been the superintendent of a hospital in Florida. This was her first place of housing work. She had never seen anything like Painters' Row, and had spent most of a week there. Back of those five lines lay three closely [page 2] written pages of notes that were absolutely devastating their exhibition of neglect. We sent these to Collier's; they forwarded them to Cabot; and he came back at the Steel Corporation with the facts in his possession. Within a year, due to his activity on the one hand, and that of Dr. Edwards, ↑Pittsburgh↓ Commissioner of Health, on the other, half of the buildings were torn down and some reforms made in the remainder. We reinvestigated them and published the facts: told of the changes made, and those still needed. And I believe these were carried out fairly shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile Cabot's interest had become aroused; we called his attention to the fact that this little group of houses was a very small matter compared with other conditions in the steel industry, and he went to it "as a piece of citizenship." He gave us $4,000 to send John Fitch into the other steel districts that next year, and that was the beginning of our Industry Department, to which Mrs. Bowen contributed in the past.

The first point of attack was the 7-day week; and between Cabot and Fitch on the outside and W. B. Dixon on the inside -- vice-president of the Steel Corporation -- that was smashed within two years. And the American Iron & Steel Institute brought in a one-day-of-rest schedule which was adopted pretty generally by the industry before the war.

The next point of attack was the 12-hour work day. We brought out the facts in The Survey. Fitch wrote for the American Magazine and other agencies, and Cabot sent out a letter to all fellow stockholders putting the issues squarely up to them. At first he was [raised] the list of stockholders. He started suit, and the Steel Corporation compromised, offering to send out his communication to as large a list of stockholders as he wished, but not giving him the names. They were less concerned at his raising the 12-hour day issue with stockholders than in creating a precedent which would enable people to get at the list of stockholders for a stock selling and speculative purposes.

He got quite a bunch of letters, the Steel Corporation more, and these they published. I think the outstanding letter from a large stockholder in favor of abandoning the 12-hour day even if it meant cutting dividends, was that of Mrs. Bowen. I hope she publishes her letter in her reminiscences.

The reform did not go through at that time. There came the financial depression, Cabot's illness, his death, and the war. ↑In 19 --look up date↓ the issue was raised in the steel strike organized by William Z. Foster. It was brought out vigorously by the Interchurch World Movement Report on the Steel Strike. John Fitch's article in The Survey, in which he pointed out that the 12-hour day and the right to organize were primary issues in the strike -- and the ↑where↓ New York papers all played ↑[illegible]↓ up the red terror and Foster's old I.W.W. pamphlet -- was a factor in the discontinuances of the Sage Foundation grants to The Survey. That in passing. Later investigations proved Fitch right. [page 3]

Meanwhile, Mr. Cabot had left $50,000 as a fund to be used in improving industrial conditions. Philip Cabot, his brother, Edward T. Devine and I were named members of the Board of Managers. This fund was finally available about 1920, and our first step was to reopen, constructively, the 12-hour day issue. We had John Fitch bring the facts to date as to its spread and its human consequences; he had two or three investigators in the field one summer. We had Whiting Williams report on the change to the three shift system in England; and we had Morris L. Cooke, engineer of Philadelphia, (Horace [B.] Drury assisting him) canvass the American plants -- some twenty of them -- which had gone on the three shift system. These included the American Rolling Mill Co. of Middletown, Ohio, the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, the Ford Company, Commonwealth Steel, and the International Harvester Co. The findings were put before engineering societies on the one hand, and The Survey bought out a special number on the other. 

The next step was a grant of $5,000 by the Cabot Fund to the National Engineering Council to enable their committee to make a thorough study of the technical problems involved. Their report was issued a year later. The Steel Corporation had a committee out on the subject, which committee turned the proposition down. We seemed to have reached a stalemate. We then engaged Dr. Samuel McCune Lindsay of Columbia, who had been closely associated with President Harding in his campaign, to see what he could do in using these findings as a leverage for action. Mr. Hoover was very much interested. Harding became so. He called the steel people together at the White House, with the result that the American Iron & Steel Institute appointed a committee to consider the subject.

Their report, when it was brought in, again turned the proposition down. Harding, by that time, was aroused. It is one of the few things for which I take my hat off to the man. He made it the text of one of his chief speeches on his western trip. He wrote a letter to Judge Gary calling on the steel people to reconsider their action. They did. The day Harding died, as I remember it, announcement was made that the steel industry would abolish the 12-hour day.

A year ago, the Cabot Fund asked Miss S. Adele Shaw, formerly our managing editor, who had been instrumental in the first canvass of the 12-hour day problem when the Cabot Fund reopened it, to check up on results. Her findings showed that so far as the Steel Corporation and the big companies were concerned, the reform had gone through; the long day persists in some smaller plants. Incidentally, Miss Shaw discovered that in changing from 12 hours to 8 or 10, not a few of the plants had resumed the 7-day week. Judge Gary stepped lively and announced the elimination of the 7-day week the same day that Miss Shaw's report was issued.

Cabot was fundamentally interested in the underlying issue of the right of men in an industrial democracy to organize. This right is denied in steel. Had he lived, he would have taken up the three issues in sequence -- the 7-day week, the 12-hour day, and the right to organize. We spent half his $50,000 in breaking the back of the 12-hour day.

[What] Mrs. Bowen did in the Pullman Company is the only story I know to match Cabot's work. I thought perhaps you and she would be interested. I may try to set the story down sometime -- this is just its skeleton.

Sincerely,

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