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., produced by the rolling mills. The work covered a large
variety as laboring work goes, and it was not usual to keep a man
continuously at the same class of work.

Before undertaking the management of these men, the writer was informed
that they were steady workers, but slow and phlegmatic, and that nothing
would induce them to work fast.

The first step was to place an intelligent, college-educated man in
charge of progress in this line. This man had not before handled this
class of labor, although he understood managing workmen. He was not
familiar with the methods pursued by the writer, but was soon taught the
art of determining how much work a first-class man can do in a day. This
was done by timing with a stop watch a first-class man while he was