scarce and as difficult to get as it ever has been in the history of
this country, and yet there was always a surplus of first-class men
ready to leave other jobs and try their hand at Bethlehem piece work.

Perhaps the most notable difference between these men and ordinary
piece workers lay in their changed mental attitude toward their
employers and their work, and in the total absence of soldiering on
their part. The ordinary piece worker would have spent a considerable
part of his time in deciding just how much his employer would allow him
to earn without cutting prices and in then trying to come as close as
possible to this figure, while carefully guarding each job so as to
keep the management from finding out how fast it really could be done.
These men, however, were faced with a new but very simple and
straightforward proposition, namely, am I a first-class laborer or not?
Each man felt that if he belonged in the first class all he had to do
was to work at his best and he would be paid sixty per cent more than
he had been paid in the past. Each piece work price was accepted by the
men without question. They never bargained over nor complained about
rates, and there was no occasion to do so, since they were all equally
fair, and called for almost exactly the same amount of work and fatigue
per dollar of wages.

A careful inquiry into the condition of these men when away from work
developed the fact that out of the whole gang only two were said to be
drinking men. This does not, of course, imply that many of them did not
take an occasional drink. The fact is that a steady drinker would find
it almost impossible to keep up with the pace which was set, so that
they were practically all sober. Many if not most of them were saving
money, and they all lived better than they had before. The results
attained under this system were most satisfactory both to employer and