Be it further resolved, That our organization always has favored an eight-hour day, as we know it is beneficial to the best interest of the wageworkers in general. We trust you will succeed in having the eight-hour day bill carried through without any more opposition on the part of Mr. D. There are about 40 local unions in the city of Bridgeport, representing about 12,000 union men and women, and if Mr. D. can give you the name of any union man or woman who met him at the depot and shook hands we would like to know him or her. You may read this letter before the Labor Committee if you wish. Wishing you all success in your undertaking, I remain, yours, fraternally, [SEAL.] JOHN O'DONNELL, President. GEORGE M. HUNGERFORD, Recording Secretary, Local Union No. 190, Brotherhood of Painters and Decorators and Paperhangers of America. Residence: No. 1301 Central avenue, Bridgeport, Conn. CENTRAL LABOR UNION, Bridgeport, Conn., March 12, 1904. Mr. JAMES O'CONNELL: Following is the action of the Bridgeport Central Labor Union at their special meeting held March 9, 1904. The following resolutions were adopted: Whereas Mr. Davenport, a lawyer of this city, representing the Antiboycott League, has been appearing before the Committee on Labor in the House of Representatives in opposition to our eight-hour bill; and Whereas he has made the statement before the committee that he was a good friend of organized labor, and that since he made his speech against the eight-hour bill hundreds of union men have shook his hand and told him he had expressed their opinion on the question, And whereas he made the statement that the eight-hour bill was not wanted by the union men of this city, and that the leaders of organized labor who are now appearing before the same committee are not representing the wants of the union men in this section, it is hereby Resolved, That we, the officers and delegates of the Bridgeport Central Labor Union hereby denounce the statements of Mr. Davenport as unqualifiedly false in every particular, and challenge Mr. Davenport to name one union man who told him that he was opposed to the eight-hour bill, for one of the fundamental principles of organized labor is the eight-hour day; and be it further Resolved, That we indorse the stand taken by our leaders in Washington in their efforts to secure the passage of this bill now pending before your committee. J. J. O'NEIL, President. N. P. BISSONNETTE, J. M. DONNELLY, Committee on Resolutions. BRIDGEPORT THEATRICAL STAGE EMPLOYEES, I. A. T. S. E., To whom it may concern: Resolved, That we, the members of the International Alliance Theatrical Stage Employees, Local 109, of Bridgeport, Conn., do hereby deny his statements; and be it further Resolved, that we are in favor of the eight-hour bill as presented before the Labor Committee at Washington. [SEAL.] GEORGE F. BELDON, President. WM. H. LYONS, Recording Secretary, Local 109. Mr. JAMES O'CONNELL, Washington, D. C. BRIDGEPORT TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION 252, DEAR SIR: We understand that Attorney Daniel Davenport, of this city, made the remark that the workingman of Bridgeport did not desire shorter work hours. We are emphatically in favor of the passage of the "eight-hour bill" now pending before Congress. We understand the bill now being considered, and we are in favor of an eight-hour day and in favor of any bill that will prohibit the working of more than eight hours in any one calendar day. Fraternally, yours, [SEAL.] ROBT. T. CHERRY, President. Mr. O'CONNELL. Mr. Chairman, I think it comes with bad grace for any gentleman to question the integrity of another gentleman appearing before this committee, who states that he represents absolutely the opinions of 75,000 skilled machinists of this country, the opinions of 300,000 metal-working tradesmen of whose organization he is president, and the opinions represented by him as an officer of the American Federation of Labor, when that gentleman makes the statement before this committee, which is in print, that he believes" he represents, that he thinks" he represents certain people. Mr. Davenport, in his testimony at page 16 of the printed hearings, states that he "believes" he represents So-and-so, and "I think I represent Soand-so." He leaves it with the committee to decide whether he does or not. I say absolutely I am here representing the men I have mentioned, and not from a technical and theoretical standpoint, but from a practical standpoint; that these men are absolutely in favor of the bill before the committee; that it is their wish that this bill be passed; that they are in favor of the bill because it absolutely prohibits the working of overtime except in cases of emergency. Mr. Davenport, in his statement, ridiculed and belittled the meaning of emergencies. They brought gentlemen here, practical men, from the United States Steel Company, from electrical works throughout the country, and from other industries, to state to the committee that it was absolutely impossible to stop the work of a plant on the minute, at 4 o'clock or 5 o'clock as the case might be; that it was a physical impossibility to do it, and that it was ridiculous on the part of the committee to consider such a proposition; and while he admitted there was probably some wisdom on the part of the men who were representing this bill, he said that they represented it in total ignorance and in total darkness as to what it meant. Now, I speak as a practical mechanic, having spent over twenty years in the various machine shops of this country. You have been told during this hearing that certain jobs were done in machine shops that it was impossible to stop, but they did not say to you that it was impossible to change the men on a job. One gentleman, who was a practical man, said that in the boring of a cylinder, which several gentlemen made mention of, when the cut is a finishing cut, it could not be stopped without doing the cylinder injury. I admitted that was correct; but there is no injury incurred in the changing of the men upon that job. I have changed with men upon jobs of a similar character probably a hundred times in my lifetime. I have changed with the man who went home and I took his job, or I went home and he took my job. In the Washington Navy-Yard they run three turns, eight hours to each turn. You can go over there every day and see one man taking a machine that another man is operating and going right along with it. They do not work a man over eight hours in that yard. The men change three times in the twentyfour hours on every job. Some of it is the finest class of work that is built in America. The closest work that is done by any mechanic in the world is done in the Washington Navy-Yard to-day. It is not done by the inch or the hundredth part of the inch, but the work is done under the micrometer caliper down to a fraction of an inch which is far beyond the conception of the eye, and every day, three times a day, men are changed upon this work without any injury to the work whatever. Practical men come here representing the molding industry and tell you that conditions exist in the foundry that make it absolutely impossible to work an eight-hour day; that it would be ruinous to their business; that it would cause great loss of material; that sometimes this thing and that thing occurs in a cupola which would make it impossible for the men to change. Mr. Jenks, the representative of the United States Steel Company who was here, said that the industry was such that they had to occupy the men in the work by allowing them 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there, and that the work would go on, and in other instances he told you that it required absolutely no skill to operate this thing; that it simply required a man to move the levers and handles and so on, and that was all. I want to give you the evidence of some practical men. Here is the report of the work of the Naval Gun Factory at Washington, a statement by Captain Edwin C. Pendleton, superintendent of the yard, before the Appropriations Committee, in which Mr. Pendleton asks for an appropriation to enlarge the foundry at the Washington NavyYard so that they can make castings at the yard, which they are now buying from private contractors. Mr. Pendleton makes this proposition to the committee, knowing full well that he can operate that yard only eight hours, to the minute, every day, that is, for one turn to a man. He submits to the committee statements showing the cost under which the yard is run on the eighthour basis, in addition to which the men receive a fifteen days' leave of absence each year with pay. They also receive all holidays with pay, and notwithstanding this lower number of hours' work and the addition of the fifteen days' leave of absence and the addition of the holidays granted to the men, he shows in his statement here-it is a long document; you can all get it The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Give the number of it, Mr. O'Connell. Mr. O'CONNELL. It is House Document No. 10. He states in the document that he has produced work-under these working conditions, remember, the hours and the holidays and the leave of absence-at a greatly reduced cost from the cost which the Government is paying to private contractors. The other side may say to you that this is done because they do not charge a percentage for fixed costs, etc., because it is a Government property. Such is not the case. They add, so he states here, 40 per cent for maintenance of the yard and so on, for fixed expenses and all that, when they make out their statement as to the cost of work in the yard. Here is the last report of the Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance to the Secretary of the Navy, in which you will find exactly the same statements, and in addition to which you will find a statement showing one contract for guns in which the Government was engaged itself, and at a greatly reduced cost produced these guns; not only that, but they produced the finest guns made in the world. No equal to them in any part of the civilized globe had then been produced, and they have been produced under the reduction of the hours, and under the holidays and under the leave of absence, and yet cheaper by a very great percentage than has been done by the Government in its contracting or subcontracting. Mr. FOSTER. Let me ask you in that connection, does the Government take into consideration the plant itself; that is, the money invested in the plant? Mr. O'CONNELL. They do not consider the money invested; no; 40 per cent is added. Mr. FOSTER. What is that? Mr. O'CONNELL. The 40 per cent is added. It states particularly here why it is added. It is added for the maintenance of supplies, the fuel, the operation of the plant, and the depreciation of tools, etc., and of the plant itself, but the first cost of the plant is not figured in. Mr. HUGHES. The depreciation of the plant amounts to first cost? Mr. O'CONNELL. The depreciation of the plant is added, of course, but the first cost of the plant is not added. It is stated here that the reason that is not figured in is because, out of the contracts let to certain institutions in this country-I will not make an accurate statement in regard to it; the firm is named, but I will not state it-I think probably the Bethlehem Steel Company or the concern in Philadelphia, the Midvale Steel Company, in five years the amounts received for contracts had paid for their plant absolutely out of the profits. Now, Mr. Chairman, the statement is made by a gentleman representing a so-called antiboycott organization, who says, for reasons obvious to the members themselves, he refused to give to the committee or anyone else the name of the persons he represents, and he stated later the reason, upon a question asked by myself, that he refused to give these names was because of the fear they would be put out of business by the American Federation of Labor, by the damnable methods of the Federation of Labor, the unlawful methods of the American Federation of Labor, to so state it; and this gentleman, knowing nothing about the practical operation of a plant, through all his statement tried to convey to the committee that the gentlemen who were on the opposite side or who were advocating the passage of this bill were misrepresenting; that they did not represent anybody, and that Mr. Gompers was Mr. Gompers and Mr. O'Connell was Mr. O'Connell. Mr. Davenport, in his own statement, in the beginning of it, begins by saying, "I think I represent" and "I believe I represent. We want to start off in the very beginning by saying we represent. We defy Mr. Davenport or any one else to substantially contradict that statement, to bring to this committee one witness who will say we do not represent the wants of labor. I defy Mr. Davenport to bring one machinist out of the 75,000 I have the honor to be the executive head of who will say that I do not represent exactly his views before this committee, and these 75,000 men are the highest-skilled artisans the world has produced. Mr. Covel, the president or acting president of the National Metal Trades Association of Manufacturers, an organization composed of about 300 firms engaged in the metal industry, particularly in the machinists' line, appeared before the committee. He is the acting manager of the Ledgerwood Manufacturing Company, of Buffalo, N. Y.-a gentleman I know very well. We have had dealings together, and we are on very friendly relations. We have an understanding with his firm under which our people work nine hours. He made the statement here, and the only statement he made was that the foundry, with which he was thoroughly familiar, could not operate if limited exclusively to the minute of eight hours. I maintain that the evidence of Mr. Pendleton, of the Washington Gun Factory, a practical man, is just as reliable as that of Mr. Covell; and I do not question Mr. Covell's statement at all, because I know him to be a very honorable gentleman. But he is mistaken. It is true that at certain periods of the handling of a foundry, a cupola, the atmospheric conditions may interfere somewhat with the proper melting of iron. It is true that sometimes in a foundry, a very large foundry especially, where they have large cupolas, the iron will not properly be ready to pour at the exact moment, and it may cause a delay of a few moments; but no reasonable man-no practical manwho knows anything of the industries of this country would say that that was not an emergency case. No practical man would say that a firm was violating the law because it had to work its employees a few minutes more to save that run of iron. But in 99 per cent of the cases to-day in the foundries of this country with hours of ten or nine, as it may be, the plant is so operated that the men are through their work 99 per cent of the time on the exact minute. They make it a business. The foundries do not want to pay for overtime; they do not want to work overtime, regardless of what Mr. Davenport may say, that the men want to work overtime. Such is not the fact. They want to quit when the time comes. When the whistle blows they want to go home, and they so arrange their business as to take advantage of everything that is possible to get the plant closed at the proper time. So I say in not 1 per cent of the cases of the whole industrial world of our country do the men have to meet a condition of affairs where they have to work overtime, because of the atmospheric condition of affairs that would affect a foundry. Mr. Jenks, of the United States Steel Company, made a statement here that probably when the time came to change the men the man who was to take the turn might be on a street car and the street car might be tied up. That is a strong argument against eight hours. Why, it is so ridiculous and so silly for a practical man like Mr. Jenks, with years of experience in the iron and steel industries of this country, to say that a plant would be in violation of this law because a street car happened to hold a man up. His plant employs, he says, 7,000 workmen, and he also said it did not require any particular skill only a man to operate a few levers, and so on, and the work went on. It is ridicu |