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The next step was the nine-hour day, and this in good time was obtained too, but only as the result of the power of the strong, well-managed union. The union was just five years old, when unheard-of disaster fell on San Francisco, the earthquake and fire. Well indeed did the members stand the test.
Hallett, an American woman of forty, a slight, gentle-voiced little widow, who had been packing candies and tying and labelling boxes for sixteen years. In this time she had advanced from a wage of $4 a week to a wage of $6, earned by a week of nine-hour days, with a Saturday half-holiday.
The constant repetition of an act of such accuracy for nine hours a day had strained her eyes excessively and made her extremely nervous. For six months of these nine-hour days, she earned $8 or $8.50 a week. During the other six months there was no work on Saturdays, and she earned about $7 a week. She had a week's vacation with pay.
In 1901 after a long and wearisome dickering with the National Metal Trades Association, a shorter day was agreed upon, but, as the employers would not agree to a ten-hour wage for a nine-hour day, O'Connell led his men out on a general strike and won.
"To-night, you fresh young kid, you!" she said calmly, "I'm going to dictate two letters, explaining why business was rotten last week, and why it's going to pick up next week, and then I'm going to keep an engagement with a nine-hour beauty sleep." "Don't get sore at a fellow. You'd take pity on me if you knew how I have to work to kill an evening in one of these little townpump burgs. Kill 'em!
For example, any lawyer or any student of civics who wished to learn about the labor laws of a State, whether, for instance, it had a nine-hour law or not, would look in the index under the head of "Labor."
Although hailed as one of the big agreements in labor history, it lasted only one year, and broke up on the issue of making the nine-hour day general in the Association shops. The machinists continued to make numerous agreements with individual firms, especially the smaller ones, but the general agreement was never renewed.
She came into my soil-stained arms as eagerly as a bride. It was good. It took all the soreness out of me. Before supper I took the boy and we went down to the public baths on the waterfront and there I dived and splashed and swam like a young whale. The sting of the cold salt water was all the further balm I needed. I came out tingling and fit right then for another nine-hour day.
In those days the Works would have been a model plant nine-hour day, high wages, no women working at night, no children...." If Cally was not wholly heartened by words like these, she knew where the lack was. And perhaps Hen herself was conscious of something missing.
Not until more than a half year later, however, was the award of the Commission made. It conceded the miners a 10 percent increase in wages, the eight and nine-hour day, and the privilege of having a union check-weighman at the scale where the coal sent up in cars by the miners is weighed.
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