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These three took turns up there in the tower, locking and unlocking switches and signals until one might expect them to faint for dizziness and confusion. It was no uncommon thing in the signal tower, when one of the three wanted a day off, for the other two to double up on twelve-hour shifts. As long as the service was well performed, the Superintendent asked no questions."
Meanwhile I was more and more turning aside from politics and devoting myself to the social condition of the people I find myself, in June, protesting against Sir John Lubbock's Bill which fixed a twelve-hour day as the limit of a "young person's" toil. "A 'day' of twelve hours is brutal," I wrote; "if the law fixes twelve hours as a 'fair day' that law will largely govern custom.
Give us them of great size and power, large enough to carry a gun and gun crew, and capable of taking twelve-hour cruises at a speed much greater than that of the fastest dirigible air-ship, and we shall be on the highroad to aerial supremacy at sea."
This was a fine adjustment, for by working hammer-and-tongs through a twelve-hour day, after freight had been deducted from the selling price of the wood in Los Angeles, the wood-chopper received one dollar and sixty cents. Jones had thought to get ahead of the game by turning his wood into charcoal. His estimates were satisfactory. But the railroad also made estimates.
I lent a weary ear to old Kohokumu's interminable chanting of the deeds and adventures of Maui, the Promethean demi-god of Polynesia who fished up dry land from ocean depths with hooks made fast to heaven, who lifted up the sky whereunder previously men had gone on all-fours, not having space to stand erect, and who made the sun with its sixteen snared legs stand still and agree thereafter to traverse the sky more slowly the sun being evidently a trade unionist and believing in the six-hour day, while Maui stood for the open shop and the twelve-hour day.
Blake's lips tightened grimly, but he ignored the question. "We'll drive the work on twelve-hour shifts, double pay and best food that can be bought. Divide up the force now, and turn in with your shift those who most need sleep."
He and Peterson would divide the time equally into twelve-hour days; but three divisions were necessary for the men, the morning shift working from midnight until eight o'clock, the day shift from eight to four, and the night shift from four to midnight. Finally, when the whistle blew, at noon, Bannon tipped back his chair and pushed his hat back on his head. "Well," he said, "that's fixed."
Inside of a year the steel industry reduced wages thirty percent, in three like installments; and the twelve-hour day and the seven-day week, which had figured among the chief causes of the strike of 1919 and for which the United States Steel Corporation was severely condemned by a report of a Committee of the Interchurch World Movement, has largely continued as before.
After it was over when the yawning keeper had rattled the bars and threatened a twelve-hour close confinement to the perpetrators one was amazed to identify with the latter persons outwardly in human shape, instead of malformed and sooty fiends from the bottomless abyss.
This proved to be so satisfactory that laws were passed providing for a further decrease in hours. This standardizing of the day of labor, while not general in the country, had its effect. The twelve-hour day, while still long, was a decided betterment over the sixteen-hour day. There was beginning to be a little possible margin for social, mental, and recreational activity.