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Show MK. FKICK'S SIDE OF THE STORY. , ! The Cut in Wages Wan Made "To Increase I the Earnings." PiTTsBtritG, July 8. H. C. Frick, secretary of the Carnegie company, was interviewed last evening in regard to the basis of difference differ-ence between the company and the men. He said skilled workmen in the Amalgamated Amalgamat-ed association worked under what was j kuown as the sliding s.-ale. As the price of steel advanced so did their earnings, and vice versa. While there was no limit to their advance there was a point at which the decline stopped. "We believe if we can advance without limit the earnings of the workmen they should be willing to follow the selling price down to a reasonable minimum, and instead of $2o as a minimum we fixed The reason for this was that we spent large sums of money in introducing new machinery, machin-ery, by means of which the workmen could increase their daily output, thereby increasing increas-ing the amount of their earnings. Another point was that the date of the expiration of the sliding scale was June 30th. We asked that the date be changed to December 31st to permit us to take estimates, begtunitig January Jan-uary 1st, so we would enabled to make contracts con-tracts for the year accordingly. The Amalgamated Amal-gamated association declined. The third matter was the proposed reduction in tonnage. ton-nage. We are prepared to show that in nearly every department under the proposed j reduction skilled workmen would make more than they did when the scale of 18S0 went Into effect. As a rule the men who are making the largest wages were the ones who most bitterly denounced the proposed revision, re-vision, for out of 3800 men engaged only 325 were directly affected by the reduction. Finding it impossible to arrive at an agreement agree-ment with the Amalgamated officials we decided to close the works." Asked for the reason for the employment of Pinkerton men, Frick said he did not see how else they could have protection, doubting doubt-ing the ability of the sheriff to enforce order or-der at Homestead and protect their property. Frick's attention being called to the widespread wide-spread interest about the investigation pro-posed pro-posed by congressional request, said they welcomed the proposed investigation, and were prepared to submit to this committee evidence which would convince unprejudiced unpreju-diced men of the equity of their position. 1- rick further said regarding the political situation: "We cannot afford to run our business and politics at the sama time. We did not propose to reduce the earnings of employees below those of other Amalgamated men in other wills. We put in machinery other mills do not possess to increase the output and the earnings of the men. We asked that a reduction be'made in the earnings of our employees to place them on a par with other workmen in other Amalgamated concerns. |