=Accidents.= If it was a lucky day when we visited the steel-mill there were no serious accidents. Men are being continually hurt in the works. A report concerning one says: “John Schwobboda and Joseph Mikelliffyky were standing near one of the hearths. Something went wrong, and instead of the steel coming out in an orderly stream it broke out and before these two could get away they were caught in the midst of the stream and absorbed by the burning metal.” This thing has happened many times. The percentage of deaths due to accidents and injuries during the last ten years among soldiers and sailors of the United States has been about twelve to the thousand; in the same period with the workers in the steel-mills it has been about sixteen to the thousand. =Wages and Conditions of Labor.= The toil is strenuous and the hazards great; the hours are long and the product is of almost incalculable value. What do men get out of it? They are the servants of civilization and without them we would have no such trade as we have to-day, we would have no commerce and no progress. Steel is king. When the price of steel is up to normal, times are good; when the price of steel is down, times are bad. A Pittsburgh man said that steel is the elevator which carries civilization, “The world goes up or goes down with the price of steel rails.” The workers are the subjects and the slaves of this king. They are giving their lives as well as their time in fealty to him. Yet how little the average person knows of the lives of these men. A genius for mathematics has estimated that if the 587 rolling-mills in the United States were set end to end in a circle around Pittsburgh it would be 100 miles in diameter. Inside of this circle can be formed another circle three quarters as large if we set end to end the 532 smaller steel-mills and 3,161 puddling furnaces, where the iron is first melted and made into bars called pigs. There are 577 open-hearth works, or factories that manufacture steel by another process much slower than the Bessemer, but having certain advantages because the process does not have to be carried on so rapidly. These works would make a third circle 50 miles across. The 410 other furnaces of various kinds would form a fourth circle 35 miles in diameter. If all the Bessemer converters were made into one great big converter and put in the center, it would be a mile in circumference and would pour a river of molten steel every hour.