The twelve-hour day, I believe, tends to discourage a man from marrying and settling into a regular home life. Men complained that they didn't see their wives, or get to know their children, since the schedule of hours shrunk matters at home to food, sleep, and the necessities. "My wife is always after me to leave this game," Jock used to say, the first-helper on Seven. Mathematically, it figures something like this: twelve hours of work, an hour going to and from the mill, an hour for eating, eight hours of sleep--which leaves two hours for all the rest, shaving, mowing the lawn, and the "civilizing influence of children." I have no brief to offer for the eight-hour day as a general panacea for evils in industry. I merely bear witness to the fact that the twelve-hour day, as I observed it, tended either to destroy, or to make unreasonably difficult, that normal recreation and participation in the doings of the family group, the church, or the community, which we ordinarily suppose is reasonable and part of the American inheritance. Steel has often been described by its old timers as a "he-man's game." That has even figured as an argument against any innovation that might lighten the load of the workers in it, and against any change in the twelve-hour day itself. The industry has certainly a rough-and-tumble quality and a dangerous streak in it, that will always call for men with some toughness of fibre. But I question whether the quality of the men it attracts, and the type it moulds within its own ranks, will ever be improved by the twelve-hour day. The excessive hours, I know, operate as a check against many younger men, who would otherwise enter the industry. The inherent fascination of making steel is, I think, very great. It was for me. But the appeal is the mechanical achievement of the industry, its size, power, and importance, even its dangers. The twelve-hour day, on the other hand, tends to place a premium on time-serving and drudgery, in lieu of the more masculine qualities of adventure and initiative. FOOTNOTE: [3] The Three Shift System in Steel--Horace B. Drury: an address to the Taylor Society and certain sections of the Am. Soc. Mech. Engineers and of the Am. Inst. Electr. Engineers, Dec. 3, 1920.