Mr. Crawford pointed out that many young men who might be marked out for advancement in the steel industry, where their energy and ability would be quickly recognized and rewarded, prefer to go into offices or stores as clerks, although the field of advancement there is much smaller because natural conditions in a steel mill or coal mine, unless mitigated by the efforts of the employer, were such as to injure their self-respect. By surrounding living conditions in the industry with those things that make for clean, decent manhood such men would be attracted and the employing corporation would thereby open to itself new fields for recruiting to its organization the highest type of men. The work done by the Corporation in making conditions at its plants more safe and sanitary, in endeavoring to improve home conditions among its workers, in providing better educational facilities for their children, and so on, will be detailed in another chapter. Any official of the Corporation or of such concerns as have worked along similar lines will tell you that the installation of these helps to better living is plain, practical business. That the gain in efficiency pays many times over the outlay involved. They studiously deny altruistic motives. But the observer who has an opportunity to become familiar with their activities can hardly help arriving at the conclusion that the men who engage in this work for the improvement of working conditions usually become engrossed in it for its own sake. That the human side of the work, deny it as they will, eventually and inevitably comes to occupy the chief place in their minds. [Illustration: “Drawing” Bee-hive Coke Ovens] Under the Corporation’s stock subscription plan many thousands of employees have become stockholders of the great company. It has been suggested by those who see nothing but menace to the workers in every action of a big corporate enterprise, by those to whom the very word “corporation” is anathema, that this plan had for its real object the subjugation of the worker by inducing him to invest part of his wages in the securities of the employing company and then demanding from him unswerving obedience; enslaving him by holding over his head the fear of the loss of his investment. It has been claimed that the plan was a master stroke to give the Corporation the whip hand in the event of a strike. It is, of course, impossible to argue motives, but the plain facts are that the plan has not worked out this way. [Illustration: “Pushing” Coke in By-Product Oven] [Illustration: The Other Side--Coke Falling into Car Two Views of Modern By-Product Oven]