In the matter of wages the Corporation’s course has been in entire harmony with its general policy toward the worker. Since its organization in 1901 it has many times, and always voluntarily, increased wage rates, and in doing so it has set a lead which other steel companies have found themselves forced to follow. Only once has it ever reduced wages and then but a small amount and only after the dividend on the common stock had been eliminated. The wages were soon restored and frequently thereafter advanced. Its principle has been that capital and labor both have important rights in the financial results of industry, but that labor is perhaps more directly concerned and should therefore be the last to suffer in times of stress. Since 1901 the average wage rate of the steel worker has been increased approximately 237 per cent. and this increase has been due almost entirely to the Corporation’s stand on this question. Any one who doubts this has but to ask the competitors of the big company to be convinced. In 1911, when steel prices were at an unprofitable level and business was slack, the heads of more than one independent company expressed the opinion that a reduction in wages, what they called the liquidation of labor, was necessary, even imperative, but that they were restrained from attempting this liquidation while the Steel Corporation continued to pay its men the old rate. They said in effect: “The United States Steel Corporation boosted wages to the present high level. Let it take the lead in lowering them.” But the Corporation refused. Instead, with the first signs of an improvement in business, it gave wages another boost. Again in 1914, in the face of the worst period of depression in years, and with world industry demoralized as a result of the outbreak of the European war, and in spite of the fact that the Corporation had been compelled to forego the payment of the dividend on its junior stock and was not fully earning its preferred dividend, its management refused to let the worker suffer. So strong was the sentiment throughout the trade at this time in favor of the liquidation of labor that a wage cut was looked on as not only justified, but inevitable, and it is generally understood that even in the Corporation it was only the insistence of Judge Gary that prevented its occurrence.