To describe the many “steel towns” scattered all over the eastern half of the American continent would be impossible, as it would be to discuss the problems presented by local conditions in each case. Broadly speaking, the Corporation, wherever it has built to house its employees, has sought first of all the comfort and happiness of these workers and not its own gain. And it has always borne in mind that comfort and happiness are æsthetic as well as physical, and built accordingly. In the older steel centres the Corporation, as it has not built from the ground up, has naturally not been able to introduce into the communities as many basic improvements as has been possible in the newer developments. But it has in every case sought to improve existing conditions, always with the workers’ comfort, health, and happiness as its goal. The H. C. Frick Coke Co. has set itself the task of making attractive the coal-mining towns of the Connellsville region. By the usual corporation methods of sanitation, of making personal and community cleanliness easily attainable, it has raised very materially the standard of living in the coal towns, and the standard of management of the towns themselves. It has even managed to make many of these towns attractive--if the reader has ever been through coal-mining regions he will appreciate the size of this achievement--by encouraging gardening by means of prizes and so on, and by fostering community pride. It has set new community standards in the coal districts. To the late George G. McMurtry must be given much credit for the movement for bettering conditions in industrial centres. Over 30 years ago Mr. McMurtry conceived and laid out a model city in the environs of Pittsburgh for the workers of the American Sheet Steel Co. The town laid out by the former head of the Sheet Steel Company will stand as a lasting monument to him, though it does not bear his name--Vandergrift, Pa., the first of the steel towns. CHAPTER X HUMANIZING INDUSTRY Of all the problems with which industry is confronted none is more important or more difficult of solution than that of establishing proper and harmonious relations between the man who works with his hands and the individual or corporation who pays him his wage. Upon its solution depends to a large extent the settlement of the whole vast problem of capital and labor. And the proper treatment of the worker has been a question to which the management of the Steel Corporation has applied itself with energy almost since the organization of the big company. To claim for the Corporation complete success would be an exaggeration. The problem is one that has been growing ever since the dawn of the industrial era and obviously cannot be settled, if at all, without many years of effort and of mutual give and take. To expect any employer, or group of employers, to achieve immediate success in solving the difficulties that naturally arise between capital and labor would be absurd.