Another instance, related by a large consumer, shows how these agreements were evaded. He said that the company from which he purchased his supplies of steel pleaded the force of a pool agreement as an excuse against giving him a discount from the market price. He then suggested that he be appointed agent of the steel company in his town at a commission of a dollar a ton and this solution of the difficulty was agreed to. He was the only consumer of steel in the town and the commission was only a round-about way of giving him the discount asked. In the fierce and bitter struggle that was the steel trade only the most daring or the most unscrupulous manufacturer could survive, and under the strain for production that it necessitated only the strongest workers could live. No one, unless he has been through a steel plant, can imagine the conditions under which the steel maker works. The visitor, unaccustomed to the heat that is flung from blast furnace or rolling mill as from the gates of hell, must perforce hold his hands before his face at times to mitigate the frying sensation. True, much has been done of recent years to make the lot of the man at the furnace or rolling mill easier, his work less trying on his health. But at the time of which this is written such was not the case. Under the most favorable conditions the steel mill, as a well-known steel maker said once, is far from being a drawing room. Under the conditions that prevailed toward the end of the last century, when men were worked to the breaking point in the mad fight for “tonnage,” it was no wonder that the majority of steel workers collapsed early under the strain and were thrown on the human scrap pile, their vitality sapped and their youth gone. The one slogan of the industry then was “tonnage.” Everything was sacrificed by the manufacturer to this single end. Machinery, comparatively new, was scrapped to make room for more modern equipment. Waste of this kind was not considered. Production was everything, and nothing was spared to obtain increased output. And it must be admitted that to this attitude on the part of producers, as much perhaps as to her immense natural advantages, the United States owed her rapid rise to the front rank of steel nations.