2/1] COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 139 



their employers for increases in wages. There had been 

 many strikes, chiefly in the mills around Pittsburgh in the 

 years previous to 1865. In 1849 and again in 1857 there 

 were extended and prolonged strikes, and after 1857 smaller 

 strikes were numerous.^ 



The conference of 1865 wlas desired both by the union 

 and the employers. The initiative seems to have been 

 taken by the employers.*' The puddlers, in concert with 

 representative employers, finally established a scale of 

 prices to be paid for boiling pig iron. The amount to be 

 paid for boiling iron ranged from $4 a ton, if iron was sold 

 for 2^ cents a pound, to $9 per ton, if the price was 8^ 

 cents per pound. This is the first recorded sliding scale in 

 the United States.'' The depression following the Civil 

 War reduced prices to such an extent that the scale was 

 repudiated. Two years later another joint conference 

 drafted a new sliding scale. This agreement, with slight 



5 For a review of labor conditions in the iron trade previous to the 

 activity of the union, see the account of Miles S. Humphreys, first 

 president of the Puddlers' union, in the Report of the Pennsylvania 

 Bureau of Industrial Statistics, 1878-1879, pp. 150-151. 



s The plan of the sliding scale was suggested by B. F. Jones, of 

 Jones and Laughlin's American Iron Works, Pittsburgh, and a ten- 

 tative draft was made by Mr. Humphreys for submission to the em- 

 ployers (National Labor Tribune, April 14, 1888, p. 2; Pennsylvania 

 Bureau of Statistics, 1887, p. G2). A copy of the scale of 1865 may 

 be found in the National Labor Tribune, February 7, 1874, and in 

 the report of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Statistics, 1887, p. Gis. 



■^ There were no doubt sliding scales in England before this time. 

 S. J. Chapman says : " The first sliding scale was Thornicroft's, 

 which was introduced in 1840" (Econ. Journal, 1903. "Some Theo- 

 retical Objections to Sliding Scales," p. 186, note). Carlyle, writing 

 in 1843, mentions " sliding-scales " (Thomas Carlyle, Past and 

 Present, pp. 36, 180, 242), but he may have had in mind the sliding 

 scales of tariff duties. However, the Webbs, relying upon a state- 

 ment furnished by Mr. Daniel Jones, of the Midland Iron and Steel 

 Wages Board, to Professor Munro, and cited in the latter's " Sliding 

 Scales in the Coal and Iron Industries," p. 141. point out that the 

 sliding-scale arrangement appears to have been familiar to the iron 

 trade as early as the time when Carlyle wrote. " .\t tlie time of the 

 great strike of Staffordsliire puddlers in 1865," tlie Webbs further 

 state, " a local understanding of a similar nature appears to have 

 been in existence." Its introduction into the coal trade of Great 

 Britain dales from 1874, tiiough it was not until 1879 tliat its adop- 

 tion became widespread (Sidney and Beatrice Webb, History of 

 Trade Unionism, Appendix ii, pp. 484-4S5). 



