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EMPLOYEES

AVERAGE DAYS DU

STRIKES IN THE UNITED STATES: 1881-1905-Continued

(From the Twenty-first Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor)

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standpoint the strike is an evil, and all justifiable means should be employed to prevent its occurrence.

We must not conclude, however, that workingmen and labor organizations are wholly or even mainly responsible for strikes. Indeed there are reasons to believe that the employers are more often responsible for strikes than the employees. If a body of men agree not to work for a given employer unless that employer complies with certain conditions, whose fault is it if the employer refuses to comply and a strike follows? Very evidently the fault may lie with either the master or the men, or with both. The fault lies with the men if the conditions which they demand are, in view of all the circumstances, unreasonable and extortionate. The fault lies with the employer if he refuses to grant reasonable conditions of employment. Sometimes the fault is with one, sometimes with the other; sometimes the one gains by the strike, sometimes the other; but the public, which is never at fault, stands always to lose. The greatest lesson to be derived from a consideration of strikes is the necessity of their suppression in the interest of the general public.

One of the greatest evils attendant upon the strike is the violence emanating from both sides from employers' associations as well as from labor unions. It is frequently said that labor violence is diminishing with the passage of years. The statement is both true and untrue. A close study of labor disputes in the early period of the modern labor movement makes it very plain that the average strike of that period was attended with much more violence than the average strike of to-day. Most labor leaders have thoroughly learned the lesson that violence does not pay, and they exert every effort to suppress it. But at the same time the average strike of the present time is attended with some violence or coercion, and the steady increase in the number of strikes makes the aggregate volume of violence now greater than it was in the past.

Historically, also, a marked change has shown itself in the character of the violence employed. In the past, labor lawlessness was more or less sporadic; brutal, it is true, but frank and unpremeditated. The lawlessness of to-day, however, has taken on a

far more sinister form; it has become deliberate, premeditated, in many cases official. No disinterested person can sift the testimony in the labor troubles in the mining industry of Idaho and Colorado without admitting that there has been a certain amount of carefully planned violence perpetrated with the passive consent, if not with the active encouragement, of union officials. There can be no doubt, also, that individual employers and employer associations have stooped to equally reprehensible practices. They have employed as watchmen or detectives ex-convicts, thugs, and professional bad men, who unquestionably have not refrained at times from perpetrating violence in order to cast discredit upon the unions. It is impossible to say who began the trouble, and just as impossible to conclude which side is the most to blame; the lesson to be drawn is the public necessity of suppressing and punishing violence or intimidation, when practiced by either side of the controversy.

Employers' Associations. The development of modern employers' associations has been briefly described in an earlier chapter. Their activities give rise to a movement which may be briefly described as an anti-labor movement. They are, in almost every respect, the natural foil and counterpoise of the labor organization. They resemble the association of laborers even in structure. Thus we have employers' associations recruited entirely from one industry, such as the Stove Founders' National Defense Association; associations of employers in distinct but related industries, such as the national Metal Trade Association; and mixed associations in which all kinds of employers are united, such as the Citizens' Alliances, so common now in many of the Western cities. To complete the analogy, these associations are combined in city, state, and national federations; thus forming large confederacies, similar in scope and activity to the state and national federation of labor.

We find the same resemblances between employers' associations and labor organizations when we examine the policies and aims of the former. Thus they make frequent use of the lockout; the Stove Founders' National Defense Association, for example, began its interesting career with a lockout of the iron

molders in the employ of its members. Like the trades unions, also, they have their legislative committees or lobbies, and are credited, for instance, with having played an important part in defeating the eight-hour and anti-injunction bills which have been before Congress several times. Some of these organizations also maintain so-called labor bureaus, whose function it is to secure accurate information of the workmen in the trade, so that troublesome agitators may be refused employment; and the methods employed in this branch of the work gives rise to something closely akin to the "unfair list" published by the American Federation of Labor and many national unions. Some of the more radical associations have stooped at times to violence and coercion, as was illustrated in 1904 by the employers' associations of the Cripple Creek district which boycotted business firms, forced public officials to resign by threats or violence, and filled the vacant places with their own adherents. Some of the employers' associations, like the Stove Founders' National Defense Association, are conservative in tone and policy, working harmoniously with the labor organizations in the industry, and going no farther than to endeavor by every legitimate measure to further the interest of the affiliated employers. Such asso ́ciations are exceedingly helpful in furthering that régime of peaceable collective bargaining to which most students of this subject look forward as the ultimate outcome of present-day tendencies. They are thus doing in an effective way the work of industrial peace. Another group, however, illustrated by the National Metal Trades Association, while they are temperate in tone and wage no warfare on the labor organization as such, nevertheless maintain certain fundamental principles which are directly in conflict with the fundamental tenets of trades unionism. These associations, for instance, maintain that the method of wage payment — i.e. whether wages shall be reckoned by the hour, the piece, or the premium system is a matter which concerns the employer alone, and they refuse to submit such questions to collective bargaining or arbitration. Associations in the second group do not needlessly foment strifes with the unions, but they regard industrial peace as a consideration secondary to the maintenance of their funda

mental principles, and accordingly they have been involved in a number of protracted strikes and disputes. Finally, there is a third group of employers' associations, of which the average citizens' alliance is a good example, which may be correctly described as "union smashers." Such associations have little regard for the establishment of sound principles of collective bargaining, and they are usually violently opposed to any recognition of organized labor; their aim is to weaken and harass their enemy, the labor organization, whenever possible.

Owing to this difference of policy among the various employers' associations, it is difficult to predict how the anti-labor movement will affect that question in which the public interest is greatestthe question of industrial peace. For some little time, perhaps, the militant enthusiasm of the more belligerent associations will probably result in multiplying strikes and lockouts. In the end, however, they will probably contribute effectively to the maintenance of industrial peace by checking the more extortionate demands of the unions and by securing that degree of organization among employers which is necessary for the successful operation of collective bargaining. If wage earners are to act in concert by common or standard rules, it is evident that eventually they will have to deal with an organized body of employers; and the sooner such organization of employers is perfected, the sooner will collective bargaining be established as the regular method of determining conditions of employment.

Although collective bar

The Agencies of Industrial Peace. gaining does not necessarily and in every instance operate to discourage strikes, its net influence is unquestionably favorable to the maintenance of industrial peace. Where a powerful trades union exists, and the employers resolutely refuse to deal with it, strikes are frequent. Where the opposite policy is pursued, and the employers frankly recognize the union, strikes are infrequent. Thus, there has been no great trouble for years in the stove foundry, bituminous mining, and newspaper publishing industries, in which general conventions between the respective labor and employers' organizations are regularly held for the adoption of terms of employment for the ensuing year.

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