PENDING PROBLEMS FOR WAGE-EARNERS. 67 



APPENDIX. 



The Cost and Danger of Strikes. Few persons are aware of the 

 enormous annual loss of wages due to strikes. Startling figures are fur- 

 nished by the Labor Bureau at Washington in a recent publication cover- 

 ing the period from 1881 to 1894 inclusive. 



It appears that no less than 3,714,406 persons were thrown out of em- 

 ployment, suffering a loss in wages of $163,807,866. Fifty-five and a half 

 per cent of the strikes failed entirely ; thirty-two per cent are classed as 

 successful, and twelve and a half per cent as doubtful or partly success- 

 ful. Labor organizations contributed $10,914,406 to assist strikers. 



The promoters of strikes argue to their comrades that unsuccessful 

 efforts are nevertheless ultimately beneficial ; but study of the subject has 

 led me to take the opposite view, viz., that all strikes of skilled workmen 

 are, in the end, harmful to the participants. No one single cause has done 

 more, in my opinion, to hasten the introduction of entirely automatic 

 machinery in operations where a certain degree of skilled labor was con- 

 sidered indispensable, than strikes on the part of such skilled employees. 

 Numerous instances might be recalled where large manufacturers have, on 

 account of strikes, cheerfully expended immense sums of money in per- 

 fecting automatic machinery, not primarily to effect economy in wages, but 

 as an insurance against future danger from such causes. 



A notable instance of this nature occurred a few years ago at one of 

 the largest iron and steel works in the world. In a certain department 

 specially skilled men were able to make wages which now seem incredible; 

 they were, however, paid a percentage upon the tonnage, and, owing to 

 enormous output, the profits of these operatives exceeded in some years that 

 of many successful manufacturers having large capital at stake. These 

 men considered themselves indispensable, and struck, not for higher wages 

 or shorter hours but at the dictation of outsiders. When work was re- 

 sumed they found their occupation gone forever: automatic machinery had 

 supplanted the former skilled labor. 



I do not believe that any employee (I am one myself) is indispensable, 

 and many highly skilled and otherwise valuable operatives have, unfor- 

 tunately for themselves, failed to appreciate this fact until too late. 



The danger I have indicated regarding the effect upon skilled labor of 

 strikes does not appear to have presented itself to the minds of the work- 

 ingmen, and if their leaders have perceived it they have concealed it. I 

 regard the strike as a barbaric weapon of attack, resembling somewhat the 

 boomerang, which, we are told, frequently returns and injures its pro- 

 jector. 



Another element of danger to the workingman which usually accom- 

 panies a strike is the license which it affords to the irresponsible and law- 

 less element of society to commit depredations, endangering the lives and 

 property of innocent persons, and sometimes compelling the use of armed 

 force for its suppression. The strikers, though innocent of these overt 

 acts, are injured thereby, and the suspicion lurking in many minds is not 

 without foundation, that some leaders of strikes, while openly exhorting 

 their followers to preserve the peace, secretly count upon this outside 

 aid ; and if they do not, they are strangely blind to the result of past ex- 

 perience. 



