BY E. M. JOHNSTON, F.L.S. 



197 



divisions of labour, who, although not themselves immediately 

 concerned, yet voluntarily resolve to help by docking Is. per 

 week from their own small earnings, nay, often sacrifice for a 

 time their earnings altogether where it is thought that a Strike 

 in their own branch would serve more speedily to bring their 

 brother-workers' campaign to a successful conclusion. 



In the present day — with its hard and fast divisions of 

 labour, its fluctuations of demand and supply, its hordes of 

 unemployed, and its crushing competitive rings and interests 

 ■ — the intelligent wage-earner perceives plainly enough that as 

 a unit he is perfectly helpless, and that he can only succeed in 

 bearing up against opposing organised interests by a similarly 

 organised action. 



No one who has closely followed the struggles of workmen 

 during the last thirty years can fail to perceive that upon this 

 organisation (solidarity) rests the whole strength of their 

 Position in the industrial scheme, and that anything which 

 tends to weaken or demoralise their centres of organisation, 

 meets with their most strenuous resistance ; for it is manifest 

 to them that the breaking or weakening of the heart or centre 

 °f their organisation detaches them again to helpless units who 

 are unable to enforce any claim whatever. 



It will be conceded, therefore, when it is proposed to ask 

 the question, Can Strikes raise Beal Wages of Wage-earners 

 oXl round ? that the writer is one who regards combination 

 or co-operation amongst wage-earners as of paramount 

 necessity to them, and that when all better modes of appeal 

 for reasonable concessions are unavailing, the last and terrible 

 resort " to Strike " may in certain^ cases not only be justi- 

 fiable but imperative. 



Strikes can only Succeed in Eaising Beal Wages when 

 it is Pabtial oe Confined to Industries that 

 Comprise a Small Peopoetion op the Community. 



While much has been granted in favour of organisation, 

 and the right to resort to Strikes under certain circumstances, 

 it cannot be concealed that many expect by organised Strikes 

 to effect what is plainly an utter impossibility, even if 

 employers gave way at every point. 



A Strike may be the means of successfully raising the 

 status of some branches of labour that are comparatively 

 underpaid or over-worked ; it may raise the real wages of a 

 particular country or locality which formerly laboured under 

 the average remuneration of other countries ; it may tem- 

 porarily be the means of forcing the capitalist or employer 

 to give a fairer or larger share of the profits of capital and 

 labour — i.e., machinery plant, skill, and labour— but from 

 the very nature of the common source of all profit and 



