THE 
 
 MARTIN P. CATHERWOOD 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL 
 
 OF 
 
 INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR 
 
 RELATIONS 
 
 AT 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http ://www. arch i ve . o rg/detai Is/cu31 924062283985 
 
The Battles of Labor 
 
 Being the William Levi Bull 
 Lectures for the Year 1906 
 
 By 
 CARROLL D. WRIGHT, Ph. D., LL. D. 
 
 Former United States Commissioner of La- 
 bor, President of Claris College, and Author 
 of " Industrial Evolution of the United 
 States," "Outline of Practical Sociology," etc. 
 
 PROPERTY OF LIBRARY 
 
 lEW YORK STATE SCHfHH 
 
 WBsmuL m um relatiok 
 
 CORNEUOOMIVERSITY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright, 1906, by 
 
 George W. Jacobs & Company 
 
 Published, April, iqob 
 
In compliance with current 
 copyright law, LBS Archival 
 
 Products produced this 
 
 replacement volume on paper 
 
 that meets the ANSI Standard 
 
 Z39.48-1984 to replace die 
 
 irreparably deteriorated 
 
 original. 
 
 1992 
 
 ^_ TM 
 
 (So) 
 
The Letter Establishing the Lectureship 
 
 Bishop Whitaker presented the Letter of Endowment of the 
 Lectureship on Christian Sociology from Rev. William L. 
 Bull as follows : 
 
 For many years it has been my earnest desire to found a 
 Lectureship on Christian Sociology, meaning thereby the 
 applicadon of Chrisdan principles to the Social, Industrial, 
 and Economic problems of the Ume, in my Alma Mater, the 
 Philadelphia Divinity School. My object in founding this 
 Lectureship is to secure the free, frank, and full consideration 
 of these subjects, with special reference to the Christian 
 aspects of the quesdon involved, which have heretofore, in 
 my opinion, been too much neglected in such discussion. 
 It would seem that the dme is now ripe and the moment an 
 auspicious one for the establishment of this Lectureship, at 
 least tentadvely. 
 
 After a trial of three years, I again make the offer, as in 
 my letter of January i, 1901,10 continue these Lectures 
 for a period of three years, with the hope that they may 
 excite such an interest, particularly among the undergraduates 
 of the Divinity School, that I shall be justified, with the ap- 
 proval of the authoriues of the Divinity School, in placing 
 the Lectureship on a more permanent foundadon. 
 
 I herewith pledge myself to contribute the sum of six 
 hundred dollars annually, for a period of three years, to the 
 payment of a lecturer on Chrisdan Sociology, whose duty it 
 (hall be to deliver a course of not less than four lectures to 
 the students of the Divinity School, either at the school or 
 
elsewhere, as may be deemed most advisable, on the appli- 
 cation of Christian principles to the Social, Industrial, and 
 Economic problems and needs of the times ; the said lecturer 
 to be appointed annually by a committee of five members : 
 the Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania ; the Dean of the 
 Divinity School ; a member of the Board of Overseers, who 
 shall at the same time be an Alumnus ; and two others, one 
 of whom shall be myself and the other chosen by the pre- 
 ceding four members of the committee. 
 
 Furthermore, if it shall be deemed desirable that the Lec- 
 tures shall be published, I pledge myself to the additional 
 payment of from one to two hundred dollars for such purpose. 
 
 To secure a full, frank, and free consideration of the ques- 
 tions involved, it is my desire that the opportunity shall be 
 given from time to time to the representatives of each school 
 of economic thought to express their views in these Lectures. 
 
 The only restriction I wish placed on the lecturer it that 
 he shall be a believer in the moral teachings and principles 
 of the Christian Religion as the true solvent of our Social, 
 Industrial, and Economic problems. Of course, it is my 
 intention that a new lecturer shall be appobted by the com- 
 mittee each year, who shall deliver the course of Lectures for 
 the ensuing year. 
 
 WILUAM LEVI BULL. 
 
Contents 
 
 I. The Background ... 7 
 
 II. In Medieval and Modern In- 
 dustry 57 
 
 III. Great Modern Battles . .109 
 
 IV. How Modern Battles of Labor 
 
 are Treated . . .163 
 
I 
 
 THE BACKGROUND 
 
THE BACKGKOUND 
 
 The dark and unhappy background of 
 the modern battles of labor is to be found 
 not in our modern system of industry, but 
 in the revolts and massacres growing out of 
 labor conditions largely in antiquity and 
 through the ages prior to the institution of 
 the factory system. 
 
 The diflference between the character of 
 modern strikes and lockouts and the an- 
 cient disturbances which preceded them is 
 not so great as one might imagine at first 
 thought. Our modern strikes are to secure 
 social and economic freedom or advanced 
 and improved conditions. The ancient 
 strikes were to secure not only social and 
 economic development, but personal free- 
 dom, and they often grew out of religious 
 and political controversies, elements which 
 
lo The Background 
 
 do not enter, at least to any degree, into our 
 modern battles. 
 
 It is generally supposed that the modern 
 system of industry is peculiarly productive 
 of the contests of labor and capital, or rather 
 the conflicts between laborers and their em- 
 ployers ; yet a careful study of history re- 
 veals the fact that, considering the differ- 
 ence in conditions, and in some respects the 
 causes underlying modern controversies, 
 they find their root in the far past. There 
 have been centuries that have been quite 
 free from labor conflicts, but the struggle of 
 the wage-earner in our time to secure some- 
 thing which he deems important to his life 
 springs from the same aspiration that in- 
 spired the workers of antiquity and the ages 
 between antiquity and the present time. 
 
 Wherever the struggle has resulted in ac- 
 tion, that action and the struggle itself 
 must be considered as aspiration, for no 
 man and no body of men ever engaged in a 
 great contest without some lofty aspiration 
 as the moving spring. 
 
The Background ii 
 
 This is evidenced when we consider what 
 labor is. Ruskin has defined it, philo- 
 sophically, in a way that we can accept. 
 He said : " Labor is the contest of the life 
 of man with an opposite ; the term ' life ' 
 including his intellect, soul, and physical 
 power, contending with question, difficulty, 
 trial or material force. Labor is of a higher 
 or lower order as it includes more or fewer 
 of the elements of life ; and labor of good 
 quality, in any kind, includes always as 
 much intellect and feeling as will fully and 
 harmoniously regulate the physical force." 
 
 All life, and particularly that led by the 
 laborer, being a contest of the life of man 
 with an opposite, all the conflicts of the 
 past or of the present must be considered as 
 the struggle of man to overcome a difficulty 
 or secure an advantage or improved condi- 
 tions and environment, in the estimation of 
 those who organized the conflict, and who 
 engaged in the sacrifices, bloodshed, and 
 unhappy consequences which came from it. 
 
 The world of society in all its elements 
 
12 The Background 
 
 is a constant struggle, but the great labor 
 struggle in all its breadth and comprehen- 
 siveness not only underlies all other forms 
 of struggle, but it preceded them all, for 
 man has ever been undertaking to carry out 
 the first great command which God gave to 
 the human race, which was " to multiply 
 and replenish the earth, and to subdue it." 
 The attempt to subdue the earth, to conquer 
 it, has involved labor, invention, planning, 
 organization, the preservation of results ; 
 and it has called for laws, constitutions, and 
 established government.^ 
 
 So in this struggle for the conquest of the 
 earth we find the great fundamental princi- 
 ples or initiative forces of all the battles of 
 labor. The evils, the problems, the rough 
 places, the hardships and sacrifices cannot 
 be enumerated, but when we understand 
 philosophically the course of history in 
 these respects, the attitudes of the Semitic 
 and Aryan races, the first meaning more of 
 cooperation and human sympathy, the sec- 
 
 ' Ct. Cephas Brainard, Jr. 
 
The Background 13 
 
 ond standing in its march around the world 
 for the great principles of competition^ we 
 see those psychological forces which have 
 entered into all the great conflicts. 
 
 But in all the conflicts of modern times 
 the laborer is supposed to be a human being, 
 endowed, as are all the sons of God, with an 
 immortal element which we call the soul, 
 while in the olden time the man who la- 
 bored to secure the productions necessary 
 for life, convenience, and comfort was con- 
 sidered as a being too low to have a soul. 
 This distinction in the estimate marks great 
 distinction in the treatment. 
 
 The historian of the far past, and to a 
 great extent of the times nearer to us, has 
 been unfair to labor; unfair not only in 
 treatment, whenever he condescended to 
 speak of labor, but far more unfair in his 
 negligence of any treatment. The historians 
 of antiquity, imbued with the idea to which 
 I have just referred, that the workers in 
 society had no souls, did not consider it 
 worth while, or at least dignified, to pay 
 
14 The Background 
 
 any more attention to them in their records 
 than they would to beasts of burden, animal 
 creations also without souls. Hence popu- 
 lar illusions relative to the history of 
 labor itself and especially to the accounts 
 of its endeavors through its aspirations for 
 better conditions, to overcome the great dif- 
 ficulties under which it was employed. A 
 few stray passages here and there, some- 
 thing from hieroglyphics and slabs un- 
 earthed and translated in more recent times, 
 give about all the knowledge we have of 
 the conflicts of slave and master, of em- 
 ployer and employee. 
 
 In our modern understanding a strike 
 occurs when the employees of an establish- 
 ment refuse to work unless the management 
 complies with some demand, and a lockout 
 occurs when the management refuses to 
 allow the employees to work unless they 
 will work under some condition dictated by 
 the management but offensive or distasteful 
 to the employees. So in effect strikes and 
 lockouts are practically the same thing, the 
 
The Background 15 
 
 disturbances simply originating with one 
 side or the other as may be. 
 
 This definition of strikes and lockouts 
 applies with as much truth and effect to 
 those occurring in antiquity as to those we 
 have witnessed during the present genera- 
 tion, which may be considered the great era 
 of modern strikes. 
 
 The background therefore for all the bat- 
 tles of labor clearly belongs to antiquity and 
 not to the inception or progress of what is 
 known as the modern industrial system, or 
 the factory system so-called. 
 
 To maintain this thesis it is well to give 
 attention in this first lecture to some of the 
 great conflicts of the past not only for the 
 purpose of understanding the background 
 of the present, but of understanding the 
 elements of similarity in all history. 
 
 The solidity of this position finds ample 
 corroboration in the great trade unions that 
 have existed since history took any account 
 of human afiairs. What was in pre-historic 
 times we know not, but history gives illus- 
 
i6 The Background 
 
 tration after illustration not only of the 
 organization and long-continued existence 
 and the great power of trade unions as such, 
 but of their conflicts and their trials. The 
 accounts of these unions, as well as of the 
 great strikes and uprisings of the workers 
 of the old world, are quite unknown to 
 students and to those of our own age, but 
 we should not be ignorant of them if we 
 wish to be fair and intelligent as well in 
 considering modern conditions. 
 
 Mr. C. Osborne Ward, in his very valua- 
 ble work entitled "The Ancient Lowly," 
 enumerates no fewer than thirty-five trade 
 unions existing at one time under the law 
 of Constantine. It is impossible of course 
 to say when such unions first came into 
 existence, but that they existed cannot be 
 denied. In Rome the freedmen themselves 
 constituted the chief membership, but it is 
 not clear what inspired them. They were 
 secret orders. Nor are we able to reach any 
 positive conclusion as to their philosophical, 
 religious or economic characters. They 
 
The Background 17 
 
 grew out of that old contempt for and taint 
 of labor resulting from the opinion to which 
 I have referred, that the workers had no 
 souls. But the right of combination from 
 the very earliest times was enjoyed. 
 
 The Romans had no conspiracy laws re- 
 lative to such combinations ; such laws were 
 left for more modern legislators. The right 
 extended throughout Europe in the time of 
 Numa Pompilius, so seven hundred years 
 before the opening of the Christian Era 
 trade unions existed in large numbers. 
 Pompilius not only tolerated them, but he 
 was the author of some regulations concern- 
 ing them. He distributed the entire people, 
 including the working people themselves, 
 into eleven guilds. Plutarch and Mommsen 
 are not agreed on this matter, but careful 
 consideration seems to show that Plutarch 
 was more nearly correct. They differed 
 chiefly as to the number of classes, which 
 is not important. 
 
 Distinct trades existed and they embraced 
 all the arts of Roman times. There was in 
 
i8 The Background 
 
 those days much skill, for mechanics made 
 all the armor for warriors. During the 
 reign of Pompilius— thirty-nine years — the 
 trade organizations developed in large 
 degree, and notwithstanding the Roman 
 idea of crushing them or treating them 
 with great harshness, they existed almost 
 uninterruptedly for about seven hundred 
 years, Pompilius even making them the 
 basis for some of his reforms. 
 
 So his reign must be considered, as we 
 look back upon it, as of great value in teach- 
 ing many lessons in the treatment of the 
 laborer, Plutarch even comparing Numa 
 with Lycurgus. 
 
 Numa did not organize trade unions ; he 
 found them already in existence, but the 
 privilege to organize and freedom from 
 hostile legislation was what he granted 
 them. Their members did not have the 
 immunities possessed by others, for caste 
 in its severest forms existed. Laborers were 
 still degraded and so remained until the 
 great Master declared them equal, for it 
 
77ie Background 19 
 
 was not many years before His time that 
 there was a cessation of privileges. 
 
 Tarquin and Claudius utterly failed in 
 suppressing them. The aristocrats of those 
 days were as fierce and as antagonistic in 
 their hatred of the man who worked as any 
 brutal master of modern times. Cicero, in 
 his violent attacks upon organization, ex- 
 pressed the sentiments of the favored 
 classes. 
 
 It is quite evident from fugitive state- 
 ments that Pompilius borrowed his ideas 
 from the condition, or rather the position, 
 of the organizations of labor as they existed 
 in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Attica ; and 
 both Numa and Solon legalized such organ- 
 izations and did not interfere with the right 
 of combination, for Numa recognized the 
 unions even before Solon of Athens, who 
 must be considered as a follower of Numa 
 rather than a leader in these respects. 
 
 As against these men Lycurgus insisted 
 that no slaves should be emancipated. He 
 was a strong believer in the most rigid 
 
20 The Background 
 
 military control, so under his laws all labor 
 must be conducted by men held in abject 
 submission and slavery. The Pelopennesian 
 trade unions were not given the encourage- 
 ment that Numa gave, and so there are to be 
 found but few tablets with inscriptions 
 suggestive of the existence of labor organ- 
 izations. But in the Northern Grecian 
 Isles, Asia Minor, and Italy there are many 
 monuments suggestive of their existence, but 
 historians have left them in darkness and 
 only the archaeologists have been ready to 
 give them light. 
 
 Notwithstanding the grudging tolerance 
 referred to, labor was not recognized as 
 being respectable or even decent. The 
 right to organize and combine was not ex- 
 tended to the slaves. The slaves therefore 
 in their uprisings, or strikes as we should 
 now call them, depended upon some brave 
 leader to organize them into insurrection- 
 ary forces. 
 
 There were a great many burial associa- 
 tions and they were powerful auxiliaries, 
 
The Background 21 
 
 or rather ancillary societies, to the trade 
 unions. They acted under the garb of re- 
 ligion and without regard to the law, even 
 after the passage of the conspiracy laws b. c. 
 58 ; for in spite of such legislation the 
 unions as well as the associations exercised 
 their peculiar functions. This was because 
 there were some wealthy men among the 
 membership who sought to control social 
 and political action. They were of plebeian 
 stock. Another cause was that, when they 
 felt the persecution and recognized the at- 
 tempts to crush them, they intensified the 
 secret features of their orders. In this per- 
 haps is to be found the reason for the first 
 great blow which was given them, for in 
 secret conclave they gave themselves to acts 
 of conspiracy and diplomacy in order to 
 accomplish their ends. 
 
 The burial societies — the trade unions of 
 those days — were quite generally organized. 
 There were the plasterers, the goldsmiths, 
 the workers in mosaic, the brass-and cop- 
 persmiths, silversmiths, gold gilders, deco- 
 
22 The Background 
 
 rators, plumbers, painters, stone-cutters, 
 masons, carpenters, and many others who 
 had their unions ; even the doctors and 
 architects combined to practice their arts 
 and to advance their conditions. There is 
 evidence sufficient to warrant the conclusion 
 that the artisans in the building trades were 
 organized. They certainly held their or- 
 ganization through a period of six hundred 
 years at Rome, and nearly as many in 
 Attica and other parts of Greece. The 
 masons were interlinked, or thoroughly 
 associated, with the unions in the building 
 trades. They agreed upon prices at which 
 work should be done. They had a federa- 
 tion for the very purpose of taking contracts 
 for the erection, decoration, and finishing 
 of temples and public edifices. 
 
 There was also a great organization of 
 armor-makers. This comprehended a great 
 number of subsidiary occupations, em- 
 bracing the iron and metal workers, artists 
 in the alloys, manufacturers of weapons, 
 shoes, and other necessary articles for war 
 
TTie Background 23 
 
 purposes ; the shield-makers, arrowsmiths, 
 sling-makers, and all the others necessary 
 for the production of war material. Then 
 there were peculiar organizations among 
 those who supplied food, both for the 
 armies and for the people. In fact, Rome 
 herself could not have carried on her great 
 wars without the eflBciency of the trade 
 unions. The victualing system generally 
 attracted much attention and was tolerated 
 perhaps more generously than the other 
 orders, the unions of fishermen or other 
 suppliers or producers of food being neces- 
 sary for the public welfare. 
 
 It is recorded that a stone has been dug 
 up bearing an inscription which exhibits 
 the relics of a union of manufacturers of 
 cooking utensils. So we see that the wants 
 of life were supplied, not in a helter-skelter 
 way, but through organizations. Organiza- 
 tion was carried even further than we know 
 it to-day. The mimics had their unions, 
 and in some of their performances there 
 may be found the origin of wakes. The 
 
24 The Background 
 
 dancers, trumpeters, bagpipers, horn-blowers, 
 and other instrumentalists were organized 
 as our musicians are to-day. Whether one 
 of them would play with a non-union mu- 
 sician has not been revealed. Then those 
 engaged in the games, — circus performers, 
 gladiators, fortune-tellers, — all these had 
 their unions ; and some of the elements of the 
 gladiatorial scenes, ferocious and bloody, 
 between the working men and tigers and 
 other wild animals, being made compulsory 
 by Roman law, had their influence in some 
 of the great uprisings of the olden time. 
 
 The clothing-cutters and workers in tex- 
 tiles, the fullers, the weavers, the carders, 
 the combers, all these were organized. The 
 government undertook to conduct many in- 
 dustries, and the organizations of labor 
 found some friendly tolerance as a conse- 
 quence. 
 
 One of the most interesting and even 
 valuable experiences of antiquity in this 
 respect was the organization of the image- 
 makers. They were the people who worked 
 
The Background 25 
 
 for the gods ; they were known as big and 
 little godsmiths. So when Christianity 
 dawned on the world these image-makers 
 were opposed to the new religion, for if 
 idols were to be abolished, if Pagan ceremo- 
 nies were not to continue, there would be 
 little or no work for the image-makers. 
 Paganism was tyrannical, cruel, and re- 
 ligious as well. It ignored what we call 
 the proletariat. Nevertheless in its temples, 
 beautiful, magnificent, were numerous idols 
 exhibiting the very finest and most skilful 
 work the world produced ; beautiful altars, 
 sepulchres, sarcophagi, and mausoleums. 
 All these must go if Christianity obtained 
 a hold upon the thought of the world. 
 The image-makers therefore opposed Chris- 
 tianity, purely for economic reasons, for the 
 Christian had no need for idols. But their 
 workers, like working men everywhere and 
 in all times, ready to accept any new propo- 
 sition that looks to greater equality and 
 better conditions, finally overcame their 
 antagonism and took to their hearts the 
 
26 The Background 
 
 principles of the new religion ; but the 
 workmen's craft as learned, practiced, and 
 intensified by the old image-makers existed 
 and still exists. 
 
 Without going into further detail rela- 
 tive to the organizations of antiquity, we 
 may safely assert that they exerted a great 
 influence in the development of the skill 
 of brain and hand which has left its mark 
 in the productions of the old industrial 
 system ; skill which is not surpassed to- 
 day and the productions of which excite the 
 admiration of moderns. They were the 
 enemies of the slave system and of all 
 monopoly. Their influence and their force 
 in legislation, in general economic condi- 
 tions, and in the planting of the Christian 
 religion cannot be denied. The great 
 Master was Himself of them, His youth 
 spent among them, and there are writers 
 who do not hesitate to assert that He 
 worked through labor organizations in 
 His endeavor to bring the kingdom on 
 earth. There is no positive evidence of 
 
The Background 27 
 
 this, but the analogies of His preaching 
 and the tenets of the labor unions of His 
 time surely indicate such a similarity that 
 it is not a very great stretch of the imagina- 
 tion which leads to the conclusion that if 
 not of them He was with them in spirit 
 and in action. He loved these working peo- 
 ple beyond all other members of the com- 
 munities in which He preached. He drew 
 His disciples from them, and recognized 
 their needs as expressed in their struggles 
 and their aspirations. 
 
 Whatever the trials and troubles of labor 
 organizations in the past as constituting a 
 great element in the background of labor 
 as we know it, as helping us to understand 
 more fairly and with more Christian spirit 
 the evolution of labor, we must still find 
 the darker and the unhappier background 
 in those uprisings caused by the desire to 
 secure, first, personal freedom, and, second, 
 better economic conditions. 
 
 So far as history is concerned, the first 
 great battle which labor fought was the 
 
28 The Background 
 
 strike of Moses and the Jews known in 
 sacred history as the Exodus and curiously 
 enough this great strike had in it more of 
 the elements of our modern battles of 
 labor than most of those in ancient times ; 
 for there had been a persistent and long- 
 continued labor agitation through many, 
 many years, during which the Hebrews 
 sought by every means in their power of 
 representation, petition, and appeal to pre- 
 vent or even to modify the severe tasks 
 which the Egyptians placed upon them. 
 These attempts of the Hebrews resulted 
 in bloody encounters when servants and 
 masters fought with all the fierceness of 
 wild beasts, but Moses, like Spartacus in his 
 great struggle, organized the forces of labor 
 and ordered a general strike, so thorough 
 in all its plans that the whole body of 
 Hebrews subject to the persecution of the 
 Egyptians — probably a million in all — left 
 their employers and marched out in a 
 great procession. It is held by some that 
 the Egyptians were glad to be rid of this 
 
The Background 29 
 
 turbulent body, but they showed their 
 gladness in their attempts to subdue them. 
 The uprising was a clearly defined and 
 well defined labor strike, and it was organized 
 for economic as well as for physical causes. 
 It was the greatest strike that has been 
 recorded. The grievances underlying the 
 strike are familiar to all and while based 
 on economic and social conditions, there 
 was a religious element in it all, for two 
 chiefs of the tribe made a petition asking 
 that Pharaoh would allow them to go to 
 some wooded retreat where they might 
 celebrate in honor of Jehovah as their 
 custom demanded. The delegates or the 
 two chiefs presenting this petition on be- 
 half of the people were Moses and his 
 brother Aaron. They respectfully submit- 
 ted their appeal in an interview which the 
 king granted, but grudgingly, however. 
 These great delegates, whose names live 
 to-day, gave evidence that their people 
 were kindly disposed, but wearied to the 
 very verge of physical exhaustion from 
 
30 The Background 
 
 overwork, unwholesome food, and depriva- 
 tion in every direction. 
 
 They were met by disdain and a manner 
 on the part of the king most insulting and 
 exasperating. Some employers to-day find 
 the formula for an answer, when working 
 men respectfully present their claims, in the 
 answer which Pharaoh made to Moses and 
 Aaron. Pharaoh said : " Wherefore do ye 
 lead the people from their work ? Go you 
 unto your burdens." And Pharaoh told his 
 task-masters to say : " Ye shall no more 
 give the people straw to make brick as here- 
 tofore. Let them go and gather straw for 
 themselves." To-day when like petitions 
 are presented — but thank God the experi- 
 ences are growing less and less under an en- 
 lightened intelligence — the employer says : 
 " If you do not like the wages I pay and 
 the conditions in my works, go where you 
 please," The spirit of the answers is the 
 same. 
 
 The Egyptian hirelings, who were largely 
 the overseers of the Hebrew people, drove 
 
The Background 31 
 
 them into the direst necessities, and the 
 order to gather straw for themselves resulted 
 in a corner in st-raw being worked up by the 
 Egyptian workmen, and in the language of 
 the Bible the order was, " Let there be more 
 work laid upon the men that they may 
 labor therein." 
 
 Moses and Aaron led their people into 
 what many writers would call rebellion, but 
 into what the sociologist and economist 
 must call the greatest strike of recorded 
 history. 
 
 We may speak of strikes as economic 
 failures, and when we think of that we may 
 ask. Was the Hebrew strike a failure ? Out 
 of it grew the great law of Moses, the best, 
 the wisest ever promulgated prior to the 
 Solonic law. Moses led his immense family 
 and became its great statesman, deliverer, 
 savior. That great legislation that has come 
 down to us, that is so full of inspiration, so 
 strikingly applicable in our times, found its 
 very fundamental principles in the strike of 
 Egyptian workmen. That law is indelibly 
 
32 The Background 
 
 written in every code that has received the 
 attention of man since Moses. 
 
 A great uprising or strike with an entirely 
 different character grew out of what was 
 known as the Eleusinian mysteries. These 
 mysteries were based on a myth and held at 
 Eleusis, a place of considerable size in At- 
 tic Greece about ten miles from Athens. 
 The mysterious cult grew out of ancient 
 mythology and related to the beautiful 
 daughter of Ceres and of Jupiter, who was 
 stolen from her mother and carried off by 
 Pluto to his nether-world home. The 
 mother assuming different garbs or char- 
 acters and going to Eleusis there found occu- 
 pation in the nursing of a child of the king. 
 The boy thrived marvelously, Ceres breath- 
 ing her life upon him, purging his mortal 
 character of dross, dressing him with oint- 
 ment and bathing him with a mysterious 
 fire hoped to make this kingly child im- 
 mortal. But the mother of the child ob- 
 serving these processes of what may be 
 called transubstantiation, the boy hanging 
 
The Background 33 
 
 in a halo of flame, became frightened and 
 the old nurse in her trepidation let the 
 child drop into the fire itself, and thus he 
 perished. Then the old nurse, that she 
 might not be sacrificed, rehabilitated her- 
 self as Ceres and ordered the people to erect 
 for her a beautiful temple where she should 
 reside while prosecuting her search for her 
 own lost daughter who had been abducted 
 by Pluto. In this myth lies the key to the 
 Eleusinian mysteries, in celebrating which 
 the people of Athens sought to personify 
 the transformation of matter into life and 
 life into immortality, partially a religious 
 ceremony, partially a social one. 
 
 The crusades of the Athenians were to do 
 homage to the goddess of the harvests. 
 The things real and things unreal finally 
 assumed a priesthood in character, and the 
 devotees found themselves a great society of 
 men and women bound together by ties of 
 secrecy, which gave them a power they 
 could not otherwise have exercised. 
 
 We do not know just what occurred at 
 
34 The Background 
 
 the Eleusinian penetralia of mysteries. We 
 can only conclude from all that is known that 
 they symbolized the procreative potentiality 
 of nature itself and that their rites em- 
 phasized the elements of eternal bliss. 
 
 To participate in these rights the initiated 
 went out from Athens in a crusade, but the 
 laborers who had no souls, degraded and 
 misunderstood, could take no part in the 
 celebration of the mysteries at Eleusis, and 
 there was a constant conflict on the passage 
 of the great procession. This occurred every 
 five years and the festivities lasted nine 
 days. 
 
 The outpouring gave the labor organiza- 
 tions, the slaves, and all the downtrodden 
 the opportunity to attack the procession of 
 Eleusinian devotees, and they assaulted the 
 crusaders with clubs and stones. They did 
 this because they were excluded from partic- 
 ipating and because they hated the very 
 class of people that made up the crusaders. 
 Here was the occasion, although not the 
 cause of the great conflict. 
 
The Background 35 
 
 Insulted with personal assaults the nobil- 
 ity and their friends retaliated, and the 
 lowly people sufifered the consequences. 
 Their action was a strike against what they 
 considered exclusion from religious rites. 
 They entered their protest in a brutal way, 
 but they started that great agitation which 
 brought to the slaves and others greater 
 freedom and recognition. They were the 
 men who had built beautiful temples, mag- 
 nificent palaces and the monuments of 
 ancient Greece. Their skill had been recog- 
 nized, and they felt that their personality 
 should be recognized as well. It was a 
 strike practically for the recognition of the 
 union. 
 
 Labor also fought its battles in Lace- 
 dsemon through the working people or 
 Helots, who were slaves living and working 
 in large measure in the rural communities. 
 
 Lycurgus had provided for an annual 
 election of magistrates, the ephori. The 
 principal object of the establishment of this 
 body was to develop democratic principles 
 
36 TTie Background 
 
 looking to the equalization and develop- 
 ment of the hopes of the people, but the 
 people, other than property owners, were 
 practically denied the privilege of suffrage 
 or of enjoying the results of their own 
 labor, although it is shown by fugitive 
 statements that the working people in- 
 volved were perhaps as worthy of recog- 
 nition and might have been as intelligent 
 as their masters. Instead of practicing the 
 democratic ideas held by Lycurgus, it was 
 sought to reduce the number of working 
 people, so under the orders of the ephori 
 aristocratic youths were induced to repair to 
 a distance and assassinate the workers. 
 These young men, unfortunately, had gov- 
 ernors or guardians powerful enough to com- 
 pel them to carry out these bloody orders 
 of the ephori, so whenever a new slaughter 
 of the working people was ordained the most 
 able-bodied young men were armed and in- 
 structed in their inhuman work, and the 
 walking delegates of that day, in connivance 
 with the authorities, saw to it that the 
 
The Background 37 
 
 workers themselves went forth without 
 arms, and the few naked, ill-fed laborers 
 were unsuspectingly driven into the fields 
 or places of labor where the assassins, lying 
 in wait, indulged in their sanguinary sport. 
 It was to carry out the compulsory provi- 
 sions of the law of Lycurgus, to indulge in 
 manly gymnastics ; it was sport. The aris- 
 tocratic youth felt the tingle of blood, the 
 toughening of sinews in his athletic de- 
 velopment. 
 
 Plutarch, even in his barbarous age, said : 
 " The governors of the youth ordered the 
 shrewdest of them from time to time to dis- 
 perse themselves into the country, provided 
 only with daggers and some necessary pro- 
 visions. In the daytime they hid them- 
 selves and rested in the most private places 
 they could find ; but at night they sallied 
 out into the roads and killed all the Helots 
 they could meet with. Nay, sometimes by 
 day they fell upon them in the fields and 
 murdered the ablest and strongest of them." 
 
 Here is an example of one of the ancient 
 
38 The Background 
 
 battles of labor. Such deeds darken the 
 background and help us to understand the 
 condition out of which labor is growing. 
 
 In Greece, Sicily and Rome in ancient 
 times there occurred many great and disas- 
 trous strikes. Typical of these was the great 
 labor war among the miners of Laurium, 
 B. c. 413. The miners knew before they 
 entered upon their insurrection that they 
 would have to suffer death by torture in 
 the most maddening ways that the cruelty 
 or the greed of their masters could invent, 
 unless their great revolt or strike met with 
 success. Among the strikers were slaves 
 through the accident of their birth ; some 
 were slaves because they were prisoners of 
 war; some were slaves because they had 
 been bought and sent into the mines, 
 and there were many convicts working as a 
 punishment, constantly under the lash. 
 These men were leased by the overseers or 
 contractors from the government who re- 
 ceived as compensation for their labor one 
 twentieth of the proceeds thereof. So our 
 
The Background 39 
 
 modern lease system, which has been so 
 generally condemned, finds its roots in this 
 dark background. 
 
 The working man of the Laurium silver 
 mines was a social outcast. These mines 
 were not far — only about thirty miles — 
 from Athens. The labor was arduous ; men 
 and women, some of whom had been guilty 
 of some criminal act, were sent into the sub- 
 terranean caverns, stripped entirely of their 
 clothing, their bodies painted, their legs 
 loaded with chains and thus set at work 
 breaking the rock and carrying it to the 
 mouth of the shaft. Outside smiths and 
 others were at work to aid the inside labor- 
 ers. It is not more than one hundred years 
 since the boys and girls were worked naked 
 in the coal mines of England. 
 
 How the dark background of antiquity 
 has continued its depressing and demoral- 
 izing influence ! Such conditions could not 
 be continued without protest, and any pro- 
 test then meant battle. The conditions 
 were such that the working people hated 
 
40 The Background 
 
 not only fatherland and employer, but 
 home. The labor war then when it broke 
 out compelled the laborers to seek retreat 
 from the infernal cruelties of their bondage. 
 The great strike of the silver miners left 
 the mines unproductive, a condition which 
 could not be tolerated by the government. 
 When 20,000 miners, mechanics, teamsters, 
 and laborers struck their work and made a 
 desperate advance on the Spartan garrison 
 at Decelia, they were met by offers of com- 
 promise, one of which was that they might 
 work on their own reckoning, part of their 
 proceeds being paid to their masters. As 
 they knew nothing of having plenty of food 
 and other comforts, many of them acceded. 
 The losses to the armories at Athens through 
 the loss of products was a most serious ele- 
 ment in the progress of the Pelopennesian 
 war, and the strike left its scars not only 
 upon the Athenians, but upon all with 
 whom they were in affiliation. It was a 
 great strike for social and economic better- 
 ment and must be so classed. 
 
The Background 41 
 
 Later on another vast and bloody conflict 
 occurred at the same mines, more than a 
 thousand striking work and proceeding one 
 day in a body to the protecting castle of 
 Sunion, claiming and receiving there some 
 protection from the divine guardian of that 
 place. The strikers killed their overseers, or- 
 ganized for combat, seized the arms in the 
 armories, laid waste the country, and were 
 the masters of the stronghold. They were 
 finally defeated by Heraklitos, the mayor 
 of the city, with the brutalities of general 
 crucifixion usual in such victories. 
 
 Rome was not a stranger in the construc- 
 tion of this dark curtain, but her labor wars 
 were usually in the nature of conspiracies. 
 One of these occurred in Latium about 194 
 B. c. It was a strike of slaves and it started 
 through a lockout. The degraded wretches 
 of the agricultural districts went into collu- 
 sion with the slaves inside the city ; they 
 really constituted great bands prowling 
 among the mountain regions. The people 
 of Setia were about to indulge in a gala day. 
 
42 The Background 
 
 probably some gladiatorial contests were 
 ordered. Here was an opportunity for the 
 strikers, and by taking advantage of the 
 excitement of the populace, the people not 
 being on the alert, they expected they could 
 plunder the town, take possession of muni- 
 tions and weapons necessary for their own 
 purposes, and then, armed and supplied, the 
 town of Norba would be subjected to vio- 
 lence ; the masters and patricians murdered, 
 they would have an easy conquest of other 
 cities where, under a constant repetition of 
 their carnage, they would secure the con- 
 trol of what they considered the world. It 
 must be remembered, however, that no con- 
 ception of there being any world beyond 
 their own limited vision was possible. 
 
 This strike was defeated through the ac- 
 tion of a traitor to the working people, for 
 information was carried to Rome and laid 
 before the Praetor by two slaves who ex- 
 posed all the plans of the insurrectionists. 
 
 It took not much longer to convoke the 
 Roman Senate than it would to convoke 
 
The Background 43 
 
 our own at the present time, and it was or- 
 dered that Merula, the Praetor, with a few 
 regular troops then available, should pro- 
 ceed against the strikers. It is not known 
 whether a conflict ensued, but it is known 
 that the ringleaders were apprehended and 
 the insurrectionists demoralized ; 2,000 of the 
 conspirators were slaughtered and the up- 
 rising suppressed. 
 
 The grievances which led to the uprising, 
 however, could not be suppressed. The 
 gibbetings, the murders, the agonies, the re- 
 ward of the traitors, caused the spirit of in- 
 surrection again to assert itself in the im- 
 mediate vicinity of Prseneste, where it was 
 discovered that a plot existed to master that 
 town. This second insurrection, however, 
 failed as did the first, although a battle, ac- 
 cording to some authorities, must have been 
 fought, one of considerable importance. 
 Two thousand five hundred public execu- 
 tions took place, to say nothing of those 
 who lost their lives in the conflict. 
 
 It can easily be imagined that all these 
 
44 The Background 
 
 events terrorized the Roman citizens, who 
 instituted measures of the strongest vigi- 
 lance. Hostages were reduced to slavery, 
 prisoners chained ; but the worst punish- 
 ment of all was the underground prison, 
 the public career, built as early as b. c. 
 650-500. This was called the Tullian cell, 
 to which, according to Bombardini, the 
 Italian jurist, " you descended by a ladder 
 to the distance of twelve feet into a damp 
 hole, excavated in the earth. It was walled 
 in on all sides and vaulted overhead hav- 
 ing the sections adjoined. It had a putrid 
 odor and a frightful outlook." This horrid 
 prison developed from something still worse. 
 Long before the period of which I am 
 speaking, b. c. 198, prisoners were worked 
 in this excavation ; masters of the slaves 
 lowered their food and scanty clothing to 
 them through breathing holes. This prison, 
 which may be seen now, was a deep and 
 spacious excavation under the Capitoline 
 hill, and it was made by slaves. Of course 
 vengeance, not correction, guided the au- 
 
The Background 45 
 
 thorities ; as the prisoners quarried the 
 stone, the cavities left made prisons for 
 themselves. It was this process that caused 
 Pliny to designate Rome as the " city hang- 
 ing in the air." The occupants squeezed 
 their bodies between sharp rocks, and the 
 prison was a place from which the person 
 doomed, when once incarcerated, never 
 afterward saw the light of day. It is easy 
 to determine whether the causes of these 
 bloody insurrections were just or unjust. 
 
 This period, about 200 or 190 b. c, seems 
 to have been quite prolific in strikes. 
 "Some of them resulted from the agrarian 
 agitation, others from the attempt to 
 establish some sort of socialistic govern- 
 ment and other potent reasons and auspi- 
 cious questions. 
 
 The historian, Nymphodorus Siculus, 
 has given an interesting account of a 
 somewhat remarkable strike which oc- 
 curred in the island of Scio. This island 
 is the ancient Chios, about seven miles 
 from the coast of Asia Minor and part of 
 
46 The Background 
 
 the Greek Archipelago, It contains only a 
 little more than five hundred square miles, 
 and is considered the primeval home of 
 the Pelasgians and the Leleges of Cyclopean 
 fame. It is therefore Greek, beautiful in 
 its natural aspects of verdure, of forest and 
 of stream. Slavery existed there in its 
 most accursed forms. While other prov- 
 inces kept their slaves recruited from their 
 own sons and daughters, as well as from 
 the prisoners taken in war-time, Chios 
 engaged in the slave trafl&c in order to 
 increase her laborers. 
 
 It is quite impossible to fix the date of 
 the occurrence narrated by the historian 
 quoted, but it must have been before the 
 Christian Era, although Dr. Biicher thinks 
 it was some two hundred and fifty years 
 after the birth of Christ. 
 
 At all events, there was a slave named 
 Drimakos. He was a runaway who had 
 provided himself with a weapon, and rush- 
 ing from his owner he secreted himself in 
 a den in the mountains, having with him 
 
The Background 47 
 
 a dozen desperate associates. He could 
 supply himself and companions with food 
 only by taking it from the dwellings below 
 the mountains, where there were fields 
 richly cultivated ; or, to some extent, from 
 the city from which he was a fugitive. 
 
 It was determined by the masters, includ- 
 ing that of Drimakos himself, that these 
 desperados must be taken without regard 
 to whether they were living or dead ; but 
 others taking courage and gathering in- 
 spiration from Drimakos joined him among 
 the mountain crags. So in a short time 
 the slaves found themselves in posses- 
 sion of their mountain homes, and their 
 number being constantly augmented by 
 other fugitives they became a community 
 of power, over which Drimakos was made 
 king, commander-in-chief, and really a 
 despot. As has occurred so many, many 
 times in history, this cruelly abused man, 
 when given despotic power, began to use it 
 with as much severity or nearly so, but with 
 more justice perhaps, as did his old masters. 
 
48 The Background 
 
 The Chians, in order to capture the 
 leader and his fellow fugitives, sent an 
 expedition into the mountains, but the 
 expedition met with defeat, for the 
 Chians, through the ingenuity and skill 
 of Drimakos, were led into- ambush, cut 
 to pieces, their arms captured, and the 
 fugitives were masters of the field. A 
 bloody battle was fought, even a succession 
 of battles, but Drimakos, a man of sym- 
 pathy through his sufferings and his 
 wrongs, appointed a council of arbitration 
 and asked a like council on the part 
 of his enemies, to settle the whole mat- 
 ter and avoid further bloodshed. 
 
 In the council or the conference in which 
 the new king met the city magistrates, 
 Drimakos made a most remarkable speech, 
 as follows : " We will never lay down our 
 arms. We will never again submit to the 
 drudgery of bondage. We are fixed in our 
 own minds and act under counsel of the 
 Almighty. 
 
 " Nevertheless if you follow my advice 
 
The Background 49 
 
 and adhere to it in the strictest faith, after 
 signing this pledge and compact,- the war 
 may be terminated and the further effusion 
 of blood dispensed with; then we can 
 mutually live in peace and enjoy tranquil- 
 lity on terms which will be full of prosper- 
 ity to the whole state of which we all are 
 members. 
 
 " What we want is enough to subsist upon 
 — no more. In future when hunger and 
 need inspire us, we shall visit your gran- 
 aries, flocks, and stores and take what we 
 require, but always by weight and measure. 
 The weights and measures are to be those 
 which we have brought you and exhibit 
 before your eyes. Here also is a signet with 
 which we propose to seal up your store- 
 houses and granaries after taking from them 
 what we require, as by this means you will 
 be able to distinguish our work from that 
 of common robbers. Regarding the slaves 
 who in future shall escape from you to our 
 camp, I shall rigidly investigate the causes 
 of each man's running away, weigh his 
 
50 The Background 
 
 story carefully, and after submitting his 
 case to an unbiased examination, if he be 
 found to have suffered injustice at your 
 hands, proving that he has been treated 
 wrongly by you, I shall protect him. If on 
 the contrary the runaway slave shall be 
 found not to have had a sufficient cause, I 
 shall return him to his master." 
 
 The great slave, the man who had run 
 away from slavery, recognized and upheld 
 the institution. The conditions imposed by 
 him were agreed to by the Chian authorities, 
 for they were not so situated as to refuse. 
 During the existence of the stipulations, 
 and for many years afterward, the condi- 
 tions were carried out. 
 
 The king of the mountaineers took what 
 stores they wished, but always by weight 
 and measure according to the compact. 
 The country was rid of robbers, with which 
 it had been infested ; Drimakos becoming 
 the great robber would allow no competi- 
 tion. 
 
 When this wonderful man became old he 
 
The Background 51 
 
 undertook to delegate his powers to a young 
 man — a runaway — who had been kidnapped 
 when a child and sold to one of the mer- 
 chants of Chios. 
 
 The Chians, however, were beginning to 
 be restless after their many years of subju- 
 gation by their former slave, and offered a 
 large reward for the head of the great insur- 
 gent who resolved, now that he was feeble, 
 upon a plan ingenious in itself but as disas- 
 trous as it was ingenious. So he said to this 
 young man : " Thou art child and son and 
 all that to me is dear. I have lived out my 
 span. I have lived long enough ; but thou 
 art still young and hast blood and hope 
 and sprightliness, and there is much before 
 thee. Thou shalt become a good and brave 
 man. 
 
 " Son, the city of the Chians is offering 
 to him that bringeth them my head a sum 
 of money and promising him his freedom. 
 Therefore thy duty is to cut off my head, take 
 it to them, receive thy reward, return home 
 to thy fatherland and be happy." 
 
52 The Background 
 
 This was a very revolting idea to the 
 young man, but his old friend, having re- 
 solved, would not change his plan ; and so 
 he allowed himself to be persuaded, and the 
 great slave king, laying his head upon the 
 block, the youth became the executioner, 
 then took the head to the city and returned 
 to his home with wealth and renown. 
 
 But the loss of Drimakos left his old as- 
 sociates without his guiding hand, and they 
 became pillagers and robbers and pirates. 
 Then the Chians saw the error of their 
 ways, for Drimakos had held freebooters 
 under control and the treachery of the 
 Chians in securing the death of Drimakos 
 brought them under their old difficulties 
 and they recalled the words of prophecy 
 which he had uttered and his inspired state- 
 ment that the cause of the poor slaves had 
 been favored by the gods who were angered. 
 When this memorial feeling took possession, 
 kindling to a high degree, they erected a 
 mausoleum over Drimakos's grave and he 
 himself was worshiped as a hero. After- 
 
The Background 53 
 
 ward mention of the ghost of Drimakos 
 through the superstitions of the people be- 
 came a shibboleth with the Chians. 
 
 Oh, those ages, the ages back of the 
 Christian Era, were full of these great re- 
 bellions, strikes, insurrections, whatever 
 one chooses to call them, but all growing out 
 of labor conditions. 
 
 There was the great rebellion in Spain, 
 B. c. 149, when the massacre of Galba and the 
 dramatic life of Viriathus revealed the 
 cruelties which labor suffered. Time will 
 not permit even the. briefest relation of this 
 wonderful story, nor of the civil war in 
 Sicily when one of the greatest labor re- 
 bellions or strikes on record in any country 
 or at any time occurred, all growing out of 
 the horrid conditions regulating labor. 
 
 Nor can I speak of the bloody strikes in 
 Asia Minor, even in close proximity to Pal- 
 estine and those immortal scenes that grew 
 out of Nazareth and Jerusalem a few years 
 after them. These scenes give a deeper hue 
 to the darkness of the background of the 
 
54 The Background 
 
 battle of Enna where all but a fragment of 
 20,000 workmen were killed or taken 
 prisoners. 
 
 Then there is also the story of Sparta- 
 cus who led the strike of the gladiators. 
 The grievances which led to the trouble are 
 probably better known to-day than those 
 underlying any of the great battles which 
 labor has fought. Poetry and romance and 
 history have all combined to make the 
 story of the gladiators under Spartacus, 
 about 74 B. c, familiar even to school-chil- 
 dren. But the real history of the rebellion 
 led by Spartacus in the revolt against the 
 cruel regulations reveals the fact that 
 Spartacus to all intents and purposes 
 was a working man. He rose to his great 
 renown through his own genius, and 
 through the organizations which he inspired 
 he carried on his great work for human 
 liberty and decent conditions. 
 
 He was himself a slave. At fifteen years 
 of age, holding the head of his dying father, 
 chained and nailed to the trunk of a tree, 
 
The Background 55 
 
 he was conjured to avenge that father's 
 death, and he then and there vowed venge- 
 ance upon his powerful enemies ; this feel- 
 ing of vengeance, allied to the cruelties to 
 which he had been subjected, gave him the 
 mind and the skill and the strength to 
 carry out his promises. 
 
 He had been a shepherd in Thracian 
 Greece ; he was a giant ; he was young ; he 
 had all the elements of a great leader. He 
 fought many battles — at least twelve — be- 
 fore the final tragedy, in which great num- 
 bers of the brave men with Spartacus were 
 slaughtered, the story of which will never 
 die ; and in the last of which the body 
 of Spartacus was so completely cut to 
 pieces that it was never found. Florus 
 says he died like a Roman emperor. 
 
 In that last battle the Romans gave no 
 quarter. Sixty thousand working men gave 
 their lives in a defeat which caused the 
 chains of labor to be more securely riveted 
 for ages. 
 
 Spartacus fought for principle, as others 
 
5'6 The Background 
 
 had fought, with slaves for soldiers. In 
 the different wars of the slaves' rebellion 
 against the Roman system more than one 
 million perished. 
 
 Many other references might be given to 
 show not only the vastness, but the savagery 
 of labor's battles in the far past. The 
 evolution growing out of those conditions 
 has been slow, so slow that it can hardly be 
 recognized even when we compare modern 
 with ancient times. The brutalities take 
 different form, but they are there. The 
 darkness does not disappear, even when rec- 
 ognizing the magnificent results which 
 Christianity brought out of those old strug- 
 gles to which I have alluded ; but these 
 results teach us that growth is there, that 
 the evolution has been and is sure ; that 
 the auguries of the present based on those 
 magnificent auguries of two thousand years 
 ago are bringing an age which cannot be 
 compared with any other, and that the 
 golden age is in the future and not in the 
 past. 
 
II 
 
 IN MEDIEVAL AND MODERN 
 INDUSTRY 
 
II 
 
 IN MEDIEVAL AND MODERN INDUSTRY 
 
 It would be interesting to dwell at greater 
 length upon the ancient background of 
 labor. There were eight centuries during 
 which Rome had but two classes of people, 
 masters and slaves ; if we could tell the 
 story of the latter we should get the story 
 of the Roman workmen, for that empire, 
 with its patricians arrogant and ostenta- 
 tious, found it necessary to unite the patri- 
 cian and the rich plebeian in order to over- 
 come the opposition to the welfare and the 
 rights of the working classes. Those of 
 the latter who were not legal slaves were 
 oftentimes in a worse condition than the 
 slaves themselves. 
 
 But we must pass rapidly to mediseval 
 and modern times. 
 
 All through the centuries up to and in- 
 cluding the eighteenth, the working people 
 
6o In Mediaeval and Modem Indastty 
 
 were slaves or serfs, and their condition was 
 not much better than their forebears' prior 
 to that period ; nor did they have the in- 
 telligence of the insurrectionists in the dif- 
 ferent countries prior to the Christian Era. 
 
 The workman was stagnated, as was so- 
 ciety generally, and although out of the 
 middle ages there came some of the grand- 
 est inventions the world has seen, in the 
 development of science, in mathematics and 
 medicine, yet in other directions, the world 
 practically stood still. 
 
 The peasantry all through those centuries 
 lived in slavish servility, but the people — 
 the bourgeois — were, in the later centuries, 
 gaining something in civilization and in 
 political power. There were corporations 
 and organizations among artisans and mer- 
 chants, and these became powerful in their 
 methods of defense against the oppression 
 of the nobles. They were prolific in France, 
 but they never attained similar power or 
 position to those in Belgium, Holland or 
 England. 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 61 
 
 These organizations Avere often as auto- 
 cratic as the very power against which they 
 aimed their forces, for the workmen did not 
 hesitate, trained as they were under despotic 
 rule, to reproduce some of the worst features 
 of the aristocracy ; but when these features 
 were announced and carried out as far as 
 possible by the nobles, the workmen did 
 not fail to denounce them. 
 
 There were many features of these unions 
 coincident with those with which we are 
 entirely familiar. They fixed the hours 
 and the days for working ; they allowed or 
 restricted output by regulating the size of 
 articles to be made, the quality of the 
 stuffs used in their manufacture and even 
 the price at Avhich they were to be sold.^ 
 They prohibited night Avork, except in 
 the production of funeral articles, which 
 might be made at night ; but beyond and 
 above all these stringent regulations the 
 trade unions of those days taught industry 
 and business integrity. They became pow- 
 
 I "The Stoiy of Manual Labor," by John C. Simonds. 
 
62 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 erful and they worked strenuously to secure 
 the advancement of honest labor and to 
 bring about the great and resistless up- 
 heaval of the French revolution of 1789, 
 and the abrogation of the rights and privi- 
 leges of the nobles and the clergy. 
 
 Among the strikes which occurred during 
 the middle ages reference should be made to 
 the disputes between masters and " valets," 
 that among the shearmen in 1350, and that 
 of the weavers alien in 1362. There was at 
 that time, or at least there is much evidence 
 to show that there was, a separate journey- 
 man class having various interests quite 
 distinct in some of their essential features 
 from the interests of the master artisans. 
 
 There occurred combinations, the result 
 of agreements existing among the men 
 themselves that they would not work ex- 
 cept under certain circumstances and con- 
 ditions. Our modern strikes find examples 
 for their methods in these very agreements, 
 for they gave the fullest power to the officers 
 of their associations to deal with all cases of 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 63 
 
 grievance or dissatisfaction which might 
 arise. An extract from these agreements is 
 exceedingly interesting in discussing how 
 strikes arise and the causes of disputes. 
 
 " Whereas, heretofore, if there was any 
 dispute between a master in the trade and 
 his man (vadlett), such a man has been 
 wont to go to all the men within the city 
 of the same trade ; and then, by covin and 
 conspiracy between them made, they would 
 order that no one among them should work 
 or serve his own master until the said mas- 
 ter and his servant or man had come to an 
 agreement ; by reason whereof the masters 
 in the said trade have been in great trouble, 
 and the people left unserved ; it is ordained, 
 that from henceforth, if there be any dis- 
 pute moved between any master and his 
 man in the trade, such dispute shall be set- 
 tled by the wardens of the trade. And if 
 the man who shall have offended, or shall 
 have badly behaved himself toward his 
 master, will not submit to be tried before 
 the said wardens, then such man shall be 
 
64 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 arrested by a sergeant of the Chamber, at 
 the suit of the said wardens, and brought 
 before the mayor and aldermen ; and before 
 them let him be punished at their discre- 
 tion." 
 
 Of course after the Black Death there 
 was a great increase in wages, but also much 
 difficulty between employers and employees. 
 Men were not content even with the increased 
 wages, and this discontent with remunera- 
 tion caused many of the difficulties. Jour- 
 neymen became masters of the situation 
 temporarily. Their movement did not re- 
 sult in entire defeat, but it did result in the 
 removal of the power to determine wages 
 from the individual master to the craft as a 
 whole, or to the wardens as its representa- 
 tives.^ 
 
 Some of the difficulties arose from very 
 curious causes, but the strikes were in all 
 respects like the strikes with which we are 
 acquainted. In England the Peasants' Re- 
 volt of 1381 caused much disturbance 
 
 > Ashley, " Eoonomio History " Vol. 1. 
 
In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 65 
 
 among the journeymen in the towns quite 
 like the ferment that existed among the 
 villeins in the country places. The jour- 
 neymen felt aware that they would never 
 become masters, and they caught the idea 
 that their independence and improvement 
 must result from their own action ; and 
 this action was jointly with the peasants, 
 resulting in public demonstrations and re- 
 fusals to work — that is, strikes — as the most 
 powerful means of securing better compen- 
 sation, better conditions, etc. These were 
 old methods, however, and the very same 
 that occurred thirty years before, to which 
 I have just alluded. The Peasants' Revolt, 
 as such, occurred June 10, 1381, and it was 
 quite extensive, being simultaneous from 
 the coast of Kent to Scarborough and all 
 through the eastern towns. 
 
 The rioters took Norwich and stormed 
 the Castle ; the thriving artisans of London 
 shared in the insurrection. On the west of 
 England all the country from Hampshire 
 to Lancashire was involved. The immedi- 
 
66 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 ate occasion was the outrage committed on 
 Watt Tyler's daughter and the vengeance 
 which he undertook on the criminal, al- 
 though many ascribed the difficulty to the 
 poll tax. But the cause lay deeper than 
 any personal grievance or any personal out- 
 rage, because the uprising was concerted 
 and related more particularly to the wages 
 of labor than to any other cause. 
 
 Curiously enough the serfs had organized 
 their trade unions, and they were united in 
 their resistance to the law and in their 
 strenuous demands for increased wages ; yet 
 Tyler's case had something to do with the 
 Peasants' Revolt. 
 
 The conditions of villeinage and general 
 dissatisfaction must be considered as con- 
 tributing largely to the revolt ; and yet, 
 strange to say, Kent County led the insur- 
 rectionary movement, although there were 
 no serfs in that county, and their action can 
 be accounted for only through their sym- 
 pathy with the serfs where they existed. 
 In other words, the Kent County people— 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 67 
 
 artisans, peasants — entered upon a sym- 
 pathetic strike. 
 
 Just seventy years later Cade's Revolt 
 found its starting point in Kent. Kent 
 was active in all the leading events which 
 took place prior to the days of Cromwell. 
 
 Under Tyler, in 1381, the insurrectionists 
 marched to London, occupied Black Heath 
 and Southworth and forced Sir John Man- 
 ley to approach the king and lay before him 
 their grievances ; and then they crossed the 
 bridge and entered London. The councils 
 of that city were so divided, the interests and 
 sympathies so varied, that the city was dis- 
 tracted. Then the insurrectionists became 
 rioters and John of Gaunt's new palace was 
 burned and the Hospital of St. John sacked, 
 while on the last days of their occupancy 
 they made London their camping-ground, 
 probably in Smithfield, 
 
 Then came a night of terror, during 
 which the young king, his mother, his two 
 half-brothers, the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, and some of the nobles found lodging 
 
68 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 in the tower, but the garrison was a slender 
 one and on the next morning the insurgents 
 approaching the tower informed the king 
 that he must grant them a conference or 
 the tower would be attacked, captured and 
 all that were in it slain. The affrighted 
 king left the tower and appointed a con- 
 ference to take place at Mile End, but 
 no sooner had he left it than the insurgents 
 took possession of it, seized the Archbishop 
 and others and forthwith put them to death. 
 
 Tyler was no doubt aided by many in 
 London who were dissatisfied with this, that 
 or the other condition, and probably by 
 some old soldiers of the French wars. 
 
 The king met the rioters and on his de- 
 manding the occasion of the conference 
 they answered : " We will that you make 
 us free forever, ourselves, our heirs, and our 
 lands, and that we be called no more bond 
 or so reputed," and the king without delay 
 assented, bidding the mob to return to their 
 homes while the charters for their new con- 
 dition were to be carried to them. The 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 69 
 
 morning following Tyler occupied Smith- 
 field in force. 
 
 The king was desirous of escaping from 
 London and was even attempting to make 
 his way out of the city. This was strange, 
 for the whole country was in insurrection. 
 The king found the peasants everywhere 
 under arms and while at St. Bartholomew's 
 Abbey undertook a parley. Tyler as he 
 saw him commanded his followers to fall 
 back, he himself advancing to meet the 
 king, but Walworth, the mayor, slew Tyler. 
 This enraged the crowd, but the king, braver 
 than some of his associates, appeased them, 
 riding boldly to the front and announcing 
 to them that he was their monarch and 
 their friend. Then the rebels returned to 
 London and soon dispersed. 
 
 On returning to his mother, who was still 
 in the tower, and being congratulated by 
 her on his safe return, he assured her that 
 he had well-nigh lost but actually gained 
 his crown on that memorable morning at 
 Smithfield. 
 
70 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 There were many more features, riotous, 
 tragical, disastrous, which accompanied the 
 Peasants' Revolt. They need not be re- 
 lated. The insurrection was over in a 
 week, and then, as in our own time, after 
 the tragedy the authorities began to study 
 the situation, to discover if possible the 
 causes of the insurrection and how it was 
 organized and developed. 
 
 There were all sorts of combinations, re- 
 sulting in insurrections of greater or less 
 magnitude, involving citizens of various 
 classes and degrees, following the events of 
 1381, and they are sufficient to indicate the 
 existence of strikes in mediaeval times and 
 to establish their comparison with the 
 strikes of our own times. 
 
 As additional mediaeval experiences we 
 may cite the Peasants' War, which was the 
 rebellion of the peasants of Southern and 
 Central Germany in 1525. It may be, and 
 probably it is, true that the Reformation of- 
 fered the occasion but not the cause of this 
 revolt. It was intimately associated with 
 
In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 71 
 
 the Anabaptist uprising which took place 
 early in the sixteenth century. The Ana- 
 baptists sprang up at about the time of the 
 Reformation, but when or where they first 
 appeared, whether in Germany or Switzer- 
 land, it is difficult, if not impossible, to 
 determine ; but they sprang up like rank 
 vegetation. Their growth is explained from 
 the fact that the seed was in the ground, 
 and this explains the growth of all labor re- 
 volts and of all communistic attempts. 
 
 In 1521 they appeared at Zwickau and 
 later, under Thomas Miinzer, took part in 
 and shared the sanguinary strife of the 
 Peasants' War. Thus religion and labor 
 conditions joined hands and Miinzer and his 
 followers claimed a divine commission. 
 
 The Anabaptists were defeated near 
 Muhlhausen and their leaders put to death. 
 It 1533 they concentrated their operations 
 at Miinster and, as in all such movements, 
 fanaticism ruled, but after a sanguinary 
 strife of fifteen months the so-called king- 
 dom of Anabaptists perished. 
 
72 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 The story is a cruel one. Throughout the 
 most flourishing districts of the country 
 travelers were horror-struck with the sight 
 of heaps of dead bodies and of smoking 
 ruins. Fifty thousand peasants perished 
 and almost everywhere the people lost what 
 little liberty they had previously possessed. 
 
 The revolt was primarily caused by the 
 actual and burdensome grievances of the 
 peasants, but they sought to rectify these 
 by a process which has always led to ten- 
 fold greater evils — plunder, rapine, murder, 
 and all the excesses of infuriated hordes. 
 
 Read the story of the Reformation in all 
 its bearings if you wish something possess- 
 ing all the charm of romance and a truth 
 stranger than any fiction. 
 
 Contemporaneously with the Peasants' 
 War in Germany and the Anabaptist revolt 
 culminated those mighty communistic move- 
 ments in France, begun before the opening 
 of the tenth century and resulting in the 
 almost entire destruction of feudalism. 
 They were " the first attack of that mortal 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 73 
 
 illness which eventually was to destroy the 
 system." 
 
 We learn from Paul Lacombe that no 
 epoch was ever more frightful for the poor 
 peasant ; with no hope, since he owned no 
 land and had no chance of becoming rich ; 
 with none of the comforts or even necessi- 
 ties of existence, life was to him a perpetual 
 agony. We must understand that around 
 the castle of each feudal lord was generally 
 a large palisaded enclosure, built to receive 
 the serfs of the domain and their cattle, at 
 the approach of the enemy. To live in his 
 hut like a hare in his hollow, with his ear 
 always on the alert ; to cultivate out of 
 season, and against his will, barren soil ; at 
 the slightest sound of danger to take ref- 
 uge in the Manorial enclosure ; to encamp 
 there in want and fear, hardly sheltered and 
 not at all fed, a prey to epidemic diseases ; 
 later to go out starved and trembling to 
 see his plot of ground and harvest in 
 cinders ; to repair the damage and begin 
 again, with the prospect of another similar 
 
74 In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 
 
 catastrophe ; such was the life of a peasant 
 under the feudal system of France and of 
 other countries. The poor creatures felt it 
 an impossibility that humanity could sur- 
 vive under such a system. And it is not 
 surprising that insurrections, revolts, and 
 the battles of labor came to be general, ex- 
 hausting, tragical. 
 
 Then occurred the establishment of the 
 French communes which were born in the 
 holiest of holy causes. Under the prevail- 
 ing conditions they became the most active 
 and determining element in the processes 
 of French civilization. The revolts, the 
 massacres, the stupendous crimes, the 
 wonderful sacrifices, the heroic deeds, the 
 patriotic martyrdoms, and the demagogical 
 stratagems which attended their birth and 
 their christening into French history, have 
 all been repeated in later times, but with 
 varying purposes. They were the out- 
 growth of the conditions that surrounded 
 the working man. The Revolution of '89 
 was inaugurated through and by their 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 75 
 
 ■ influence, and that Revolution swept 
 away the privileges of the nobility and 
 of the clergy ; and it swept away much 
 more, but it left something for future 
 generations which was good. 
 
 During the Revolution of 1848 these 
 principles were reinvoked and the attempt 
 was made to make labor the basis of the 
 new order. 
 
 How many strikes or labor revolts 
 occurred during the period from the 
 beginning of the Christian Era to the 
 middle of the eighteenth century, other 
 than the great rebellions well known in 
 history, it is impossible to state. His- 
 torians have been as negligent during this 
 period as they were during the period prior 
 to it. Whatever revolts there were, however, 
 wherever they occurred, in what numbers, 
 and with what results, they were the back- 
 ground that the middle ages formed for 
 our own period. 
 
 I said in my first lecture that it was 
 generally supposed that strikes were one 
 
7^ In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 of the direct products of modern industry. 
 It is true that probably more strikes and 
 lockouts and labor disturbances generally 
 have occurred during the last twenty-five 
 or thirty years than in all the previous 
 period of history since the dawn of the 
 Christian Era, but they have been of a 
 different character and on the whole have 
 been peaceful and not tragical ; although 
 here and there, as we shall see in the next 
 lecture, tragedy has played an important 
 part in the conduct of the battles. 
 
 It cannot be without interest to take a 
 cursory glance over this immediate past, 
 in order to discover if possible whether 
 the phenomena of strikes and lockouts are 
 novel in our present industrial history, or 
 whether they had their beginnings in times 
 and under conditions which have passed ; 
 whether they are the result of the powerful 
 organizations of working men, or whether 
 they are the outgrowth of discontent and 
 dissatisfaction with existing industrial con- 
 ditions, or the natural result of industrial 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 77 
 
 development and the development of in- 
 telligence. 
 
 While it may be truly said that the 
 strike, as a method pursued by working 
 men to obtain the redress of real or fancied 
 grievances, has assumed importance only 
 during the last generation, it is true that 
 the strike, as I have shown, is not a new 
 weapon even in this country in the hand 
 of the laborer. 
 
 Careful investigation of records shows 
 that it is reasonably certain that a strike 
 occurred among the bakers of New York 
 city as early as 1741, for in the trial of 
 journeymen cordwainers in the city of 
 New York in 1810, counsel for the defense 
 stated that he had ascertained the facts 
 relative to the occurrence in 1741. 
 
 There was also a series of strikes among 
 the boot- and shoemakers of Philadelphia, 
 beginning in 1796 ; and again in 1798 
 there was a " turnout," as a strike was then 
 called, ordered by the journeymen shoe- 
 makers of this city. The cause of this 
 
78 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 was a demand for an increase of wages, the 
 same as in New York in 1741. This strike 
 lasted ten weeks and was partly successful, 
 although the next year the journeymen 
 shoemakers turned out to resist a demand 
 made by the masters for a reduction of 
 wages. 
 
 In New York, in November, 1803, oc- 
 curred what is commonly known as the 
 Sailors' Strike. This has been considered 
 generally by writers as the first strike in 
 the United States, but the facts just cited 
 indicate the contrary. The sailors formed 
 in a body, marched around the city and 
 compelled other seamen who were employed 
 at the old rates to leave their ships and join 
 the strike. The strikers were pursued and 
 dispersed by the constables, who arrested 
 their leaders and lodged them in jail ; so 
 this strike failed. 
 
 The shoemakers, always the leaders in 
 agitation, in those days as in revolutionary 
 times, turned out again in 1805 here in 
 Philadelphia. They demanded an increase 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 79 
 
 of wages. This particular strike lasted six 
 or seven weeks and was unsuccessful. The 
 strikers were tried for conspiracy and the 
 men convicted, but I have not been able to 
 learn whether sentence was passed upon 
 them. 
 
 There occurred a strike among the cord- 
 wainers in the city of New York in 1809. 
 This strike is memorable only because there 
 originated in it some of the terminology 
 which enters into all strike literature of our 
 time. The proprietors took their work at 
 the time of this strike to other shops and by 
 this stratagem defeated the strikers ; but 
 the action being discovered a general turn- 
 out was ordered by the Journeymen Cord- 
 wainers' Association against all the master 
 workmen of the city, nearly two hundred 
 men being engaged in the strike. 
 
 At that time, November, 1809, a stoppage 
 of work in one shop by the journeymen was 
 called a " strike " ; a general stoppage in all 
 shops in a trade was known as a " general 
 turnout," and a member of a journeymen's 
 
8o In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 association who did not keep his obliga- 
 tions to the organization, that is, a man wlio 
 would work while a strike was on, was de- 
 nominated a " scab." This is the first time, 
 so far as I have been able to discover, that 
 this word was applied to one who would 
 work while his comrades were on strike. 
 
 An interesting strike occurred in 1817 at 
 Medford, in the State of Massachusetts, 
 when one Thacher Magoun, a shipbuilder, 
 determined to abolish the grog privilege 
 customary at that time, drink being fur- 
 nished to workmen at certain intervals dur- 
 ing the day. Upon notice being given by 
 Mr. Magoun that no liquor should be used 
 in his shipyard, the words " No Rum " were 
 written upon nearly every clapboard of the 
 workshop and upon each timber of the 
 yard. Some of the men refused to work 
 but finally gave in, and a ship was built 
 without the use of liquor in any form. I 
 do not remember that the temperance ques- 
 tion or the use or the prohibition of the use 
 of liquor ever appeared as a cause in any 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 81 
 
 other American strike, nearly all those oc- 
 curring prior to 1880 being for an increase 
 in wages or to prevent a reduction, or to 
 establish some rule the working people 
 thought necessary, or to prevent some rule 
 to which they were opposed. 
 
 During this period the year 1835 must 
 be considered as exceptional, for then oc- 
 curred not so very many strikes, but some 
 of considerable importance. Five hundred 
 mechanics in Boston struck for the ten-hour 
 system, and this was the case in twenty 
 mills in Paterson, New Jersey. The stone- 
 cutters of New York struck not only for an 
 increase of wages, but for the regulation of 
 piece work. In May of that year the 
 Schuylkill merchants pledged themselves 
 not to employ laborers unless they would 
 agree to work by the day and from sunrise 
 to sunset. A contemporary writer, com- 
 menting upon this lockout, said : " All 
 combinations are wrong, but if on one part, 
 they must be on the other." 
 
 In the same month there was a serious 
 
82 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 strike in Philadelphia coal yards. This 
 was for a reduction in the hours of labor ; 
 and in June several trades in Philadelphia 
 met and offered an imposing manifestation 
 in favor of the change in hours. They 
 formed a procession with a large white ban- 
 ner bearing the motto " From 6 to 6," but 
 their conduct was peaceable. In the same 
 month occurred other strikes of house car- 
 penters and brick -layers, lamp and chande- 
 lier employees, together with the tin plate 
 and sheet iron workers. In some of these 
 cases the demands were promptly complied 
 with. In the same month also the journey- 
 men cordwainers again took the field, and 
 the strike committee reported that nearly 
 one hundred and forty employers acceded to 
 the demands. Then in the same month the 
 working women, tailoresses, seamstresses, 
 binders, folders, etc., undertook to formu- 
 late a schedule of prices and asked advances. 
 The master bookbinders considered the 
 cause of these women whose claims were 
 founded alike on justice and humanity, 
 
In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 83 
 
 and they resolved that $3.00 per week was 
 the least amount of wages that could be 
 offered by any one possessed of practical 
 principles of humanity, and that less wages 
 were unjust, inhuman, and oppressive. 
 
 There were not many strikes during the 
 Civil War. People were too busy, too ex- 
 cited, too much interested in greater affairs. 
 The decade of the '70's was more turbulent, 
 coal miners, railroad employees and others 
 entering into great contests for an increase 
 of wages and an improvement in conditions. 
 
 The greatest strike of that period was that 
 of July, 1877, on the Pennsylvania Rail- 
 road. This strike will be dealt with more 
 specifically in the succeeding lecture, as it is 
 one of the historic strikes of the country. 
 
 Taking the whole period then, from 1741 
 to 1880, my investigations show that there 
 were 1,491 strikes and lockouts, and that of 
 these 1,089 related to wages and 278 only to 
 other causes ; that of the whole number 316 
 succeeded, 154 were compromised, 583 
 failed entirely, while the results in 438 
 
84 In Mediaeval and Modem Industiy 
 
 cases cannot be ascertained. It was shown 
 by a report of the tenth census that in 1880 
 there were 610 strikes. In no year prior to 
 that was there any considerable number of 
 strikes, certainly not more than 80 or 90. 
 From that year, 1880, we have a very ac- 
 curate record down to December 31, 1900. 
 The facts for subsequent years are not yet 
 ready for use, but I apprehend that when 
 they are known we shall find that there 
 has been a decrease in the total number. 
 When we analyze the course of strikes 
 during the twenty years from January 1, 
 1881, to December 31, 1900, we shall be as- 
 tonished at the magnitude of the disturb- 
 ances in the aggregate. 
 
 In 1881 there were but 471 strikes, while 
 in 1900 there were 1,779. The largest num- 
 ber occurred in 1890, when there were 1,883. 
 These figures signify but little in them- 
 selves, but when we learn that the number 
 of establishments involved in these strikes 
 during the period under discussion was 
 117,509 we begin to appreciate the impor- 
 
In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 85 
 
 tance or influence for good or ill these strikes 
 exerted. During that period there were 
 6,105,694 employees thrown out of employ- 
 ment. The largest number was in 1884, 
 when over 660,000 people were thrown out 
 of work. In addition to these strikes there 
 occurred during the same twenty years 
 1,005 lockouts, involving nearly 10,000 es- 
 tablishments and throwing out of employ- 
 ment over 1,000,000 people. In the strikes 
 90 per cent, of the employees thrown out 
 were males and 10 per cent, females, while 
 in the lockouts 80 i per. cent were males and 
 191 per cent, females. And now we learn 
 the power that the organizations exert in 
 these later times as in the ancient periods, 
 for of the whole number of strikes in the 
 twenty years in question nearly 63 i per 
 cent, were ordered by organizations, and of 
 the lockouts 17 per cent, by associations of 
 employers. The average duration of all the 
 strikes was nearly twenty-four days and of 
 the lockouts over ninety-seven days. 
 The successes of the strikes is a most in- 
 
86 In Mediaevnl and Modem Industry 
 
 teresting feature, and the facts usually dis- 
 turb the theories of those who have not 
 studied the subject. I have heard it as- 
 serted by intelligent men that nearly all 
 strikes fail, yet the facts show that of the 
 whole number occurring during the twenty 
 years, nearly 51 per cent, succeeded, while 
 over 13 per cent, succeeded partly, and but 
 36 per cent, failed. These proportions are 
 quite as true for the lockouts, for nearly 
 51 per cent, succeeded and nearly 43 per 
 cent, failed. 
 
 It is more interesting still to learn what 
 became of the strikes ordered by the labor 
 organizations. Here again we find similar 
 proportions, for of those strikes ordered by 
 such organizations nearly 53 per cent, suc- 
 ceeded and 33 J per cent, failed, while nearly 
 14 per cent, succeeded in part. Of the 
 strikes not ordered by organizations — those 
 which were inaugurated by temporary con- 
 certed movements, 35} per cent, succeeded 
 and more than 55 per cent, failed. 
 
 The concentration of strikes in certain 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 87 
 
 localities offers some very serious lessons 
 not only for the economist, but for the 
 sociologist. 
 
 Taking those in Illinois, Massachusetts, 
 New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, we find 
 that in these five states, which contain 
 nearly 75 per cent, of all the manufacturing 
 establishments involved in strikes during 
 the twenty years, and almost 85 per cent, of 
 all the establishments involved in lockouts, 
 the strikes averaged in the different years 
 very nearly 58 per cent, of all the strikes 
 occurring in 1892 and over 87 per cent, of 
 those occurring in 1897. But it may not 
 be unreasonable to assume that after all the 
 proportion of strikes occurring in these five 
 states was not undue, relative to the capital 
 invested and the number of establishments 
 in these states. 
 
 The losses resulting from all these strikes 
 cannot be accurately ascertained, but they 
 have been ascertained with sufficient accu- 
 racy to indicate their vastness from an eco- 
 nomic point of view. 
 
88 In Mediaevd and Modern Industry 
 
 It is fairly easy to calculate or even to 
 ascertain the wage losses of the employees, 
 and the assistance to employees by labor 
 organizations while their members were on 
 strike is the subject of very positive infor- 
 mation. 
 
 The wage loss during the twenty years 
 amounted to nearly $258,000,000 and the 
 money the organizations spent in assisting 
 their striking fellows was over $16,000,000, 
 a sum sufficiently large to have enabled 
 these men to establish cooperative plants, 
 or to carry out various plans for improve- 
 ment and advancement. The losses of the 
 employers has been set at nearly $132,000,- 
 000. This, again, is the subject of fairly 
 accurate calculation, but no method can 
 ascertain the losses of society at large, or of 
 thousands of individuals discommoded, hin- 
 dered in their occupations and otherwise 
 interfered Avith. 
 
 In lockouts the employees lost nearly 
 $49,000,000 and paid out nearly $3,500,000 
 while the employers lost nearly $20,000,000. 
 
In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 89 
 
 The total loss resulting from industrial 
 disturbances during the twenty years then, 
 to employees alone was nearly $307,000,000 ; 
 and the total loss to establishments or firms 
 in both strikes and lockouts during the 
 twenty years was nearly $143,000,000, or a 
 total direct loss to both employees and em- 
 ployers of nearly $450,000,000. 
 
 Now, what were the causes for all these 
 battles? It is comparatively easy to ascer- 
 tain the alleged causes and where the causes 
 are not clear, to ascertain the occasion of 
 the conflicts. But that other, deeper, un- 
 derlying psychological basis which must 
 have entered into all these disturbances 
 cannot be ascertained. 
 
 Many of the strikes were honest and 
 honestly conducted for legitimate causes ; 
 many for trivial causes and those which 
 did not warrant an economic rebellion ; 
 but others — and we can never know 
 the proportion — were the result of the 
 desire of ambitious men to exhibit the 
 reason for their existence officially, and 
 
90 In Medinevdl and Modem Industry 
 
 to show to their unions that they had 
 the power to coerce their employers. 
 When such psychological reasons ex- 
 isted they were kept in the background, 
 and only the appeal to the men that they 
 were underpaid, or oppressed, or working 
 under some conditions which were not 
 agreeable oJBfered as the real cause for de- 
 claring a strike. 
 
 But doing the best one can, taking only 
 those material causes which have been 
 alleged and ignoring by force of necessity 
 the psychological aspects of the C9,se, we 
 can reach certain conclusions that are valu- 
 able in their sociological and economic sense. 
 
 Of the whole number of strikes oc- 
 curring in the twenty years, nearly 21 per 
 cent, were ordered for a direct increase 
 of wages ; Hi per cent, for an increase 
 of wages combined with a demand for a 
 reduction of hours, and about the same 
 proportion for a reduction of hours, while 
 something over 7 per cent, of the strikes 
 were against a reduction of wages. 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 91 
 
 It is true, then, that 58 i per cent, of all 
 the strikes occurring in this country during 
 the twenty years involved rested upon the 
 question of wages and the hours of labor. 
 The balance were for a variety of reasons, 
 such as sympathetic strikes against the 
 employment of non-union men, although 
 this number was very small ; only 2J per 
 cent, of the whole for the adoption of new 
 scales ; for the recognition of the union IJ 
 per cent. ; for the enforcement of union 
 rules against some particular system like 
 the task system I per cent., etc., etc., but 
 these latter are unimportant in the dis- 
 cussion of causes. In all there were 
 twenty leading causes and they ac- 
 count for nearly 77 per cent, of all the 
 strikes in the country, and based on 
 these leading causes nearly 50 per cent. 
 of the strikes succeeded, over 13 per 
 cent, succeeded in part, while 37 per cent, 
 failed. 
 
 You may be curious to know whether 
 these disturbances are indigenous with 
 
92 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 us in the United States, or whether other 
 countries sufiFer in the same way. 
 
 Quite a number of European countries 
 collect regularly the statistics of strikes 
 and from their reports the facts can be 
 ascertained. Take Austria, for instance, 
 and we find that the total number of 
 strikes for the ten years from 1891 to 1900 
 was 2,178, of which number 445 succeeded 
 and 936 failed, the balance succeeding 
 partly. Labor organizations there have 
 the same influence as here, for of the 
 whole number 653 were ordered by them. 
 There were 13,636 establishments involved, 
 while over 456,000 strikers took part. 
 The causes were similar, and in proportion 
 as well, to those occurring in this country. 
 
 The facts for Denmark are meagre and 
 apply only to three years, 1897, 1898, 1899, 
 but in these years there were 356 strikes 
 involving 7,312 establishments. 
 
 France, in the eleven years from 1890 to 
 1900 inclusive, experienced 5,112 strikes, 
 with a total number of 1,147,200 strikers 
 
In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 93 
 
 and 18,782,418 days lost by the employees. 
 Of the whole number of strikes 1,216 suc- 
 ceeded and 2,220 failed. 
 
 The German statistics are more meagre 
 still and are for only two years, 1899, 1900, 
 but the total number of strikes in these 
 two years, 2,271, comes close to the 
 American standard ; 606 succeeded but 
 1,181 failed, while a very large percentage 
 was ordered by labor organizations, the 
 number being 1,613. The number of 
 strikers was 222,141. 
 
 Great Britain has a record of five years, 
 from 1899 to 1903 inclusive, during which 
 4,526 strikes occurred, 1,815 of them result- 
 ing in favor of the strikers, while there were 
 over 1,852,000 employees thrown out of 
 work. 
 
 Italy is not lagging behind in these 
 methods, for between 1879 and 1899 in- 
 clusive that country, which is not particu- 
 larly a manufacturing country, had 2,483 
 strikes involving a total of 623,810 persons 
 and a loss of five and a half million days. 
 
94 In Mediaeval and Modem Industiy 
 
 Thus we see that America cannot claim 
 to be very much in advance of other coun- 
 tries in the methods of her working men in 
 attacking their employers. We see so much 
 more about our own American battles than 
 about those of other countries that we think 
 the other countries are at peace, although 
 now and then we do read of the longshore- 
 men's strike or of the engineers' strike — 
 that is a strike of what we should call 
 machinists — or of the troubles in the French 
 coal mines, or of those of various artisans 
 and mechanics in different countries; 
 but we waive all the prestige we have 
 gained when we contemplate the recent 
 strikes of the working people in unhappy 
 Russia. 
 
 The question is often asked. What time 
 would be required at increased wages to re- 
 coup the loss occurring during strikes? 
 This of course is an arithmetical question, 
 and I was at some pains a few years ago to 
 have constructed a table showing the num- 
 ber of days required for employees to re- 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 95 
 
 cover their wage losses in wholly successful 
 strikes for an increase of wages. 
 
 The table looks very much like a table 
 of logarithms, but it is instructive in the 
 extreme. It was based on 5,443 strikes in 
 which the average wages lost per employee 
 during the strike was $20.42 and the average 
 daily wage gained per employee on account 
 of the strike 27 cents. It would take, there- 
 fore, summing up all these cases, 76 days on 
 the average to recoup the loss occasioned 
 by the strike. If we take the cases of 
 those employees engaged in strikes that 
 were partially successful, we find that the 
 average wages lost was $43.34 and the aver- 
 age daily gain 12 cents, and that the aver- 
 age number of days required to recoup the 
 loss was 361. 
 
 Of course the trade unionist would say, 
 and does say, " What of it ? We are battling 
 for a principle, and the losses and gains in 
 dollars and cents must not be considered." 
 The employers also say they are battling for 
 a principle and that the losses and gains 
 
g(> In Mediaeval and Modem Industiy 
 
 must be considered. Society, the third 
 party, and the one most seriously involved 
 in any labor strike, says, " A plague to both 
 your houses. We are losing not only in 
 money, but in inconvenience, stoppage of 
 business and in various directions." Proba- 
 bly the truth is not wholly with any one 
 of these parties. 
 
 There is a deeper question involved than 
 that covered by the alleged cause for which 
 a strike is undertaken. 
 
 I said a while ago that the working peo- 
 ple of the middle ages, in fact all along 
 after the Christian era to our own age, were 
 not as intelligent as those who conducted 
 the great revolts in antiquity. I must add 
 that the intelligence of the modern work- 
 ing man, the man who has inaugurated all 
 these conflicts, with the statistics of which 
 I have wearied you, is an intelligent being 
 that cannot be compared with those of the 
 past. He has been taught in the schools 
 that he is one of the sovereigns of the land. 
 He is a political factor ; he ia in large degree 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 97 
 
 becoming a social factor. He is certainly 
 an important economic factor, and his in- 
 telligence leads him to the conclusion that 
 this being so, he should have an influence 
 in shaping economic conditions. 
 
 Fools do not strike. Were our working 
 men everywhere on a par with the serfs of 
 the middle ages we should have but few 
 labor organizations and but few, if any, 
 strikes ; but with the intelligence that he has 
 the working man insists that that intelli- 
 gence shall be felt. He knows enough now 
 to feel his condition and to know that he 
 ought to have better conditions, but he 
 does not know enough to know how to 
 secure them without the brutal auxiliary of 
 the strike. 
 
 Macaulay said that the evils of liberty 
 were not to be cured by less but by more 
 liberty; so the evils of strikes, whatever 
 they are, are not to be overcome by a body of 
 less intelligent men, but by a body of more 
 intelligent men ; men whose intelligence 
 will tell them how to secure results without 
 
98 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 the methods that have prevailed during the 
 last quarter of a century. 
 
 Here is our hope, and during the last 
 year or two we have seen abundant evi- 
 dence of this supplemental or increased in- 
 telligence which will preserve the country 
 from the strife we so much lament. We 
 see in the papers the accounts of the few 
 strikes that have occurred during the past 
 year and we think the old regime of force 
 still exists, but we do not see the vast num- 
 ber of difl&culties that are arranged be- 
 tween employers and employees by the 
 practical use of those principles of justice, 
 of humanity, that enter into our own relig- 
 ious beliefs. 
 
 I shall have more to say of this later on, 
 but I wish to caution you here and now 
 against any pessimistic conclusion which 
 the era of violence I have presented to you 
 might induce. 
 
 You may ask with propriety, What" is the 
 attitude of the courts and of legislatures to- 
 ward this great question of strikes and the 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 99 
 
 rights, privileges, and obligations of strikers 
 and employers involved in the difficulties ? 
 
 Up to the early part of the nineteenth 
 century a strike was considered a conspiracy. 
 This doctrine, as derived from the English 
 common law, was applied here, but is con- 
 strued notv in a much more liberal way 
 than was formerly the case. 
 
 The trial of the journeymen boot- and 
 shoemakers of Philadelphia, in 1806, to 
 which I have alluded, furnishes an em- 
 phatic example. At that trial the recorder 
 particularly asserted that " A combination 
 of workmen to raise their wages may be 
 considered in a twofold point of view ; one 
 is to benefit themselves, the other is to in- 
 jure those who do not join their society. 
 The rule of law condemns both." 
 
 The development of the doctrine of con- 
 spiracy as applied to strikes, or rather the 
 growth of conservatism in its application, 
 seems to have been sporadic in its character, 
 for we find the views of Judge Gibson, as 
 stated in the Commonwealth of Pennsyl- 
 
loo In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 vania vs. Carlisle, early in 1821, more in 
 accordance with modern construction than 
 those of other judges who succeeded him. 
 The fact appears to be that this doctrine of 
 conspiracy was so seldom invoked that it 
 was only half understood by some, includ- 
 ing the legal and judicial professions, and in 
 view of the very few precedents and ad- 
 judications of cases involving strikes, the 
 decision in each individual case depended 
 upon the research and learning of the par- 
 ticular judge before whom the case was 
 tried. There were not then, and there are 
 only partially now, digests or compilations 
 of laws, precedents, and adjudications in this 
 country relating to the doctrine of conspiracy 
 as it affects the right of the employers or 
 the employees to combine for an increase of 
 wages or for other causes. Some recent 
 works have appeared which are of great 
 importance and usefulness in the examina- 
 tion of such rights. 
 
 As I have stated, the first trial in this 
 country for conspiracy to raise wages oc- 
 
In Mediaeval and Modern Industry loi 
 
 curred in 1741, when the journeymen 
 bakers were charged with a conspiracy in 
 refusing to bake until their wages were 
 raised. They were tried and convicted, but 
 what the sentence was the records do not 
 show. 
 
 The earliest trial of this character which 
 has been fully reported and of which the 
 record is available was that already alluded 
 to, of the journeymen boot- and shoemakers 
 of Philadelphia, in 1806, before the mayor's 
 court of this city. The indictment against 
 eight defendants was that they had con- 
 spired against the peace and welfare of the 
 commonwealth to fix wages and prices, and 
 to do those things the court thought did 
 interfere with the dignity and the peace of 
 the State. A great deal of testimony was 
 taken, one man stating that for several 
 years he had lost as much as $4,000 annu- 
 ally from his inability to fill his contracts, 
 owing to the refusal of the journeymen's 
 association to allow its members to work in 
 his shop with men who did not belong to 
 
102 In Mediaeval and Modem Jndustty 
 
 that organization. It also appeared that 
 workmen had been threatened and even 
 severely beaten for working against the 
 orders of the association, and that the mod- 
 ern system of boycotting was in full opera- 
 tion. 
 
 The trial is an exceedingly interesting 
 one, as showing the attitude of the courts 
 of that day. The jury found the defend- 
 ants guilty of a combination to raise their 
 wages and they were fined by the court 
 eight dollars each, with the costs of suit, 
 and to stand committed until the fine was 
 paid. 
 
 The methods pursued by organized labor 
 at that early day is evidence of the fact that 
 the doctrine of conspiracy was not under- 
 stood and that the application of the com- 
 mon law rules gathered from English prece- 
 dents was unreliable. 
 
 In other cases which occurred during the 
 succeeding years of similar character and 
 with similar rulings, the jury usually found 
 the parties indicted guilty, and they had to 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 103 
 
 pay the fine or stand committed until they 
 did pay it. 
 
 So case after case — not a great number to 
 be sure — might be cited to show how judges 
 looked upon strikers. In an opinion de- 
 livered by Judge Brady, of the city of New 
 York, in 1887, in dismissing a writ of habeas 
 corpus in a labor case, Judge Brady said : 
 
 " No doubt exists of the right of work- 
 men to seek by all possible means an in- 
 crease of wages, and all meetings and com- 
 binations having that object in view, which 
 are not distinguished by violence or threats, 
 and are lawful, therefore cannot be reason- 
 ably condemned or justly interfered with." 
 But Judge Brady took occasion to remark 
 that where violence or threats occurred the 
 combination should end, for it was a con- 
 spiracy pronounced, and justly so, to be 
 criminal, and punishable by imprisonment. 
 
 The courts everywhere now take this 
 view that men have a right to associate to- 
 gether peaceably to make their demands 
 and to quit the work of their employers, 
 
104 If^ Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 reasoning that if one man has a right to 
 quit — which no one will deny — two men or 
 a thousand men have the same right, and 
 it is not conspiracy if they enter upon con- 
 certed action ; but when they resort to vio- 
 lence or picketing that is not peaceable, or 
 any other methods which involve the life 
 or the limbs or the safety of others, then the 
 participators are amenable under the crimi- 
 nal code of the state wherein the action 
 takes place. 
 
 Some judges, and those very high, take 
 the ground that there is no such thing as 
 peaceable picketing to prevent scabs as they 
 are called, or non-union men, from enter- 
 ing the works of the employer of the 
 strikers. Statute law has stepped in with 
 a view to guiding the courts as much as 
 anything, and of protecting the com- 
 munity, but it is only recently that any 
 legislation in this country has been di- 
 rected toward strikes, boycotts, and con- 
 spiracies relating to Avages and other 
 demands. In many of the states where 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 105 
 
 the common law of England was -in force 
 men were tried for and often convicted of 
 conspiracy for attempts to coerce their 
 employers by resorting to strikes and their 
 concomitants — the boycotting of non-union 
 men and of those who employed them. 
 In recent years a number of the states and 
 territories have endeavored to make plain 
 by statute how far a combination by em- 
 ployees to raise or maintain the rate of 
 wages, or for kindred purposes, is to be 
 protected ; and on the other hand, what 
 acts by such combinations, or by indi- 
 viduals, will subject the perpetrators to 
 punishment under the criminal codes. 
 In the absence of specific legislation in 
 some states the common law on the subject 
 of conspiracy remains in force, and in 
 some others where the common law does 
 not obtain, the absence of statutory enact- 
 ments on the subject may be accounted for 
 by the comparative rarity of serious strikes 
 or boycotts. 
 The legislation is varied in its character, 
 
io6 In Mediaeval and Modem Indastty 
 
 and, to a certain extent, voluminous, but 
 many of the states have, as I have in- 
 timated, defined these things and the 
 courts are therefore bound to follow the 
 statute. I need not cite the states that 
 have undertaken to legislate on these 
 matters, except to cite one law which may 
 be considered as representative of the more 
 drastic legislation of the past few years. 
 Alabama has a statute which provides that 
 " Any person who, by force or threats of 
 violence to person or property, prevents, or 
 seeks to prevent, another from doing work 
 or furnishing materials, or from contracting 
 to do work or furnish materials, for or to 
 any person engaged in any lawful business, 
 or who disturbs, interferes with or prevents 
 the peaceable exercise of any lawful in- 
 dustry, business or calling by any other 
 person, must, on conviction, be fined not 
 less than ten nor more than five hundred 
 dollars, and may also be imprisoned in the 
 county jail," etc. Other legislation may 
 be found in the statutes of many states. 
 
In Mediaeval and Modem Industiy 107 
 
 But strikes, and boycotts, and intimida- 
 tions cannot be prevented by legislation. 
 Those engaged in them may here and there 
 be apprehended, tried, and sentenced ; but 
 there must be something else than law. 
 There must be methods involving elements 
 higher than the police force of states in 
 order to reach and cure the evil. What- 
 ever evils exist, and whatever the unhappy 
 results of strikes may have been, they have 
 had in varying degree considerable influ- 
 ence upon economic affairs in the organiza- 
 tions of laborers, in calling attention to 
 the relations between employers and em- 
 ployees, and in various other directions. 
 
 The complications of a disturbing nature 
 are those which appeal to the public, 
 although I think that during the last five 
 or six years most great strikes have secured 
 the interest and sympathy of the public 
 and that it is chiefly when the conser- 
 vatism of the wiser labor leaders fails to 
 prevent abuses and the strikers, inspired 
 by temporary successes, see themselves 
 
iq8 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 
 
 marshaled as a power in the economic 
 world, that recklessness takes the place of 
 orderly conduct and the public condemns 
 the action and the men behind it. 
 
 It is a great problem and cannot be 
 solved by courts, by laws, by military force, 
 or any drastic measure. 
 
Ill 
 
 GREAT MODERN BATTLES 
 
Ill 
 
 GREAT MODERN BATTLES 
 
 The mere statement of facts relating to 
 the course of strikes in this country as 
 given in the previous lecture conveys but 
 little impression of the intense excitement, 
 the apprehension and the inconvenience of 
 the public during great conflicts. 
 
 The public is alternately swayed by 
 sympathy and fear when these conflicts are 
 being waged and it is through peculiar or 
 specific strikes that the influence of the 
 whole method on the public mind is best 
 understood, for during their continuance we 
 are flooded with panaceas, either for their pre- 
 vention or their regulation and suppression. 
 
 So it is well now to consider some of the 
 more important battles which have occurred 
 in our own generation and which may well 
 be designated historic in their character. 
 
112 Great Modem Battles 
 
 In the late sixties and early seventies the 
 public mind was aroused to a pitch of ex- 
 citement and apprehension never before ex- 
 perienced in this country, through a long- 
 continued series of outrages committed by a 
 secret organization in the anthracite coal 
 regions of Pennsylvania known as the 
 "Molly Maguires." An open strike, no 
 matter how tragical or how disastrous, does 
 not create that feeling of apprehension re- 
 sulting from the secret actions of an or- 
 ganization like the Molly Maguires. Their 
 depredations may be considered as forming 
 the dark background of our own modern 
 battles. 
 
 No great strike was inaugurated by this 
 secret organization, but the murders, wreck- 
 ings, and other actions by it caused a fever- 
 ish condition of the public mind, so that 
 when the great era of historic strikes really 
 opened people feared for the continuance of 
 industry and for the general prosperity and 
 business of the country, and when the first 
 great historic strike occurred in 1877 it is 
 
Great Modem Battles 113 
 
 not to be wondered at that the public ex- 
 citement was so great that the most drastic 
 remedies were considered as the only ones 
 with which to deal with labor uprisings 
 and insurrections. 
 
 The very first of these great historic 
 strikes, although many severe ones of less 
 importance had taken place prior to that 
 year, occurred in 1877 on the Baltimore & 
 Ohio Railroad at Martinsburg, West Vir- 
 ginia. The immediate cause of the first 
 strike in that year arose because the wages of 
 all employees had been reduced 10 per cent. ; 
 but this was but one of many grievances 
 which had been growing for a long time. 
 Irregular employment was one of the causes, 
 for men with families to support were often 
 permitted to work only three or four days 
 per week ; the balance of the time they were 
 forced to spend away from home along the 
 lines of the road at their own expense, so 
 they had but little left for their families. 
 Again, wages, which were payable monthly, 
 were sometimes retained two, three or even 
 
114 Great Modem Battles 
 
 four months; the tonnage of freights was 
 increased and the men were paid for the 
 number of miles run, irrespective of the 
 time consumed in running. 
 
 This great strike affected in most instances 
 only the freight trains, but when it began 
 there was rioting and destruction of prop- 
 erty and loss of life at Martinsburg and 
 Baltimore and various places in Pennsyl- 
 vania. The state militia at Martinsburg 
 and Pittsburg sympathized with the strikers, 
 affiliated with them, and refused to fire 
 upon them ; so the United States troops 
 were ordered from the eastern garrisons, 
 and their presence carried fear to the mobs 
 and they fled. In Cincinnati, Toledo and 
 St. Louis mobs of roughs and tramps col- 
 lected and succeeded in closing most of the 
 shops, factories, and rolling mills in those 
 cities, while in Chicago a body of reckless 
 men known as the Communists of that day 
 enhanced the excitement by formidable 
 demonstrations. In those cities and in 
 Syracuse, Buffalo, West Albany and Horn- 
 
Great Modem Battles 115 
 
 ellsville, the state militia dispersed the mobs 
 without violence or destruction of property. 
 
 What occurred during this strike on the 
 Baltimore and Ohio occurs in all strikes, 
 accompanies all armies and all conflicts 
 where it is not the intention to do violence 
 to individuals or to private property ; that 
 is the committing of depredations by the 
 hangers-on, the camp-followers, those who 
 are always ready to seize any occasion as the 
 opportunity for exercising their passions 
 and even their feelings of revenge. 
 
 This year, 1877, saw that memorable 
 strike on the Pennsylvania railroad, which 
 was accompanied by riots, many acts of 
 violence, intimidation, and the destruction 
 of a great amount of property. This road, 
 after the panic of 1873, found it necessary 
 to reduce wages, while on account of the 
 general decline in business, another reduc- 
 tion was made in June, 1877. So the em- 
 ployees of the different roads having their 
 termini at Pittsburg inaugurated serious 
 agitations of a strike on account of these re- 
 
ii6 Great Modem Battles 
 
 ductions, and the agitations resulted in the 
 formation of a " Trainmen's Union." 
 
 The activity of this organization resulted 
 in a plan for a general strike to take place at 
 noon, June 27, 1877, on the Pennsylvania, 
 the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago, the 
 Allegheny Valley, the Panhandle, and the 
 branches of these roads ; but the general 
 strike was organized to work from Alle- 
 gheny City. On the night of June 25th, 
 the union consisting of the Panhandle em- 
 ployees held a meeting in accordance with 
 a notice of the day before, emanating from 
 about forty members, to the eflFect that the 
 strike was to take place. It there developed 
 that other members did not care to enter 
 upon a strike, and further that some of 
 them had disclosed all their plans to the 
 railroad authorities ; so measures were 
 adopted looking to the prevention of the 
 strike, and word was sent to all points of 
 the road. Many members of the union, 
 however, felt that in this they had met 
 with defeat, and dissatisfaction resulted. 
 
Great Modem Battles 117 
 
 The great strike of July 19th, at Pitts- 
 burg, cannot be designated as a strike of the 
 Trainmen's Union, nor did that union have 
 anything to do with tlie previous one in 
 July on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at 
 Martinsburg. 
 
 Early in that month the Pennsylvania 
 Railroad issued some orders relative to the 
 hauling of trains, by which the company 
 could dispense with the services of one half 
 of its freight conductors, brakemen and flag- 
 men on the Pittsburg division ; so on the 
 morning of July 19th, on several of the early 
 trains which were to leave Pittsburg in ac- 
 cordance with the orders of the road, the 
 men, consisting of two brakemen and one 
 flagman on each train refused to go out and 
 the trains did not leave the yard. New 
 crews were made up as none of the 
 regular trainmen would take the places of 
 the strikers, but the strikers threw coupling 
 pins, etc., at these men as they were en- 
 deavoring to make up the train ; so they 
 were by force compelled to desist. The 
 
ii8 Great Modem Battles 
 
 strikers, curiously enough, numbered only 
 twenty or twenty-five men, but they took 
 possession of the switches and refused to let 
 any trains pass out. The number of strikers 
 increased gradually and by midnight of the 
 19th they and their sympathizers numbered 
 several hundreds of men. 
 
 It is useless to give the story of this great 
 strike, for it is a long one, but in brief the 
 sheriflF of the county could not handle the 
 crowd and the governor of the State of 
 Pennsylvania sent three regiments of infan- 
 try and a battery of artillery to Pittsburg. 
 The strikers increased in number, mobs 
 gathered, and on the 20th there were four or 
 five thousand men crowded in the vicinity 
 of the station, ready to be led into any ex- 
 cesses which the excitement attending their 
 collection suggested. On the next day, the 
 21st, the rioting began and while the troops 
 were getting into position many of the guns 
 of the militia were seized and the bayonets 
 twisted off. The troops made no impression 
 upon the crowd. The mob grew more 
 
Great Modem Battles 119 
 
 boisterous and stones and other missiles 
 were thrown at the troops. Pistol shots 
 were fired by the crowd and the troops re- 
 ciprocated, and several persons were killed 
 and wounded. The inquest showed twenty- 
 two persons in all who had been killed by 
 the soldiers at Twenty-eighth Street. But 
 the regular firing when it began dispersed 
 the crowd and the troops were left in posses- 
 sion of the field. 
 
 It was not for long, however ; when all at- 
 tempts to move trains had been abandoned 
 and the troops needed rest and food, the 
 mob collected again, and having obtained 
 arms by breaking into gun stores, began to 
 fire upon the roundhouse, machine shops, 
 and the windows of places where soldiers 
 were gathered. 
 
 Then the mob set fire to cars, running the 
 burning cars down the track nearest the 
 roundhouse to set it on fire. 
 
 On the 22d the strikers obtained a field- 
 piece and were in position to fire on the 
 roundhouse, but the military ofiicers notified 
 
120 Great Modem Battles 
 
 the strikers that if they attempted to fire the 
 piece they would be fired upon in return. 
 No attention was paid to the warning, and 
 when one of the strikers was seen ready to 
 fire the cannon, they were fired upon by 
 the troops and several of the mob killed. 
 Then gatling guns were brought into 
 action, and the sight of them with their 
 death-dealing qualities scattered the mob. 
 
 Attacks and counter attacks were kept up 
 until the 23d, when two regiments were 
 marched through the principal streets of the 
 city of Pittsburg for the purpose of quell- 
 ing any disposition toward riotous conduct 
 which might still exist. A citizens' com- 
 mittee was organized and exercised all its 
 influence in quelling disturbances. Never- 
 theless, cars were set on fire and attempts 
 were made to fire the station, but the citi- 
 zens' safety committee interfered and this 
 was about the last attempt at violence at 
 Pittsburg, although it was several days be- 
 fore order was fully restored. 
 
 How much this sounds like the story of 
 
Great Modem Battles 121 
 
 the actions in Paris in 1848 ! It was of the 
 same piece, carried on so far as rioting was 
 concerned more by the hangers-on than by 
 the real working men, although the disturb- 
 ances were instituted by their initiatory ac- 
 tion and their constant agitation. This be- 
 comes more emphatically true when we 
 understand that from the very beginning of 
 these great strikes the real employees of the 
 road had the active sympathy of a vast pro- 
 portion of the people of Pittsburg. 
 
 Nearly 1,600 cars, mostly freight but 
 including passenger and baggage cars, with 
 their contents — or such of the contents as 
 were not carried away by thieves and 
 thugs who surrounded the movement, 126 
 locomotives, and all the shops, materials, 
 and buildings — except one or two small 
 ones — belonging to the railroad company, 
 were burned on Saturday night and Sun- 
 day. Tracks and property in other parts 
 of the city were also ruined by fire, the 
 rails being warped and twisted and the 
 ties burned, as was often the case in the 
 
122 Great Modem Battles 
 
 Civil War. All the adjuncts and methods 
 of real war were resorted to to carry out 
 the designs of the strikers. 
 
 It was currently reported, and so far as 
 I have been able to learn the reports were 
 true, that a great many old freight cars 
 which must soon have been replaced by 
 new, were pushed into the fires by agents 
 of the railroad company. This was a 
 novelty then, but it occurred in subsequent 
 strikes, and of course the loss of these cars 
 was included in the damages for which 
 the railroad company made claims on the 
 county of Allegheny. It has been es- 
 timated that the damage, including loss 
 of property and loss of business, which 
 was inflicted by the mob at Pittsburg 
 amounted to over $5,000,000; while the 
 actual loss of the railroad company alone, 
 not including the freight they were trans- 
 porting, was about $2,000,000. Neither 
 the number of men thrown out of employ- 
 ment, nor the total value of property 
 destroyed through the resulting riots can 
 
Great Modem Battles 123 
 
 be given, but the chief of the Bureau of 
 Industrial Statistics of Pennsylvania made 
 a statement that the total amount of claims 
 presented to Allegheny County — the courts 
 having decreed that that county was liable 
 for all damages sustained through the 
 riots — amounted to |3, 592,789. Two and 
 three-quarter millions of this sum was 
 paid by compromise and judgments in a 
 few years after the strike, but it is only 
 within the past few months that the last 
 sum awarded as damages has been paid by 
 the county. 
 
 It is not strange that the whole country 
 was greatly excited during and after these 
 strikes, and the question was constantly 
 propounded everywhere, How can such 
 affairs be prevented, or the causes leading 
 to them be removed ? 
 
 As a matter of fact both the strike on the 
 Baltimore & Ohio and that at Pittsburg 
 were unsuccessful. The objects for which 
 the battles were fought were not secured. 
 It is not strange that the minds of a great 
 
124 Great Modem Battles 
 
 many people then reverted to the outrages 
 of the Molly Maguires ; the fear that the 
 unruly mob, induced to act even by the 
 righteous position of the strikers them- 
 selves, might control industry, hamper 
 transportation, and incommode the whole 
 public, grew to intensity, and the drastic 
 remedies proposed were in accordance Avith 
 the public fears. 
 
 The next strike that would be called 
 historic was that of the telegraphers, which 
 occurred in the year 1883. This involved 
 the majority of the commercial telegraph 
 operators in the entire country, extending 
 to the linemen of the commercial companies 
 and then to a few railroad operators, but 
 as the telegraphers are a pretty intelligent 
 body of men they managed to keep the 
 information relative to this strike mostly 
 to themselves. It is known, however, that 
 the strike took place to secure the cessation 
 of Sunday work without extra pay, the 
 reduction of day work to eight hours, and 
 the equalization of pay between the sexes 
 
Great Modem Battles 125 
 
 for the same work. A demand was made 
 also for a universal increase of wages. The 
 strike began July 19th and ended August 23, 
 1883, although it was declared off by the 
 union on the 17th. The strike was un- 
 successful, the emploj'ees losing a quarter of 
 a million dollars, and expending $62,000 in 
 assisting destitute fellow operators; while 
 the employers lost nearly $1,000,000. The 
 number of persons taking part in the strike 
 was 6,270. One of the companies made a 
 provisional agreement with the Brother- 
 hood of Telegraphers and in accordance 
 therewith resumed business, so while the 
 other companies were resisting the strike 
 the company which made the agreement 
 secured a handsome profit, on account of 
 the increased volume of business which 
 came to it. 
 
 This strike must be considered as one of 
 the minor historic conflicts of our time. 
 But it was not long before a real historic 
 strike, or series of strikes, took place. 
 
 This was on the Southwestern, or what is 
 
126 Great Modem Battles 
 
 known as the Gould system of railways, 
 and occurred in the years 1885 and 
 1886. 
 
 The shopmen on the Missouri Pacific in 
 Missouri, Kansas, and Texas were dissatis- 
 fied with the wages received, and about 
 March 9th nearly four thousand of them 
 struck for a restoration of the wages which 
 had been paid in the previous year. The 
 strike was begun at Sedalia, Missouri, 
 March 7, 1885, and in two days became 
 general all over the system, while during 
 its continuance freight traffic was almost 
 practically suspended. The strike came to 
 an end on the 16th of March, and on the 
 17th work was generally resumed. 
 
 The second strike on the Gould system 
 took place a year later, the trouble begin- 
 ning at Marshall, Texas, on the Texas & 
 Pacific Railroad, and grew out of the dis- 
 charge of a foreman for alleged incom- 
 petency. This would seem to be rather a 
 trivial occasion for so great a strike as that 
 which resulted. 
 
Great Modem Battles 127 
 
 The discharged foreman was prominent 
 in the local assembly of the Knights of La- 
 bor, and on his discharge, this order inau- 
 gurated the great railroad strike on the 
 Gould system in March, 1886. It was 
 claimed, however, that this discharge was 
 in violation of an agreement made the year 
 before at the settlement of the first Gould 
 strike, at the instance of the governors of 
 Missouri and Kansas. Other violations 
 were also claimed. 
 
 During the month of March all freight 
 traffic was practically suspended on the 
 roads in question, and about ten thousand 
 men thrown out of work, nearly all of them 
 being strikers. 
 
 In the latter part of March, on the 28th, 
 the strike was declared off, but the railroad 
 officials declined to treat with the men, ex- 
 cept individually — a weakness in corpora- 
 tions which has continued until the present 
 day, although it is fading away, and rail- 
 road officials, themselves the representatives 
 of others, are now more willing to treat 
 
128 Great Modem Battles 
 
 with committees, also the representatives of 
 others. 
 
 Owing to this declination, on April 5th 
 the order declaring the strike at an end was 
 rescinded. The backbone of the strike was 
 broken by that time, however, and traffic 
 was resumed, but under police protection 
 for a while. 
 
 The strike of March, 1885, might have 
 been considered a just one, but that of 
 March, 1886, was ill-judged and no really 
 adequate cause existed for it. The disastrous 
 result and the lack of public sympathy for 
 the strikers bring the two strikes into sharp 
 contrast and mark an epoch in great rail- 
 — ruad conflicts. 
 
 No really prominent or emphatic battle 
 occurred again — although there were very 
 many strikes in the meantime — until July, 
 1892^ when a most serious di fficulty arose at 
 Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Car- 
 negie Steel Company and its employees at 
 the Homestead works. This difficulty grew 
 out of one in the previous month in regard 
 
Great Modem Battles 129 
 
 to wages. No agreement could be reached, 
 and the company closed its works on the 
 30th day of June and discharged its men. 
 It is interesting to know that only a small 
 portion of the men were affected by the 
 proposed adjustment of wages. Most of 
 them, however, were members of the Amal- 
 gamated Asspciation of Iron and Steel 
 "Workers ; hence the trouble. 
 
 The company had refused to recognize 
 the Amalgamated as an organization or to 
 hold any conferences with its committees ; 
 it was proposed to operate the works with 
 non-union men. The union men refused 
 to accept the reduced rates of wages and 
 agreed that they would resist the company 
 in its attempts, whatever they were, to pros- 
 ecute its work with non-union men. The 
 lodges of the Amalgamated Association or- 
 ganized an advisory committee, with author- 
 ity to take full charge of the affairs of the 
 strike. All employees of the company were 
 ordered to break their contracts and to re- 
 fuse to work until the Amalgamated Asso- 
 
13° Great Modem Battles 
 
 elation was recognized and its proposed con- 
 ditions adopted. 
 
 The working men had already resorted to 
 one of their familiar methods — that of 
 hanging the president of the company in 
 effigy. 
 
 Two days prior to the time provided by 
 the contract under which the men were 
 working the works were shut down, and on 
 the Fourth of July the company asked the 
 sheriff of the county to protect the works 
 while they carried out their intention of 
 making repairs, as they declared. The em- 
 ployees, however, organized to defend the 
 works against what they called encroach- 
 ments, or demands to enter ; that is, they 
 would not allow any one to enter on the pre- 
 tense of repairing the works. As a matter 
 of fact the employees of the great Home- 
 stead steel works took possession of them. 
 When the sheriff's men came near, the 
 employees who were assembled in force no- 
 tified them brusquely to leave the place, 
 stating that they did not intend to create 
 
Great Modem Battles 131 
 
 any disorder and that they would not allow 
 any damage to be done to the property of 
 the company. They also oflfered to act as 
 deputies in preserving order, but this ofiFer 
 was declined. The advisory committee dis- 
 solved and the records of that committee 
 were destroyed. 
 
 The immediate occasion of the fighting 
 which took place later on at Homestead was 
 the approach of a body of Pinkerton detect- 
 ives, who were gathered in two barges on 
 the Ohio River some distance below the 
 works. To make a long story short, the 
 workmen entrenched themselves behind 
 steel billets and prepared to resist the ap- 
 proach of the Pinkerton barges and all at- 
 tempts to land, the result being a fierce bat- 
 tle brought on by the heavy volley of shots 
 fired by the strikers. The Pinkertons were 
 armed with Winchester rifles, but they were 
 obliged to land and ascend the embankment 
 single file, and so were soon driven back to 
 their boats, many of thejr. mg.n „beiog killed 
 or woufidfid— by^-tb»-fire-of-tbe~entrenched 
 
132 Great Modem Battles 
 
 strikers. Many attempts to land failed, the 
 detectives being subjected constantly to a 
 galling fire. 
 
 This opening battle, which took place on 
 the 5th of July about four o'clock in the 
 morning, was continued during the day and 
 renewed the following day, a ten-pound brass 
 cannon having been secured by the strikers 
 and planted so as to command the barges 
 moored at the banks of the river. Then an- 
 other force of a thousand men took up a 
 position on the opposite side of the river, 
 where they protected themselves both by 
 a cannon which they had obtained, and by 
 a breastwork of railroad ties. 
 
 In mid-forenoon the bombardment com- 
 menced, the cannon were turned on the 
 boats and the firing kept up for several 
 hours ; but the boats were protected by 
 heavy steel plates inside, so efforts were 
 made to fire them. Oil was sprayed on the 
 decks and sides of the boats, while many 
 barrels of oil were emptied into the river 
 above the mooring-place of the boats, the 
 
Great Modem Battles 133 
 
 object being to set fire to it and allow it to 
 float against them. The Pinkertons, under 
 these warlike preparations and actions, 
 finally threw out a flag of truce, which un- 
 fortunately was not recognized by the 
 strikers. The officers of the association 
 then interfered and the surrender of the 
 Pinkertons was arranged. Under the arm- 
 istice the detectives were to be safely guarded 
 on condition that they left their arms and 
 ammunition, and having no other alterna- 
 tive they accepted the terms. Seven had 
 been killed and twenty or thirty wounded, 
 and on their march through the streets they 
 were treated with abuse. Eleven workmen 
 and spectators were killed in the fights 
 which ensued. 
 
 On the 10th the governor sent the en- 
 tire force of the militia of the common- 
 wealth to Homestead and on the 12th the 
 town was placed under martial law and 
 order was restored. 
 
 Congress made an investigation of this 
 great strike, but no legislative action was 
 
134 Greed Modem Battles 
 
 ever taken. The strike was not declared 
 off until November 20, 1892. 
 
 The Homestead strike must be considered 
 as the bitterest labor war occurring in this 
 country, prior to that which took place at 
 Chicago two years later in 1894. And the 
 Homestead affair brings again to mind the 
 barricades of Paris in 1848. 
 
 TEe railroad strikes of 1885 and 1886 
 seem to have been ordinary affairs compared 
 with the great strike in Chicago in 1894, 
 known as the Pullman strike. It was the 
 most extensive and far-reaching labor con- 
 troversy, so far as railroads are concerned, 
 which can properly be classed among the 
 historic conflicts in this generation. 
 
 It began with a private strike at the 
 works of the Pullman Palace Car Company 
 at Pullman, a suburb of Chicago ; it ended 
 with a practical insurrection of all the labor 
 employed on the principal railroads radi- 
 ating from Chicago and some of their affili- 
 ated lines, paralyzing internal commerce, 
 greatly inconveniencing the public, delay- 
 
Great Modem Battles 13^ 
 
 ing the mails, and in general demoralizing 
 business. Its influences were felt all over 
 the country to greater or less extent, ac- 
 cording to the interests involved. The 
 contest was not limited to the parties with 
 whom it originated, for there were soon 
 brought into it two other factors or forces. 
 
 We need not stop to consider the cause of 
 the original strike at Pullman. It was one 
 of those affairs which needed but little 
 common sense to have been avoided. The 
 Pullman Company was having a contro- 
 versy relative to the wages of its men — men 
 who were not employed in any way as rail- 
 way employees. The American Railway 
 Union — an ephemeral organization — had 
 achieved partial success in a contest with 
 the Great Northern Railroad only a few 
 weeks previous to the Pullman strike. It 
 had foolishly taken into membership many 
 Pullman employees, although as stated 
 they were not railway people ; but they 
 worked on things that were used on rail- 
 ways, and for that, trivial cause were en- 
 
136 Great Modem Battles 
 
 rolled among the members of the American 
 Railway Union. 
 
 So when the employees at Pullman had 
 trouble with the company, the Railway 
 Union espoused their cause, on the ground 
 that they were members of the union. 
 This union then numbered about 150,000 
 members. It was the purpose of the Rail- 
 way Union to enroll nearly all the railway 
 employees of the whole country, so that 
 when the time should be considered ripe 
 the roads from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
 and from the Canadian line to the Gulf 
 could be struck at one instant, paralyzing 
 absolutely the traffic of the country, and 
 thus enabling the union to dictate terms 
 before business could again be resumed. 
 
 The strike at Pullman was therefore 
 premature and the Railway Union was op- 
 posed to it, but it felt obliged to protect the 
 Pullman employees in their local contro- 
 versy. The strike was ordered in strict 
 obedience to David Harum's Golden Rule 
 of horse trading which was, as some of you 
 
Great Modem Battles 137 
 
 may remember, " Do unto others as you 
 think others are going to do unto you, but 
 do it first." The application of this rule 
 has caused many strikes and lockouts, but 
 it is emphatically illustrated by the strike 
 at Pullman, which was ordered May 11, 
 1894. 
 
 The night before the committee of Pull- 
 man employees and the executive oflBcers 
 of the American Railway Union held a con- 
 ference in Chicago and voted unanimously 
 that there should not be a strike at Pull- 
 man. The Railway Union ofiicers consid- 
 ered the time not yet arrived to carry out 
 their grand scheme of continental stagna- 
 tion. The committees went home, but the 
 Pullman committee was authorized to order 
 a strike if during the next few days cir- 
 cumstances arose which, in their judgment, 
 warranted it. About two o'clock on the 
 morning of the 11th of May the committee 
 was informed that the Pullman Company 
 ~ proposed to declare a lockout. The com- 
 mittee then, adopting David Harum's rule, 
 
138 Grea.t Modem Battles 
 
 ordered a strike and thus precipitated the 
 whole conflict. The American Railway 
 Union having declared its purpose to espouse 
 the cause of the Pullman employees entered 
 this conflict and practically carried it on. 
 Then the General Managers' Association, a 
 body of men representing all the roads 
 radiating from Chicago, through what it de- 
 clared the necessity of protecting the traffic 
 of its lines, made its contest with the Ameri- 
 can Railway Union. These roads represented 
 a combined capital of more than two billion 
 dollars and employed more than a quarter 
 of all railroad employees in the United 
 States. There were then involved three 
 forces : the Pullman people, the American 
 Railway Union, and the General Managers' 
 Association of all the railroads in Chicago. 
 All these were enlisted in the strife for 
 supremacy, and these forces alone, without 
 reference to the conditions and circum- 
 stances attending the strike or accompany- 
 ing it, constituted this one of the really 
 great historic strikes of America. 
 
Great Modem Battles 139 
 
 The Railway Union declared a boycott 
 against Pullman cars, the General Man- 
 agers' Association undertook to protect their 
 interests, while the sympathies and antago- 
 nisms of the whole country were aroused. 
 The attempt was made to induce all trades 
 in Chicago to join in a great sympathetic 
 strike, but here the American Federation 
 of Labor brought its influence to bear and 
 no general sympathetic strike occurred. 
 Surely here is an instance which illustrates 
 the indebtedness of the country to that 
 great organization which has again and 
 again prevented universal strikes. However, 
 riots, intimidations, assaults, murder, arson 
 and burglary, with lesser crimes, attended 
 the strikes, and troops were engaged, as in 
 the other strikes referred to. United States 
 troops and United States deputy marshals 
 were sent to Chicago to protect Federal 
 property, and to prevent obstruction in the 
 carrying of the mails and interference with 
 United States commerce. They were not 
 sent there to make any attempt whatever to 
 
140 Great Modem Battles 
 
 suppress the strike, nor could they, as such 
 matters belonged to the city and state au- 
 thorities. But the state militia was called 
 in for some service. The total force em- 
 ployed during the continuance of the strike 
 of 1894 was 14,186, practically an army corps. 
 All the attending circumstances of the 
 strike point to one conclusion, that a share 
 of the responsibility for bringing it on 
 belongs in some degree to each and every 
 party involved. A vast deal of bitter 
 feeling was generated — so bitter that no 
 party was ready to consider the rights of 
 the others. That is the attitude in all 
 great strikes. The other parties, on the 
 other hand, claimed that they were justified 
 in adopting any means in their power to 
 resist the demands of the attacking party. 
 The probability is that neither recognized 
 the rights of that third party involved, the 
 public, to such an extent as to induce them 
 to forbear bringing inconvenience and 
 disturbance upon it. It was in many 
 respects the most suggestive strike that 
 
Great Modem Battles 141 
 
 has ever occurred in this country and if 
 it only prove a lesson sufficiently severe to 
 teach the public its rights, and to teach it 
 to adopt measures to preserve those rights, 
 it will be worth all it cost. This perhaps 
 is the great lesson of that great conflict. 
 
 It is interesting to note that at the in- 
 vestigation made by the Chicago Strike 
 Commission, the head of the American 
 Railway Union was asked : " Is it right 
 for employees, when making demands, to 
 proceed deliberately to paralyze business, 
 especially of parties not involved, in order 
 to enforce those demands? " " Certainly," 
 was the reply. And to the question 
 whether it is also right, then, for employers 
 to resort to any means by which they can 
 resist those demands, even involving 
 stagnation to business, " Certainly," was 
 also the reply. This is the real strike at- 
 titude ; any method necessary to carry out 
 the purposes of either party can properly 
 be resorted to. 
 
 The courts, however, and not the army 
 
142 Great Modem Battles 
 
 of over 14,000 men broke the strike. It 
 was through the injunctions granted by 
 the courts that the strike lost its force. 
 The strike practically ceased about the 
 middle of July. 
 
 The losses were enormous. In earn- 
 ings the roads lost more than $5,000,000. 
 Thirty-one hundred employees at Pullman 
 lost $350,000. About 100,000 employees 
 upon the twenty-four railroads radiating 
 from Chicago lost nearly $1,500,000. But 
 beyond these very great losses were suffered 
 incidentally throughout the country. The 
 paralyzation of transportation, with all the 
 incidents of a great war, gave the people 
 again apprehension and fear for the safety 
 of our institutions. Bradstreet's estimated 
 the losses of the public at $80,000,000, but 
 whatever the losses were, they taught the 
 necessity of preventing such disasters. This 
 strike illustrates how a small local dis- 
 turbance, arising from the complaints of a 
 few people, may result in involving a large 
 part of a great country. 
 
Great Modem Battles 143 
 
 The great consolation rests with us that 
 the lessons of the Chicago strike did not 
 fail of their effect. The American Railway 
 Union proposed to break down the noble 
 railway brotherhoods. On the contrary, it 
 broke down itself, and the brotherhoods 
 were stronger than ever in their work. 
 They have been conservators of peace on 
 the railroads, and since the Chicago battle 
 there have been no. railway strikes of any 
 importance in this country ; and so long 
 as the influence of the Brotherhoods of 
 Locomotive Engineers, of Railway Con- 
 ductors, of Railway Trainmen, and Rail- 
 way Firemen is exerted with the wisdom 
 shown during the past ten years there will 
 be no great railway wars. The managers 
 of roads recognize this influence, and deal 
 with it on a manly, businesslike basis. 
 
 There have been other great strikes 
 on the railroads, and especially during 
 the period in which the Chicago strike 
 occurred. It was an era — or may so 
 be called — of vast labor controversies. 
 
144 Great Modem Battles 
 
 The Lehigh Valley Railroad strike, which 
 occurred in 1893, the strike on the Great 
 Northern of April, 1894, the great coal 
 strike which occurred in the same month, 
 and the Chicago strike of June and July 
 — all crowded into the space of seven 
 months — are sufl&cient to make that brief 
 period memorable. 
 
 Passing over many strikes of considerable 
 proportions, we come to the great anthracite 
 coal strike of 1900. This was practically a 
 peaceful affair, and was brought to a suc- 
 cessful conclusion through political in- 
 fluence. The coal operators considered it a 
 political " hold-up." At that time business 
 men generally were apprehensive that the 
 financial condition of the country might be 
 greatly disturbed through the coinage 
 system. It was a presidential year, and the 
 success of one of the parties they feared 
 meant free coinage of silver. The operators 
 and business men, without regard to party 
 affiliations, were against this. The con- 
 tinuance of the strike of that year in the 
 
Great Modem Battles 145 
 
 anthracite coal regions it was thought 
 would jeopardize the interests of those who 
 believed in what they called the sound 
 money system, so the operators were in- 
 duced to yield their position and acceded to 
 the demands of the miners by granting an 
 increase of 10 per cent, to their earnings. 
 The legitimate result of such an illegiti- 
 mate method had more to do with the great 
 strike of 1902 than almost any other cause ; 
 but the strike of 1902 passed into history as 
 one of the most extensive battles labor has 
 ever fought. 
 
 While it was not during a presidential 
 year it was during a year of congressional 
 elections, and the operators very naturally 
 felt that, having yielded two years before 
 for political reasons, the strike of 1902 was 
 inaugurated at a time when like influences 
 might again be brought to bear upon them, 
 and they were determined that the politi- 
 cians should have nothing whatever to do 
 with its settlement ; the settlement of 1900 
 left an increased sensitiveness and irrita- 
 
146 Great Modem Battles 
 
 tion in the mining districts which had not 
 existed during the twenty-five years previ- 
 ous to the strike. 
 
 The occasion of the battle of 1902 was the 
 demand of the United Mine Workers of 
 America for an increase in wages and a de- 
 crease in time, and the payment for coal by 
 weight wherever practicable and where 
 then paid by car-load. But the cause lay 
 deeper than the occasion and may be found 
 in the desire for recognition of the miners' 
 union by the operators. Leading up to it 
 and surrounding it were long-continued 
 grievances, some of them imported from 
 England and Wales. There have been 
 grievances in all mining operations from 
 Laurium to Pennsylvania. 
 
 The United Mine Workers were of course 
 encouraged by their victory of 1900, and so 
 in 1902 thought they would be able to 
 secure that dearest result of all, the recogni- 
 tion of their union. The history of that 
 great strike has been told and re-told ; it is 
 familiar to you all, yet it deserves a place 
 
Great Modern Battles 147 
 
 in this account of historic strikes perhaps 
 more clearly than any other whose history 
 can be written. 
 
 After many ineffectual attempts, through 
 conferences and otherwise, nearly the entire 
 body of mine workers, about 147,000, aban- 
 doned their employment and remained idle 
 until the strike was declared off on the ap- 
 pointment of the Anthracite Coal Strike 
 Commission. The strike lasted from May 12 
 to October 23, 1902. An exceedingly in- 
 teresting feature in the ordering of the 
 strike lies in the fact that, under the order 
 of the executive committee of the miners' 
 union, work was suspended on May 12th, 
 and on the 15th, their general convention 
 having assembled, it was voted to continue 
 the strike. The total vote cast was 811. 
 That for the strike was 461 i or 57 per cent. 
 of the convention, and the number against 
 it, 3491. The majority for the strike there- 
 fore was 111}. 
 
 It is impossible to state with any par- 
 ticular degree of accuracy the losses oc- 
 
148 Great Modem Battles 
 
 casioned by the strike, but according to 
 the Chief of the Bureau of Anthracite 
 Coal Statistics, the shipments of coal 
 decreased twenty-two and one-third mil- 
 lion tons, 40 per cent, of the shipments 
 of the previous year. Making an esti- 
 mate on coal mined for local trade 
 and consumption, the total decrease in 
 1902 must have been nearly twenty-five 
 million long tons. This meant a decrease 
 in the receipts of the coal mining com- 
 panies of over 146,000,000, while the mine 
 employees lost in wages a total of upward 
 of 125,000,000, and $1,800,000 was spent 
 by the mine workers of the country in the 
 relief of the miners of the anthracite 
 regions. The decrease in freights paid to 
 the railroad companies on the larger sizes, 
 had it all been sent to New York harbor, 
 would be about $19,000,000, and on the 
 smaller sizes the total decrease in freight 
 receipts would be about $28,000,000. This 
 is simply the material part or the economic 
 side. 
 
Great Modem Battles 149 
 
 The story of the other side, of the 
 intimidations, violences, murders, boycotts 
 — all the accompaniments of a great labor 
 war — can be told, even at the best, only 
 by a recital of those cases which came to 
 the public attention or were recorded in 
 the courts ; and these we have not time to 
 enumerate. 
 
 The cruelties, some of them crude and 
 others refined to the last degree of cruelty, 
 were considered as war measures ; but 
 when those of us who are not actively 
 interested in a contest of this kind believe 
 that there is but one war-making power 
 in the land, we can hardly comprehend 
 the application of war terminology to the 
 affairs of a strike, especially when, in what 
 is curiously called civilized warfare, some 
 of the practices that obtained in this great 
 conflict in your own state would not be 
 tolerated in a war between nations. 
 
 True, the officers of the union deprecated 
 all such practices, made speeches warning 
 the union men against them, and urged 
 
150 Great Modem Battles 
 
 peaceful conduct only, but they were 
 powerless to enforce their precepts. An- 
 other thing is true which must be recog- 
 nized in this great conflict, and that 
 is that the arrests for criminal assaults 
 during the continuance of the strike were 
 not more in number than usually occur in 
 the same area of territory when there is no 
 strike on. 
 
 I suspect that all such great conflicts 
 have their comical or amusing sides. Cer- 
 tainly this occurred in the anthracite 
 regions. I remember one case of an 
 illustration that appeared in a well-known 
 magazine owned and published by one of 
 your own citizens here in Philadelphia, of 
 the pursuit of a scab or a non-union man 
 by a large body of unionists. The poor 
 scab was represented as in great terror and 
 fear for his life, and the picture showed 
 him just at the point of being captured. 
 The fact is that the enterprising artist who 
 produced the picture secured about one 
 hundred men to pose as pursuers and one 
 
Great Modem Battles 151 
 
 of their number to pose as the pursued. 
 This man who represented the terrified scab 
 was a union man, and the whole thing was 
 arranged for effect. 
 
 A number of such instances occurred. 
 They served to irritate and alarm the 
 public, but without them there was a 
 sufficient number of cruelties, intimidations 
 and violences to alarm any man who cared 
 for the welfare of his country. 
 
 We need not discuss the culpability of 
 either side ; it existed in both parties. The 
 great third party to all strikes — the public 
 — was not considered, and the chief result, 
 the crudest of all, was the coal famine, 
 precipitated by the lack of a sufficient 
 amount of moral courage and patriotic 
 devotion to have prevented the occurrence 
 of the contest, or to have stopped it before 
 the public suffered from its consequences. 
 
 It was the greatest labor battle of our 
 country, on account of its extent, the ele- 
 ments which entered into it, and the meth- 
 ods of its prosecution. But it was the 
 
152 Great Modem Battles 
 
 greatest for another reason, and that is be- 
 cause in the end reason and moral force 
 won the strike, and the strikers and the 
 operators yielded to the decision of the 
 most powerful tribunal in any land — the 
 opinion of the people. It was the greatest 
 battle again, because of the action of the 
 president of the United States ; and this 
 action I would like to have you clearly 
 understand, because of the allegations made 
 at the time, and because of the fears that 
 now exist that the chief executive may 
 interfere in any industrial crisis or that 
 labor organizations may appeal to him to 
 assist them. 
 
 Many people in October, 1902, felt, and 
 many people now think, that the president 
 interfered in the coal strike of that year. 
 There may be reasons for the existence of 
 such feeling, but the fact is the president 
 did not interfere in the conduct of that 
 great strike. 
 
 In June, pursuing actual lawful means, 
 that is, acting in accordance with the pro- 
 
Great Modern Battles 153 
 
 visions of Federal law, the president sought 
 to ascertain the facts through the officer 
 designated by law to supply such facts. 
 But the strike went on, the suffering of the 
 people increased, apprehension became more 
 and more intense. Early in October, with 
 a view to assisting the parties to come to 
 some reasonable agreement, the president 
 invited a conference of the chief coal opera- 
 tors and the chief officers of the United 
 Mine Workers of America in his office at 
 Washington. On the assembling of this 
 conference — and all invited came — the 
 president stated emphatically that his sole 
 purpose in calling the conference was to 
 listen to any suggestions which any or all 
 of them had to make to him ; that he had 
 no suggestion whatever to make relative to 
 the conclusion of the great controversy. 
 The conference adjourned without any 
 definite action. 
 
 Public excitement grew apace ; public 
 apprehension grew faster than the excite- 
 ment. Careful and conservative senators 
 
154 Grent Modem Battles 
 
 of the United States avowed their readi- 
 ness to authorize the president to take any 
 drastic measures necessary to bring the 
 controversy to a close. Politicians every- 
 where, economists, sociologists, were quite 
 ready to fall into line with the State Social- 
 ists and take possession of the coal mines 
 and operate them in the interest of the 
 people. No such feeling had ever been 
 generated by any other of the historic 
 strikes. Here was a new phase, a new 
 danger, a new element. 
 
 A few days after this celebrated confer- 
 ence, which occurred on October 3d, the 
 people of New York were apprehensive of 
 great riots — coal riots like the bread riots 
 that had occurred in England — and all at 
 once the largest operators sent a request to 
 the president for the appointment of a com- 
 mission, to which they were willing to leave 
 all the points of the contest, pledging them- 
 selves to abide by the decision. You can 
 imagine that the president was greatly 
 gratified, and he immediately sent to the 
 
Great Modem Battles 155 
 
 officers of the union asking them if they 
 would consent to the same terms, which 
 consent was promptly and ananimously 
 given. Then the president appointed his 
 commission, and with its appointment his 
 appearance in the coal strike affairs ceased. 
 
 The operators might have invited any 
 other citizen of the United States to desig- 
 nate a commission, the Governor of Penn- 
 sylvania, any judge, any private citizen, 
 and have agreed, as they did agree, to abide 
 by the decision ; but the president was the 
 chief executive, he was the most prominent 
 man in the country, his judgment was re- 
 lied upon, and so they simply invited him 
 to name a commission. If any man cares 
 to condemn, or even to criticise, this action 
 on the part of President Roosevelt, he must 
 do it without understanding the facts or 
 else by reason of a peculiarly constructed 
 mind. 
 
 To be sure the commission when it was 
 appointed had no power, except the power 
 delegated to it by the parties in controversy, 
 
156 Great Modem Battles 
 
 and not by the president. It was extra- 
 judicial, it was extra-legislative, it was 
 extra-everything that you may choose to 
 apply to it, but it was the board of abitra- 
 tion selected or agreed to by the parties 
 themselves and its creation must remain as 
 the action of the parties to the controversy. 
 It stopped the strike immediately as by 
 agreement. The parties had a court before 
 which they could state all the facts and 
 opinions which they cared to bring before 
 it. For five months the commission was 
 engaged in taking testimony, giving every 
 party on either side the opportunity to pre- 
 sent his case, and every member of the great 
 array of counsel was given the chance to 
 present the testimony he saw fit to bring 
 before the commission. Thus in five 
 months the commission heard 566 witnesses 
 and took down over 10,000 pages of testi- 
 mony ; and the good it did, again making 
 this strike one of the most emphatically 
 historic battles in modern times, grew out 
 of the fact that employers and employees 
 
Great Modern Battles 157 
 
 were brought face to face and could frankly 
 and safely state the facts of which they 
 were possessed, or the views held by 
 them. 
 
 Each learned something of the other, and 
 when the award was finally made, which 
 was practically an agreement to continue 
 for three years, both sides acquiesced, and 
 they have lived fairly peaceably and reason- 
 ably since its promulgation. 
 
 Here is the other great good that has 
 come out of that controversy, — the recogni- 
 tion of moral principle, the recognition of 
 manly action, of mutual conciliation. In its 
 settlement we trace all the attributes, all the 
 elements of that first great attempt — so far 
 as the records show — to induce men to come 
 together on a common basis, and that was 
 when Isaiah, six hundred and fifty years 
 before Christ, finding the troubles that 
 existed in Jerusalem beyond his control, 
 asked the chief men to meet him and said 
 to them : " Come, let us reason together." 
 
 This story of historic strikes — and there 
 
158 Great Modem Battles 
 
 are those who would include other disturb- 
 ances than those I have mentioned — ought 
 not to be closed without reference to the 
 disturbances in Colorado in 1903. But 
 those disturbances can hardly be brought 
 into this category. 
 
 They were peculiar and during their con- 
 tinuance the country at large thought that 
 the whole state of Colorado was affected by 
 them. The conditions which brought them 
 about had continued for twenty-five years. 
 During that period there was a series of 
 strikes, practically thirteen different con- 
 troversies, beginning in 1880 at Leadville, 
 the others occurring at various places dur- 
 ing the years 1894 to 1904 inclusive. 
 
 They were all attended with much ex- 
 citement and more or less disorder, but the 
 most extensive of them all was in 1903-4 
 through the action of the gold miners at 
 Cripple Creek. During that term there 
 were serious interruptions to the mining in- 
 dustry of the state, but it requires some ex- 
 pansion of our understanding of what con- 
 
Great Modem Battles 159 
 
 stitutes a historic strike to bring these into 
 that list. 
 
 It should be stated, however, that during 
 1903, out of the fifty-nine counties in the 
 state of Colorado, only four were affected by 
 the strikes. All the other counties were as 
 peaceful as any state in the Union. 
 
 There were very many elements entering 
 into the disturbances that were peculiarly 
 unique and that have not accompanied 
 other affairs, such as the organization of 
 the Citizens' Alliance, which immediately 
 engaged in actions for which they had con- 
 demned the miners. The miners had 
 deported non-union men. This was a fa- 
 vorite method of getting rid of persons ob- 
 noxious to the unions. The Citizens' Alli- 
 ance immediately retaliated by the deporta- 
 tion of union men and their sympathizers. 
 Murders, boycotts, illegal imprisonments, 
 injunctions, all the chief paraphernalia of 
 the modern labor war were employed. The 
 total expense to the state for the various 
 military campaigns on account of labor 
 
i6o Great Modem Battles 
 
 disturbances from 1880 to 1904 was over 
 $1,000,000. 
 
 The whole story is a tragic one, but can 
 hardly be crystallized into a brief history. 
 
 The long-continued chain of disturbances 
 in Colorado has left its mark in the four 
 counties involved, and to a considerable ex- 
 tent upon the whole state and the public at 
 large. The real facts were distorted and 
 misrepresented, and it was hard to ascertain 
 them ; but they were ascertained by the in- 
 vestigation I conducted and they are to be 
 found in full in a report upon them. 
 
 The last strike, which began in Novem- 
 ber, 1903, and ended in June, 1904, although 
 savage and brutal, did not affect the country 
 materially like the coal strike of the year 
 before. None of us felt the effects of a re- 
 duction of the producing power of the 
 mines and smelters of Colorado. We heard 
 only of the individual outrages, whether 
 committed by strikers or important citizens 
 through their secret organizations. Po- 
 litically the effects of the strike were felt 
 
Great Modem Battles 16 1 
 
 in Colorado. They helped, however, to a 
 feeling that there must be some way by 
 which such controversies can be prevented, 
 or, if they occur, suspended ; and so we 
 have come to that point in this course 
 when the treatment of strikes and the ef- 
 forts to prevent or settle them must be con- 
 sidered. 
 
IV 
 
 HOW MODERN BATTLES OF LABOR 
 ARE TREATED 
 
IV 
 
 HOW MODERN BATTLES OP LABOR ARE TREATED 
 
 From the time of the Mosaic law, the 
 laws of Numa Pompilius, the Solonic dis- 
 pensation, the Twelve Tables, the Code of 
 Lycurgus, and the Aggrarian laws before 
 and during the reigns of the Gracchi, to the 
 latest session of any legislature in any of 
 our states, in all lands and in all countries, 
 attempts have been made through positive 
 enactment to regulate or to fix, in ever 
 varying degree, the condition of the work- 
 ers of society. 
 
 It has been always, as it is now, a popular 
 idea that through law men can be made 
 better and their acts supervised. This 
 course has been natural and quite logical, 
 for what we call problems are ever appearing 
 and their solutions are ever being sought. 
 
 But what we call problems are simply 
 new conditions growing out of the evolu- 
 
i66 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 tion of social and industrial forces. We 
 have the temperance problem, so-called, and 
 yet not many years ago there was no such 
 problem. Increased intelligence, the in- 
 creased sensitiveness of the public conscience, 
 are ever bringing things to the front to be 
 dealt with by society, and what was once a 
 matter of ethics, an action constituting per- 
 haps a moral obliquity, is now a matter for 
 the criminal code to be punished as a 
 crime. 
 
 On the other hand, there are other 
 matters which were once considered crimes, 
 like the combination of labor resulting in 
 strikes and all the concomitants of labor 
 conflicts — excluding of course intimidation 
 and violence — that are not now regarded as 
 crimes, but the natural result of the evolu- 
 tion of economic forces. 
 
 The complications of modern society — 
 using that word in its broadest sense — are 
 the complications which come of the 
 recognition by each man of others' rights, 
 and of the recognition by governments of 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 167 
 
 individual rights, privileges, and duties. 
 The old conflict was that by which man 
 secured the right to live. The clash of 
 arms in primitive societies meant physical 
 development, and all the struggle for ex- 
 istence meant this ; it was as natural and 
 as logical as any other conflict. 
 
 The change gradually came to the world 
 from militancy to industrialism, not the 
 struggle for existence but the struggle for 
 subsistence ; then when the struggle for 
 subsistence ceased primarily by doing away 
 with the old iron law of wages, the struggle 
 was broadened to that for some of the 
 aesthetic potentialities of life, some of those 
 things which mean culture in some degree 
 and those attributes of man which are 
 necessary for his becoming not only an 
 economic, but a social and political factor. 
 
 The claims of labor to-day are in this 
 direction. So we went through the great 
 clash of ideas at the beginning of our 
 civilization, and this clash meant mental 
 development. We have been through the 
 
i68 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 clash of ideas in the theological world, and 
 this clash meant spiritual development. 
 Now with the struggles under industrialism 
 we have the evolution of conditions which 
 we like to call economic problems. 
 
 The sociologist who has studied society 
 in its growth and understands ever so 
 partially the unfolding of the elements 
 which make society, sees that conditions 
 are not and cannot be problems. They are 
 results, not causes. Therefore all proposed 
 solutions for social and economic diflBculties 
 must be in the nature of systems and at- 
 tempts to modify conditions in order to 
 bring about results other than those exist- 
 ing. 
 
 Yet many of the proposed solutions of 
 existing problems, or methods for develop- 
 ing existing conditions, are worthy of study 
 and consideration, even though they may 
 not contain within themselves any effective 
 remedies for supposed or recognized evils. 
 There are men who apparently look on 
 these conditions, or economic problems, if 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 169 
 
 you prefer to give them that name, as 
 arising primarily from somebody's vicious 
 conduct, and these are the men who always 
 have a panacea — a machine method — by 
 which better conditions are to be secured. 
 
 Yet John Stuart Mill tells us that there 
 is not any one abuse or injustice prevailing 
 in society by merely abolishing which the 
 human race would pass out of suffering into 
 happiness. This is a broad economical as 
 well as social truth and helps us to ap- 
 proach any proposition which looks to 
 the betterment of conditions with some 
 scepticism, unless the proposition is 
 based on the broadest humanity and on 
 the practical application of the great 
 principles which make Christianity what 
 it is. 
 
 It is perfectly easy to arraign society and 
 say that it is at fault because it does not 
 accomplish the ideal of the special pleader, 
 and this is particularly true when we are 
 dealing with strikes — the blotch which ap- 
 pears upon the face of industrial society as 
 
170 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 the result of some impurity in the blood. 
 The crank, the man who sees something 
 very clearly but not in its true relations, 
 would deal with these blotches alone but 
 would not adopt a constitutional treatment 
 which should, through the purification of 
 the blood, remove the blotches. This state- 
 ment becomes intensified in its significance 
 when we understand what labor is. I think 
 I like Ruskin's definition better than any 
 other, a definition which I have already 
 given. That is : " Labor is the contest of 
 the life of man with an opposite." 
 
 Here again we get the very underlying 
 elements of labor strikes, and in this we 
 find the deeper philosophy underlying the 
 whole question of labor, especially as evi- 
 denced by its battles. Legislation evidently 
 has not cured the blood ; it has not changed 
 the conditions out of which controversy 
 grows. It has always, until later years, 
 been drastic in its nature, and as a rule has 
 resulted in more harm than good. At the 
 present time the courts are great factors 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 1 7 1 
 
 in the treatment of strikes and of strikers. 
 This I shall refer to later. 
 
 Outside of legislation from time imme- 
 morial there have been efforts — and they 
 have been scattered all through history — 
 to remove the incongruities attending pro- 
 duction, to relieve the unhappy lot of work- 
 ers through some communistic or socialistic 
 movement. I need not pause to describe 
 these efforts ; they are all summed up in a 
 very few words, that in the ownership not 
 only of the property, but of the tools of in- 
 dustry by society itself the workers would 
 be made happy. 
 
 Communism is the basic element of all 
 socialism. Socialism in its drastic form — 
 and I mean social democracy as preached in 
 Europe but not much in this country — ad- 
 vocates the old, old method that in ancient, 
 as well as in modern times, has proven so 
 disastrous whenever the attempt has been 
 made to establish a state upon its principles. 
 No such state as yet has ever been estab- 
 lished. The causes of the failure to estab- 
 
172 H<yw Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 lish such a state are to be found chiefly in 
 the constitution of human nature. 
 
 Fundamentally society under any com- 
 munistic regime is to be conducted on 
 the basis of a man's being called upon 
 to work according to his capacity and of 
 receiving goods or commodities according 
 to his needs. In an absolutely pure, un- 
 selfish state of society where judgment, 
 integrity and loyalty to the principle ob- 
 tain, provided every individual united 
 with the community, such a measure of 
 work and compensation might be ideal ; 
 but it has never taken men long under it 
 to understand that their capacity was ex- 
 ceedingly limited and their needs not 
 limited. 
 
 Of course the fundamental basis of all 
 such attempts by labor or by society through 
 communistic methods, or by organizations 
 of labor, or by men individually — ancient 
 or modern — is to secure more than they are 
 getting. How to get it is the great ques- 
 tion. So far, in answer to this question 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 173 
 
 we have had the laws referred to, commu- 
 nistic attempts, strikes, — and yet the ques- 
 tion is a universal one ; each one of us asks 
 it. How shall we obtain more for the serv- 
 ices rendered? The man in receipt of $2 
 per day wants $2.50, the man getting $2.50 
 must have $3, the $3 man must have $4, 
 and the $5 man $10 ; the man who is in re- 
 ceipt of $5,000 a year salary thinks he ought 
 to have $10,000, and the $10,000 man can 
 live up to $20,000 easily. This is the labor 
 question so far as compensation is concerned, 
 and it belongs to the capitalist, to the pro- 
 fessional man, as well as to the man who 
 works for daily wages. 
 
 It is the universal question. Naturally 
 the economist says that it can be answered 
 only by increased efficiency, and that effi- 
 ciency will be gauged by society ; laws, 
 strikes, all the accompaniments, all the 
 machinery adopted to secure this increased 
 compensation have little or no effect, ex- 
 cept here and there and now and then when 
 a strike results in an increased wage. The 
 
174 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 difficulties underlying the problem are not 
 economic alone ; they are ethical and belong 
 to society as an ethical organization, for 
 society recognizes that there is no greater 
 inequality than the equal treatment of un- 
 equals. The immorality of equal compen- 
 sation for unequal services is an immorality 
 which society always recognizes, no matter 
 what the attempts may be to secure the in- 
 equality of compensation for equal services. 
 
 Legislation therefore, whether supplied 
 by the organized legislative bodies of the 
 world, or that coming through the com- 
 mittees of a communistic society, or that 
 coming through the laws and declarations 
 of a trade union, cannot be relied upon 
 either to avoid strikes or to satisfy the 
 strikers. 
 
 How often we have been told that certain 
 laws would solve the labor problem, and 
 yet, beginning with the act known as Sir 
 Robert Peel's Act of 1802 to the present 
 time, we have had 104 years of distinctive 
 labor legislation in the mother country and 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 1 75 
 
 in this ; we have had the inspection of fac- 
 tories here by law ; we have had legislation 
 regulating employers' liability, the hours of 
 labor, sanitary conditions, and yet I think 
 no one would hesitate to say that the labor 
 question is as intense to-day as at any time 
 during the whole 104 years. 
 
 Laws have not avoided strikes, and in 
 only slight degree have they had any in- 
 fluence in settling them. I mean statutory 
 provisions, and not the acts of the courts. 
 
 There is of course within socialism cer- 
 tain constructive elements which must be 
 applied in all these matters if we hope for 
 a better condition. The best definition of 
 modern socialism with which I am ac- 
 quainted is that made by Mr. Fairman, a 
 member of the London Fabian Society, a 
 socialist organization. He says socialism is 
 not a system nor a method, but a criticism; 
 and this is quite correct. 
 
 The constructive elements of any social- 
 ism lie in the fact that socialism criticises 
 conditions. It is constantly arraigning so- 
 
1 76 Ho'VD Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 ciety and bringing out the defects in the in- 
 dustrial system. They are thus brought to 
 public view, when perhaps if the socialists 
 did not exist the public might not be so 
 thoroughly informed. It is when the social- 
 ist undertakes to settle all these questions 
 by a revolution in the form of government, 
 by ignoring the inherent qualities of human 
 nature itself that the fault comes to view. 
 
 This is true because commerce and in- 
 dustry are competitive. They are growing 
 more and more cooperative. Individualism 
 prevails as against collectivism or social 
 service, and yet collectivism is the great 
 dynamic of society. It is in this latter 
 power that there is to be found, perhaps 
 more than in any other feature, a method 
 by which society can rid itself of labor wars. 
 
 But collectivism expresses itself in vari- 
 ous forms. It is socialistic. The word col- 
 lectivism is adopted here and there by 
 socialists to take the place of the word 
 socialism, for it means transactions for and 
 by collections of individuals ; collective 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 177 
 
 trading, collective bargaining, mean the 
 trading and bargaining by collections, and 
 thus all such movements introduce an 
 element of socialism. 
 
 I think the time has gone by when we 
 should have any fear of the word socialism. 
 It has no very powerful menace in it ; the 
 kind we know in this country is harmless. 
 It expends itself in the propagation of ideas 
 relative to municipal and state ownership 
 of some of the utilities which are necessary 
 for our comfort and welfare. 
 
 The first expression which collectivism 
 gave in any crystallized form was in indus- 
 trial conciliation and arbitration, as the 
 means both for preventing strikes in the 
 first place and for settling them in the sec- 
 ond place. The principle of conciliation is 
 growing. In its very nature the word it- 
 self betokens a spirit of recognition of 
 mutual rights ; the willingness to come 
 together and talk over the affairs of an in- 
 dustrial establishment ; the desire not only 
 to talk them over, but to adjust differences 
 
178 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 of opinion, to adjust the attempts to regu- 
 late the conditions whereby all parties can 
 work with more or less harmony and con- 
 tentment. 
 
 Originating in France as a matter of his- 
 tory, it has spread over Europe, has become 
 one of the leading features of industrialism 
 in England, and is in use in this country to 
 a far greater extent than the public supposes. 
 
 In simple terms it means that the em- 
 ployers and employees in a great productive 
 establishment, or any other concern devoted 
 to industrial pursuits, shall each appoint 
 committees — standing committees — fairly 
 representing each side, to which any diiFer- 
 ences, or controversies, or demands, no mat- 
 ter from which side they emanate, can be 
 referred. This joint committee then has 
 the opportunity, because it has the ability, 
 to secure each from the other the very in- 
 formation needed to discuss all matters in a 
 friendly way, in a manly way, and thus 
 come to a conclusion by which a strike is 
 avoided. 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 179 
 
 The work of the Anthracite Board of 
 Conciliation is significant not only in itself, 
 but in its results. From its organization, 
 in June, 1903, up to August, 1905, one 
 hundred and forty-one cases were submitted 
 to it for arbitration. Ten were complaints 
 by the mine owners and one hundred and 
 thirty-one by the mine workers. Of the 
 total number of complaints submitted, forty- 
 six were withdrawn and twenty-eight 
 were not sustained, making seventy-four 
 complaints which had not sufficient basis 
 to warrant their presentation to the board. 
 Of the remainder nineteen complaints were 
 sustained, three were partly sustained, eleven 
 mutually settled, three compromised and 
 thirty-one were left pending. Seventeen 
 cases were sent to an umpire, the board be- 
 ing evenly divided on them. Most of these 
 cases were decided against the miners, but 
 the decision in all cases, whether against 
 the miners or against the operators, was ac- 
 cepted as final, and no break in the work 
 of the mines occurred. There was hardly 
 
i8o How Battles of Labor are Treats 
 
 one case disposed of by the board or by the 
 umpire, which, under other conditions, 
 would not have precipitated a strike. 
 
 Such a course involves the very highest 
 ethical elements in men, so far as business 
 relations are concerned. It is the practical 
 application of what I feel bold enough to 
 call " righteousness in industry," 
 
 Now, a man has no right on the lecture 
 platform to use that phrase, " righteousness 
 in industry," without explaining what he 
 means by it. Industrial conciliation in- 
 volves it. 
 
 A few years ago, just after the great ex- 
 position at Chicago, many railroads in this 
 country were crippled on account of having 
 overstocked their roads with cars. Times 
 were bad, as you will remember, after the 
 panic of 1893. The great Southern Rail- 
 way, like many others, found it absolutely 
 necessary to reduce wages. After working 
 under the reduction for a year or two the 
 men of that system made a demand for a 
 restoration of wages, and the committee 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 181 
 
 came to Washington and presented the 
 matter to the managing vice-president of 
 the road. He wished to take it up and 
 discuss it with the committee, but the 
 president of the road said to him : " Bald- 
 win, there is no such thing as ethics in the 
 conduct of a railroad " ; but after some 
 argument he said, " Well, try it on and 
 we will see how it comes out." So the 
 managing vice-president met the men, told 
 them to come again on such a day and he 
 would lay before them the whole business 
 of the road. They came on the appointed 
 day, and he had a printed statement of 
 receipts and expenses, a statement relative 
 to the non-payment of dividends on stock, 
 the struggle of the company to pay interest 
 on its bonds, and all the facts concerning 
 the conduct of the business of that great 
 road of about 4,000 miles and having 6,000 
 employees. 
 
 They discussed the matter for days, 
 mutually, manfully, each recognizing the 
 dignity of the other. They adjusted some 
 
i82 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 injustices, but there was no general in- 
 crease of wages. The men were entirely 
 satisfied when they learned the facts, and 
 when the conference adjourned they went 
 home with a new dignity in their char- 
 acters. They had been met by great 
 ofiicial railroad magnates as men equal to 
 them, and had been treated in a manly, 
 businesslike way. 
 
 Where was the victory ? You know who 
 Baldwin was. You know that a monu- 
 ment is being erected to him in acknowl- 
 edgment of his great services and his 
 greater character. He applied the prac- 
 tical principles of industrial righteousness. 
 Afterward when he was sought as the 
 president of a great enterprise, he said to 
 the directors : " You probably do not want 
 me. You know how I treat labor; you 
 know that I confer with the committees 
 of their unions ; you know that with them 
 I discuss all matters ; I think you do not 
 want me." And the chairman of the board 
 said : " Baldwin, that is why we want 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 183 
 
 you." So he was elected to that great 
 position which he held until his death. 
 
 Then there is another instance which I 
 never weary of relating, which was told me 
 by Mr. Abraham S. Hewitt, whose works 
 at one time had been running at a con- 
 siderable loss, during which they had re- 
 duced wages ten per cent. The men after 
 a while were weary of the lower compensa- 
 tion and asked to have their wages restored. 
 Mr. Hewitt did not say to them what 
 Pharaoh said to Moses and Aaron, but he 
 said : " Boys, it is your right to come here 
 and make this demand ; not only that, it 
 is your right to know the facts and know 
 why we cannot meet it, if we cannot, and 
 so if you will send an accountant here he 
 shall have all our books, and we will abide 
 by his report." The men accepted the 
 offer, chose their accountant and when they 
 received his report again waited upon Mr. 
 Hewitt and said : " Mr. President, we have 
 come to withdraw our request for a restora- 
 tion of wages. We know your situation ; 
 
184 Hov) Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 we know you are losing money, and the 
 union has unanimously asked us to recom- 
 mend to you a further decrease of ten per 
 cent, in our wages." This suggestion was 
 not adopted, /but Mr. Hewitt, in telling me 
 of the incident, said : " Do you think any- 
 body could get up a strike in our works ? " 
 
 This is righteousness in industry. It 
 does not mean any complicated machinery 
 or method or any process that cannot be 
 seen and understood ; but it is the simple, 
 direct, moral. Christian way of men meet- 
 ing men. It is the Pauline method of set- 
 tling troubles in the church, and it is the 
 only method by which any controversy 
 should be dealt with. 
 
 Here is the first expression, then, of this 
 principle known as collectivism. It grew 
 out of the endeavor to settle strikes, after 
 they were once declared, through arbitra- 
 tion. Arbitration in its final analysis is the 
 purest kind of socialism, because it is the 
 effort of society to adjust affairs between 
 contestants in any industry. 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 185 
 
 A strike is on, the community is dis- 
 commoded, is meeting with losses, is suffer- 
 ing, and it says to the parties directly in- 
 volved, " If you cannot conduct your busi- 
 ness affairs in such a way as to avoid dis- 
 commoding us, we shall be obliged to help 
 you conduct them." 
 
 Arbitration is not a solution of labor 
 problems ; it is not a remedy for strikes, 
 but it is one of the highest and grandest 
 methods for settling a war after the war has 
 begun. 
 
 One of these days bodies of employees or 
 employers, whether individuals or corpora- 
 tions, which so misconduct their affairs as 
 to bring about strikes will be held in public 
 estimation as are those men who are guilty 
 of fraudulent bankruptcy. 
 
 We all know the great power of arbitra- 
 tion. We know what it can accomplish, 
 and we know how it fails. We know what 
 it did for this country four years ago ; and 
 it was not because either party wished to 
 resort to it, but because the public, that 
 
i86 HoHV Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 great third party involved in all strikes, 
 through its opinion compelled the contest- 
 ants to refer their differences to an impartial 
 body. But it is collectivism after all. It is 
 the negotiation of one body with another. 
 
 There is now a form of collectivism, 
 practical, businesslike, humane, and moralj 
 which bids fair to accomplish more in the 
 avoidance of strikes, and in the treatment 
 of strikes after they occur, than any other 
 which has been suggested ; that is what is 
 now known as collective bargaining, a new 
 force comparatively but one which expresses 
 the most important principles of industrial 
 management. Let us see what it is. 
 
 A thousand men, we will say, decide to 
 go into the business of cotton manufactur- 
 ing, and they subscribe their money to- 
 ward the stock of the corporation. The 
 stockholders meet for organization. They 
 immediately see that they cannot conduct 
 the business ; the body is too large, a thou- 
 sand men cannot attend to the innumer- 
 able details of the business transactions, so 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 187 
 
 they choose a committee of twelve men, it 
 may be, to represent them, to conduct the 
 affairs of the cotton factory. The twelve 
 men, who are commonly called directors, or- 
 ganize, and they find that they are too 
 numerous to attend to the daily affairs and 
 details of the business, even though they 
 can meet often as the stockholders cannot ; 
 so they choose a manager. The manager 
 therefore is the man who conducts the or- 
 dinary business affairs of the concern ; he 
 represents the directors and is responsible 
 and accountable to them ; the directors are 
 responsible and accountable to the stock- 
 holders. Every time this manager hires a 
 man or buys goods, materials or what-not 
 necessary for the conduct of the business, 
 he indulges in collective bargaining ; that 
 is, he bargains or trades for the collection of 
 individuals. 
 
 The factory cannot run, however, without 
 a thousand operatives. The thousand opera- 
 tives after a while think it is for their in- 
 terest to organize a union and they have an 
 
i88 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 executive committee. Trouble arises, or the 
 organization thinks there should be some 
 change in the rules of work, or an increase 
 of wages, or a reduction of hours, or some- 
 thing else which seems to them of impor- 
 tance, and they delegate a committee to wait 
 upon the manager for a consultation. The 
 manager says, " I cannot deal with you as a 
 committee of our employees ; I must deal 
 with our employees individually." In 
 other words he, the crystallized representa- 
 tive of collective bargaining himself, refuses 
 to bargain collectively with his employees. 
 Now, a case has been known where the 
 committee, refused a conference as stated, 
 has afterward been called upon by the 
 manager to adjust the affairs of the factory 
 and the committee has replied, " No, Mr. 
 Manager, we cannot deal with you ; we will 
 deal with the stockholders individually." 
 This answer is just as logical and just as 
 ethical as the statement of the manager; 
 both parties were unreasonable, illogical, 
 and unethical. Each should have dealt 
 
Hcmj Battles of Labor are Treated 189 
 
 with the other as representing the constitu- 
 ency behind them. 
 
 That is collective bargaining, where the 
 manager or the board of directors on one 
 side and the committee of employees on 
 the other come together and make their 
 own arrangements. So out of that situa- 
 tion has grown what we call the trade 
 agreement. 
 
 The trade agreement is a compact between 
 the employers and the employees, stipulat- 
 ing all the terms of employment, rules and 
 conditions of the works, wages of the peo- 
 ple, etc., and also stipulating that whenever 
 any difference arises, whether on account of 
 propositions of the employers or employees, 
 such differences shall be referred to a com- 
 mittee, usually called a conciliation com- 
 mittee, specifically defined in the compact. 
 
 This is the highest type of collective bar- 
 gaining. 
 
 The trade agreement offers every oppor- 
 tunity for the highest forms of conciliation, 
 aud it is performing an immense service in 
 
igo How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 all industrial relations. It is quiet in its 
 action, but effective, and the instances of the 
 breach of agreement by either the employers 
 or the employees in this country are so 
 rare that reference hardly need to be made 
 to them. 
 
 You will remember that in 1903, during 
 the pendency of the work of the Anthracite 
 Coal Strike Commission, the bituminous 
 members of the United Mine Workers of 
 America met in Indianapolis for the sole 
 purpose of considering the propriety of can- 
 celing the agreements between them and the 
 bituminous operators. The bituminous 
 operators were making great profits, on ac- 
 count of the shortage in the anthracite coal 
 supply. The convention met, discussed the 
 matter, and unanimously voted not to break 
 the agreements. 
 
 Could there have been a greater moral 
 lesson in teaching the power and the virtue 
 of the trade agreement than that action of 
 the bituminous miners ? 
 
 In England this form of agreement, or 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 191 
 
 rather this method of avoiding open con- 
 flicts, has existed in many of the leading in- 
 dustries of that country for more than 
 thirty years, and in those industries where 
 it has applied there have been no disturb- 
 ances, no strikes, no warfare. 
 
 In this country for some fifteen or more 
 years certain great industries have used the 
 trade agreement, and the public has never 
 heard of the establishments utilizing it, ex- 
 cept through their advertisements of goods 
 for sale. 
 
 Here and there of course trouble occurs, 
 even with the existence of the agreement, 
 and a few instances of breach of agreement 
 have occurred ; but on the whole it has 
 worked admirably and has prevented strikes. 
 The results of the adoption of the trade 
 agreement, however, are not exploited by 
 the press. We hear of the strikes that oc- 
 cur, we know the progress of the battles, as 
 we hear the exaggerated accounts from 
 morning to morning, and we think the 
 country is being disrupted by labor wars ; 
 
192 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 but we do not hear of the thousands and 
 thousands of cases that formerly might have 
 resulted in battles being prevented by this 
 moral instrument, this instrument which 
 brings men face to face in a temper suited to 
 discuss calmly and in a businesslike way the 
 differences that exist. 
 
 Another great moral influence grows out 
 of the trade agreement, and that is, it brings 
 to the front the ablest men in the unions. 
 The men must be competent to deal with 
 the employers in their business affairs. 
 
 Sometimes these trade agreements provide 
 directly for the open shop. The union does 
 not care so much for the open shop as it does 
 for the recognition of the union as a factor 
 in the enterprise. 
 
 Nearly all leading trade unionists are op- 
 posed to strikes. They order them as a last 
 resort. I think, however, they are quite 
 unanimous in advocating the necessity and 
 the usefulness of the trade agreement. 
 Hence a resort to this particular feature of 
 collective bargaining will more and more 
 
Ho<u} Battles of Labor are Treated 193 
 
 relieve the public of the inconvenience re- 
 suiting from a labor battle. It will not only 
 do that ; it will avoid some of the illogical 
 doctrine which now too often actuates the 
 union in its consideration of differences 
 which arise. 
 
 The trade union is a voluntary social or- 
 ganization and is, therefore, like all other 
 organizations, subordinate to the laws of the 
 land ; it cannot enter upon legislation in 
 the establishment of rules that are inimical 
 to the laws which apply to every one else. 
 Yet the union, in its endeavor to secure its 
 own ends, often sets up a distinct governing 
 agency and assumes to control those who 
 do not join it, and to deny to them the very 
 personal liberties which the members claim 
 for themselves, and which the constitution 
 and laws guarantee to every person. 
 
 It was Abraham Lincoln who said, " No 
 man is good enough to govern another man 
 without that other's consent." This grand 
 principle applies to trade unionists as well 
 as to every other citizen. 
 
194 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 The union by its rules assumes to inter- 
 fere with the management of the business 
 of the employer. These are things that 
 under the trade agreement are quietly and 
 morally settled and not left as irritating 
 elements existing between employer and 
 employee. The trade agreement thus in- 
 duces confidence, the lack of which leads to 
 more trouble perhaps than any other one 
 element. 
 
 It is often alleged, and with considerable 
 truth and justice, that without force, in- 
 timidation, violence, and boycotts a strike 
 could not be carried on. That is to say, a 
 strike is organized for the very purpose of 
 coercing employers, and that this coercion 
 would fail were it not for the apprehension 
 created by some form of lawlessness. All 
 these forms of lawlessness are too often con- 
 sidered as war measures, and those who urge 
 them or set them in operation do not consider 
 the moral bearing of the matter. This is a 
 very serious danger point, and one that is 
 being recognized more and more by the lead- 
 
Ho<w Battles of Labor are Treated 195 
 
 ers of great organizations. Many leaders 
 now say with equal justice and truth that, 
 while they may have the sympathy of the 
 public at the inception of a strike, the mo- 
 ment lawlessness of any kind begins, the 
 sympathy of the public is lost; for the 
 public insists that if there is any justice in 
 the claims of the strikers they should rest 
 upon that justice and not upon war meas- 
 ures to establish it. 
 
 There are very serious complications even 
 in this question. It is perfectly true that 
 in some of the great historic strikes which 
 have been described, the employers them- 
 selves have instigated acts of violence. 
 This was for two reasons. First, so long as 
 there were no such acts there was no occa- 
 sion to call upon the constabulary or troops, 
 but with such acts they could reasonably 
 call upon the executive, either of the city 
 or of the state, to interfere. In the second 
 place, these acts have been instigated by 
 employers in a few instances for the very 
 purpose of alienating public sympathy from 
 
196 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 the strikers. Recognizing perhaps the jus- 
 tice of their case, they have sought to des- 
 troy public opinion through acts of vio- 
 lence. I have been convinced during the 
 investigation of strikes which it has been 
 my duty to carry on that these two state- 
 ments are true. I am very glad, however, 
 to know that they have been very rare in 
 the history of strikes. When they do oc- 
 cur it is easy to see what a thoroughly 
 irritating element is introduced into the 
 conduct of a strike on the part of the em- 
 ployers. 
 
 The union leaders know well that in 
 order to succeed in any great strike they 
 must have the sympathy of the public. 
 This feeling has been emphatically expressed 
 by the United Mine Workers' Journal in 
 the following language : 
 
 " A strike cannot be won unless the rea- 
 son for it appeals to public sympathy, and 
 bad faith does not so appeal. A strike 
 must be based upon grounds of justice and 
 reason, and to remedy conditions that will 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 197 
 
 bear the scrutiny of the just and the mis- 
 representations of the unjust." 
 
 Another irritating event sometimes oc- 
 curs, at least I have known of it several 
 times, and that is where a manufacturer, 
 being overstocked with goods, finds it neces- 
 sary to shut down his works until his stock 
 is reduced. He does not wish to have the 
 reputation of closing down ; so, through 
 some tool or tools among his employees, 
 some absurd demands are made on their 
 behalf, which are promptly rejected, and a 
 strike ensues. In such cases the strike lasts 
 only until such time as the stock of goods 
 has been reduced to the point which the 
 manufacturer considers the proper one, and 
 then by an arrangement with the committee, 
 or otherwise, work is resumed. 
 
 I am glad to say that this almost criminal 
 resort to a strike is very rare ; but, when it 
 occurs and it is known among the body of 
 employees that it has occurred, one can 
 easily understand that the future relations 
 are strained at least, and that there is no 
 
198 H(yu) Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 confidence existing between employers and 
 employees. 
 
 These things are in the nature of in- 
 timidations, and are introduced here only 
 to show some of the exceedingly irritating 
 elements of some controversies. They are 
 not approved by unions or by employers 
 generally. 
 
 I think all men, or nearly all men, 
 understand that the union itself is a 
 benefit. This is certainly true of England, 
 and the employers of that country would 
 not have the unions crushed if they could. 
 Their development has been one of real 
 though slow improvement in the relations 
 between employer and employee. 
 
 All combinations of men, however, no 
 matter in what direction they are made or 
 what purposes they propose to achieve, 
 have elements of evil in them. They are 
 new and powerful forces, and they are 
 factors for good or ill as they are managed 
 or controlled with wisdom or unwisdom. 
 
 Any strike ordered by a well-managed 
 
H(yw Battles of Labor are Treated 199 
 
 union which seeks no more than the en- 
 forcement of demands which have been 
 presented, or which is organized for some 
 supposed benefit of its members, when no 
 law of society is transgressed, whether wise 
 or unwise in the inception and purposes, 
 is an exercise of nothing more than the 
 legal rights that belong collectively or in- 
 dividually to its members ; and whatever 
 coercion results from the demand or from 
 the strike itself is not now considered 
 illegal, nor does the law condemn it. 
 
 It is the indirect consequence of the 
 legal exercise of the right to work or the 
 right to cease work, but when such a strike 
 is organized with the idea that its pur- 
 poses can be accomplished only by in- 
 timidating the employer or intimidating 
 the non-union man through any form 
 of violence or otherwise, or through a 
 boycott which threatens to destroy business 
 or to incommode or injure innocent parties, 
 then the law condemns it, and rightly; 
 and it is then that the idle and the 
 
200 Hoiv Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 vicious associate themselves with the 
 minority of the strikers and give color 
 to the whole conflict. 
 
 It was said by the Anthracite Coal Strike 
 Commission that a labor or other organiza- 
 tion, whose purpose can be accomplished 
 only by the violation of law, has no right 
 to exist. On the other hand it may be 
 said with equal force that an employer who 
 resorts to some of the methods already 
 indicated, in order to gain his ends, has no 
 right to continue in business. 
 
 All this means that the non-union man 
 has the same right to exist, and to exist 
 peaceably, as the man who belongs to the 
 union. 
 
 Out of strike methods has grown what 
 we know as the boycott. It is a weapon 
 of cruel creation, unmanly, cowardly, and 
 unpatriotic. The boycott of course has ex- 
 isted since the human race existed. Every- 
 body boycotts somebody at some time. 
 There are decent and polite boycotts like 
 those where a merchant who does not 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 201 
 
 employ labor under sanitary conditions or 
 at good wages cannot sell his goods if a 
 certain association can prevent it, and there 
 are the cruel boycotts that result in murder 
 and the destruction of property. Actual 
 cases of such boycotts are to be found 
 during every great strike. 
 
 In the coal strike an innocent and com- 
 petent teacher, who happened to be the 
 daughter of a non-union miner, was dis- 
 missed by the school board on the threats 
 of the union, and a boy working in a drug 
 store was dismissed because his father re- 
 turned to work before the strike was de- 
 clared ofiF. His employer was threatened 
 if he did not dismiss him. These are 
 forms of boycotts which ought to be 
 brought under the severest condemnation 
 of law, as they are of society itself 
 
 If A considers a dealer, B, as dishonest 
 he has a perfect right to say to his friends, 
 " I do not trade any more with B, and I 
 advise you not to," for such and such rea- 
 sons. That is a boycott ; we all indulge in 
 
202 Hcrw Baitles of Labor are Treated 
 
 it; it is legitimate. But when A says to 
 his friends, " If you trade any more with B 
 we trade no more with you, and if that does 
 not succeed we destroy your business," that 
 is a crime ; that is not a lawful method of 
 prosecuting one's claims. 
 
 The boycott is carried on so secretly when 
 strikes are on that it is difficult to reach ; 
 but in whatever form, where it results in 
 the injury or even inconvenience of an- 
 other, it is the worst kind of tyranny, and 
 no free society should tolerate it. 
 
 In some instances, as I have already in= 
 timated, these practices which are called 
 war measures would not be tolerated in what 
 we designate civilized war ; for in civilized 
 warfare women and children and the de- 
 fenseless are safe from attack, and a code of 
 honor which would condemn such practices 
 as I have described controls the parties to 
 such warfare. 
 
 All these matters, cruel, barbarous, often- 
 times cowardly, yield to the principles of 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 203 
 
 collective bargaining, and if carried too far 
 in the estimation of the public, they yield 
 to arbitration. 
 
 I have referred to the courts and the part 
 they play in the treatment of strikes. The 
 labor men of the country are up in arms 
 against what is known as the writ of injunc- 
 tion. They admit the necessity of the writ, 
 because they can see that it is the bulwark 
 of law. It is the expeditious method to 
 which courts resort when they wish to pre- 
 vent an act, not simply because the act may 
 be unlawful, but because it is feared it will 
 result in the destruction of property or the 
 loss of life or limb. The trade unionists do 
 not object to the writ of injunction in cases 
 where it is necessary to prevent some act 
 not of itself illegal, or to save property and 
 life and limb ; but they do object, and 
 strenuously, to its application to them dur- 
 ing strikes. Where an employer fears a 
 strike, or a strike has occurred and he fears 
 that violence may ensue, he seeks an in- 
 
204 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 junction to restrain the strikers from com- 
 mitting the acts which the employer im- 
 agines may be committed. 
 
 This is the grievance of the unions, be- 
 cause the acts which the injunction aims to 
 prevent, if committed, would subject the 
 man or men committing them to criminal 
 process. The underlying reason is that 
 under an injunction the employees are re- 
 strained from doing those things which 
 would prevent non-union men from taking 
 the places of the strikers through picketing 
 as it is known, or the intimidation of appli- 
 cants, or the persuading of applicants from 
 entering the works of the employer. This 
 word " persuade " has achieved a signifi- 
 cance not before belonging to it. One may 
 persuade another by argument, and per- 
 suading has sometimes, many times, con- 
 sisted of forcible arguments with fists and 
 clubs. The injunction seeks to restrain 
 men from persuading, while the unions 
 want the law to define what persuading is, 
 and say they ought not to be restrained 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 205 
 
 from what they call peaceful persuad- 
 ing. 
 
 The issue of restraining orders by courts 
 of equity during times of strikes has devel- 
 oped during the past few years, so that 
 injunctions in labor questions constitute a 
 leading subject of the discussion, not only 
 in legislatures, but in conventions and in 
 the meetings of members of the bar. The 
 Supreme Court of the United States has 
 said : " Something more than the threat- 
 ened commission of an offense against the 
 laws of the land is necessary to call into 
 exercise the injunctive powers of the courts. 
 There must be some interference, actual or 
 threatened, with property or rights of a 
 pecuniary nature ; but when such inter- 
 ferences appear, the jurisdiction of a court 
 of equity arises." 
 
 It is upon this theory that it is possible to 
 invoke the aid of a court of equity, and for 
 the court to issue a preliminary or permanent 
 injunction. Like most other matters of law 
 in the United States, there has been little 
 
2o6 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 uniformity of practice in the development of 
 equity procedure. In some states injunc- 
 tions are issued more generally than in 
 others, and in particular some of the Federal 
 courts in the west have freely granted them 
 under the mandatory provisions of the Sher- 
 man anti-trust act. This diversity of prac- 
 tice and its causes must be taken into ac- 
 count whenever the labor question is up for 
 discussion. 
 
 Then there is the blanket injunction, 
 such as that which was issued against Mr. 
 Debs during the Chicago strike, which re- 
 strained certain persons from doing certain 
 things, naming them, and then covering all 
 other citizens. It was a sweeping restrain- 
 ing order which applied to you and to me 
 as well as to Mr. Debs and his associates. 
 The labor unions object to such a sweeping 
 order. It was the injunction, however, in 
 the Debs case which terminated the Chicago 
 strike. 
 
 It is a most difl&cult and complicated 
 question to be adjusted by statutory law, 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 207 
 
 but the moment you exempt one class of 
 citizens from the action of the writ of in- 
 junction there is a violation of the constitu- 
 tion, which provides that there shall be no 
 legislation benefiting one class of citizens as 
 against another ; or, as we say popularly, 
 such legislation would be class legislation. 
 Yet there is probably some point where the 
 law can come in for the purpose of defining 
 the extent of the injunction, but not through 
 discrimination of classes, because the govern- 
 ment is instituted for the common good, for 
 the protection, safety, and happiness of the 
 people and not for the profit, honor or pri- 
 vate interests of any one man or class of men. 
 " No man, nor corporation or association of 
 men, has any other title to obtain ad- 
 vantages, or particular and exclusive privi- 
 leges distinct from those of the community, 
 than what arises from the consideration of 
 services rendered to the public." 
 
 This is the language of many of the con- 
 stitutions in this country, and the principle 
 of it must be carried out fully without ref- 
 
2o8 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 erence to industrial disputes. Without 
 such principles all government is unstable, 
 and the very men who seek to have law 
 made for their especial benefit would find it 
 reacting upon themselves if they could not 
 resort to the law when conditions might be 
 reversed. 
 
 A new element in law, or rather a new ex- 
 pression of an old element, has come to the 
 front which, if carried out, may work won- 
 ders in the prevention of strikes and boycotts, 
 and that is, the responsibility of the individ- 
 ual members of the union for damages ac- 
 cruing through the collective action of the 
 union. I take it that under the common 
 law in this country where damages have re- 
 sulted from the action of the union, in- 
 dividual members are responsible, the same 
 as a member of a copartnership is respon- 
 sible for the acts of his copartners. This 
 feature of the common law has not been 
 prominent, because the unions had no prop- 
 erty and the individual members little or no 
 property which could be attached in an action 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 209 
 
 for damages. Recently through the great 
 damage to a manufacturing concern in Con- 
 necticut resulting from a boycott ordered by 
 some unions, the individual members were 
 sued and wherever they had any property 
 attachable under the law of that state, the 
 property was attached. 
 
 The leading case of this kind, however, 
 that has come up in recent years, was in 
 England and was what is known as the Taff- 
 Vale Railroad case, where certain damage 
 was done to the property of the railroad by 
 an association of employees, the organiza- 
 tion having a large amount of money in its 
 treasury. The corporation sued the mem- 
 bers individually, and then under a rule of 
 the court joined the organization itself. 
 The decision went in favor of the corpora- 
 tion. On appeal it went against the cor- 
 poration. It was then carried to the highest 
 court in England, the Law Lords, and the 
 latter held that the members of the associa- 
 tion individually and the association itself 
 were liable for damages, and something like 
 
210 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 $120,000 was ordered by the court in ac- 
 cordance with the decision of the Law 
 Lords. 
 
 This decision excited a great deal of 
 antagonism at the time but as it has been 
 more calmly considered many labor leaders 
 have come to the conclusion that it may 
 be a good thing after all ; that with similar 
 laws, making the employer liable for ac- 
 cidents occurring in his works, there would 
 be greater discrimination in employment, 
 more safety, and better conditions. But 
 without reference to this purely sociological 
 side of the matter it has the greatest bear- 
 ing upon the strike question and how to 
 treat strikes, especially when strikes are 
 accompanied by boycotts. 
 
 Let it once be known throughout this 
 land that damages resulting from a boy- 
 cott can be assessed under the law not 
 only against the association ordering the 
 boycott, but against the individual mem- 
 bers of the association, and strikes will 
 decrease in number and severity. 
 
H<yu) Battles of Labor are Treated 211 
 
 There are some economic methods that 
 obtain in industrial matters which some- 
 times prevent strikes and secure fair in- 
 dustrial peace. Chief among these are 
 profit-sharing, the payment of bonuses, 
 prizes, and an organization of pension 
 funds. Profit-sharing is not considered as 
 an economic system having permanent 
 value in it, yet there are those who believe 
 that it ofiers the only way, or at least the 
 chief way, out of industrial diflBculties. It 
 certainly enlists to some degree the loyalty 
 of the employees, makes them feel that they 
 are a part of the corporation or partnership 
 and that the more interest they take in the 
 establishment, in the economic employment 
 of their time, and in the attention to little 
 details, the more compensation they will 
 receive. 
 
 It is a moral system rather than a purely 
 economic one. It has had varying success 
 and has met with some most disastrous fail- 
 ures. Its failures are always referred to when 
 profit-sharing is under discussion, and yet 
 
2 1 2 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 if a rule be good the fact that some men 
 undertaking to carry it out are not wise 
 and the rule meets with failure, is not a 
 very strong case against the rule itself. 
 Yet there are cases where even this state- 
 ment does not apply, as in the case of the 
 Briggs Brothers in the north of England 
 some years ago. They were working their 
 mines in a communit}' that was about as 
 bad as a community could be. Drunken- 
 ness, theft, everything that was bad pre- 
 vailed, and the Briggs Brothers sought for 
 many years for some means of bringing 
 order out of chaos and of securing the 
 happiness of their people. Finally they 
 adopted a scheme of profit-sharing, to 
 which the miners agreed, and they lived 
 in peace and plenty for ten years, when 
 all at once through some agitation which 
 I do not call to mind the men struck and 
 the profit-sharing scheme ceased to exist. 
 
 A great house in Brooklyn some years 
 ago made an agreement with its men that 
 they should have once a year a certain per- 
 
H(yu) Battles of Labor are Treated 213 
 
 centage of the accrued profits. The men 
 were to elect their own foreman and had 
 certain other privileges, making an in- 
 dustrial democracy of the great establish- 
 ment ; but it was agreed that if a strike 
 occurred among the men they should 
 forfeit the accrued profits at that time. 
 One morning in June, 1868, they were all 
 in line in a parade accompanying a labor 
 strike, and they forfeited for the privilege 
 of parading $46,000. 
 
 Nevertheless, in many, many cases in 
 France, in England and in this country 
 profit-sharing has been carried on on a large 
 scale with great moral and economic results 
 and an entire absence of strikes. The 
 payment of bonuses and prizes belongs to 
 the same system morally as profit-sharing, 
 but the establishment of pension funds, or 
 relief funds, has had a twofold effect in 
 avoiding strikes. On some of the large 
 railroads where relief funds are thoroughly 
 organized, a man cannot secure employ- 
 ment unless he joins the relief fund or- 
 
214 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 ganization, and his pension or his amount 
 of relief in case of accident or otherwise 
 would be forfeited should he leave the 
 company or strike. Not all the railroads 
 that have established such funds have this 
 provision, but the men feel, while applaud- 
 ing the efforts of the company to provide 
 relief in case of accident or sickness or old 
 age, that they are bound in a certain way 
 and cannot be free men ; that they must 
 conform to certain rules which secure 
 permanency of service, and thus they are 
 irritated, not perhaps to the extent of in- 
 dulging in a strike, but to the extent of 
 making them discontented and uneasy. 
 
 However, this question of pension funds 
 by great corporations is accomplishing 
 much good and should receive the approval 
 of all who desire to see strikes become 
 matters of the past. 
 
 I believe that the great era of strikes 
 which has existed in this country since 
 about 1880 is passing away. I made a 
 similar statement back in 1886 or 1887, 
 
Hovt Battles of Labor are Treated 2 1 5 
 
 and the strikes have rolled up and increased 
 in the volume which I have described ; 
 and yet I believe that I was right when I 
 made that statement. I made no limita- 
 tion of time, I make no limitation of time 
 now ; but I do believe that the good sense 
 of the working men of this country, co- 
 operating with the good sense and the 
 wisdom of the employers of labor, will see 
 to it that strikes do not occur and that the 
 public is not discommoded. 
 
 A strike is uneconomical in every sense 
 of the word, and all strikes for alleged 
 economic reasons, while they may be 
 justified from the point of view of the 
 strikers, are uneconomic in their results. 
 There is no form of strike, except that for 
 the recognition of the union, which does 
 not come into the economic category. 
 
 There is much misunderstanding rel- 
 ative to this expression " recognition 
 of the union." The public means one 
 thing by it, the employers and employees 
 mean another. The public usually thinks 
 
2i6 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 it means simply this, that the employers 
 shall recognize that the union exists, 
 and has a right to exist, and shall 
 continue its existence. The union means 
 by its recognition that it shall have a part 
 in the establishment of rules, wages, and 
 conditions, and that it shall be recognized 
 as a party in productive industry through 
 the trade agreement. 
 
 So employers do not welcome any move- 
 ment for the recognition of the union. 
 They do not hesitate in many instances 
 to indulge in the trade agreement as the 
 result of the principle of collective bargain- 
 ing, and whenever they enter such an 
 agreement they do recognize the union and 
 in the way the union means ; but to put the 
 matter broadly, employers are averse to the 
 union's dictation of terms. I think that is 
 human nature. We are all ready to confer 
 and agree upon what shall be done, but we 
 do not like to be ordered to do a certain 
 thing. 
 
 The trade agreement, if approached 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 217 
 
 properly, relieves the situation of such 
 stress. 
 
 It will be seen from what I have said in 
 this lecture on the treatment of strikes, 
 that whatever the treatment is, it must be 
 in the line of the practical application of 
 religious principles. The trade agreement 
 is this, conciliation is this, arbitration is 
 this, but more can be secured by the in- 
 dividuals involved than by all the organ- 
 ized methods that can be invented. 
 
 We must recognize the principles of that 
 old fable which covers the whole question of 
 strikes, or of the relation of employer and 
 employee. 
 
 " Once upon a time the other members of 
 the body conspired against the stomach ; 
 they declared that they had all the work to 
 do, while the stomach lay quietly in the 
 middle of the body and enjoyed, without any 
 labor, everything they brought to it. So 
 they all quit work and determined to starve 
 the stomach into submission. But soon 
 they discovered that while they were starv- 
 
2 1 8 How Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 ing the stomach they, too, were being 
 starved, and that the whole body was wast- 
 ing away." 
 
 This old fable sums up the whole matter. 
 The relations of employers and employees 
 are not identical, as the economists describe 
 them, but they are reciprocal, and being re- 
 ciprocal we must recognize the principles of 
 that old fable when discussing the question 
 of strikes. 
 
 We are having our industrial, social, and 
 political struggles. They are all evolution- 
 ary in their character and not questions, as 
 I have intimated, of inauguration. Out of 
 the industrial struggle there is growing 
 what the late Henry D. Lloyd called a new 
 political economy which looks first " to the 
 care and the culture of men." In this lies 
 what Drummond called " other selfishness." 
 In it is to be found the hope of the future 
 and that religion which shall hold in its 
 power the church, industry, commerce, and 
 the whole social fabric, and if religion does 
 not hold these things, the hope is small in- 
 
How Battles of Labor are Treated 219 
 
 deed. Hope is infinite, but our knowledge 
 is infinitesimal, so we must broaden our 
 knowledge to meet the range of our 
 hope. 
 
 We must recognize the struggle in all its 
 phases as inspiration itself, and that with 
 every new development we find confronting 
 us the great wall of human elements. Who- 
 ever therefore aids the struggle, to soften, to 
 reduce its asperities in all rational ways, is 
 the friend of humanity. We must recognize 
 further that with the adjustment of old 
 problems with old conditions new ones grow, 
 as did Vico's republic, and that the new 
 conditions or problems will agitate the 
 minds of posterity, as our problems have 
 enlisted our sympathy and our eflforts, and 
 those of the past the efiForts of our ancestors 
 everywhere. 
 
 We must not be pessimistic. We must 
 recognize the intelligence that is coming to 
 the workers, the hewers of wood and the 
 drawers of water, and that with intelligence 
 and its increase there must be new problems. 
 
220 Hoiv Battles of Labor are Treated 
 
 there must be new demands, or civilization 
 retrogrades. 
 
 So with these things, with a new applica- 
 tion of religion, with a new political 
 economy, with " other selfishness," we are 
 in a position to meet broadly and on the 
 highest plane all the industrial and social 
 problems of the future. 
 
Ill 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
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