for thirty years without a strike. The average lockout lasts ninetyseven days, but of a thousand establishments, less than two declare a lockout in the course of a year.

A strike is simply a method of bargaining. If the grocers of a city would refuse to sell their sugar for less than seven cents a pound and the customers would refuse to pay more than six, exactly the same thing would occur as happens in an ordinary strike. A strike does not necessarily involve any form of bitterness; it merely represents a difference between what the buyer of labor is willing to offer, and what the seller of labor is willing to accept. Until the buyer and seller of an ordinary commodity agree as to price and conditions no sale can be effected. Until the wages and conditions of work are agreed upon and acceded to by both employer and workman, the industry must stop.

Strikes thus result from a failure to make a bargain or contract by men who are free to contract. Strikes cannot exist before freedom of contract is accorded. The present conception of a strike is that of workmen and employers exercising their undoubted right to refuse to enter into contracts where the conditions are not satisfactory to them.

It is frequently stated that trade unions desire strikes because they are organized for that purpose. This is not true. The trade union is organized for the purpose of securing better conditions of life and labor for its members, and, when necessary, a strike is resorted to as a means to that end. The same conditions which cause the creation of trade unions are equally answerable for the constant demand for improved conditions for the working class, which demand frequently voices itself in strikes.

Strikes are to be avoided in all cases where the object desired can be obtained by peaceful negotiation. There is nothing immoral, however, in the workingman's striking, just as there is nothing immoral in his wanting higher wages.

298. The Utility of the Strike16

BY FRANK JULIAN WARNE

A Strike is simply a piece of industrial machinery, if it may be so termed, which the organization of the Trade Union provides for the attainment of well-defined and laudable objects. Its operation does not necessarily mean the violation of law, or the destruction

16 Adapted from The Coal-Mine Workers, 154-158. Copyright by Longmans, Green, & Co. (1905).

of property, or the taking of human life. All these, where in evidence, are unforeseen incidents to the conduct of a great strike for any long period, and are the manifestations of aroused human passion and class hatred. No one would question the use of a revolver in the hands of a husband defending his wife and children and home from the violation of its sanctity by outlaws, but most of us would condemn the employment of the same weapon in the hands of the outlaws for the accomplishment of their designs. And yet the weapon in both cases is a revolver. So it is with the Strike; it is simply a weapon for the attaining of certain well-defined ends. In the hands of men defending their Standard of Living from the cupidity and inhumanity of particular members of the employing class, the Strike is of the very greatest social value. But like the revolver, it can be misused, as in the case of self-seeking individuals masquerading under trade-union principles, but because of that misuse the weapon should not be condemned. It is no more possible for the Trade Union to prevent the Strike from falling into the hands of those who misuse it, than it is for the Law to prevent revolvers from coming into the possession of outlaws. The Strike has performed and will continue to perform a most useful function. in the progress of the trade-union movement, and consequently in the onward march of American civilization.

It is true that the course of the labor movement has been marked by the taking of human life and the destruction of property, just as has been the case in the creation of the State and the establishment of the Church. The why and the wherefore are easily to be explained in the theory of the adjustment of the principles of new institutions to those created for society by older established ones. This is not said as an apology for the taking of human life in strikes. No one regrets this manifestation of the progress of the Trade Union more than does the writer, and yet if he had to choose between preserving the lives that have been so lost and retaining the Trade Union as an institution, it would not be in favor of the former. This decision would be made in the firm belief that in the attainment of its objects-in throwing more safeguards around the workingman, especially in hazardous employments; in securing better sanitary arrangements in factories and mills, in preventing the employment of children at tender ages, in securing higher wages, in reducing the hours of employment, in raising the Standard of Living, and in innumerable other ways-in these directions the Trade Union is saving for society more lives than have been taken in all the industrial conflicts of which history gives any record.

The Strike justifies itself either as a weapon of offense or defense in the protection, as a last recourse, of the Standard of Living of the American workingman. It is, economically, simply the refusal of a number of workingmen, usually organized in an association, to sell their labor for less than a stipulated price or to work under other than specified conditions of employment, coupled with the refusal of the purchaser of that labor-the employer-to accede to the demands.

299. The Striker and the Worker1

BY SOLON LAUER

I am perfectly willing that you should quit your job, whenever you do not like it. You may quit individually, or you may all quit by agreement. It may cause your employers and us, the public, much inconvenience and expense; but I do not see how we can refuse you that right if you choose to exercise it.

But there your rights cease. If, now, your employers can find other men to take your places, why shall they not do so? Have not these men as good a right to work as you have to refuse to work? And will you march upon them with stones and clubs, and assault. them with dynamite, in order that you may carry your point with your employers? When you play the Dog in the Manger, my brothers, there is nothing for it but to beat you into submission. Eternal Justice, seated calm and impassive above all our petty quarrels, demands it. If the machinery of Justice be not wholly wrecked and ruined here below, it must be set in motion against your selfish plot.

This is not my affair. I can get on without your cars. Legs were before electrics. If there were nothing but my interests involved, or those of my neighbors, you and your employer should sit growling at one another, or fly at each other's throat, until one or other were wholly vanquished and demolished. But there are the Rights of Man to be considered; yea, the Rights of the Workingman, which ought to be most dear to your hearts. You do not want these jobs on the present terms. These men do want them, having until now none at all, or worse ones. Shall their rights be ignored and violated, that you may carry your point?

"From Social Laws, 189-190. Published by the Nike Publishing Co. (1901).

300. Wanted-Jobs Breaking Strikes18

We break strikes-also handle labor troubles in all their phases. We are prepared to place secret operatives who are skilled mechanics in any shop, mill or factory, to discover whether organization is being done, material wasted or stolen, negligence on the part of employees, etc., etc. . . . . We guard property during strikes, employ non-union men to fill places of strikers, fit up and maintain boarding-houses for them, etc. Branches in all parts of the country. Write us for references and terms. The Joy Detective Agency, Incorporated, Cleveland, Ohio.

301. The Efficacy of Secret Service19

Secret service properly applied with the right men correctly placed can be made extremely profitable when conditions are studied. and co-operation given. Such service is our specialty, and for that reason we maintain practical men of all trades and occupations, both union and non-union. In their daily reports they suggest improvements and new ideas; also detail the agitating, dishonest, non-producing, and retarding conditions.

Our operative, when engaged by you, is, to everyone but yourself, merely an employee in your establishment, and whatever he receives as wages is credited as part payment for his detective service. Daily typewritten reports are mailed to our clients. These operatives are continually under direct supervision of the management of this agency.

Within the heart of your business is where we operate, down in the dark corners, and in out-of-the-way places that cannot be seen from your office or through your superintendent or foreman.

If it is of interest to you to know today what occurred in your plant yesterday, and be in a position to correct these faults tomorrow, we would be pleased to take the matter up with you further, and respectfully ask an interview for one of our representatives.

302. The Boycott of the Butterick Company”

BY A. J. PORTENAR

It was my fortune to take a very active part in the boycott instituted against the products of the Butterick Company by Typographi

18 Adapted from an advertisement appearing in American Industries, August 15, 1907.

19 This letter is alleged to have been sent out by the William J. Burns Detective Agency. Quoted from Laidler, Boycotts and the Labor Struggle, 295.

20 Adapted from Organized Labor, 90-92. Copyright by the Macmillan Company (1912).

cal Union No. 6 in 1906, and later carried on by the International Typographical Union. This boycott was, I verily believe, better organized, more determined, and more damaging to the parties it was aimed at than any other I have knowledge of, not excepting that against the Buck Stove and Range Company, which is more widely known only because of the adventitious circumstances that brought the highest officials of the American Federation of Labor into court. Not only in the United States and Canada, but in Cuba, Germany, and Australia, the International Typographical Union cut into the sales and captured the customers of the Butterick Company. Wherever a typographical union was organized, there, in greater or less degree, the boycott was pushed. The expected court proceedings were in evidence at all times. There were arrests, injunctions, actions for criminal contempt. In short I doubt if a more thorough trial of the efficiency of the boycott has ever been made.

Now what about results? That the Butterick people were considerably damaged they themselves admitted. Eventually the Butterick house was unionized again, but it is not possible for us to say to what extent the boycott was responsible for that consummation. It is within my knowledge, however, that it had been decreasing in intensity for two years before an agreement with the company was reached, in 1911, and that at the time of settlement the boycott was practically dormant.

I was very active in this matter, and from the experience thus gained I have reached definite conclusions. We expended a large amount of money; how large I do not know. There was a continuous distribution of printed matter and of comparatively expensive novelties bearing appropriate inscriptions. There were speakers sent to tour the country. There was an organizer whose sole duty it was to further the boycott. There was a prominent lawyer engaged by the year. So far as money could compass our object, we were not niggardly. But money is only one of the essential factors a union needs in the conduct of an affair of this kind. Far more than money, it must have the enthusiastic devotion of its members to the continuous, laborious, and unpleasant work needful to make the expenditure of money effective. This, with a few exceptions, I found it impossible to get. And even these few, in the course of time, finding themselves unsupported by the great majority, began to get lukewarm, and at last ceased to labor in a field, so vast and so deserted. It was not that we had no success; the Butterick Company is the best witness to the contrary. But it is scarcely believable how unremittingly we had to labor to save what we had