UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 19(4- 
 
 JULY 
 
 1915 
 
 JULY 
 
 /916 
 
 JULY 
 
 1917 
 
 JUNE NOV. MAR. JULY NON t MARJULY NOV . 
 
 1918 1919 I9E0 
 
 PERCENTAGES OF INCREASE IN THE COST OF LIVING IN THE 
 UNITED STATES, JULY. 1914, TO NOVEMBER, 1920 
 
 This table was prepared by the National Industrial Conference Board whose 
 figures are regarded as standard and used by Federal Reserve Banks, the U. S. 
 Railroad Administration, and other organizations which require the most 
 reliable possible figures and data. 
 
 This table shows the cost of living — that is, cost of items of general com- 
 modities which enter into the average family living budget. It does not refer 
 to the large balance of general commodities whose average rise has been 
 materially greater than that of the particular items here shown. 
 
 The present curves closely parallel those prepared by other authorities and 
 also closely parallel those prepared by the U. S. Department of Labor except 
 for a period during 1920, in which case it has since been shown that the Depart- 
 ment of Labor figures involve a demonstrable error which make them slightly 
 too high for this period.
 
 The High Cost of 
 Strikes 
 
 By 
 
 Marshall Olds 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York and London 
 
 Zbe fmicfeerbocfcer press 
 
 1921
 
 Copyright, 1921 
 
 by 
 
 Marshall Olds 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 /■KN
 
 / 
 
 
 •4 
 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 WHO FOUGHT 
 
 CLASS PRIVILEGE, CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS, 
 
 AND SIMILAR ANTI-AMERICANISM 
 
 WHEREVER HE FOUND IT 
 
 
 2081158
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The author has been a laborer — on a farm, as 
 assistant in a railroad repair shop, as a dock walloper, 
 as working boss of a gang, and as an assistant ma- 
 chinist. Except for hiring his own stenographer and 
 occasionally an assistant, he has never been an 
 employer. 
 
 The author's fundamental point of view in regard 
 to the modern labor problem is that the man who, 
 with his hand and brain, creates the production 
 which is necessary to the very existence of society, 
 deserves his full share not only of pay but of recog- 
 nition and opportunity from society. He particu- 
 larly believes therefore that the industrial worker is 
 too valuable a citizen to be allowed to remain, or to 
 allow himself to remain, in any sense a member of a 
 class apart. 
 
 The western farmer once regarded himself as a 
 member of a class apart. For years through the 
 Granger movement and various other class organiza- 
 tions, he fought both politically and economically 
 for special considerations and special privileges — 
 
 vii
 
 viii Preface 
 
 to advance his own interests as a member of his class 
 irrespective of the interests of the rest of the coun- 
 try. But the farmer to-day occupies his enviable 
 economic status, not as a result of class effort but 
 because the growth of the nation developed an in- 
 creasing demand for his services and his products, 
 and because, forgetting class theories, he put his 
 whole energy into cashing in on the opportunity 
 which national progress offered him. 
 
 The early history of the Brotherhood of Loco- 
 motive Engineers was marked by the same attitude 
 of class antagonism — with strikes and threats of 
 strikes, as has continued to mark the policy of many 
 other labor organizations. But locomotive engineers 
 have not had a strike for a generation and they 
 occupy a recognized position as the aristocrats of 
 labor to-day, not because they have demanded 
 special class consideration, but, on the contrary, 
 because they have adopted the policy of skilling 
 themselves individually to keep pace with railroad 
 progress — to accept more responsibility — to deliver 
 a more valuable service. In other words, they have 
 recognized the opportunity which American railroad 
 progress offered, they have made good on that oppor- 
 tunity and their advancement has chiefly come just 
 exactly as it comes to the average other American — 
 because he makes increasingly good on his job.
 
 Preface ix 
 
 American industry as a whole has been making 
 tremendous progress in the last decade, not only 
 materially but particularly psychologically. There 
 is no question that there was a time when many 
 American employers were so engrossed in creating 
 the machinery and organizing the materials of 
 modern industry that they were prone to look upon 
 the laborer as more or less of a machine and labor as 
 merely a commodity. But as mechanical equipment 
 began to approach its limits of efficiency, the average 
 employer came more and more to realize again the 
 value of the human equation in industry and the 
 importance of individual skill in production. 
 
 For a generation, evidences of efforts on the part 
 of employers to increase the individual skill and pro- 
 ductivity of their workers — by voluntary raises in 
 wages in proportion to production, by bonuses, by 
 sharing profits, by stimulating labor's ambitions for 
 better living condition, by education, and by many 
 other means, have conspicuously multiplied. Short- 
 age of labor during the war, and the exigencies of 
 the war brought these efforts to a culmination in 
 which industrial management adopted a nation- 
 wide policy of developing every means to make it 
 possible for the individual worker to produce more 
 and to be paid in proportion to his production. 
 
 In other words the war established on a nation-
 
 x Preface 
 
 wide scale the soundness of the policy which the 
 farmer, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 
 and many other individual labor groups had already 
 proved out, and which the whole development of 
 industry in general was already conspicuously 
 working towards, namely: that, considering the 
 increasing progress of our whole nation, with its 
 constant demand for more and more of every kind 
 of product, its constant need for more and more 
 skilled men and higher skill in the individual man, its 
 constant substitution of machinery for mere brawn 
 which tends to free the unskilled worker to move up 
 into the skilled class, all industry and therefore 
 industrial labor, has its biggest, surest opportunity 
 for permanent advancement through mutual co- 
 operation in increasing production to meet our 
 increasing national demands. 
 
 This is of course the exact opposite of the theory 
 of the professional labor leader as to labor's proper 
 method of advancement. He persistently holds that 
 labor is a class apart which can progress only by 
 standing together as a class and fighting for special 
 class privileges and consideration. He blindly 
 assumes that industrial management has not ad- 
 vanced for thirty years and therefore still insists that 
 labor's interest is inherently and entirely antagonistic 
 to the interest of the rest of industry. He ignores
 
 Preface xi 
 
 the constant growth of the country and the constant 
 demand for more and more products and still insists 
 that only through less individual skill and less in- 
 dividual production can the increasing number of 
 workers continue to find occupation. His entire 
 reliance therefore for labor's advancement lies in 
 powerful labor organizations which are able to force, 
 irrespective of skill or production or the interests of 
 industry or the rest of the country, labor's advance- 
 ment as a class through strikes or threats of strikes. 
 
 During and after the war, because of our labor 
 shortage and other circumstances, the professional 
 labor leader was able to climb into the saddle. For 
 nearly two years he dominated the labor situation 
 and on a conspicuous nation-wide scale carried his 
 theories to their logical conclusion. 
 
 The average American knows in a general way that 
 the strikes and labor unrest after the war were big 
 contributing factors in the high cost of living. Labor 
 itself knows that its wages, which strikes sent up 
 like a skyrocket soon began to come down like the 
 stick. But the very fact that this demonstration of 
 the professional labor leaders' theories has so con- 
 spicuously raised the cost of living — the fact that it 
 has brought wage advances that were merely tempo- 
 rary — the fact that it has led to making the labor 
 question a conspicuous national, economic, and even
 
 xii Preface 
 
 political issue — all argue the importance to both 
 labor and the public of having more than a mere 
 general idea of what this demonstration actually- 
 showed. 
 
 The present volume is in no sense a condemnation 
 of labor organizations or unions as such. The 
 Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and other 
 groups of labor which have sought their advance- 
 ment along similar lines have always maintained 
 strong organizations. The very position of labor 
 makes the right kind of organization generally desir- 
 able and often necessary. Nor is any attempt made 
 to deny to labor the same right which is possessed 
 by every other competitive interest in industry, that 
 of competing, and when necessary, of fighting for its 
 legitimate advantages by every legitimate means. 
 
 What is attempted is to analyze, as specifically as 
 possible, the costs to the public and to labor itself of 
 the strike epidemic which followed the war and to 
 show, as concretely as possible, the results, to labor, 
 to industry, and to the whole country, of the theories 
 of the professional labor leader for the advancement 
 of labor as they have logically worked themselves 
 out in this most conspicuous large scale demonstra- 
 tion of those theories. 
 
 M. O. 
 
 New York City, March i, 1921.
 
 SPECIAL NOTE 
 
 The present volume has been largely built on a 
 series of articles which appeared in the New York 
 Tribune in October, 1920, and in Leslie's Weekly. Its 
 main facts and arguments have therefore not only 
 already received a wide reading and criticism from 
 widely divergent points of view, but have been tested 
 by certain conspicuous subsequent events. 
 
 The facts brought out, for instance, and the de- 
 ductions drawn in Chapter III — "Strikes and the 
 High Cost of Rent " — were sweepingly condemned by 
 certain obviously interested critics as grossly exag- 
 gerated and as constituting a vicious and unwar- 
 ranted attack on labor organizations in the building 
 trade. The subsequent Lockwood Investigation of 
 building conditions in New York, however, has 
 shown conclusively that this chapter constituted a 
 most conservative statement of conditions as they 
 actually existed. 
 
 Certain sympathizers with the clothing workers 
 wrote repeatedly, sweepingly denying and condemn- 
 ing the author's statements as to facts and motives
 
 xiv Special Note 
 
 and policies of the Clothing Union officials. Yet a 
 well-known radical union leader in this field admitted 
 freely that these same statements and deductions 
 were at least in general true and were entirely 
 warranted from the point of view of modern indus- 
 trial organization; but added, that of course the 
 very object of such strikes and the very purpose of 
 these unions, as expressed in their constitutions, is to 
 break down modern industrial organization. 
 
 A well-known radical labor leader and union official 
 of the so-called "intellectual" type, while he agreed 
 as labor leaders in general will not, with the author's 
 basic conclusions as to the importance of production, 
 not only in the after-the-war strike but in the whole 
 modern labor situation, sweepingly criticized the 
 whole point of view of the present volume as to 
 labor's necessary means of advancement as "fifty 
 years behind all modern progressive thinking on this 
 subject. " The author is entirely conscious that the 
 basis of many of his conclusions goes back even 
 further than this in human thought and experience. 
 As a matter of fact it is his fundamental conviction 
 that one of the chief reasons for the acuteness of the 
 modern labor problem is the very fact that there 
 has been too much straining after special "modern" 
 theories in regard to industrial relations, with too 
 much straining to fit our industrial conditions into
 
 Special Note xv 
 
 these special "modern" theories, and too little con- 
 sideration of the whole problem in the light of certain 
 basic principles of all human experience. 
 
 It is also his conviction that what the labor union 
 movement, begun in Europe and largely developed on 
 eastern European theories, needs more than any- 
 thing else at the present time is to look back and 
 check its theories and practices with the basic prin- 
 ciples to which western, and particularly American 
 civilization and progress owe their success. 
 
 The criticism has been frequently made that the 
 author has not given sufficient weight to the influence 
 of inflation and other obvious contributing factors to 
 high prices in general, and at most has merely touched 
 on particular contributing factors in his discussion 
 of certain specific high prices. Certain economists 
 for instance who fully agree that lessened production 
 was the basic cause for after-the-war increases in 
 prices and that strikes were the basic reason of this 
 lessened production have yet felt that such constant 
 emphasis on even the basic factor with only casual 
 reference to other factors fails to give a true picture 
 of the whole situation. ■ 
 
 1 In his nine-page review of the present argument as it appeared in 
 the New York Tribune (see American Federationist for November, 
 1920), the only specific and valid criticism which Mr. Samuel Gompers 
 makes is this same one that from the point of view of general causes 
 of high prices the argument does not give relative consideration to 
 other contributing factors.
 
 xvi Special Note 
 
 Two special chapters were prepared for the original 
 New York Tribune series which did deal in much 
 greater detail with inflation, profiteering, over- 
 speculation, over-spending, competition for labor 
 and similar contributing factors to high prices. But 
 it was felt by others at that time, and the author still 
 feels, that while such chapters would of course be 
 necessary to any broad general discussion of high 
 prices themselves, that they are not necessary and 
 would merely interfere with and divert the develop- 
 ment of the present argument which is not in regard 
 to the general causes of high prices but is specifically 
 devoted to pointing out and emphasizing that and 
 why non-production due to strikes was the basic cause 
 of high prices after the war. 
 
 Many critics have appeared who have denounced 
 the author's statements as to motives of certain labor 
 leaders and labor policies by quoting public utter- 
 ances of these same labor leaders to the contrary. 
 No one who is familiar with Mr. William Z. Foster's 
 book, The Great Strike, dealing with his own attempts 
 to organize the steel industry, in which he constantly 
 speaks of his "flank attacks, " his "camouflage, " his 
 1 ' feints to cover secret attacks, ' ' and otherwise frankly 
 glorifies the most unscrupulous forms of deception — 
 no one who is familiar with the influence of radicalism 
 in labor politics and its frankly admitted Soviet
 
 Special Note xvii 
 
 policy of the ends justifying any means, can fail to 
 realize that in many cases it is impossible to get at 
 the truth without going back of public statements 
 and obvious maneuverings of the labor leader and 
 judging facts and motives and policies on the basis of 
 his acts. 
 
 In thus educing motives and policies on the basis 
 of acts, the author has used every effort to be con- 
 servative. As a matter of fact, there is little question 
 that in many cases, if all the facts were known, the 
 actual conditions would prove, just as they did in 
 the building trade, to be far more extreme than the 
 author's statement of them. 
 
 The present volume as a whole, and particularly 
 those sections devoted to interpretation and deduc- 
 tion, as distinct from mere statement of fact, have 
 been discussed in detail with many men of many 
 points of view — employers, economists, financial and 
 legal experts, labor leaders, radicals, and many 
 workers, both union and non-union. 
 
 This assistance, in some cases involving a very con- 
 siderable amount of time, constitutes a contribution 
 of whose value the author wishes to express full 
 acknowledgment and appreciation. 
 
 M. O. 
 
 New York City, March i, 1021.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. — Strikes and the High Cost of Food 3 
 
 II. — Strikes and the High Cost of 
 
 Clothing 16 
 
 III. — Strikes and the High Cost of Rent 26 
 
 IV. — The High Cost of Strikes to Labor 41 
 
 V. — Striking at the Nerve Centers of 
 
 Industry ..... 50 
 
 VI. — Strikes and Inefficient Distribu- 
 tion of Labor .... 62 
 
 VII. — Strikes and the High Cost of Living 73 
 
 VIII. — What are Strikes Gaining to Off- 
 set these Losses ... 85 
 
 IX. — Outlaw Strikes — Mania Strikes — 
 
 Graft Strikes 93 
 
 X. — Strikes for Higher Pay and 
 
 Shorter Hours . . . .102 
 
 XI. — The High Cost of Futile Strikes . 115 
 
 XII. — The High Cost of Strike "Victories" 128
 
 xx Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XIII. — Strikes as Mere Incidents in Fights 
 
 for Personal Power . . .144 
 
 XIV. — Striking for Monopoly Domination 
 by a Class of Everybody's Neces- 
 saries of Life . . . .157 
 
 XV. — Strikes and Radicalism . . .177 
 
 XVI. — Striking at the Roots of Americanism 193 
 
 XVII. — Summary of Facts .... 205 
 
 XVIII. — What are we Going to Do about it? 216 
 
 XIX. — Make Labor Obey the Law . . 237 
 
 XX. — At the Bar of Public Opinion . 256
 
 The High Cost of Strikes
 
 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 STRIKES AND THE HIGH COST OF FOOD 
 
 How much did you pay for potatoes in April, 1920? 
 The price of potatoes throughout the whole North- 
 eastern section of the country was raised at that time 
 over four dollars more per barrel — and if you live in 
 this section, you paid over four dollars more per 
 barrel — because of one specific strike. 
 
 From February till June, 1920, if you live in this 
 section, you paid about twice as much as you need 
 have paid — twice as much as you would otherwise 
 have paid — for all your fresh vegetables, also entirely 
 on account of a strike. 
 
 Many people throughout the country during and 
 after the war sought relief from the high price of 
 meat by eating fish — but the price of tuna went up 
 fifty per cent, in 191 9 and thirty-five per cent, more 
 in 1920 because of two strikes. 
 
 Thousands of people of New York have had to pay 
 
 3
 
 4 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 three cents more for every can of tomatoes and other 
 canned goods because of another strike. 
 
 Strikes have been one of the biggest factors in the 
 high cost of sugar. In one instance one strike alone 
 sent the price of sugar up eight cents a pound, and it 
 is probable that altogether you paid double that 
 extra on every pound of sugar you bought in Febru- 
 ary to May, 1920, because of strikes. 
 
 And this is just on the sugar you, yourself used. 
 The cost of the sugar the preservers and canners used 
 made you pay a thirty-five per cent, advance, even 
 over the big raise of 1919 for 1920 preserves. 
 
 We all paid more for peaches and other fruits in 
 the summer of 1920 than ever before — the primary 
 cause goes back to a strike. Easterners for months 
 during the same summer had to pay more for meat, 
 directly due to strikes. And in the same way it can 
 be shown specifically that labor as well as the rest of 
 us — that overworked women and underfed children 
 as well as profiteers — had during the whole first two 
 years after the war to pay exorbitant and otherwise 
 wholly unnecessary high prices for a hundred and one 
 other products, that all of us had to have or suffer 
 without, directly and specifically because of some 
 strike or series of strikes. 
 
 One of the most important developments in the 
 last decade — one that has contributed very much
 
 Strikes and High Cost of Food 5 
 
 not only to keeping the cost of living down but in 
 raising the standards of living in all the Northern 
 section of our country — has been the rise of the fruit 
 and vegetable growing industry in the Southern 
 States. Formerly people in the Northern sections 
 of the country were limited during a large part of the 
 winter months to the few fruits and vegetables that 
 could be carried over in cellars from the previous 
 summer, and which not only furnished the meagerest 
 diet of this kind, but which, in proportion as they 
 were consumed or spoiled, rose higher and higher in 
 price. The development of fruit and vegetable 
 growing in the South has meant that from January 
 on Northern markets have been supplied with an 
 ever-increasing variety of all kinds of palatable and 
 healthful products, which each year tended to be- 
 come cheaper in proportion as the supply grew, till 
 even the poorest among our population have been 
 able to reform the family diet on a more healthful 
 and palatable basis. 
 
 The main arteries which supply this important 
 food element to our millions of families in the North 
 East are the Clyde, Mallory, and Old Dominion 
 Steamship lines. Early in 1920 the dock workers of 
 each of these lines struck. Following the usual prac- 
 tice of modern strikers of striking just when they 
 could influence their employers most by pinching
 
 6 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 the public hardest, and in spite of the fact that they 
 had a wage agreement with six months still to run, 
 the dock workers on each line planned this strike for 
 just the time when the Southern vegetables for the 
 Northern market were beginning to arrive on the 
 dock from their particular section. 
 
 These dock laborers, who in the South were chiefly 
 negroes, and in the North almost entirely foreigners, 
 had been receiving $35 a week for nine hours a day. 
 They struck for $44 a week, eight hours a day, four 
 hours on Saturday, and $2 an hour for all overtime. 
 These three steamship lines were on record with the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission as having been 
 run at a net loss of over $6,000,000 in 1919, so that 
 any increase in wages had to depend on an allowance 
 by the commission of an increase in freight rates. 
 It is not proposed to go into the ethical phases or the 
 justice of such a strike here, but this is sufficient to 
 indicate that at least this strike was not forced on 
 labor by unbearable wages or conditions. 
 
 By April this strike had so diminished New York's 
 supply of potatoes that a special attempt was made 
 to get a cargo of potatoes through. The cargo was 
 brought safely to the Spring Street dock — to within 
 a few hundred yards of the commission warehouses, 
 and to within a mile of New York's biggest public 
 markets. But the less than three hundred strikers
 
 Strikes and High Cost of Food 7 
 
 not only refused to handle these potatoes themselves 
 but in spite of the interest and the need of the whole 
 population of New York succeeded through intimida- 
 tion and other methods familiar to the public in 
 preventing their being removed these few hundred 
 yards by any other means. 
 
 Finally a lighter was secured and the potatoes 
 moved aboard it without the knowledge of the 
 strikers. The lighter was then towed down the river 
 and up Newark Bay to Harrison, N.J. The potatoes 
 were here taken from the lighter to the Erie Railroad 
 by truck and sent in to New York as Jersey freight. 
 These extra and special operations cost a little over 
 four dollars a barrel, but the shortage of potatoes at 
 the time was so acute that the New York market 
 eagerly absorbed them even at this tremendously 
 higher cost. 
 
 As soon as the strikers from these boat lines 
 started and the normal arteries for supplying one of 
 New York's chief food necessities were closed it was 
 necessary of course to fall back on the railroads from 
 the South. But these, because of strikes of their own, 
 lack of equipment, and other disorganization which 
 had lasted over from the war, were having the ut- 
 most difficulty in taking care of their own traffic, 
 including the Southern vegetable crop for the inland 
 cities of the North, and were in no way prepared
 
 8 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 to bear this immense and unexpected volume of 
 extra traffic. 
 
 Moreover it is absolutely necessary for fruit and 
 vegetables to be handled with the utmost dispatch, 
 and this these railroads were entirely unable to do. 
 It was necessary, therefore, to load these fruit and 
 vegetables into any kind of freight cars that could be 
 secured — generally without any chance for icing — and 
 then to pay not ordinary freight, but special express 
 rates, in order to rush them to market. Yet even 
 with all these precautions, literally hundreds of cars 
 of fruits and vegetables reached the North in such a 
 spoiled condition that they had to be dumped im- 
 mediately into the city garbage dumps. 
 
 Due thus directly and entirely to this strike of a 
 few hundred dock laborers and to no other cause, 
 hundreds of thousands of families throughout the 
 Northern section of the country had to pay, according 
 to all competent estimates, often at least one hundred 
 per cent, more for all the fruit and vegetables they 
 bought during the whole spring of 1920. 
 
 Moreover, the indirect results — in the shortage and 
 so in the higher prices of all the other commodities 
 which the Southern railroads could not handle be- 
 cause they handled this normal boat business — all the 
 other indirect results which always follow any such 
 general upsetting of the normal operation of industry,
 
 Strikes and High Cost of Food 9 
 
 though they cannot be estimated, unquestionably 
 ran up the real cost of this strike to the public far 
 higher even than this. 
 
 "Eat more fish " was one of the slogans of the war, 
 and numerous government bulletins emphasized to 
 the whole country the specially healthful and palat- 
 able qualities of tuna fish until it has become, even in 
 these few years, almost a staple product of national 
 consumption. 
 
 Tuna fish are caught and canned or otherwise 
 preserved chiefly along the coast of California, where 
 an important new industry has been started by their 
 increased general popularity. The tuna fish comes 
 to the California coast in great schools during a 
 certain limited season of each year, the fishers and 
 canneries being occupied the rest of the year in catch- 
 ing and preparing sardines and other fish. 
 
 Now there are few sections in the country in which 
 the general cost of living, according to the best official 
 figures, had gone up even by the summer of 1920 when 
 prices reached their peak, more than 116 per cent, 
 over 19 1 4. In California it had gone up very much 
 less than this. Yet in 1919, just as the tuna fish began 
 to run, the California fishermen struck for a five 
 hundred per cent, raise in wages and stayed on strike 
 till after the schools of tuna fish had left. As a result 
 there was practically no tuna fish packed that year
 
 io - The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 and the demand throughout the country put the price 
 up about fifty per cent. The price of sardines and 
 other fish handled in the same industry was of course 
 also more or less seriously affected. 
 
 Again in 1920 just as the tuna fish began to run 
 the fishermen struck. Again also for a 500 per cent, 
 increase in wages, but they finally compromised on a 
 350 per cent, increase. This necessitated a still 
 further advance of 35 per cent, in the price of tuna 
 fish. In other words, all the rest of us whose incomes 
 did not even keep pace with the high cost of living 
 had to pay 85 per cent, more for our tuna fish simply 
 and solely because certain California fishermen de- 
 cided to use the weapon of the strike to increase 
 their own incomes over four times their increased 
 cost of living. 
 
 Authorities do not agree as to just which was the 
 most important and which was only the second most 
 important contributing factor to the high cost of 
 sugar. There are those who say that the honor of 
 being the primary cause goes to an arbitrary war 
 government which handled the sugar situation with 
 far more regard to the feelings of certain Southern 
 politicians than with regard to the pocketbooks of the 
 rest of the nation. Others maintain that the trouble 
 started when a fully developed, high-powered modern 
 strike bacillus, escaping from warring civilization,
 
 Strikes and High Cost of Food 1 1 
 
 strayed in some unaccountable way into the jungles 
 of Cuba. 
 
 For years the dark-skinned gentleman, who since 
 the end of revolutionary days have used their wide- 
 famed machetes in the peaceful occupation of cutting 
 sugar cane, had been paid at the rate of fifty cents per 
 one hundred arrobas, of about twenty-five pounds 
 each, for this work. Since, however, the modern 
 strike bacillus found its way into Cuba, he receives 
 $i .50 for the same work. As a result the first cost in 
 the production of sugar went up three hundred per 
 cent. 
 
 But in the center of Cuba everything grows wild, 
 the social demands are limited, and the local equiva- 
 lent for our high cost of living could be very comfort- 
 ably maintained with only an ordinary amount of 
 work at fifty cents per one hundred arrobas. At 
 $1.50 a hundred arrobas it could of course be main- 
 tained with only one third as much work. And who 
 can blame this poor backward Cuban if he was im- 
 mediately seduced by a very popular modern labor 
 doctrine and promptly refused to work more than one 
 third of the time? Or who can blame him if he re- 
 fused to worry because his loafing on the job still 
 further increased the price of sugar to some unknown 
 Northern gringo? 
 
 Moreover, the modern strike bacillus, as we know
 
 12 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 too well, also refuses to stay put. He soon got to 
 work among the railroad operatives who transport 
 the sugar to the port ; among the dockmen who load 
 the sugar ; he followed on up into the sugar refineries 
 of America. 
 
 During January, 1920, there were seven separate 
 and distinct strikes that handicapped production or 
 distribution and so increased the price of sugar. Four 
 of these strikes continued into February and four 
 new ones were begun. Four of these extended over 
 into March, and twelve new strikes were begun in 
 March. Six of these continued over into April and 
 five new ones began in April, all of which, both old 
 and new, continued into May. Meanwhile the price 
 of refined sugar advanced from 13^ cents a pound 
 the first of March to 22^ cents a pound by the end 
 of May. 
 
 Moreover, in addition to these general facts as to 
 the relation between strikes and the increased cost of 
 sugar there are any number of isolated instances 
 where strikes have resulted directly in sending the 
 price of sugar still higher. For instance, during the 
 outlaw railroad strike around Pittsburgh, sugar was 
 twenty-two cents a pound in all the surrounding 
 territory, but because no new supply could be moved 
 into Pittsburgh sugar went up and stayed up to thirty 
 cents a pound as long as this strike lasted.
 
 Strikes and High Cost of Food 13 
 
 There was no shortage of sugar in 1920. More 
 sugar was produced and Americans consumed more 
 sugar than at any other time in our history. Our per 
 capita consumption, for instance, was 79 pounds in 
 191 3 and 78 pounds in 1914. It went down to 73 
 pounds during the war in 19 18. On the other hand, 
 it was 85 pounds per capita in 191 9, and was running 
 at the rate of 87 pounds per capita during this period 
 of 1920. 
 
 Moreover, not only was there no shortage of sugar, 
 but it can be very definitely said that the producers of 
 sugar were not profiteering. For every detail of their 
 costs and selling prices was on file in the United 
 States Department of Justice. One practical author- 
 ity on sugar conditions who would not allow himself 
 to be quoted said in July that he "estimated" that 
 directly and indirectly "strikes" were costing the 
 American people over fifteen cents on every pound of 
 sugar they were then buying. Certainly the definite 
 facts and figures seem to indicate that this estimate 
 was reasonable. 
 
 These specific facts as to the effect which strikes 
 and strikes alone had in increasing, and often in- 
 creasing exorbitantly, the price of every kind of food 
 product can be multiplied again and again. The 
 strike itself may often have been far away and at an 
 entirely different time from the increase of price, yet
 
 14 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 be directly responsible for it. The strike may often 
 have been for only a few days' duration, yet directly 
 increased the price of a whole season's output. 
 
 Michigan frequently has a grasshopper pest in 
 July, against which farmers protect their crop by a 
 special spray. In 1920 railroad strikes around 
 Chicago prevented this spraying material from being 
 delivered and Michigan farmers in the Lansing dis- 
 trict alone lost their root crop to the extent of 
 one million dollars. Of course the consumer paid for 
 this loss in the higher prices of beets and carrots 
 and turnips. 
 
 The same railroad strike at the big distributing 
 centers held up material with which fruit growers all 
 through the Middle West spray their trees in May 
 and June. Three months later the fruit crops in these 
 sections were so limited and poor that all of us had to 
 pay January prices for fruit right through August 
 and September. 
 
 And parallel examples of how strikes were the 
 direct and sole cause of definite and big increases in 
 the prices of meat and butter and rice and eggs and 
 milk and practically every other necessity of life 
 could be cited almost indefinitely. 
 
 Moreover, it must be clearly understood that all 
 these represent only the direct effect of such strikes, 
 and only of strikes which have had a direct and
 
 Strikes and High Cost of Food 15 
 
 traceable effect on prices. The indirect effects have 
 in many cases undoubtedly been even greater. 
 
 Again, it must be remembered that labor itself is 
 the biggest buyer of food products in the country. 
 
 The question cannot help but occur: Does labor 
 itself, does the average American worker, really know 
 or realize how much it cost, not only the country as 
 a whole, but how much it cost him, because some 
 few or few hundred fellow workmen, somewhere in 
 the country, casually decided to go on a strike?
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 STRIKES AND THE HIGH COST OF CLOTHING 
 
 When you had to pay $55, $65 or $75 for a suit of 
 clothes during 19 19 and 1920, about $20 to $30 of that 
 price was due to strikes. 
 
 Men's shirts went up out of all proportion to their 
 increased cost of production and to the increased 
 cost of other articles. The extra difference was 
 because of strikes. 
 
 Laboring men in 1920 had to pay four times as 
 much for their overalls as in 191 3, and about twice as 
 much as in 1919. The chief reason was strikes by 
 other laboring men. 
 
 Certain cotton cloth went up nine cents a yard on 
 account of one strike. 
 
 Several hundreds of millions of yards of gray cloth 
 went up five cents a yard entirely because of strikes. 
 
 Scores of millions of yards of many kinds of the 
 dress cloth made in the Providence district went up 
 one hundred per cent, entirely because of strikes. 
 
 Moreover these increases of nine cents a yard and 
 five cents a yard and one hundred per cent, apply 
 
 16
 
 Strikes and High Cost of Clothing 17 
 
 merely to increased costs caused by strikes that 
 affect factory production. They apply only to 
 factory prices. Railroad strikes, dock strikes, team- 
 sters' strikes, and many other strikes have further so 
 handicapped or held up the distribution and sale of 
 those goods that you, the ultimate consumer, often 
 had to pay many times this much extra. 
 
 When the war ended, America began the task of 
 demobilizing four million men, most of whom had 
 been out of civilian life from one to two years. All 
 the men and women who had anything to do with the 
 discharged soldier, from demobilization officers to 
 Salvation Army doughnut girls, will tell you that the 
 discharged soldier in general — and four million families 
 will tell you that their discharged soldier in particular 
 — had just two ideas when he got out of the army : First, 
 to get some good home cooking again, and, second, to 
 get back into a nice new suit of civilian clothes. 
 
 During 1919 America needed, therefore, at least 
 four million suits of clothes more than it needed the 
 year before. As a matter of fact, it got just four 
 million J suits less than the year before, or some eight 
 million suits less than it needed, because of a series of 
 
 1 This figure, furnished by officers of the Clothing Manufacturers' 
 Association, is confirmed by multiplying the 7,600,000 working days 
 lost through strikes in the clothing industry in 1919 (National In- 
 dustrial Conference Board figures) by the average production per 
 day per worker.
 
 18 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 strikes that tied up practically the whole clothing 
 industry the spring of that year. 
 
 The facts about labor conditions in the clothing 
 industry have rather frequently come to public atten- 
 tion in the past. It is generally known that while 
 designers and cutters and such skilled workmen re- 
 ceive exceptionally high wages, the great bulk of the 
 work used to be done under what is popularly known 
 as sweatshop conditions by a very low grade of labor 
 — largely recently arrived or unassimilated foreigners, 
 both men and women, most of whom have been too 
 physically or technically inefficient to do other kinds 
 of better grade work. 
 
 Unquestionably labor conditions in the clothing 
 field had been in crying need of readjustment for 
 many years before the war. But the great sudden 
 war demand for uniforms and other articles of cloth- 
 ing, with its corresponding demand for labor, had 
 brought such a large measure of readjustment in this 
 field that before the end of the war, the chief evils of 
 the sweatshop system had disappeared and the most 
 ordinary clothing worker was receiving from twenty- 
 five dollars to thirty-five dollars a week. 
 
 During the war, but when its end was already in 
 sight so that the demand for a greatly increased pro- 
 duction to meet the needs of the millions of soldiers 
 about to return to civil life was perfectly obvious, the
 
 Strikes and High Cost of Clothing 19 
 
 clothing workers struck for a forty-four hour week and 
 other production concessions — which would and did 
 decrease production at least thirty-five per cent., and 
 in addition for a wage increase which doubled even 
 their high war pay. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of the production of the four 
 million additional suits of clothes which were needed, 
 this strike cut the production for the year 19 19 
 almost four million suits of clothes below the produc- 
 tion of the year before, or nearly eight million suits 
 below what we needed and knew in advance that we 
 would need. And it was this tremendous shortage — 
 inexcusable because entirely foreseen by both manu- 
 facturers and labor and deliberately precipitated by 
 labor — which sent the price of an ordinary suit of 
 clothes up to $55, $65, and $75 during 1919 and the 
 early part of 1920. 
 
 But this shortage and consequent immense ad- 
 vance in price is only the first half of the result. The 
 shortage became so acute and the prices went so 
 high that the clothing manufacturers yielded to the 
 demands of the strikers. The result was that with 
 this new wage scale plus the new lower scale of pro- 
 duction, due to the forty -four hour week, this class 
 of labor which had never been able to earn more than 
 $12 to $20 a week under normal labor competition, 
 even for the old rate of production, now received
 
 20 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 $50 to $85 a week for the new scale of production, 
 which was equivalent to about $100 a week per 
 worker for the old rate of production. 
 
 On the basis of this immense increase in costs, the 
 manufacturers then started in to try to catch up 
 with the demand. But prices had already been 
 forced so high that by the spring of 1920 the public 
 began to refuse to pay them — the manufacturers and 
 retailers had more and more to dispose of immense 
 stocks at less than cost and as a result by July, at 
 what was ordinarily the height of the producing 
 season, over fifty per cent, of all labor in the industry 
 was out of employment. 
 
 This Ponzi get-rich-quick idea which was the basis 
 of the clothing strike in the spring of 1919 not only 
 cost the general public, including millions of the 
 labor public, from ten to thirty dollars apiece on 
 every suit they had to buy, but for months it cost 
 over half the clothing workers of the country them- 
 selves the thirty-five dollars a week — double what 
 they had ever been able to earn before, or perhaps 
 even forty dollars or forty-five dollars a week — which 
 they might have continued to earn steadily and 
 indefinitely. 
 
 Moreover the end is not yet. The scale of living 
 of American labor ought to go steadily up. Wages 
 ought to go steadily up. Labor believes this, and is
 
 Strikes and High Cost of Clothing 21 
 
 right in believing it. But wages cannot be doubled 
 one year and doubled again to four times the original 
 wages the next year. The public, including the labor 
 public, cannot pay four times as much, including the 
 thirty-five per cent, reduction in efficiency — actually 
 six times as much — to any special group of labor for 
 making any absolute and universal necessity. That 
 the public, including the rest of labor, will not pay 
 such rates was amply demonstrated the last six 
 months of 1920 not only in this but in other fields. 
 And with their get-rich-quick bubble hopelessly 
 burst there has already been much bitterness and 
 recrimination, and under the radical leadership which 
 now dominates the clothing unions there are sure to 
 be further strikes, which can only mean still further 
 needless cost to both the workers and the public. 
 
 Change the word "suits" to "shirts" and the 
 figures in proportion, and the story of what has 
 happened in the suit industry will tell almost word for 
 word what has happened in the shirt industry also. 
 
 There were the same four million soldiers, and as a 
 man probably buys about four shirts to one suit of 
 clothes, this means that about 16,000,000 more shirts 
 were needed to supply the American market than 
 were needed that last year of the war. As a matter of 
 fact, a series of strikes in the shirt and allied industries 
 actually cut the production of shirts, according to
 
 22 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 Babson's figures, by 15,886,500 below that of the 
 year before, which meant a total of about 32,000,000 
 shirts fewer than America needed. Of course, under 
 such circumstances the price of shirts went fifty or 
 one hundred per cent, higher than the increased cost 
 of labor or material or any other legitimate factor 
 would have sent it. And this is the amount that 
 strikes cost you on every shirt you bought. 
 
 Again change the word "suits" or "shirts" to 
 "overalls" and make the figures a little different 
 and you have the story of the extremely high price 
 to which overalls went. 
 
 In this case the lessened production, due to strikes, 
 was, according to Babson's figures, 19,133,800 pairs, 
 and the price of ordinary overalls which had been 
 87^ cents wholesale in 1913, and $1.87^ in 1919, 
 went to $3.i2>£ a pair by May, 1920. 
 
 There is a cotton goods house on lower Broadway 
 whose mills, in the Fall River district, were closed for 
 eighteen weeks during the spring of 1920 by a strike. 
 Of course, the workers lost millions of dollars in wages. 
 The firm itself lost other millions of dollars in various 
 ways. The officers of the firm rate as their biggest 
 loss the fact that their big body of skilled workmen, 
 which they had carefully built up over a long period 
 of years, and to whom they recognize that they owe a 
 large part of the success of their business, became so
 
 Strikes and High Cost of Clothing 23 
 
 inoculated with the strike mania that the continua- 
 tion of their employment became impossible. But 
 there is one loss from this strike which has a direct 
 bearing on the public. 
 
 This company has a large corps of salesmen which 
 they felt it necessary to keep together as an organiza- 
 tion. Each of these salesmen has a large body of 
 customers who regularly depended on this company 
 to supply them with certain classes of cotton goods. 
 To keep their salesmen working, their customers 
 supplied, and in general to suffer as little loss as 
 possible, the company went into the open market to 
 buy the kind of goods they usually produce. Because 
 of shortage they had to pay just two million dollars 
 more for these goods than it would have cost to 
 produce them, which two million dollars was, of course, 
 ultimately passed on to the public. 
 
 This case is in a general way typical of the round- 
 about and expensive ways that many concerns are 
 forced by strikes to resort to in order to supply the 
 public with the goods it wants. It is just one way 
 strikes pile up the high cost of living for you. There 
 are many other ways. And there were four thousand 
 strikes last year. 
 
 The strike on the Clyde, Mallory, and Old Domin- 
 ion lines which made people in New York and the 
 New England States pay one hundred per cent, more
 
 34 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 for all their fruit and vegetables also stopped, or 
 seriously interfered with, the transportation of the 
 unbleached or gray goods from Southern cotton mills. 
 
 The M. C. D. Borden Company normally handles 
 four million yards of such goods a week. During a 
 large part of the time this boat strike lasted, and 
 entirely due to the strike, the shortage in these goods 
 and the extra expense of getting what goods they did 
 obtain added about five cents a yard to the factory 
 cost. And there are one hundred other similar firms 
 handling the same kind of goods. 
 
 In making cotton goods, one mill will spin the 
 thread, another will weave it into cloth, another will 
 print it, etc. Such different mills are sometimes 
 under the control of one management and sometimes 
 separately controlled. But in either case a strike in 
 one mill seriously interferes with or stops production 
 of the others. If they are not to stop producing, these 
 other mills must go out in the open market and com- 
 pete against each other for the limited supply of the 
 particular product the striking mill usually produces. 
 Strikes in the spring of 1920 around Providence alone, 
 in this way advanced the mill cost of scores of millions 
 of yards of cotton goods one hundred per cent. 
 
 Cotton goods are finished up into hundreds of 
 different kinds of cloth, which are sold through 
 factors and jobbers and many different kinds of re-
 
 Strikes and High Cost of Clothing 25 
 
 tailers to the public, each of which adds a definite 
 percentage for handling and profit to the price they 
 pay. This means that the price the public pays is 
 not merely the one hundred per cent, more, but the 
 one hundred per cent, added to in geometric ratio. 
 
 In other words, a strike works like a stone thrown 
 into the water. If the stone is small the sixth or 
 seventh succeeding circle, which represents the price 
 to you, the ultimate consumer, is only so big. If the 
 stone is one hundred per cent, bigger each succeeding 
 circle may be only the same proportion greater than 
 the one before, but there is a tremendous difference 
 in the size of the sixth or seventh circle. 
 
 If you want to get a real idea of the high cost of 
 strikes to you try this experiment with such different 
 sized stones.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 STRIKES AND THE HIGH COST OF RENT 
 
 The average New Yorker is to-day paying $32 
 more rent every month on account of strikes or 
 threats of strikes. 
 
 Bricks, that used to cost $10 to $12 a thousand, 
 went up during the summer of 1920 to $44 a thousand. 
 
 Bricklayers used to lay from 1200 to 1500 bricks a 
 day for $5.60 a day. But during this same time they 
 were laying only from 600 to 800 bricks for $10 a day. 
 
 If it cost twice as much to lay half as many bricks, 
 it obviously cost four times as much to lay each brick. 
 And when each brick itself also cost four times as 
 much to buy, it is not hard to figure out one very 
 material item in the high cost of building and the 
 high cost of rent. 
 
 The reason why each brick cost four times as much 
 to buy and then four times as much to lay was at 
 least seventy-five per cent, because of the spirit of 
 strikes, the threat of strikes, and strikes themselves. 
 
 New York is surrounded by square miles of sand 
 and gravel. There are miles of mountains of sand 
 
 26
 
 Strikes and the High Cost of Rent 27 
 
 along the Southern outskirts of Chicago. Yet in 
 New York or Chicago this basic building material 
 went to four to five dollars a cubic yard — twice as 
 much as coal cost a few years ago. The only possible 
 reason was strikes. 
 
 A piece of limestone, which could be mined and 
 fully prepared for $1.70 in Indiana cost ten dollars 
 when erected in New York. The reason has been 
 judicially determined to be because of strikes and the 
 possibility of commanding the strike weapon. 
 
 The writer was in a position where he could watch 
 the erection, a few years ago, of the building at 190 
 West Fortieth Street. The ironwork went up twenty- 
 two stories at the rate of two stories a day. The 
 brickwork went up at the rate of more than a story 
 a day. 
 
 There was a much smaller building going up at the 
 corner of Madison Avenue and Fortieth Street in the 
 summer of 1920. Each piece of material in it cost 
 up to four times as much as that in the former build- 
 ing. Every laborer was getting at least twice as 
 much pay. But in spite of this the building went up 
 only half as fast. With this conspicuous and typical 
 example a child could figure out the reason for the 
 high cost of building and the cost of rent. 
 
 A New York City school house put up during this 
 same period is an exact duplicate of one put up before
 
 28 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 the war. This makes possible an exact comparison 
 of labor efficiency in 191 3 and 1920. Even on such a 
 building, for the education of their children, work 
 in 1920 was 33/^ per cent, less efficient. What was 
 it then on the ordinary job? Often at least fifty 
 per cent, less efficient, say almost all builders in all 
 fields. 
 
 Moreover, such conditions are in no sense caused 
 by special local conditions or limited to a few locali- 
 ties. They are nation wide. The following table 
 shows conditions in a small mid- western city: 
 
 Year 
 
 Wages per hour 
 
 Bricks laid per day 
 
 1909 
 
 $ -56 
 
 1,100 
 
 1916 
 
 .65 
 
 9OO 
 
 1918 
 
 •75 to .85 
 
 614 
 
 1919 
 
 1. 00 
 
 587 
 
 1920 
 
 125 
 
 541 
 
 In Minneapolis reliable contractors state that labor 
 in the building trades is doing only from one fifth to 
 one half a normal eight hours' work for an abnormally 
 large eight-hour pay. 
 
 In Cleveland a grand jury investigation reported: 
 
 "Second — We would be remiss in our duty did not 
 
 we point to a lamentable condition which no doubt 
 
 has injured the very group (labor) which created it 
 
 as much, if not more so, than the public generally.
 
 Strikes and the High Cost of Rent 29 
 
 "We refer to the present tendency upon the part 
 of mechanics, artisans, and laborers of all trades to 
 do less than a full day's work. 
 
 "The testimony adduced before us indicates con- 
 clusively that it requires approximately twice as long, 
 with the same number of men, to erect a house to- 
 day as it did in pre-war times. 
 
 "Impartial tests show that it takes twice as many 
 carpenter hours to do carpenter's work on a building 
 as it did five years ago. 
 
 "Bricklayers lay less than half the number of 
 bricks ; paperhangers, painters, and plasterers all do 
 less than half the work in the same time that they 
 did five years ago. 
 
 "Manufacturing firms which make and sell build- 
 ing materials prove by their records that while wages 
 have gone up two hundred per cent, in some instances, 
 labor cost has gone up four hundred per cent., indi- 
 cating that their employees are getting double pay for 
 one half the work, as compared with the period before 
 the war." 
 
 Yet any contractor or other capitalist who should 
 have dared to suggest to labor that, with material 
 twice as high or more and with labor getting twice as 
 much or more, labor itself ought to help bring down 
 the cost of building by doing at least as much as they 
 did when they got half as much pay, would un-
 
 30 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 doubtedly have had a strike on his hands within 
 an hour. 
 
 All this applies merely to the high cost of building* 
 on which construction progressed steadily even ii 
 slowly. On buildings affected by strikes, high costs 
 not only ran up much greater, but for a special and 
 pernicious reason, disproportionately greater. 
 
 As is well known, years ago the building field was 
 one in which strikes of the ordinary kind — between 
 the workers' union and the employers — flourished. 
 For a number of obvious reasons, however, the union 
 has a very distinct strategic advantage in such con- 
 troversies. In the first place, the employing side was 
 weakened because the employer represented only 
 one or a few building operations and was further 
 divided into contractor, architect, and owner, often 
 with different interests, while the union represented 
 all the workers of a given class in a locality. 
 
 Again, a building operation requires the work of 
 many classes of labor, one after the other — excava- 
 tors, steelworkers, masons, carpenters, plumbers, 
 etc., so that a strike of any one of these classes of 
 workers, though they represented but a small minor- 
 ity of the total workers, could hold up all building 
 operations. 
 
 As a result of these and other circumstances, 
 builders long ago found that it was cheaper in the
 
 Strikes and the High Cost of Rent 31 
 
 long run to yield to almost any demand, no matter 
 how unfair, from the unions rather than permit a 
 strike. Thus, although there has been for years far 
 less striking in the building trades over controversies 
 between employers and employees, the strike threat 
 has served to constantly increase the cost of building 
 far more than actual strikes have increased costs in 
 many other fields. In fact, the Senate Calder com- 
 mission shows that to-day at least one third is always 
 added to the estimated actual cost of any building 
 operation to provide against "contingencies" — 
 which consist chiefly of possible labor troubles. A 
 large New York contractor stated during the strike 
 mania period that he would not think of accepting a 
 contract at a fixed price without adding fifty per cent, 
 for such "contingencies." 
 
 Just what such "contingencies" may consist of is 
 often exceedingly problematical and involved, but 
 here is one very simple example : Some time ago the 
 steamfitters decided that it was below their dignity 
 to move radiators from the ground floor up to where 
 they had to be installed. They demanded, on threat 
 of a strike, that somebody else be hired to carry the 
 radiators. The employers yielded and hired extra 
 labor to do this. But the steamfitters soon found 
 that with this work done for them they could not 
 charge so much time to a given job. So they de-
 
 32 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 manded on threat of strike — and some of them did 
 strike — that they again be allowed to carry up their 
 own radiators! 
 
 As a result of such continually increasing demands, 
 not only for higher wages and shorter hours, but for 
 all sorts of special and expensive concessions, always 
 backed by the strike threat, costs of buildings have 
 gone up for a decade out of all proportion to normal 
 costs, and rents have continued to go up even faster, 
 both because of those costs themselves and because 
 of the way they have handicapped and decreased 
 building and so increased the competition for exist- 
 ing buildings. 
 
 But entirely in addition to this, cost of building 
 and, consequently, the cost of rents went up tremen- 
 dously after the war as a direct result of strikes of 
 two special kinds. These were : First, strikes in the 
 building field itself, ninety-five per cent, of which had 
 nothing to do with any controversy between em- 
 ployer and labor, but were the results of fights be- 
 tween unions; and second, strikes that interfered 
 with the production or transportation of building 
 material and raised its costs by raising its cost of 
 production or by causing a shortage which raised its 
 price through competition. 
 
 The first of these types of strikes — that because of 
 fights between union and union, generally for juris-
 
 Strikes and the High Cost of Rent 33 
 
 diction over some particular class of work — when the 
 question at issue is fought out to a conclusion and one 
 or the other union wins, has exactly the same effect 
 as any other strike in holding up the completion of the 
 building, increasing the interest charge before any 
 return can come from the building and often causing 
 serious depreciation of unused or partly used material. 
 
 The Chicago Tribune states that in Chicago alone 
 such jurisdictional disputes and strikes have caused 
 the shelving of $150,000,000 of proposed building 
 operations. In the country as a whole the figures 
 must obviously run into billions. 
 
 Jurisdiction fights between unions, however, are 
 more and more tending to result in compromises 
 which often do far more toward increasing costs of 
 building than the strikes themselves. A new type of 
 heating regulator, for example, is put on the market 
 and because of its superior qualities adopted in many 
 buildings. It consists of a meter connected by pipes 
 and valves to the furnace. Immediately the plum- 
 bers' union and the steamfitters' union each claims it 
 should be erected by their workers and each calls a 
 strike to keep the other out of work until the other 
 gives in. If, as has been said, the strike results in a 
 victory for either side, the owner of the building only 
 suffers the ordinary losses of an ordinary strike. 
 But if there is a compromise reached, this compro-
 
 34 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 mise is very frequently that the workers of each union 
 shall do a part of the job. This means that the work 
 which one or two men could easily and quickly do 
 by themselves must now be done by twice that num- 
 ber of men, each of whom has to wait for the others to 
 get through with their operation, with the almost 
 invariable result that the installation costs at least 
 twice as much or more than if one man or group of 
 men were allowed to go right through with it from 
 the beginning. 
 
 Four unions called strikes to see who should set 
 registers. Two unions now control this one job. 
 Plumbers and steamfitters must now work together 
 in connecting a boiler which either could connect 
 easily and much more quickly alone. 
 
 Nineteen strikes out of every twenty in the build- 
 ing trades all over the country during 191 9 were of 
 this kind and they constitute one of the biggest 
 reasons why only half as much work was done for 
 twice as much money and why the price of building 
 is going up so high that even the present high rents 
 are not enough inducement for the building of enough 
 new buildings to offer any hope of rents being re- 
 duced, at least for years to come. 
 
 The second element in the high cost of rent to-day 
 for which strikes are chiefly responsible, is in the high 
 cost of material.
 
 Strikes and the High Cost of Rent 35 
 
 Our steel capacity in 191 8 was 39,000,000 tons. 
 In 1919 the steel companies had orders for 44,000,000 
 tons which they were bending every effort to fill. 
 But the steel strike cut our actual production that 
 year to 37,000,000 tons. 
 
 Such a shortage as this, due to the steel strike, has 
 a far more serious effect on building operations and 
 the cost of building than the figures themselves in- 
 dicate. The great majority of our steel is bought by 
 big and consistent users of steel like the railroads or 
 the American Bridge Company, or other manufac- 
 turing plants. Such users are always in the market 
 and so in a specially favorable position to get as much, 
 or almost as much, steel as they require. When there 
 is a shortage, therefore, it means that the smaller or 
 occasional user of steel has to bear the chief brunt of 
 that shortage, which often means there is no steel at 
 all for him. The builder is such an occasional user of 
 steel. A shortage therefore of seven million tons in 
 the steel market does not merely mean that there is 
 twenty per cent, less steel for him, but means there 
 is no steel at all for him, or so little in proportion to 
 the demand that he has to pay exorbitant prices for it. 
 
 The third and final way in which strikes added to 
 the high cost of building was in holding up or stopping 
 the transportation of building material. 
 
 All freight traffic is divided into classes. Smaller,
 
 36 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 more valuable products and perishables which re- 
 quire careful and quick transportation are put under 
 the head of first-class freight, more is charged for 
 transporting them, and they are given a preferential 
 right of way. In the same way there are second, 
 third, and fourth class freights. 
 
 When, because of such a strike as that on the Clyde 
 and Mallory boat lines or for other causes, more 
 traffic has to be transported by a railroad than the 
 railroad can transport, shippers, who are extremely 
 anxious to get their freight through, and particularly 
 where the value of the commodity in proportion to 
 its weight will warrant it, invariably send it under 
 a higher classification. In this way the railroads 
 have their entire capacity demanded by first or 
 first and second class freights, so that third and 
 particularly fourth class freight cannot be handled 
 at all. 
 
 Fourth class freight obviously consists of coal, 
 lumber, stone, brick, sand, and other commodities 
 which have a very large bulk and weight in propor- 
 tion to their value. 
 
 Because coal is absolutely necessary special ar- 
 rangements are always made, even under conditions 
 of the severest congestion, to give coal preference, 
 but the balance of fourth class commodities under 
 such circumstances hardly move at all. It is also
 
 Strikes and the High Cost of Rent 37 
 
 obvious that most of this balance which cannot be 
 moved at all consists of building material. 
 
 This strike, then, on the boat lines congested the 
 Southern railroads, over which a large part of our 
 stone, lumber, and other building material is nor- 
 mally transported, so that all spring the rest of the 
 country got practically no building material from 
 this section. 
 
 The outlaw railroad strike, which began a little 
 later and which, although it did not tie up, handi- 
 capped the transportation of the whole country, 
 operated in exactly the same way to practically pre- 
 vent the transportation of building material from 
 any section of the country. 
 
 Moreover, as these strikes became more and more 
 seriously felt, and it became necessary for the rail- 
 roads to use every car with maximum efficiency just 
 to move coal and food and the absolute necessities of 
 industry, an embargo had to be put on building ma- 
 terial, which prevented its transportation at all, even 
 at higher rates. 
 
 This combination of strikes and threats of strikes 
 was the chief cause of the tremendous after-the-war 
 jump in the cost of building which affected every 
 part of the country. But strikes and threats of strikes 
 very much further exaggerated conditions in many 
 special localities through the grafting and blackmail 
 
 208138
 
 38 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 tribute which they made it possible for many labor 
 leaders to exact and add to increase still further the 
 cost of building. The Lockwood investigation has 
 shown that it was common practice in New York in 
 certain of the building trades for union officials to 
 allow labor to work only for contractors who would 
 pay the officials themselves an extra fifty per cent, of 
 what they paid the labor which these officials thus 
 allowed to work for them. In other cases union 
 officials would allow labor to work only for contrac- 
 tors who would make these officials a fifty per cent, 
 partner in their profits. In one conspicuous instance 
 the cost of graft and blackmail amounted to more 
 than the cost, even at present strike inflated prices, of 
 the building itself. 
 
 That conditions approximating these have existed 
 in other times and places has been proved again and 
 again by other investigations and there is no question 
 that they have been adding their full quota to the 
 high cost of building in many sections of the country 
 since the war. 
 
 It is equally true of course that after strikes, threats 
 of strikes, and embargoes due to strikes had forced 
 up the cost of building materials and building, that 
 entirely illegitimate conspiracies and combinations 
 were formed to keep prices up. But these were 
 aftermaths not causes. They have generally merely
 
 Strikes and the High Cost of Rent 39 
 
 perpetuated and exaggerated what strikes chiefly 
 created, and often the very basis of their existence 
 is the ability, through a partnership with labor 
 leaders, to get labor to work for them and strike 
 against their competitors. 
 
 Edward P. Doyle, secretary of the Mayor's housing 
 commission, after a thorough investigation into the 
 high cost of New York rents, says the chief reason is 
 "labor unrest, with unprofitable strikes." 
 
 "Capital can be procured," he said in 1920, "and 
 men will be found who, notwithstanding the un- 
 popularity of real estate ownership, are willing to 
 build houses because of their imminent need. 
 
 "At the present time, " he goes on, "houses cannot 
 be built in large units for less than twenty dollars a 
 room per month. To decently house any family, 
 however small, four rooms are absolutely necessary. 
 Eighty dollars is an uneconomic rent for a man re- 
 ceiving from $1500 to $3000 a year, and these are the 
 men who need additional housing facilities." 
 
 As typical of the whole situation, Commissioner 
 Doyle gives this specific example: The City and 
 Suburban Homes Company began "building on 
 cheap land, with a splendid organization, abundant 
 capital, and thoroughly capable supervision. The 
 original intention of the company was to rent rooms 
 for not more than $12 a month, but it finds it cannot
 
 40 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 rent the rooms just built for less than $72 to $87 a 
 month for four rooms," which means just $32 per 
 month more rent not only now, but for years to 
 come. 
 
 And this official authority added again: "The 
 situation is entirely up to labor."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE HIGH COST OF STRIKES TO LABOR 
 
 The families of over two hundred thousand work- 
 ers in Detroit had an unexpectedly gloomy 1919 
 Christmas because over two hundred thousand 
 workers suddenly lost most of several weeks' wages 
 throughout a strike of other workers hundreds of 
 miles away. 
 
 The two thousand mine laborers in the Illinois coal 
 fields who struck during July, 1920, forced 15,000 
 miners to stop work and lose their wages. 
 
 Probably a million New York laborers in scores of 
 fields lost a very considerable part of their wages for 
 weeks at about the same time because of street car 
 strikes in which a majority of the operatives were 
 forced on a strike against their own will. 
 
 Over 1,500,000 workers had their wages seriously 
 cut for nearly three months in the winter of 1919- 
 1920, because two thousand printers insisted on 
 striking in breach of their own contract and in de- 
 fiance of the orders of official leaders. 
 
 One thousand men on a strike in one place almost 
 
 4*
 
 4 2 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 invariably means many other workers — often 10,000, 
 20,000, 100,000 other workers — vitally and directly 
 affected, yet often in such utterly different fields and 
 often so many hundreds or thousands of miles away 
 that even the affected workers themselves have no 
 idea what it was that affected them. 
 
 Of the 3232 major strikes during 191 9 there was 
 probably not one that did not throw out of employ- 
 ment or otherwise reduce the wages of from two 
 times to seven hundred times as many other workers 
 as the strike itself directly involved. Yet it is doubt- 
 ful if any of these other workers ever stopped to 
 realize that the direct and only cause of their loss of 
 wages was the other strike. 
 
 In raising the cost of food and clothing and other 
 necessities — in deranging manufacturing and trans- 
 portation, and not only keeping industry from going 
 ahead but pulling it back, strikes and lessened pro- 
 duction raise general prices to the laboring man and 
 hurt him just as much as the rest of the public. 
 
 But beyond this in a peculiar way strikes hit more 
 closely home and much harder at the laboring class 
 itself than at any other class in American life. For a 
 strike that cuts off or limits for a time the production 
 of any commodity — coal or iron or cotton cloth or 
 transportation service — means that thousands and 
 often tens of thousands of other laborers who depend
 
 The High Cost of Strikes to Labor 43 
 
 on that product for their work are, through that 
 shortage of supply, not able to work, at least not able 
 to work regularly, and for that length of time lose a 
 part, if not all, of their wages. 
 
 The steel strike by raising the price of steel not 
 only raised the price of all steel products — knives and 
 sewing machines and every other steel product — to 
 the laboring public as well as to the rest of the public, 
 but the shortage of steel also shut down or partly 
 shut down hundreds of plants which couldn't get 
 steel to keep going. The stockholders in such plants 
 may have lost some of their dividends — but that is 
 only a part of the stockholders' income; managers 
 and office help may have lost some raises in pay they 
 otherwise expected — but their salaries went on just 
 the same; but to the laboring man such a shut-down, 
 or partial shut-down, due to the steel strike in which 
 he had no direct interest or voice, meant that he lost 
 all his pay for all the time he lost because of that 
 strike. 
 
 The first week of the coal strike two hundred 
 thousand workers in Detroit alone were idle — ninety 
 per cent, of all factory workers in Indianapolis 
 dropped to half time, 250,000 workers in Chicago had 
 their wages entirely cut off — and the same condition 
 prevailed in almost every part of the country. If, as 
 was claimed, every man, woman, and child of all
 
 44 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 classes in the United States lost ten dollars each 
 through this strike, it is probable that the loss in a 
 large part of the laboring families of the country 
 reached fifty dollars each. 
 
 At election time in 19 19, nearly three thousand 
 workers of the American Locomotive Company's 
 Schenectady plant had been for some time previously 
 out of employment. J. B. Bellingham, an employee 
 of the General Electric Company, president of one 
 of the labor unions in the electric field, and a recog- 
 nized labor leader, who was running for office on the 
 Socialist ticket, made a special appeal to these Ameri- 
 can Locomotive Company employees on the ground 
 of their unemployment, demanding again and again, 
 with oratorical emphasis, of them, of the capitalists, 
 and of the whole country why these capable work- 
 men, who were willing to work, whose families des- 
 perately needed their wages, should not have work. 
 
 The answer in this particular instance happened to 
 be particularly easy; the exceptionally high wages 
 which another specially powerful class of labor had 
 forced from the railroads, plus the constant strikes 
 of other classes of labor in the railroad field, had so 
 reduced both the railroads' income and the use to 
 which the railroads were able to put the equipment 
 they had, that they were at that time absolutely 
 unable to buy the extra locomotives, the manufac-
 
 The High Cost of Strikes to Labor 45 
 
 turing of which would have given employment to these 
 men. 
 
 Moreover it is not at all necessary that the strike 
 be in some big, conspicuously basic industry like coal 
 or steel to make a tremendous dent in the wages of 
 immense numbers of outside workers whom the 
 strikers themselves undoubtedly never considered in 
 the situation. 
 
 A street car strike, which in our large cities often 
 affects millions of people, making it difficult and often 
 impossible to get to and from their work at least for 
 more than a few hours a day, puts a particular burden 
 on labor because, while such a situation seldom 
 affects salaries, for every hour that labor loses, wages 
 completely stop. 
 
 Take the case of a strike of which the public out- 
 side of the little local area might never hear — a strike 
 among the cotton spinners in Lowell. Such a strike 
 by a comparatively few thousand primary producers 
 of cotton immediately involves a vastly greater 
 number of cotton weavers, cotton bleachers, cotton 
 print men, etc., so that many times as many workers 
 in the Lowell section alone as actually struck lose 
 their wages. 
 
 But this includes only the first of the outside effects 
 of such a strike. In New York, makers of all kind of 
 women's and children's undergarments, wrappers,
 
 4 6 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 dresses, aprons; in Troy, makers of collars and shirts; 
 in Utica, makers of sheets and pillow cases ; in Ips- 
 wich, Holyoke, and Rockford, makers of men's, 
 women's and children's hosiery — in short, tens of 
 thousands of workers all over the country also lose 
 time and wages because of the original strike whose 
 cause they did not know and whose outcome, of 
 success or failure, in no way benefits them. 
 
 No better example perhaps can be cited of how a 
 strike of a comparatively few men can have the most 
 far-reaching effects on the work and wages of a vast 
 number of other workers — no better illustration need 
 be given of how helpless such a great body of workers 
 is to prevent an entirely unjust and unnecessary 
 petty strike from seriously injuring them than the 
 case of the printers' strike in New York in the fall of 
 1919. 
 
 It is easy to see how a strike of printers could 
 injure their employers, how by holding up the publi- 
 cation of newspapers and magazines it could incon- 
 venience the public, including the labor public; but it 
 does not appear at first blush how a printers' strike 
 could throw any great bodies of outside labor out of 
 employment or even seriously affect their employ- 
 ment or wages. Yet it can and did. 
 
 In New York City there are a number of great 
 mail order houses who sell to eight or ten million
 
 The High Cost of Strikes to Labor 47 
 
 customers, scattered in all parts of the country, 
 hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of merchandise 
 every year. Every such sale must of course be soli- 
 cited entirely by large, elaborately printed catalogues. 
 They must be negotiated entirely by letter and 
 closed entirely through other printed matter. 
 
 But in addition to these regular mail order retailers 
 there are a great many other firms — manufacturers 
 who sell to retailers by mail, mail order jobbers, and 
 both manufacturers and jobbers whose salesmen sell 
 from catalogues instead of carrying samples — all of 
 whom depend for their sales on this kind of printed 
 matter. 
 
 In the fall of 19 19, right in the midst of the pre- 
 paratory season, when the millions of catalogues and 
 letters and circulars were being printed, which were 
 to offer these various lines of spring merchandise, a 
 few thousand New York printers stopped work. 
 They themselves did not dare call this a strike. 
 Many of the strikers had written contracts with their 
 employers, with months yet to run, guaranteeing 
 that they would not strike. Their national officials 
 decided that under the circumstances they had no 
 right to strike, and forbade them to strike. So these 
 few thousand men merely all together, at the same 
 time, went off on a vacation. 
 
 As a result of this wholly unwarranted action of
 
 4$ The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 about two thousand printers, millions of catalogues 
 were not printed or were printed months late. And, 
 to quote Mr. Roger Babson, who has made a special 
 statistical study of this situation, "the whole manu- 
 facturing programs of hundreds of these firms were 
 held up because they could not get out their cata- 
 logues. It is estimated that these firms employ 
 over 500,000 people, and indirectly give work to 
 1,000,000 others. Thus the strike of only a few 
 thousand men in one industry affected 1,500,000 in 
 another line of production. And remember, that 
 back of this 1,500,000 are still more men and women 
 whose work and earnings suffered." 
 
 One billion dollars would be a most conservative 
 figure at which to put the wages lost in 19 19 by work- 
 ers who did not strike because of strikes by other 
 workers. 
 
 This means that ten million workers in the whole 
 country, entirely in addition to all they suffered from 
 raises in prices due to strikes, also lost over one 
 hundred dollars each out of their own pay envelopes 
 because of strikes in which they had no voice or other 
 interest. Tens of thousands of these workers, of 
 course, lost much more than this. 
 
 But how many workers have ever seriously thought 
 of the strike question from this angle? How many » 
 to-day, when strikes have become one of our most
 
 The High Cost of Strikes to Labor 49 
 
 conspicuous national problems, are making any 
 attempt frankly and honestly to consider how many 
 of the strikes which caused these losses have been 
 worth what they cost to anybody ?
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 STRIKING AT THE NERVE CENTERS OF INDUSTRY 
 
 Coal cost $3.75 a ton at the mine in July, 1920. 
 This price included the cost and profit to the operator 
 and all labor costs of mining and cleaning and making 
 the product ready for the ultimate consumer. Yet 
 at exactly the same time coal cost seventeen dollars a 
 ton at Hampton Roads and twenty-two dollars a ton 
 in New England. The basic reason was strikes, but 
 strikes entirely outside of the coal field. 
 
 The basic cause of the high cost of building ma- 
 terial was as has been emphasized strikes — but 
 strikes entirely outside of the building field. 
 
 It was a strike, but not a strike by the growers 
 or jobbers or retailers of fruit and vegetables, which 
 forced every family in the North Atlantic section to 
 pay one hundred per cent, more for their fruit and 
 vegetables. 
 
 The 1,500,000 men whose time and wages were 
 reduced by the small printers' strike, the millions of 
 men that were put out of work by the coal strike and, 
 in general, by far the biggest losses and costs from 
 
 50
 
 Striking at Nerve Centers 51 
 
 strikes have been caused by strikes which occurred 
 entirely outside the industries most injured. 
 
 There are, because of the intricate interrelation of 
 the human body, certain vital nerve centers whose 
 smallest disruption may have an effect on the whole 
 human system out of all proportion to the area 
 seemingly affected. 
 
 A man familiar with anatomy can by jabbing a 
 needle into certain of these nerve centers, though he 
 leave a wound no bigger than a needle point, paralyze 
 some major function of the body. 
 
 Water, next to air, is the most plentiful and the 
 most necessary thing to human life in the whole 
 world. Yet to-day five million New Yorkers depend 
 for every drop of the water they use on a source 
 twenty miles outside of the city limits, which very 
 few of them have ever even seen. If anything should 
 happen to this source for a single day five million 
 New Yorkers could not wash. Within a week millions 
 of people would not be able to get anything to drink 
 and would have to give up their businesses and their 
 homes and move out of the city. 
 
 In the same way not only New Yorkers, but most 
 of the rest of our people, have to depend for the food 
 they eat to keep them alive, for the fuel they burn for 
 light and heat, for the clothes they wear and for 
 practically every other necessary of living on intricate
 
 52 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 and distant systems of production, transportation, 
 and distribution, most of which they never see and 
 scarcely know about and whose operation is in the 
 hands of other men they do not know and over whom 
 they have little more control than an ordinary cell 
 in the human body has over the intricate organiza- 
 tion of the human body that keeps it alive. 
 
 Thus just as in the human body so in our vast, 
 intricate industrial organization there are many vital 
 nerve centers whose smallest disruption may have an 
 effect on our whole economic system out of all propor- 
 tion to the area affected. 
 
 And the skilled labor leader to-day, intimately 
 familiar with our economic anatomy, has discovered 
 that he can, by striking at these nerve centers, 
 though the disruption may not itself appear on the 
 surface to be big or important, paralyze whole sec- 
 tions of our economic body. 
 
 The nation's coal supply is of course one of the two 
 most conspicuous of such nerve centers. 
 
 Considered in bulk, or in mine value, coal repre- 
 sents less than two per cent, of the total of American 
 commodity production. All the men engaged in coal 
 mining represent less than two per cent, of the total 
 of America's workers. Yet coal is out of all propor- 
 tion to these figures the most vital necessity in 
 America's industrial life.
 
 Striking at Nerve Centers 53 
 
 Seriously interrupt our supply of wheat or wool or 
 cotton or steel or any other single product, and you 
 may stop ten, twenty, or perhaps forty per cent, of all 
 industry. Seriously interrupt the supply of coal, and 
 ninety per cent, of industry, transportation, heat, 
 light, and almost as big a proportion of the food and 
 water supply of the whole country would be shut off. 
 
 In November, 1919, certain labor leaders stopped 
 this less than two per cent, of our production by the 
 strikes of this less than two per cent, of our workers 
 for a few weeks and threatened to stop it longer. 
 The actual non-production was perhaps not more 
 than fifty million dollars' worth of coal, but this mere 
 beginning of the strike, coupled with the threat of 
 continuing it, immediately threw millions of men out 
 of work and cost the country immediately hundreds 
 of millions of dollars. 
 
 If these labor leaders could have continued to stop 
 this mere two per cent, of our industrial production 
 they would have stopped America's total income. 
 If they could actually stop this mere two per cent, of 
 our production only long enough to exhaust our re- 
 serve supplies of coal, every man in the country but 
 the farmer would have been out of a job and every 
 city in the country would have been depopulated. 
 
 The railroads, though in a different way, are every 
 bit as vital as the coal supply, not only to the indus-
 
 54 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 trial but to the human life of the country. Actually 
 stop railroad operation for the few weeks necessary 
 to exhaust the limited food supply on the grocers' 
 shelves and in the warehouses, and every man, 
 woman, and child in every big city in the country 
 would have to board out or hire out on some farm 
 — and most of them would have to walk to get 
 there. 
 
 But strikes that attempt to tie up the whole coal 
 industry or the railroads are too much like conspicu- 
 ously holding a dagger at the nation's industrial 
 heart. They incite immediate resistance by the 
 whole country and though the country may suffer 
 severely in the struggle, as it did in the coal strike, 
 such a strike is too utterly audacious really to succeed. 
 
 If the coal strike may be likened to holding a dagger 
 at the nation's industrial heart, where the very con- 
 spicuousness of the strike aroused instant general 
 resistance, the outlaw railroad strike might be likened 
 to the sticking of fine needles into one after another 
 of the vital nerve centers along the spinal column and 
 quickly pulling each out again as soon as the act was 
 discovered. 
 
 The outlaw railroad strike represents the develop- 
 ment of a new strategy of strikes which, unless the 
 American people understand its method and its aim, 
 may make strikes of the future as much more expen-
 
 Striking at Nerve Centers 55 
 
 sive than present strikes, as present strikes have been 
 more costly than those of the past. 
 
 The basis of this strategy was its inconspicuous- 
 ness. It carefully avoided ever at any one time call- 
 ing out any great number of men. It did not want 
 the public to become aroused as it had been in the 
 coal strike. It did everything possible to keep from 
 the public any inkling of how vital and costly this 
 strike was planned to be. 
 
 Instead, it called out only small bodies of men at 
 a time — sometimes very small bodies of men — now 
 here, now there, but always exactly when and where 
 they could do the utmost damage. 
 
 If some special yard at some terminal point was 
 having a specially heavy run of traffic, right at the 
 height of it the locomotive firemen would be called 
 out. The engineers and conductors and switchmen 
 and brakemen would all be at their posts, so that 
 only a fifth of the men — perhaps not more than a few 
 dozen — would be on strike. But without the fire- 
 men, and particularly because none of the other men 
 would dare break union rules to substitute as fire- 
 men, the trains could not be operated and the whole 
 yard would become hopelessly congested. 
 
 But as soon as the particular strike, and the actual 
 results it was having, began to get the public's notice, 
 the men would go back to work and another specially
 
 56 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 busy freight yard at some distant, entirely different 
 point would be selected. Here, except that perhaps 
 the brakemen instead of the firemen would be called 
 out, the whole program would be exactly repeated. 
 
 This strategy of strikes of course did not keep 
 freight from coming through in large quantities. It 
 was not intended that it should. If freight had been 
 conspicuously held up at any one time this would 
 have aroused public opinion to the real state of 
 affairs and some definite solution might have been 
 found. 
 
 Instead this policy was cunningly calculated merely 
 persistently partially to paralyze traffic. For per- 
 sistently partially paralyzing traffic meant a per- 
 sistent partial starving of industry, which is far more 
 punishing and costly to industry and so to the whole 
 public than any sudden stopping of traffic could be. 
 
 That this is true is conspicuously evidenced by the 
 fact that while the production of coal was practically 
 stopped by the coal strike the price did not go up 
 more than a few dollars a ton, the persistent partial 
 starvation of the coal market over a period of several 
 months sent the price of coal that cost $3.75 a ton at 
 the mine to $22 a ton and up in New England. 
 
 There are two reasons why persistent partial 
 starvation is most punishing and costly. One is 
 economic and the other is psychological. Both these
 
 Striking at Nerve Centers 57 
 
 reasons must be clearly understood before the in- 
 sidious danger of this new type of strike strategy can 
 be really appreciated. 
 
 It is a well-known economic principle that short- 
 age invariably advances prices out of all proportion 
 to the actual amount of shortage. 
 
 The best authorities estimated that at no time 
 during the war was our production of normal neces- 
 saries curtailed more than twenty per cent. Yet 
 prices went up 107 per cent. 
 
 In 191 7 the flaxseed crop was only forty-five per 
 cent, less than the year before, but the price that 
 resulted from that shortage was one hundred per 
 cent, higher. 
 
 The four million suits of clothes by which strikes 
 lessened our supply of certain classes of clothes in 
 1 919 was less than thirty- three per cent, of our pro- 
 duction, yet it raised the prices of all such suits over 
 one hundred per cent. 
 
 As a part of its policy to keep prices as low as pos- 
 sible during the war the United States Steel Corpora- 
 tion consistently sold its entire output of nails at 
 prices under those of 19 14. Based on such prices 
 these nails should have retailed at about five dollars 
 a keg. As a matter of fact due to the general short- 
 age all nails went to about twelve dollars a keg retail. 
 
 But the persistent partial starvation of a market
 
 58 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 also adds a psychological factor that very much 
 exaggerates this normal price tendency to go up 
 disproportionately to the actual amount of the 
 shortage. 
 
 A man who is used to having plenty to eat may be 
 able to continue to live indefinitely even if his rations 
 are reduced to the actual point of subsistence. But if 
 in addition through this long period he is continually 
 threatened with having no food at all, it can be easily 
 understood how he would get into a state of nerves 
 where he would do almost anything or pay almost 
 anything to insure himself of really enough to eat 
 again even if only for a while. 
 
 During the coal strike manufacturers everywhere 
 faced the possibility of getting no coal at all. But it 
 was a problem they could all face together and fight 
 together. It was a definite condition, and there was 
 a definite enemy to fight. 
 
 During the outlaw railroad strike, however, they 
 knew that plenty of coal was being mined. William 
 B. Culver, of the Federal Trade Commission, had 
 publicly reported that "there is sufficient coal and 
 there are sufficient flat cars to handle our peak 
 production of coal." Yet because of this half star- 
 vation strategy of the outlaw railroad strikers they 
 were having coal just dribbled out to them. For 
 months they had had barely enough or not quite
 
 Striking at Nerve Centers 59 
 
 enough, and almost every day they had faced the 
 specter of having even the dribble cut off. 
 
 They realized that their having coal or not having 
 it depended on the whim of strike leaders, who were 
 utterly irresponsible and without scruple. Such a 
 condition was bound sooner or later to get on the 
 nerves of men that have to have coal to run their 
 business, till they became willing to pay almost any- 
 thing to be sure of having enough coal at least for a 
 while. 
 
 Of course somebody got vast profits out of this 
 difference between $3.75 and $17 to $22 a ton. Sub- 
 sequent investigations have made a big point of the 
 profiteering of groups of individuals who through 
 foresight, luck, or special influence got a-hold of coal 
 and resold it at these figures. But this does not 
 change the basic fact in the situation, namely: that 
 the semi-starvation strategy of the outlaw railroad 
 strikers forced industry into the position and frame 
 of mind where it was willing to pay such prices. 
 
 Exactly the same situation existed in regard to 
 most other goods and materials. Thousands of manu- 
 facturers never knew from day to day whether or 
 not to-morrow they would have enough raw ma- 
 terial to keep their plants going. Thousands of them 
 had their warehouses packed to overflowing with a 
 balance of goods they could not deliver and on which,
 
 60 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 therefore they could not collect the money which they 
 needed to run their business. Such men, too, inevi- 
 tably sooner or later reached a state of nerves where 
 they would pay almost anything to get such raw 
 material as was available and pay express or any 
 other rate to ship their goods — all of which added to 
 costs and prices at every turn. 
 
 Chamber of Commerce officials and other conser- 
 vative men familiar with the results all speak of the 
 cost of the outlaw railroad strike in terms of billions 
 of dollars — far more than the coal strike cost. 
 
 The public is used to big, conspicuous strikes, like 
 the clothing or the coal or the steel strikes, where 
 hundreds of thousands of men openly quit their work 
 and the issue and consequences are conspicuous. 
 Public opinion is generally able to understand and 
 judge and deal with such a strike. 
 
 But in a strike where seldom more than a few 
 thousand men are on strike at a time, and they are 
 scattered — where who the strikers are and what the 
 issues are, are almost unknown, and because of that 
 fact purposely muddled, how can public opinion be 
 aroused or organized? 
 
 Yet the present and increasing complexities of 
 modern industrial life offer wide opportunities for 
 such insidious ' ' gas attacks ' ' and labor leaders will 
 undoubtedly become more and more skillful in the
 
 Striking at Nerve Centers 61 
 
 technique of making them more and more costly 
 to the public. The obvious defense is not to wait 
 for such attacks but to put out of action in advance 
 the weapon through which they are made.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 STRIKES AND INEFFICIENT DISTRIBUTION 
 OF LABOR 
 
 One of the most conspicuous facts about the labor 
 situation after the war was the practical impossibility 
 of getting labor for many ordinary purposes. Subur- 
 banites were unable to get their lawns cut; they 
 couldn't get their coal delivered when it was needed. 
 Plumbing and electric lights went unfixed for days 
 and weeks because plumbers and electricians couldn't 
 get enough help to handle their work. Storekeepers 
 couldn't get clerks or deliverymen to take care of 
 their business. Apartments were poorly heated, 
 ashes accumulated in the basements and dirt col- 
 lected in the hallways because owners couldn't get 
 help. And a hundred and one jobs that used to be 
 done regularly and as a matter of course were not 
 done because the labor was not to be had. 
 
 Yet at the same time in these same cities the 
 clothing trade was employing thirty-five per cent, 
 more men than it had ever required to do the same 
 work before, which unnecessary and expensive extra 
 
 62
 
 Inefficient Distribution of Labor 63 
 
 labor had been added to and was maintained in the 
 industry through strikes and threats of strikes. 
 
 In certain departments of our railroads there were 
 at this same time 250,000 more men on the pay rolls 
 than it had ever taken to do the same work before, 
 whom the railroads could not then send back to 
 fields where they were really needed because of the 
 threat of strikes which would have been even more 
 expensive than continuing to pay wages to this un- 
 necessary labor. And in exactly the same way many 
 other industries also were burdened with far more 
 men than they needed whom they also could not send 
 back into other fields where they were needed because 
 of the fear of strikes which would have been even 
 more expensive than the carrying of this extra burden 
 on the pay roll. 
 
 Farmers all through the country were, during this 
 period, in crying need of labor in the harvest field, 
 yet tens of thousands of men who used to take care 
 of the nation's crops were at the same time in the 
 same States getting twenty dollars per week for two 
 days' work in the coal mines, not only keeping a 
 reasonable number of miners from working regularly, 
 but tremendously and needlessly cutting down the 
 nation's food supply and adding to the price of both 
 food and coal. This is one of the results of the coal 
 strike.
 
 64 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 America lost some six million immigrants who 
 would normally have come to swell our labor ranks, 
 because of the war. During the war we made up a 
 large part of this lack not only through more efficient 
 machinery and through greater individual efficiency 
 but particularly through cooperative efficiency in 
 the handling and distribution of labor. We could 
 in the same way have made up a large part of labor's 
 numerical deficiency after the war, but as a matter 
 of fact we tremendously exaggerated it both by in- 
 dividual inefficiency and by a tremendous inefficiency 
 in the distribution of labor. Not only have strikes 
 been chiefly to blame for this, but the perpetuation 
 of this inefficient distribution of labor was one of the 
 chief aims and reasons for many of the biggest strikes 
 which followed the war. 
 
 During the whole war, but particularly after 
 America entered the war, there was a tremendous 
 extra demand for labor in many special fields — par- 
 ticularly to mine coal, to make munitions, special 
 machines, uniforms, and such war equipment. In 
 order to get quickly the labor required to meet the 
 emergency demand in these special industries unpre- 
 cedented wages were offered. 
 
 We all remember how, attracted by these wages, 
 tens of thousands of porters, clerks, barbers, farm 
 hands, and all kinds of labor from every kind of mis-
 
 Inefficient Distribution of Labor 63 
 
 cellaneous occupations and from many of the less 
 essential industries flocked to the munition plants 
 and into other "war" industries. 
 
 It is, of course, natural that when the war ended 
 this extra labor wanted to stay in these same indus- 
 tries at the same high wages. Moreover, a great 
 proportion of these men had at once joined the unions 
 in their new trades. To-day in the country as a whole 
 twice as many workers are organized as in 191 6. In 
 the clothing trade the unions have six times as many 
 members as they had before the war, and in many 
 of the great special war industries the proportion is 
 nearly as great. This new labor not only joined the 
 unions, but began at once to take a very active part 
 in union affairs. In fact there is no doubt that a 
 great deal of the radicalism that is now permeating 
 our supposedly more conservative unions is due to the 
 influx and influence of this new and heretofore non- 
 descript labor. 
 
 Not only, therefore, did these tremendous groups 
 of new war workers want to stay in their new indus- 
 tries instead of going back to their old work, but the 
 unions which they had joined and in which they 
 became such an influencing factor did not want them 
 to go back, because it would mean loss of membership 
 and so of income from dues and of power to the unions. 
 
 Moreover, union officers were quick to see not only 
 s
 
 66 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 that they could maintain the strength of their unions, 
 but that they could increase their own hold on their 
 unions in proportion as they made it a personal and 
 union policy to keep these men in their attractive 
 new jobs. 
 
 The war was over in November, 191 8. In Decem- 
 ber, 19 1 8, the first of the great after-the-war strikes 
 occurred among the employees of the General Elec- 
 tric Company. The one and only real reason why the 
 strike was called was to forestall the action union 
 leaders feared the General Electric Company might 
 take of reducing its working force to its pre-war 
 strength of old and able employees by releasing its 
 half-trained special war workers to their former 
 occupations. 
 
 The leaders of this strike emphasized frankly and 
 openly that the paramount thing they were striking 
 for was a forty-four instead of a forty-eight-hour 
 week, in order that all union members might be con- 
 tinued in their present jobs. As a matter of fact 
 certain of the strike leaders at Schenectady openly 
 emphasized this point to the extent of insisting that 
 every union member should, if it became necessary, 
 work only half time — of course at a sufficient rate of 
 income to maintain his same scale of living all the 
 time — in order that every union "brother" might 
 be continued in employment.
 
 Inefficient Distribution of Labor 67 
 
 This frankness, however — this open insistence that 
 the main object of the strike was to keep more men in 
 a given amount of work than that work would legiti- 
 mately support — was undoubtedly one of the chief 
 reasons why the strike failed. For the older skilled 
 workers, who had served their apprenticeship in the 
 trade and had been five, ten, or fifteen years in their 
 present jobs, could naturally not see the equity in 
 being asked to sacrifice their pay and perhaps even 
 their own jobs by striking solely in order that half- 
 skilled men, who had already enjoyed a year or two 
 of pay out of all proportion to their efficiency and 
 training, should be artificially maintained in these 
 special privileges instead of going back to the work 
 where they were needed and belonged. 
 
 This strike was lost. The principle that a union 
 merely for its own advantage, or rather that union 
 officials for their own advantage, should be allowed to 
 insist that production efficiency in their field should 
 arbitrarily be lowered and the cost of production be 
 arbitrarily increased by forcing the employment of 
 three men to do the work that two men could easily 
 and normally do was repudiated chiefly by the older 
 and more skilled workers themselves. It is interest- 
 ing to note, however, that in spite of the defeat of 
 this strike and of the inefficient, expensive principle 
 that this strike was undertaken to enforce — un-
 
 68 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 doubtedly because they were defeated and the past 
 efficiency and economy of production maintained — 
 the increased demand for electrical equipment and 
 the entrance of the General Electric Company into 
 certain new fields actually kept employed practically 
 all this special war labor at or at better than war 
 wages. 
 
 In other words this experience has shown by one 
 more conspicuous example the fact that labor to-day 
 will get far better results by seeking its own interest 
 and advancement through the advancement of in- 
 dustry and the country, than by trying to force its 
 advancement by fighting for special class privileges 
 against, or irrespective of, the advancement and 
 interest of the rest of the country. 
 
 Just before the war ended the clothing workers 
 struck for a forty-four-hour week and a new system 
 which otherwise lessened production per worker 
 which would and did so cut production that thirty- 
 five per cent, more men could be kept at work and 
 in the union. 
 
 In this case, however, as has previously been em- 
 phasized, the strikers were in a particularly favorable 
 situation in that the demobilization of four million 
 soldiers meant at least for the next year a very large 
 increase in the demand for clothing, and so for their 
 labor. They, therefore, not only insisted upon a
 
 Inefficient Distribution of Labor 69 
 
 thirty-five per cent, reduction of efficiency per worker 
 in order that thirty-five per cent, extra workers could 
 be maintained permanently in the industry, but upon 
 the additional demand that the wages of all, includ- 
 ing the thirty-five per cent, of extra workers, should 
 be practically doubled. 
 
 The clothing workers won their strike. But where- 
 as in the case of the electrical employees, where the 
 fight for the principle of reduced efficiency per worker 
 was lost and the old standards of efficiency main- 
 tained, the progress and prosperity of the industry 
 actually resulted in keeping the full war quota of 
 labor employed at better than war wages, in the 
 clothing industry not merely the extra thirty-five 
 per cent, but over fifty per cent, of the whole industry 
 was within six months out of a job and earning noth- 
 ing. Moreover, by making them officially clothing 
 workers the strike and the union worked to keep them 
 for months idle and agitating instead of going back 
 to work at their old jobs where they were needed. 
 
 In the coal strike, the question of reducing hours 
 so that extra war workers, who were not needed in 
 the coal industry under normal conditions but were 
 vitally needed in other industries, should be artifi- 
 cially kept in the coal industry, was one of the two 
 most prominent and undoubtedly the one most vital 
 question at issue.
 
 70 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 Fuel Administrator Garfield has definitely declared 
 — and all other unbiased students of the coal in- 
 dustry seem to agree with him — that the chief basis 
 of labor trouble in the coal industry was the fact 
 that there are far more men in it than the industry 
 needs. ' 
 
 The United States Senate reports show that for 
 the year before the coal strike the average miner 
 received about $1600 for about two hundred days, 
 work. During this period it was shown, however, 
 that because of the number of miners and because 
 wages were such that the average miner could main- 
 tain his scale of living on much less than full time, it 
 was the custom in the industry — and this custom was 
 maintained even during the war period, when the 
 demand for coal was greatest — to work less, often 
 much less, than full time in order that there might be 
 plenty of work for all the extra men in the industry. 
 It was also shown by this same Senate report that the 
 miner who worked all the time he could instead of 
 
 1 The coal strike and the steel strike were planned at about the 
 same time. Both were strongly backed by the American Federation 
 of Labor. The chief aim of the coal strike was to keep about 100,- 
 000 more workers in the coal industry — and so in the unions — than 
 the industry could possibly use under normal working conditions. 
 Hence the demand for forty-eight hour pay for a thirty-hour week. 
 The steel strike aimed chiefly at such a reduction of hours as would 
 bring about 100,000 more men into the steel industry — and so into 
 the proposed steel unions — than the steel industry had ever used 
 before.
 
 Inefficient Distribution of Labor 7 1 
 
 part time earned from $2400 to $3200 a year on the 
 wage scale before the strike. 
 
 There were personal ambitions and factional poli- 
 tics back of the coal strike, as will be shown later, 
 but to its main aims all leaders agreed. These were 
 that in order that all the men in the industry could 
 be kept in the industry, and in the unions, and not 
 be forced back into the other industries where they 
 were needed, wages should be raised to a point where 
 the average miner could maintain a full American 
 scale of living by working three or four days a week. 
 And in order to make this doubly sure, it was further 
 demanded that the maximum week's work should be 
 officially recognized as thirty hours, which is equal 
 to exactly three and three fourths eight-hour days a 
 week. The miners' leaders won only a partial victory, 
 but this extravagantly inefficient condition still 
 persists of a far greater number of men than the in- 
 dustry needs, each working part time. Thus not only 
 does the average coal buyer pay two men's wages 
 instead of one man's wages on every ton of coal he 
 buys, but there is a correspondingly lower production 
 and higher price due to labor shortage in each other 
 industry — particularly farming — from which these 
 men came but to which they have not gone back. 
 
 But this persistent determination of the unions to 
 keep as many men as possible in the industries they
 
 12 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 dominate, or want to dominate, and so in the union 
 to help in this domination, not only obviously adds 
 immensely to the cost of living, but it is part of a 
 secret, sinister policy, to be discussed later, which will 
 in the long run, if it succeeds, be far more costly yet 
 to the whole American people.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 STRIKES AND THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 
 
 Strikes made potatoes cost four dollars more — 
 suits thirty dollars more — rent thirty-two dollars 
 more, and specifically raised the prices of hundreds 
 of other necessities of all kinds. 
 
 But such individual and special facts are only the 
 high lights of the whole picture — they represent only 
 a few of the more direct and obvious costs of strikes 
 to you. To get any idea of the whole cost of strikes 
 we must examine the background of the strike pic- 
 ture — get at the basic general facts of the strike 
 problem. 
 
 In 1919, 3232 strikes were officially reported. Of 
 these the United States Department of Labor ana- 
 lyzed 2395 and found that in only this sixty per 
 cent, of all strikes 3,95041 1 strikers lost an average 
 of thirty-four days per strike, which means a loss of 
 134,300,000 working days. 
 
 Another analysis of only part of last year's strikes 
 shows 57,885 days of striking by an average of 1640 
 workers to each strike, or a loss of about one hun- 
 
 73
 
 74 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 dred million working days. Still another analysis 
 shows 143,850,000 days of labor lost. 
 
 Not one of these investigations includes the hours 
 lost by all labor and the days lost by part of labor 
 while the strike was being fomented and agitated 
 before it began, or the time lost after the men began 
 to come back. Not one of them includes more than 
 sixty per cent, of all the strikes of which we have 
 record. There was, therefore, far more than 134,300- 
 000 working days actually lost by the strikers alone. 
 
 But practically every one of these more than 
 3,950,000 workers, who themselves lost more than 
 134,300,000 working days, caused other workers to 
 lose time and wages — in many instances two and 
 three and five and ten times as many other workers — 
 in one instance seven hundred times as many other 
 workers, as the number who actually struck. 
 
 We know then, even though we haven't the exact 
 figures, that industry and the country lost in 191 9 
 alone, directly or indirectly through strikes, literally 
 hundreds of millions — perhaps altogether five hun- 
 dred million working days. 
 
 Counting only the 134,300,000 working days lost, 
 that means, at an average of six dollars a day, 
 $805,800,000 wages lost. 
 
 The total wages lost to labor directly and indirectly 
 due to one year's strikes — and, because they were not
 
 Strikes and the High Cost of Living 75 
 
 earned and not spent by labor, lost to the business 
 of the whole country — totals billions of dollars. 
 
 But these are only the first items in the high cost 
 of strikes. 
 
 In the shoe industry in 191 9 a dollar's worth of 
 labor applied through tools and machinery to the raw 
 material produced over seven dollars' worth of finished 
 product. A dollar in the men's clothing industry 
 produced three dollars in finished product. A dollar 
 in the furniture industry produced five dollars' worth 
 of finished product. A dollar in the cotton industry 
 produced nearly eight dollars' worth of product. In 
 the coal industry the rate was three to one, and while 
 in many industries it was much higher, in few indus- 
 tries is it lower than this. 
 
 If, then, we figure that for each dollar in wages 
 lost only three dollars was lost in production, this 
 means that the days of labor lost by only the actual 
 strikers in about sixty per cent, of one year's strikes 
 cut that year's production, at factory prices, about 
 two billion five hundred million dollars. 
 
 If we try to count up the total of how much less 
 production the whole country had to sell and make a 
 profit on and enjoy, because of all the time lost in one 
 year, directly and indirectly, through all strikes, the 
 figures would be unbelievable. 
 
 In fact, it has been said that the total cost of
 
 7° The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 strikes in 19 19 was greater than the total cost of the 
 war in 191 8. This is undoubtedly a conservative 
 estimate. 
 
 In 1918, at the end of the war, the price level was 
 207 * — 107 points higher than in 191 3. 
 
 At the end of the Civil War the price level was 190 
 — 102 points higher than when the war began; and 
 the high prices were accompanied by high profits and 
 high wages, just as in our own war. 
 
 But whereas, by 1867, the second year after the 
 Civil War, prices had gone down thirty-nine points, 
 within eighteen months after the World War prices, 
 as we all know too well, had gone sixty-five points 
 still further up. 
 
 The primary and basic and biggest reason was 
 strikes. 
 
 When the Civil War ended, our whole people, 
 inspired by the incentive of the big profits and high 
 wages, went unanimously and whole-heartedly to 
 work. The result was that they started, and for 
 years enjoyed the greatest era of big production and 
 of falling prices, coupled with continuing high profits 
 and high wages, that this or any other country has 
 ever before or since enjoyed. 
 
 1 Distinction must be made between general commodity prices, 
 here referred to, and the prices of special commodities of universally 
 consumed necessities, whose prices go to make up what is generally 
 referred to as the cost of living (see table, p. 2).
 
 Strikes and the High Cost of Living 77 
 
 At the end of the World War on the other hand, 
 there seemed to be an increasing tendency on the part 
 of more and more of our producing classes not to 
 utilize the remarkable opportunity of high wages and 
 big profits to produce more, but rather to take ad- 
 vantage of high wages and big profits to work less and 
 produce less. 
 
 Free traders and Single Taxers, believers in laissez 
 faire or in socialism, or in any of the hundred and 
 one other schools of political philosophy, may dis- 
 agree about every other economic law, but all of 
 them, from Adam Smith to the near economist of the 
 soap box and the Bolsheviki, agree that wealth, 
 whether in gold or in potatoes, or in anything else, 
 comes primarily from the application of labor to 
 resources, and that the price of all wealth, whether in 
 gold or in potatoes or anything else, is in proportion 
 to the amount of it produced. 
 
 To-day, therefore, as in the period beginning in 
 1865 — through war and reconstruction as at any 
 other time — in spite of any number of new and com- 
 plicating circumstances, this fact is true and basic: 
 that we will have more things, and things therefore 
 will be cheap, in direct proportion as more labor is 
 applied to our resources, or we will have less things, 
 and things will be high, in proportion as we apply 
 less labor to our resources.
 
 78 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 As a matter of fact, this basic economic principle 
 has perhaps never been more clearly proved out in 
 actual practice than under the exceptional conditions 
 during the Civil War and after, and during and after 
 our war. 
 
 At the beginning of the Civil War plenty of goods 
 were being made to go round, and prices were moder- 
 ate — 88 — as compared with ioo in 191 3 and 103 in 
 1840. But during the war great numbers of men 
 went into the army. Other great numbers had to 
 make powder and shells and special war supplies. 
 All this labor stopped being applied to the production 
 of normal commodities ; less normal commodities were 
 produced, and the prices went up. 
 
 Of course there was profiteering and speculation 
 and inflation during the Civil War. Undoubtedly 
 there was relatively more profiteering and more 
 speculation and certainly a greater inflation during 
 the Civil War than there was during our war. But 
 profiteering and speculation as reasons for high prices 
 of normal commodities are always only the little 
 children of the real basic cause — lessened production 
 of ordinary commodities because less labor is applied 
 to producing them. 
 
 For it is perfectly plain that any would-be profiteer 
 would have a mighty slim chance to get illegitimately 
 high prices when there is plenty of the article he sells
 
 Strikes and the High Cost of Living 79 
 
 being produced and the buyer can get it anywhere 
 else as well as from him. Profiteering thrives only 
 on shortage. The profiteer has always been merely 
 the flea on the back of lessened production. 
 
 Exactly the same thing is true of speculation. The 
 speculator knows the basic economic law that when 
 plenty of goods are being produced the price is bound 
 to come down. He would not think of attempting to 
 hold or "corner" goods for higher prices except where 
 there is a decreasing production to help him along. 
 When there is an increasing production the wise specu- 
 lator always "goes short " and so helps prices down. 
 
 As for inflation, the term merely means that we 
 have more money than we have consumable products. 
 and therefore we have to pay more money to buy 
 consumable products. But it is simple as A B C that 
 the very fact that we have more money means in itself 
 that we have relatively less consumable products and 
 that the one economic way to equalize the relation 
 between money and consumable products is to in- 
 crease production. : 
 
 1 " There is no cure, in my judgment, for this increased cost of liv- 
 ing except increased production." — JudgeGary before United States 
 Senate Committee. 
 
 " The war has created a tremendous void in materials and com- 
 modities of all kinds and prices are high by reason of this scarcity. The 
 law of supply and demand is as inexorable as any law of nature, and 
 prices can only become lower when the world's storehouse has again 
 reached its normal level." — Committee of Cleveland Business Men.
 
 80 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 At the end of the Civil War we had a lot of new 
 factories and new railroads. Men had learned to 
 work more efficiently because they had to during the 
 nation's need. When the men came back from the 
 army and from making war supplies and applied their 
 labor once more to the producing of normal com- 
 modities the country began at once to have more 
 normal commodities which went to equalize the 
 previously unequal relation between commodities and 
 money — to offset the "inflation" — with the result 
 that prices went down thirty-nine points within two 
 years. Also with the incentive of high wages and 
 big profits Americans worked harder, and with the 
 advantage of the new special equipment the war had 
 given them they produced more efficiently, and this 
 harder work and more efficient production not only 
 helped to reduce still further prices — or "inflation," 
 but left an extra margin for profits and wages, as it 
 always does, so that wages and profits did not go 
 down with the price. 
 
 The fundamental fact in regard to high war prices 
 and as to whether, after the war, these prices shall 
 continue for a time to go up or shall at once come 
 down is simply this: When war takes a certain 
 proportion of labor away from the production of 
 normal commodities, less normal commodities are 
 produced and prices go up. When the war is over
 
 Strikes and the High Cost of Living 81 
 
 and labor goes back to the production of normal com- 
 modities more of them are produced and prices come 
 down — if labor does go back to producing. 
 
 In the beginning of the World War, a tremendous 
 proportion of men in Europe and a certain proportion 
 of men in America stopped applying their labor to 
 the production of normal commodities to go into war 
 work, so that there were less of our normal commodi- 
 ties produced, and prices immediately began to go 
 up. When America went into the war, four million 
 more men were taken away by the army, and other 
 millions by the production of special war material, 
 from the production of normal commodities, and 
 prices went up proportionately more rapidly until 
 they reach 207 — over twice what they had been be- 
 fore this labor had been taken from producing normal 
 commodities. 
 
 When men came back from the army after the 
 World War they had the same incentive of high 
 wages and high profit that existed after the Civil War. 
 They found an almost miraculous increase of equip- 
 ment, of new factories and new machinery and better 
 methods which could be used to produce more goods 
 in proportion to the labor applied, so that prices 
 could have come down and still left a big margin to 
 keep wages and profits up, just as actually happened 
 after the Civil War. 
 
 6
 
 82 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 At the end of the World War our railroads had 
 unquestionably gone down in efficiency, but there 
 was ample equipment and ample labor available 
 after the war to bring the railroads promptly up to 
 the standards of the rest of American industry. 
 
 We also did not have in 191 8 any great new West 
 to develop, but we have a very prosperous and pro- 
 gressive, instead of a wasted and impoverished, 
 South. We also still have far more natural resources 
 than we have either the labor or transportation fa- 
 cilities to develop, and we now have a merchant 
 marine that makes the resources of the whole 
 world more available than were those of the West 
 in 1865. 
 
 At the end of our war America had the economic 
 leadership of the world within her grasp. Our own 
 stores of all kinds of normal commodities were de- 
 pleted and the whole American people with its war 
 profits and high wages were ready to buy and pay for 
 billions of dollars' worth more of these necessities. 
 The reserve stocks of the nations of Europe and Asia 
 and South America had also been so diminished or 
 wiped out during the war that all were eager to buy 
 billions of dollars' worth of products which America 
 alone right after the war could furnish. From being 
 $3,000,000,000 in debt to Europe we had $10,000,- 
 000,000 of Europe's capital to add to our own im-
 
 Strikes and the High Cost of Living 83 
 
 mense increase of capital with which to finance the 
 production and sale of these commodities. 
 
 All this demand for more products, all this capital, 
 all these new factories and machinery, ready or easily 
 made ready, to turn out these products waited merely 
 the return of labor from the war and from war 
 industries. 
 
 Labor came back from the war and war industries, 
 but instead of applying itself with the new energy and 
 skill we had learned during the war to the new equip- 
 ment we had gained during the war to produce the 
 vast new quantities of goods which we and the whole 
 world expected, just a part of labor immediately 
 wasted 134,000,000 work days on strikes and forced 
 other labor to waste hundreds of millions more work 
 days because of strikes. 
 
 Look at the high cost of strikes from this point of 
 view. The war made it necessary to take the labor 
 of some six million men away from being applied 
 to the production of normal commodities. This 
 resulted in such a reduction in the amount of normal 
 commodities produced that prices went up one hun- 
 dred points — fifty points a year. Then these six 
 million men supposedly went back to the production 
 of normal commodities, but in the first year after the 
 war, because of strikes or labor inefficiency — which, 
 because of what we know about the efficiency of 

 
 *4 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 American labor can only be laid to the spirit of strikes 
 — they so failed to produce the goods the country 
 needed that prices went up sixty points still higher, 
 or more than they had in any year during the war. 
 
 In other words, the rise in prices during the war 
 and the still further rise in prices after the war were 
 due primarily to exactly the same causes — the fact 
 that tremendous bodies of men were not applying 
 their labor to the production of normal commodities. 
 There is just this difference in the situation. Im- 
 mense numbers of men could not apply their labor to 
 normal production during the war because their 
 country needed them. Immense numbers of men 
 would not apply their labor to normal production 
 after the war because they prefer, or were forced by 
 their leaders, to agitate and strike.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 WHAT ARE STRIKES GAINING TO OFFSET THESE LOSSES ? 
 
 Mr. Samuel Gompers, for forty years president 
 of the American Federation of Labor, is undoubtedly 
 in a position to defend strikes in general and in 
 particular with as much knowledge and ability as 
 can be used for their defense. In his famous debate 
 with Governor Allen of Kansas, as labor's chosen 
 advocate on this subject, he rested his whole defense 
 of strikes, first, on the inherent right of a free man to 
 work or not to work at his own pleasure and, second, 
 on what strikes in the past had accomplished in doing 
 away with child and woman labor and in raising the 
 standards of living of all labor. 
 
 Of these two grounds on which Mr. Gompers 
 defended strikes, the first is a very popular argument 
 with labor leaders to-day. They are continually 
 talking about the fundamental right of any free 
 American citizen to work or not to work at his own 
 volition. They constantly decry loudly as industrial 
 slavery the very idea that any man should go to work 
 or stop work at the mere volition of some other man. 
 
 85
 
 86 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 Yet iooo B. R. T. workers reversed the vote of 
 2000 men not to strike and by that reversal and by 
 threats and intimidation made 1 1,000 other men stop 
 working against their volition. All through early 
 September, 1920, the streets of Brooklyn witnessed 
 frequent riots, during which over 900 people were 
 injured, because the strikers tried physically to pre- 
 vent men from working who wanted to work. In 
 the steel strike a number of men were killed, scores 
 were maimed, and thousands intimidated by the 
 strikers in order to prevent men who wanted to work 
 from working. It is the commonest knowledge that 
 there are few strikes called in which a large propor- 
 tion — often a large majority of the strikers are not 
 forced to quit work against their will. There is sel- 
 dom a strike called in which police protection is not 
 required for those men who are brave enough not to 
 stop work merely at the strikers' volition. 
 
 For the modern labor leader therefore to attempt 
 to defend recent strikes, with their tremendous cost 
 to the public and to labor as a whole on a principle 
 which he himself has absolutely repudiated in the 
 very calling of a large part of these strikes, is the most 
 brazen hypocrisy. 
 
 But even in principle, the theory which seeks to 
 justify strikes on any inherent right of any man to 
 work or not to work at his own volition is absolutely
 
 What are Strikes Gaining 87 
 
 unsound. For a strike is never merely the exercise 
 of such a right, but is always from its very nature, a 
 conspiracy among many men to stop work together 
 in order to injure someone else — and in an increasing 
 number of cases in order to injure the public. 
 
 This whole argument is, in fact, exactly parallel to 
 another well-known argument of our past economic 
 history which labor itself helped to explode. It 
 used continually to be argued by certain classes of 
 capitalists that any man has a right to sell any pro- 
 perty that is his at any price he can get for it. But 
 when any man conspires with other men to fix or 
 regulate values so they can force others to pay their 
 price, labor agrees with the rest of the country that 
 this puts the case in an entirely different category. 
 
 It is not only unsound but dangerous for labor to 
 rest its own case on this kind of logic. 
 
 The answer to Mr. Gompers's second argument— 
 the extent to which strikes have and have not been 
 responsible in the past for labor's economic and social 
 advancement is emphasized in a succeeding chapter. 
 
 But any theorizing about the right to strike, any 
 discussion of the good or bad effects of strikes under 
 other conditions in the past, is of course merely 
 academic. 
 
 We had during the period under discussion millions 
 of men, not discussing the theories of strikes but
 
 88 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 striking. What did these strikes aim at? During 
 this period when labor was on top and labor leaders 
 in control as never before, there were three times as 
 many strikes and probably ten times as many men 
 striking as in any similar period in our history. 
 What have been the results of these strikes? 
 
 We know very definitely that this unprecedented 
 number of strikes has piled up a total of days of labor 
 wasted that runs into the hundreds of millions and 
 has never before been approached except in modern 
 Russia or in times of war panic. 
 
 We know that the loss of production from these 
 days of labor wasted, caused a shortage that added 
 tremendously to the cost of living for all of us. 
 
 We know that the only possible justification for 
 any part of this loss — the only way the public could 
 possibly be compensated for any part of it — de- 
 pends on the extent to which it might have been 
 necessary in raising the standards of American 
 workers to make them better fellow-citizens and 
 more efficient producers in the future. 
 
 Were these strikes during this period when the 
 labor leader was in particular power and the present 
 special type of big labor organization in control, a 
 necessary special effort to raise the average workers' 
 living standards which needed raising sufficiently to 
 warrant the cost? What have they succeeded in
 
 What are Strikes Gaining 89 
 
 accomplishing at this price ? Have these strikes had 
 any other aims that have made or may ultimately 
 make them a paying, or even partially paying, invest- 
 ment to the public? If the public interest has been 
 ignored and the cost has been assessed against the 
 public to advance a mere class interest, has the class 
 itself — labor in general — received any return or any 
 prospect of return commensurate with the whole cost 
 or even the cost to itself? 
 
 The debate on strikes between Mr. Gompers and 
 Governor Allen took place in the period when organ- 
 ized labor was at the peak of its power and conducting 
 this greatest, most spectacular strike campaign in 
 industrial history. Yet Mr. Gompers made no 
 reference to this campaign — to its aims or its results. 
 
 In spite of the tremendous obvious costs and losses 
 which stand so conspicuously on the debit side of the 
 balance sheet, no other leader of the great labor 
 organizations which conducted this campaign has 
 offered any definite specific statement as to either 
 aims or results. 
 
 Labor has of course assumed to assign the motives 
 and aims of each individual strike in its statement of 
 the cause of this strike. There were, on this basis, 
 according to the Department of Labor reports, 
 twenty-three reasons or combinations of reasons for 
 which strikes were called in 1919. These reasons,
 
 90 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 however, were invariably stated in the most gen- 
 eral terms, such as "more wages" — "recognition of 
 union" — "better working conditions," etc. 
 
 Such terms of course mean entirely different 
 things in different cases. "Increase in wages" may 
 in one case mean a moderate and entirely justifiable 
 demand, and in another case, such as that of the 
 California fishermen, a hold-up for five hundred 
 per cent, increase merely because the workers or 
 their leaders think they have their employers in 
 a hole. 
 
 A demand for shorter working hours may be 
 entirely legitimate, or it may, as in the case of the 
 Bituminous Coal Miners' Union, represent an encour- 
 agement of shiftlessness in order that an illegitimate 
 number of men may be kept working and so paying 
 dues into the union. 
 
 It is of course true of strikes, as of other facts 
 involving human nature, that motives and aims are 
 seldom single and unmixed. The reasons officially 
 assigned for strikes do not give, and seldom even hint 
 at, indirect motives and aims which are frequently far 
 the most important. It is of course obvious that in 
 graft and blackmail strikes, whatever aim is officially 
 assigned has little to do with the real aim and is gener- 
 ally as far away from it as possible. The more we 
 go into the strike question the more obvious it be-
 
 What are Strikes Gaining 91 
 
 comes that the same thing is true of many classes 
 of strikes. ' 
 
 It is even more impossible to get any adequate 
 idea of the results of strikes from official reports of 
 results which are almost invariably stated in terms of 
 "won," "lost," or "compromised," and at most in 
 terms of the resulting wage raises, hour reductions, 
 etc. Such statements of results being merely in 
 terms of the officially stated aims of the strike make 
 no reference to the strike's success or failure as re- 
 gards its secondary or indirect, or as is often the case, 
 its very different real aims. 
 
 Moreover, it was conspicuously obvious that after- 
 the-war unrest, the shortage of labor, dissatisfaction 
 with the high cost of living, the openly admitted 
 ambitions of organized labor, radicalism's "boring 
 from within" policy, were all important factors which 
 ran through the whole after- the- war strike situation. 
 Also both organized labor, which is largely centrally 
 controlled, and radicalism, have admitted general 
 strike policies of which individual strikes have been 
 largely mere expressions. 
 
 It is obvious, therefore, that it is not only impos- 
 
 1 As a matter of law unless a strike is for the purpose of improv- 
 ing wages, hours, or other working conditions, it is liable to be judged 
 a criminal conspiracy just as a conspiracy by anybody else to do 
 injury is criminal. Labor leaders who know the law therefore would 
 always be careful in assigning such a reason for any strike.
 
 92 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 sible to get any adequate conceptions of the motives 
 and results of after-the-war strikes from any study 
 of the statistics of individual strikes but from the very 
 nature of the case, it is necessary to study the dif- 
 ferent manifestations of this strike epidemic in the 
 large in order to get any real answer to the question 
 which labor itself has so conspicuously refused to 
 answer, in regard to their aims, motives, and results.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 OUTLAW STRIKES — MANIA STRIKES — GRAFT STRIKES 
 
 Of the 3,950,000 workers who went on strike in 
 1919, 1,053,256 struck for reasons which labor officials 
 themselves refused to recognize and otherwise con- 
 demned as unwarranted. * 
 
 On August 30, 1920, the front pages of all the news- 
 papers contained an announcement that 175,000 hard- 
 coal miners had sent a three-day ultimatum to 
 President Wilson, threatening a strike in defiance of 
 their own officers, who did not believe such a strike 
 was warranted. 
 
 On the same front pages of the same papers was 
 another announcement of the actual tying up of the 
 principal transportation systems of Brooklyn that 
 was insisted on and perpetrated against the orders 
 and threats of the union's own officials, who said a 
 strike was not warranted and would be defeated. 
 
 The printers' strike in New York, which cut the 
 wages of one million five hundred thousand other 
 men, was condemned by the printers' own interna- 
 tional union as entirely unwarranted. 
 
 1 U. S. Dept. of Labor Review, vol. x, No. 6, pages 199 to 207. 
 
 93
 
 94 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 The whole series of railroad strikes in the spring of 
 1920, which cost the public more than the coal strike 
 itself, were popularly known as "outlaw strikes," 
 because they were condemned as unjustified and 
 combated as much by the officials of labor as by the 
 employers themselves. 
 
 All through July and August, 1920, soft -coal miners, 
 principally in Illinois and Indiana, but more or less 
 all through the country, struck in direct violation of 
 the agreement that ended the big coal strike of last 
 winter. 
 
 The majority of their own officers said these 
 strikes were wrong and unjustified. The leaders of 
 the dock workers who struck in August hastened to 
 tell the public the men were wrong and shouldn't 
 have struck. In fact, a conspicuous proportion of the 
 strikes that came to public attention during August 
 seemed to have been condemned by a large part and 
 often by a majority of labor itself as being without 
 adequate justification. And the October, 19 19, 
 strikes, of which a special record happens to have 
 been kept, is even worse, for here out of seventy 
 strikes only eight were officially sanctioned even by 
 labor itself as being justified. 
 
 The first conspicuous fact then, in regard to "what 
 these strikes gained to offset their tremendous cost," 
 js that twenty-five per cent, of all these strikes,
 
 Outlaw, Mania, and Graft Strikes 95 
 
 involving over one million workers were admitted 
 by labor leaders not to have achieved, in most cases 
 not even to have aimed at, any result that could 
 warrant their cost. 
 
 On August 27, 1920, three thousand five hundred 
 American longshoremen went on strike and refused 
 to load American vessels — even vessels carrying 
 provisions to American troops on the Rhine — because 
 the English government had arrested an Irish po- 
 litical criminal. 
 
 On August 1st, all the printers in Manila went on 
 strike because of one political editorial in one news- 
 paper in favor of American government in the 
 Philippines. 
 
 On July 2 1 st, nearly a hundred thousand Irishmen 
 went on strike because an American court sent 
 Larkin, an American citizen, to jail for a crime 
 committed in America. 
 
 During August over a dozen groups of workmen 
 went on strike because of the war between Russia 
 and Poland — part of them because they were afraid 
 the government might help or encourage one or the 
 other of these foreign combatants, part because they 
 were afraid their government might not help or 
 encourage one or the other of these foreign combat- 
 ants. 
 
 In August a group of American marine workers
 
 96 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 went on strike because an English official would not 
 let an Australian Archbishop go to Ireland. Another 
 group of dock workers, seamen, and cooks struck 
 because this same Archbishop was allowed to get on 
 a boat to try to get to Ireland. 
 
 On August 31st, when five women appeared on 
 certain New York docks waving green flags and 
 haranguing the workers to strike till the British 
 government should release the Lord Mayor of Cork 
 from prison, three thousand men of all races, most 
 of them supposed to be American citizens, stopped 
 loading boats — chiefly American boats. No man in 
 his sane mind, if he stopped to think about it, could 
 believe that such an act could change the course of 
 English law any more than Henry Ford's slogan, 
 "getting the boys out of the trenches before Christ- 
 mas," could stop the World War. And in any event 
 why American shipping should be penalized, Ameri- 
 can beef cargoes be allowed to spoil, and the American 
 people be forced by American workmen into paying 
 the cost of a strike in such a cause, are equally beyond 
 the average man's imagination. 
 
 Of course, most of these workers saw the incon- 
 gruity of such a situation in a few days, and went 
 back to work, and the strike cost only perhaps fifty 
 thousand dollars — a mere bagatelle as we count costs 
 to-day. But the point is, there were during this
 
 Outlaw, Mania, and Graft Strikes 97 
 
 period literally hundreds of strikes equally footless 
 and resultless — for Ireland or Russia or Poland or 
 Philippine independence or because this or that or 
 the other man, generally a criminal, was or was not 
 treated this, that, or the other way — whose sum total 
 added a tremendous item to the cost of living and 
 which altogether constitute a second great class of 
 strikes that neither aimed at or resulted in any real 
 benefit to anybody. 
 
 One of the most serious clothing strikes in Chicago 
 in 1 919 was called because the manufacturers refused 
 to pay a huge blackmail to certain union officials for 
 not calling the strikes. 
 
 A few years as a labor leader made Brindel, the 
 former drug clerk, a "millionaire." 
 
 In the summer of 1920, the Chicago newspapers 
 announced the retirement of a notorious local labor 
 leader who had begun life as an ordinary workman, 
 but who, in twenty years as a labor politican had 
 acquired, in addition to his other wealth, real estate 
 with an assessed value of over a million dollars. 
 
 The case of the notorious "Umbrella Mike," boss 
 of an electrical workers' union, who testified that he 
 had saved $350,000 out of a salary of $50 a week in 
 six years is well known. This phenomenal ability to 
 save money did not, however, keep the jury from 
 sending him to jail.
 
 98 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 Everybody on the inside has long known that 
 because many classes of labor have always seemed 
 willing to follow their leaders and strike for only the 
 flimsiest of reasons, a large number of petty strikes 
 have always been called because bribes are not paid, 
 or not enough bribes are paid, to prevent such strikes. 
 
 But the strike epidemic which followed the war, 
 and which seemed to innoculate almost all labor with 
 this willingness to strike for the flimsiest of reasons, 
 together with the immense increases in wages and 
 prices which created an unparalleled margin for graft, 
 unquestionably multiplied this use of strikes as 
 weapons of graft and blackmail, extended this use 
 of strikes into many new trades and industries and 
 advanced such operations from the petty scale of 
 former days to a scale on which the sum total of 
 expensiveness ran very high. 
 
 Moreover, the Lockwood investigation has con- 
 spicuously demonstrated that after- the-war extortion, 
 graft, and blackmail strikes were not only on a far 
 larger, wider scale but it has given us a new idea of 
 the multifarious ways in which the strike can be 
 used as a weapon of blackmail, all of which are ex- 
 pensive to the public. Brindel, the chief union labor 
 pirate in this particular investigation, sold the privi- 
 lege of working as a skilled, high paid union laborer 
 to any barber or bootblack or other itinerant work-
 
 Outlaw, Mania, and Graft Strikes 99 
 
 man for twenty-five dollars and forced the employer 
 to keep such men at work irrespective of the way they 
 botched or slowed-up the job, on threat of strike. 
 He collected ten dollars apiece from union members 
 for the privilege of working, and then charged wages 
 and a half to employers — of which he pocketed the 
 half — for the privilege of having these men work for 
 them. 
 
 Through his ability, because of the willingness 
 of the union members to follow him blindly, to say 
 that any given piece of construction could or could 
 not be done, he frequently demanded a "fifty-fifty" 
 division with contractors on the whole profits of a 
 job. 
 
 With the inside workings of this one case thus 
 open before us, scores of other labor situations, not 
 only in this but in other industries of which we could 
 only suspect the causes because of the results, become 
 obvious. 
 
 Moreover, the fact that Brindel, in spite of what 
 was already publicly shown, not only as to his black- 
 mailing and grafting from the public but as to his 
 blackmailing and grafting from labor itself, was not, 
 as part of labor demanded, at once expelled from the 
 American Federation of Labor, is in itself eloquent 
 as to how widespread and deep-rooted such methods 
 must be throughout organized labor in general, that
 
 ioo The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 organized labor either chooses to, or must, thus 
 publicly countenance such a flagrant case. ' 
 
 It is impossible to say with any certainty how big 
 a proportion of after-the-war strikes, mania strikes, 
 and graft strikes constitute, for it is obvious that in 
 assigning official reasons for such strikes the reason 
 assigned was seldom the true one. But if outlaw 
 strikes — which were in general radically led strikes 
 in open rebellion against the official labor leaders — 
 contributed over twenty-five per cent, of all strikes, 
 it is certainly reasonable to believe, both from obser- 
 vation and the nature of the case, that mania or 
 graft strikes constituted an equal proportion of all 
 strikes. This means that roughly some fifty per cent, 
 of all after-the-war strikes must at once be written 
 off as strikes which neither gained anything for any- 
 body or seriously attempted to gain anything for 
 anybody — except perhaps for certain professional 
 labor leaders — to offset their tremendous cost. 
 
 Moreover modern organized labor and its official 
 leaders must take full responsibility for such strikes 
 even if they have not themselves specifically sanc- 
 tioned the particular strike, and even where such 
 
 1 Since this was written it appears that even as a convicted grafter 
 on both labor and the public, Brindel was not only not expelled from 
 organized labor but that he has not even been removed from leader- 
 ship. Nor does official organized labor seem anything but resentful 
 of the fact that he has now to exercise that leadership from Sing Sing.
 
 Outlaw, Mania, and Graft Strikes 101 
 
 strikes are called by insubordinate minorities against 
 their own leadership and were therefore specifically 
 "outlawed" by them. For all such strikes merely 
 respresent the logical results of their own constant 
 glorification — for their own purposes — of strikes and 
 the unrestricted use of the strikes weapon. All such 
 strikes are the blood offspring — whether legitimate or 
 not — of their own theories come home to roost.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 STRIKES FOR HIGHER PAY AND SHORTER HOURS 
 
 Of all strikes in 19 19, according to United States 
 Labor Department reports, 30.7 per cent, had as 
 their assigned reason the demand for higher wages — 
 
 3.2 per cent, the demand for shorter hours — and 
 
 7.3 per cent, the demand for higher wages and shorter 
 hours. See footnotes pages 91 and 93. 
 
 While these figures show a marked falling off in 
 the proportion of strikes for these causes, neverthe- 
 less, because they are still the most important single 
 group of reasons assigned for calling strikes, and 
 particularly because of the sentimental and social 
 issues they involve, this class of strikes deserves very 
 special consideration. 
 
 Labor has always preached and demanded higher 
 wages and shorter hours on the humanitarian and 
 social grounds of giving the worker means and leisure 
 for greater physical and mental development for 
 himself and his family. There is no question that 
 sufficient money and leisure for self -improvement, 
 for better living conditions, and for education, if so
 
 Higher Pay and Shorter Hours 103 
 
 used, tend not only to make more efficient workers 
 but also better Americans and so to raise both the 
 industrial and social standards of the whole country 
 in which we must all of us work and live. They there- 
 fore represent ideals that appeal, and should appeal, 
 strongly to American public opinion. 
 
 But both labor and the public have often failed to 
 distinguish between one possible way of achieving 
 an ideal and the ideal itself. 
 
 The ideal of physical improvement for instance, 
 is actually acquired chiefly in gymnasiums, bowling 
 alleys, baseball fields, tennis courts, children's play 
 grounds. 
 
 Better living conditions can become practical 
 realities only through better houses, bathtubs, elec- 
 tric lights, bigger yards, and gardens. Mental im- 
 provement requires schools, reading rooms, study 
 classes. 
 
 Mere higher wages and mere shorter hours are 
 often prone, as we have seen plainly in the last two 
 years, to lead to reckless over-spending and idleness 
 and discontent, in other words to the very opposite 
 of self-improvement and better living conditions, 
 unless the material basis for better living conditions 
 and self-improvement is also worked out and made 
 available. 
 
 It is notorious that the homes and communities
 
 104 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 adjacent to factories and in which the workers live, 
 when left to develop in the ordinary way, have been 
 conspicuously lacking in this necessary material 
 equipment for the practical realization of these ideals 
 which labor so consistently preaches. 
 
 The American Federation of Labor and its subsid- 
 iaries have collected hundreds of millions of dollars 
 from the workers. Yet as far as is known it has 
 never reinvested one cent, of these hundreds of mil- 
 lions of dollars of the workers' own money in any of 
 the physical equipment that is absolutely necessary 
 to realize its own theories as to the workers' self 
 improvement. 
 
 An employer, on the other hand, as long ago as 
 the eighties, built to order, entirely for his workers' 
 benefit the town of Pullman, Illinois, which for a 
 generation was a model of superior living conditions 
 famous throughout the world. An employer built the 
 city of Gary, Indiana, and worked out and paid for, 
 for its workers and their families, the Gary system 
 of education which has been copied by hundreds of 
 communities including New York City. A group of 
 employers have more recently created in Georgia, a 
 community which offers their workers living condi- 
 tions and opportunities and encouragement for self- 
 improvement that include every practical ideal 
 which the world's most advanced sociologists could
 
 Higher Pay and Shorter Hours 105 
 
 suggest. The United States Steel Corporation has 
 built entirely with its own money for the free use of 
 its workers and their families 45 schools, 19 clubs, 
 131 playgrounds, 96 athletic fields, 107 tennis courts, 
 and has spent for these and other practical contribu- 
 tions to the employees' self -improvement a total 
 of $80,000,000. And these are merely striking ex- 
 amples of the necessary material contributions that 
 thousands of employers have made at a cost that has 
 run into hundreds of millions of dollars for the prac- 
 tical realization of exactly the same ideals which labor 
 leaders claim to be fighting for in their fight for higher 
 wages and shorter hours. 
 
 Again labor and the public have often overlooked 
 another vital fact in the whole situation, namely, 
 that while it is very easy to stand for and preach 
 higher wages and shorter hours or any other ideal, it 
 is often an entirely different matter to think out and 
 work out the necessary practical ways and means of 
 achieving that ideal. 
 
 Lenine and Trotsky preached wonderfully about the 
 ideal of freeing and raising 150,000,000 down-trodden 
 people — but overlooked the practical question of ways 
 and means. 
 
 American industry has already gone far in con- 
 tributing to labor's social and material advancement 
 through paying good wages for a moderate working
 
 106 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 day. Labor itself has done very much toward 
 getting these higher wages and shorter hours by 
 preaching and fighting for them. But no adequate 
 interpretation of labor's past progress — no theory or 
 opinion as to future progress towards higher wages or 
 shorter hours is valuable unless it includes a clear 
 understanding that past progress has depended and 
 future progress must depend, not only on having 
 this ideal but on thinking out and working out 
 practical ways and means for making this ideal pos- 
 sible of realization. 
 
 In 1900 a few thousand automobiles were sold at 
 an average price of $3000. In 19 16 the average 
 automobile cost $500, and 2,000,000 were sold. Take 
 safety pins or typewriters, soaps or sewing machines, 
 electric lights or cotton goods, phonographs or any 
 of the thousand and one other products on whose 
 combined production the great bulk of American 
 industry is built, and the same principle holds true, 
 namely, that development has come about chiefly in 
 proportion as a constantly increasing efficiency of 
 quantity production has encouraged a constantly 
 increasing volume of sales by making possible a 
 constantly decreasing selling price — or at least 
 relative selling price. 
 
 If the frequent wage increases which have been 
 granted in the past had had to mean a corresponding
 
 Higher Pay and Shorter Hours 107 
 
 permanent addition to production costs, and so to 
 selling price — if past decreases in hours of work had 
 had to mean a corresponding decrease in production, 
 they would have worked against and handicapped 
 the whole progress of industry. But this has not 
 been the case. On the contrary, permanent increases 
 in wages and decrease in working hours have come 
 chiefly because ways and means have been thought 
 out and worked out — generally in the form of im- 
 provements in machinery, materials or methods — for 
 creating a permanent extra margin of production out 
 of which it was possible to pay these extra wages and 
 make up for these shorter working hours. 
 
 Where such a margin of profit exists or can be 
 created, or conditions can be otherwise brought about 
 to pay higher wages or permit shorter hours, strikes 
 for higher wages and shorter hours can be judged 
 solely on the basis of the reasonableness and justice 
 of the demand itself. But it is equally true that 
 where conditions are such, that no such margin exists 
 or seems possible of being created, or where otherwise 
 ways and means cannot be found for meeting de- 
 mands for higher wages and shorter hours, or for 
 meeting them without seriously retarding the whole 
 industry, strikes to enforce such demands cannot be 
 judged merely on the abstract justice of the demands 
 themselves.
 
 108 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 During the war and for the first year and a half 
 after the war, conditions were such that almost any 
 manufacturer could easily sell all that he could make 
 at any price he wanted to ask. This coupled with 
 the great shortage of labor, made it often at least 
 temporarily profitable for employers to pay any wage 
 that was demanded. As a matter of fact — as will be 
 emphasized in Chapter XII, this very willingness of 
 employers in many industries during this period to 
 meet almost any demands for higher wages and 
 shorter hours, irrespective of their effect on the future 
 of the industry, was one of the chief causes of the 
 disorganization, unemployment and wage reductions 
 in these same industries a year later. 
 
 That wages were actually already so high, and 
 working hours so reduced, during the great strike 
 period after the war that they had in general ceased 
 to be a real or at least a legitimate reason for strikes 
 is the commonest knowledge. 
 
 This does not of course mean that labor leaders did 
 not continue to talk higher wages to their followers 
 and to make use of many ingenious devices to try to 
 argue the need of higher wages to the public. ' 
 
 1 Mr. Samuel Gompers in attempting to answer the argument of 
 the present volume asserts that the after-the-war strikes were ne- 
 cessary to keep wages from being out-distanced by the cost of living. 
 He advances no figures or facts to back his mere assertion and ig- 
 nores the figures stated herein.
 
 Higher Pay and Shorter Hours 109 
 
 For instance, in spite of the hundred thousand extra 
 men in the industry which kept the average miner 
 from working more than part time, the average wage 
 actually received by all coal miners including the 
 poorest paid assistants was $1633 a year. With this 
 fact a matter of public record, through the Senate 
 Investigation, it obviously called for much ingenuity 
 on the part of union leaders at the time of the 19 19 
 coal strike to argue convincingly the need of a sixty 
 per cent, raise. One of the subterfuges they resorted 
 to, to thus make plausible such a demand, was to 
 borrow a certain economist's figures showing that it 
 required $2200 to maintain adequately a family of 
 five in New York City — where minimum rent was $45 
 instead of $7 a month as in the coal mine districts, 
 and where many other costs differed in proportion — 
 and carefully concealing the fact that this estimate 
 was made only on a basis of New York City prices, 
 attempt to make the public believe that a prominent 
 economist had estimated that it required $2200 for a 
 coal miner to maintain his family in a decent scale of 
 living. Many other very limited studies as to wage 
 conditions and wage raises were similarly seized on 
 and entirely misused by applying them to conditions 
 to which they did not at all apply. 
 
 All such juggling of statistics also attempted fur- 
 ther to deceive the public by comparing estimated
 
 no The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 cost of supporting a family with the income of only 
 one member of a family whereas it is a matter of 
 government record for the whole country that there 
 are 1.82 wage earners per family. l In other words in 
 eighty-two per cent, or over four fifths of all families 
 a father or unmarried brother or sister or grown son 
 or daughter also contributes to the family income. 
 
 Moreover, many labor leaders are still trying to 
 excuse their part in the strike epidemic and in its 
 results by insisting, on the basis of many such limited 
 studies, that the public was all along entirely wrong 
 about labor's high wages during the war and after- 
 ward, that on the contrary, because of the increased 
 cost of living, labor's wages were actually much lower 
 than before the war, and that their strikes were 
 simply to make labor's wages keep pace with the 
 advanced cost of living. 
 
 The ridiculousness of any such general contention 
 can fortunately, however, be definitely shown. The 
 United States Industrial Census which appeared two 
 years before the war gave the total number employed 
 and total wages paid in a big proportion of all Amer- 
 ican Industries for the year 1910. By dividing the 
 total number employed into the total of wages paid 
 we find that the average wage paid in all American 
 
 1 U. S. Census, vol. iv., pp. 30-31, shows 1.907 wage earners per 
 industrial family.
 
 Higher Pay and Shorter Hours i 1 i 
 
 industry was about $560 for that year — which figure 
 was widely quoted and accepted at that time. 
 
 In 1912, Dr. Frank H. Straightoff of Columbia 
 University gathered and analyzed all available 
 figures as to average wages. His figures included the 
 average earnings of 19,688,000 out of a total of 26,- 
 000,000 adult males in the whole country. He shows 
 that of these 19,688,000 male workers, 64.8 per cent, 
 received less than $600 annual wage and 27 per cent, 
 between $600 and $1000 annual wage. If we esti- 
 mate the average wage of the 27 per cent, who received 
 between $600 and $1000 as $900 a year, which is ob- 
 viously high, and place the average wage of the 64.8 
 per cent, who received less than $600 a year at $550, 
 which is obviously fair, we find that the average 
 wage of some 19,000,000 men workers in 19 12 was 
 about $650 a year. 
 
 A study by the United States Commission of Labor 
 of 55 industrial occupations at about the same time, 
 shows that in 11 occupations studied, no workers 
 received as much as $800 a year, and that in the 
 whole 55 occupations studied, the average annual 
 earning was only slightly above $600. 
 
 Again we know from an investigation made by the 
 New York State Bureau of Municipal Information 
 that the wage of all ordinary labor averaged less than 
 $2 a day, or under $600 a full year, in fifteen leading
 
 ii2 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 New York cities even in October, 191 5. And we 
 know from "Greater New York" statistics that the 
 average of all industrial wages in New York City was 
 $653.12 per year in 19 14. 
 
 In other words no special statistics which apply 
 only in special cases, and often only express part of 
 the facts in those cases, can controvert the general 
 facts that throughout the country the average 
 worker's wage before the war was only very slightly 
 above $600 a year — that between 1 9 1 3 and 1 9 1 9, prices 
 in general went up about 107 per cent, and most of the 
 necessities on which the actual cost of living is based 
 had only gone up 60 to 80 per cent. * that, therefore, 
 average wages would have had to go up to a little 
 over $1000 a year to keep pace with the cost of living. 
 As a matter of fact, however, in the steel industry 
 the lowest paid group of workers were by 19 19 
 receiving over $1400 a year. In the coal industry the 
 average worker was receiving $1633 a year for work- 
 ing about two thirds of the time; and in a hundred 
 and one other industries the wage of common labor 
 had gone to $6 a day — three times what it was before 
 the war. The dock workers of the Clyde, Mallory, 
 and Old Dominion Lines — negroes in the South and 
 foreigners in the North — were getting $35 a week — 
 three times what the average worker throughout the 
 
 'See table page 2.
 
 Higher Pay and Shorter Hours 113 
 
 country got before the war and they struck, ai the 
 tremendous cost to the public already emphasized, 
 for $44 for a 44-hour week or over four times what 
 the average American worker received before the war. 
 
 In short the labor leaders' frequent claims to the 
 public that the great after-the-war strike epidemic 
 was necessary to bring general wages up to a level 
 with the increased cost of living are the sheerest 
 hypocrisy. 
 
 That all such arguments to the public in regard to 
 wages were mere hypocrisy is further borne out by the 
 fact that these same leaders had already at that time 
 begun in their own circles to advance the argument — 
 and two prominent labor leaders have even advanced 
 it in public print — that they, the labor leaders, were 
 put on the necessity of beginning to advocate govern- 
 ment ownership, industrial co-management and other 
 such radical programs in order to continue to justify 
 their leadership, because wages and hours had al- 
 ready become so satisfactory that little more could 
 be hoped for along this line. x 
 
 It is obvious therefore that the 40.7 per cent, of all 
 strikes during 19 19 which alleged as their cause the 
 demand for higher wages or shorter hours or both 
 were chiefly of three kinds: 
 
 *J. M. Budish and George Soule The New Unionism, p. 10-11 
 in particular and the whole volume in general.
 
 H4 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 First: Strikes which merely alleged higher wages 
 or shorter hours as their reason for the effect of such 
 demands on the workers or the public — the real point 
 at issue being something entirely different. Mania 
 strikes, graft strikes, outlaw strikes or other strikes 
 that were mere incidents in political-labor fights for 
 personal or group power are of this kind ; or 
 
 Second: Strikes which because of the special 
 after-the-war circumstances already emphasized re- 
 sulted in easy victories for the strikers. These will 
 be specially considered in Chapter XII; or 
 
 Third: Strikes in which the demands for higher 
 wages and shorter hours were made in industries or 
 under circumstances where it was practically im- 
 possible to find ways and means for granting them — 
 in other words strikes which were hopeless from the 
 beginning and therefore entirely futile.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE HIGH COST OF FUTILE STRIKES 
 
 At the time of the great steel strike in 19 19, when 
 the demand for a reduction of the twleve-hour work- 
 ing day in the steel industry was being widely agi- 
 tated, the Inland Steel Company went entirely over 
 to the eight-hour day. Within eighteen months, it 
 was forced to go back to the twelve-hour day in order 
 to keep its skilled working force from disintegrating 
 to seek new employment where the men could again 
 earn twelve-hour pay. 
 
 France has a national eight-hour law. But with 
 the need since the war of extra effort to recoup war 
 losses, French workmen have repeatedly struck for a 
 longer working day. 
 
 Recognizing the obvious difference in conditions 
 between the fall of 191 9 and 1920, New York team- 
 sters and New Jersey street car operators voluntarily 
 agreed to increase their working day for the same 
 pay. 
 
 Organized labor has made repeated attempts to 
 get the support of the various farmers' organizations 
 
 "5
 
 n6 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 in their fight for a national eight-hour law. But the 
 farmer, with his own personal experience as to how 
 futile any arbitrary human schedule is in dealing 
 with rain and sunshine, growing seasons, bad roads, 
 limited labor supply, and other practical facts of his 
 own production problem can easily appreciate that 
 any attempt to reduce the widely different and com- 
 plex production problems of the whole country to any 
 arbitrary schedule — time or wage or otherwise — 
 would be equally futile or prohibitively expensive. 
 
 At least the chief trouble with the whole Le- 
 nine-Trotsky scheme was that it entirely failed to 
 recognize that all life is very largely built on, and 
 determined by, facts. Many of these facts are fixed. 
 The farmer has got to do most of his work in summer. 
 The steel industry has got to run twenty -four hours a 
 day. Many facts are not only fixed but variously 
 fixed according to different fixed circumstances. 
 While the farmer must do most of his work in sum- 
 mer the coal man must do most of his in winter. 
 Again even though many facts can be changed they 
 must be faced as they are till ways and means are 
 actually found for changing them. The farmer 
 who wants to raise crops in winter has got first to go 
 South or to California. 
 
 Any scheme therefore — whether of running a gov- 
 ernment, or operating a business, or striking for
 
 The High Cost of Futile Strikes 117 
 
 higher pay — which attempts to include the many 
 different facts of life in any arbitrary one-fact 
 theory, no matter how plausible — which seeks to 
 accomplish aims, no matter how idealistic or desir- 
 able, without facing facts as they are, or providing 
 ways and means to actually change those facts, can 
 only expect Lenine-Trotsky results. 
 
 One of the facts the B. R. T. men emphasized most 
 strongly in their strike was that other rapid transit 
 companies in and around New York had voluntarily 
 raised the wages of their men. But the B. R. T. was 
 in the hands of a Receiver. Thousands of investors, 
 including widows and minors, who own B. R. T. 
 stock had not for years received one cent of dividends 
 or interest on the money they have invested. The 
 receiver under the direction of the court had given 
 the men a substantial raise the year previously and 
 was willing to raise them again as much as he could. 
 This strike cost the workers the eight per cent, in- 
 crease the company could and did offer them, caused 
 immense inconvenience and loss to the two million 
 people of Brooklyn and did not, because under the 
 special circumstances it could not, get anybody 
 anything. 
 
 It was in connection with this strike that Judge 
 Mayer stated a fundamental rule, which is generally 
 applicable under similar circumstances, when he
 
 n8 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 pointed out that, "irrespective of personal sympathy 
 with the men or their cause, it is dishonest to en- 
 ter into agreements with workers that cannot be 
 carried out, or can only be carried out at the expense 
 of other agreements with, or obligations to, other 
 interested parties or the public." 
 
 The dock workers' strike which tied up the Clyde, 
 Mallory, and Old Dominion lines is another example 
 of a strike making demands for the meeting of which 
 no margin was available or could be created under 
 the special existing circumstances. 
 
 These lines were being run at a loss of about six 
 million dollars a year. They could not raise their 
 freight rates even to make up this deficit, let alone to 
 pay higher wages, without the permission of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission which permission, 
 though long applied for, had not as yet been given. 
 Irrespective then of what may be thought of the 
 right or justice of these few hundreds of dock workers 
 to have their wages raised from thirty-five dollars 
 to forty -four dollars a week and to get a half holiday 
 on Saturday — or the right and justice of their insist- 
 ing on this demand at the price of raising the cost of 
 vegetables for several months over one hundred per 
 cent, to millions of families, the fact remains that 
 under the circumstances, it was not impossible for 
 these companies to raise wages so the strike not only
 
 The High Cost of Futile Strikes 119 
 
 did not, but from the very nature of the circum- 
 stances could not, gain anything for anyone. 
 
 Perhaps the most conspicuous instance in recent 
 industrial history of a strike in which one of the de- 
 mands, judged merely on its own merit, is entirely 
 reasonable and just, yet judged on the basis of ways 
 and means of carrying it out, offers one of the most 
 complicated and difficult problems in modern indus- 
 trial history, is the demand that some three hundred 
 thousand men working twelve hours a day in the steel 
 industry be given a shorter work-day. 
 
 There is no question that a twelve-hour day is con- 
 trary to our modern ideal of working conditions. 
 The leaders of the steel industry themselves admit 
 this freely. "Does the public think," remarked an 
 executive of a big steel company at the time, "that 
 we don't realize that twelve hours is too long to work 
 regularly? But," he added, "I wish the public or 
 labor or somebody could tell us how to find some way 
 out of it." 
 
 Once a steel furnace is allowed to cool, its whole 
 interior has to be rebuilt and slowly and carefully 
 reheated. This makes it an imperative necessity 
 that furnaces be operated full blast twenty-four hours 
 a day. If the furnaces must be run twenty-four 
 hours a day, the supply of raw material coming in 
 and of semi-finished product going out, must be kept
 
 120 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 moving twenty-four hours a day; which means that 
 about half the equipment must operate day and 
 night. 
 
 In the steel industry the only possible schedule 
 therefore for some half the workers is either an eight- 
 or a twelve-hour day. Developed during a period 
 when the twelve-hour day was general, and without 
 any possibility as in other businesses of shortening 
 its working hours gradually with a minimum of ex- 
 pensive readjustment to ten, then nine, then eight 
 hours, it is inevitable that the steel industry should 
 have continued longer than other industries on a 
 twelve-hour basis. 
 
 Any sudden readjustment to an eight-hour basis 
 means that it would be necessary to obtain immedi- 
 ately about one hundred thousand extra steel work- 
 ers, a large proportion of them skilled steel work- 
 ers. There was, of course, no such body of steel 
 workers available following the war when the strike 
 occurred. 
 
 By in the meantime paying the price in less effi- 
 cient and decreased production, such a body of 
 workers might, of course, in time be built up and 
 trained from outside labor or from foreign immigra- 
 tion. But again at the time of the strike there was a 
 tremendous labor shortage. 
 
 But this is only the first problem that would have
 
 The High Cost of Futile Strikes 121 
 
 to be solved before any reduction of the twelve-hour 
 day is possible. 
 
 At the time of the great steel strike in 1919, when 
 the injustice of the twelve-hour day was being 
 widely agitated, the Inland Steel Company tried the 
 experiment of going over entirely to the eight-hour 
 basis. But after eighteen months' trial it was forced 
 to go back to the twelve-hour working day in order 
 to keep all its old skilled workers from seeking em- 
 ployment in other plants where they could earn 
 twelve-hour pay. From this as well as general ex- 
 perience, there is little question that while steel 
 workers would be very glad to work an eight-hour 
 day for a twelve-hour pay they would be absolutely 
 unwilling to work an eight-hour day for eight-hour 
 pay, which would be equivalent to a one third or 
 more reduction in their present wages. 
 
 Present pay on the other hand for three eight-hour 
 shifts would mean an initial increase of 33^ per 
 cent, to the principle labor cost of steel. For if the 
 present twelve-hour men continued to receive twelve- 
 hour pay for an eight-hour day, the present eight- 
 hour men would immediately demand, with full 
 justice, that they be raised to twelve-hour pay, and 
 the nine and ten-hour men that they be raised still 
 higher. And these eight- and nine- and ten-hour men 
 constitute half the industry.
 
 122 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 This would have meant an immediate unparalleled 
 increase in labor cost and a corresponding increase 
 in the price of our single most necessary and widely 
 used manufacturing product at a time when the 
 whole country is already staggering under high 
 prices. 
 
 Such an advance in steel would undoubtedly have 
 handicapped seriously our much needed railroad con- 
 struction and reequipment and general building 
 operations for years to come. 
 
 Moreover, steel is second only to gold as a com- 
 modity of international commerce whose price is 
 regulated by international conditions. Superior 
 manufacturing methods have made it possible for 
 American steel makers to offset the very much lower 
 wages paid by their European rivals and compete in 
 the world markets. The immense additions to our 
 steel capacity during the war promised to make steel 
 one of our trump cards in America's bid for world 
 commerce. 
 
 In France where there has been a universal eight- 
 hour day, strike after strike has been reported since 
 the war against this law or to force employers to 
 evade this law by furnishing two or four hours a day 
 extra employment so that the war-impoverished 
 workers may earn the extra pay. In Germany and 
 Belgium also conditions have, or soon must, force a
 
 The High Cost of Futile Strikes 123 
 
 realization of the necessity of extra work as the only 
 means of recouping their war losses, and these na- 
 tions, too, have vastly increased their steel capacity 
 during the war. 
 
 Any necessary serious advance in the production 
 cost of our steel would therefore not only nullify our 
 present favorable advantage but make us the victim 
 of such foreign competition not only in the world 
 markets but even in our own market. 
 
 If it could be actually shown that the steel worker 
 himself preferred shorter hours to higher pay or that 
 the public is convinced that, irrespective of his wishes, 
 for the good of society men should not work more 
 than eight hours a day — neither of which things have 
 been shown — it is quite possible that during periods 
 when the supply of labor is greater and the demand 
 for steel temporarily slackened that a readjustment 
 to an eight-hour working day could be effected on an 
 economically sound basis. In fact, not only the eight- 
 hour pay rate — long since established, which means 
 that all steel workers get time and a half for all hours 
 over eight, but many other developments, indicate 
 that the steel industry is working as definitely as 
 possible under the circumstances in this direction. 
 But the attempt, by a group of radical labor leaders 
 with only the ignorant foreign steel workers for a fol- 
 lowing, to force such a readjustment overnight dur-
 
 124 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 ing a labor shortage and in a period of reconstruction 
 when all the steel possible was needed by the country, 
 was a use of a strike that was as criminal as it was 
 futile. ' 
 
 Moreover, we must not lose sight of this fact that 
 the thirty -five dollars a week that the foreign and 
 negro dock workers had been receiving, and the sixty- 
 two cents an hour the B. R. T. workers had been re- 
 ceiving, were considerably above the average which 
 whole classes of clerks, teachers, and many other 
 much higher grade of workers receive, and were nearly 
 seventy-five per cent, above the minimum set by the 
 war industries board even for industry. We must 
 bear in mind, also, that while twelve hours is un- 
 doubtedly too long a working day from a socially 
 ideal point of view, the very public and workers who 
 preach an eight-hour day so constantly, are them- 
 selves, merely for their own convenience, constantly 
 keeping a large proportion of our 1,500,000 retailers 
 working far more than twelve hours a day and think 
 nothing of it. The very forces of nature keep some 
 ten million farmers working more than twelve hours 
 a day and we all take it as a matter of course. 
 
 'Just as the present volume goes to press there are indications 
 that the steel industry plans thus to take advantage of the present 
 lessened demand for steel and present greater supply of labor to go 
 to the eight-hour basis. It will be interesting to note how the very 
 highly paid twelve-hour worker will like in the long run having his 
 pay reduced to more nearly that of the average worker.
 
 The High Cost of Futile Strikes 125 
 
 In general it has always been characteristic of 
 Americans when they have found that because of 
 circumstances beyond anyone's control, they could 
 not earn as much as they wanted to earn or condi- 
 tions were otherwise unfavorable in the job or in- 
 dustry or locality where they were, that they have 
 had enough American energy and initiative to go 
 into some other job or industry where circumstances 
 were more favorable to the exercise of their initiative 
 and energy. 
 
 When our fathers and forefathers found that 
 farming and industry in the East had become over- 
 crowded, they never thought of striking against a 
 situation that was inevitable. Nor have we any 
 record of their trying to solve such situations by 
 agitating for some visionary scheme in which the 
 government or the State or somebody else was to 
 take control and work some omnipotent impossibility 
 for them. Instead by tens of thousands they went 
 where opportunity was. 
 
 There was a tremendous shortage of labor in al- 
 most all fields following the war. Any worker in any 
 industry which could not pay what the worker 
 wanted to earn could, if he tried with one tenth of 
 the initiative and energy that sent hundreds of thou- 
 sands of Americans of other generations West and 
 South, easily have found many jobs that would pay
 
 126 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 him anything he could reasonably earn. But, of 
 course, that would take him away from his local 
 union where he was paying dues every month. And 
 this is not only the basic reason why workers are 
 consistently influenced and educated to depend on 
 strikes rather than on their personal energy and effi- 
 ciency for their jobs and their wage advances, but as 
 will be shown later, this and similar motives of labor 
 politics were the actual reason why most of such 
 strikes were called. 
 
 It must, however, in justice to the great body of 
 labor be pointed out that eleven thousand B. R. T. 
 men did realize the special facts of that situation and 
 only joined the strike because under the present sys- 
 tem of labor politics, one thousand radicals could 
 force them to strike. It should be remembered that 
 the great body of employees of the Clyde, Mallory, 
 and Old Dominion lines refused to join the dock 
 workers in a strike so obviously unwarranted, con- 
 sidering all the conditions. It should be emphasized 
 that the Inland steel workers who wanted to keep on 
 earning twelve-hour pay, when that company went 
 to an eight-hour basis had the initiative and energy 
 to change their jobs to where they could earn this 
 pay. Again, during the 19 19 steel strike, over half of 
 all the workers, including all the better-class skilled 
 workers, refused to strike for two good common-
 
 The High Cost of Futile Strikes 127 
 
 sense American reasons : first, because they preferred 
 the very high wages of the twelve-hour day and, 
 second, because they realized that the fundamental 
 basis of a vital, international industry cannot be 
 uprooted overnight merely because an ignorant min- 
 ority in the whole industry was persuaded by $1,007,- 
 007.72 worth of political-labor propaganda to demand 
 that it should be thus uprooted. 
 
 American industry has many ideals which are yet 
 far from being realized. Because of human limita- 
 tions and the stubborn persistence of facts, some of 
 them must undoubtedly be slow of realization. But 
 when left to themselves, average American labor, 
 and when he knows the real facts the average Amer- 
 ican citizen, seldom fail to realize that the Lenine- 
 Trotsky method of rushing at ideals without regard 
 to facts or ways and means is not only futile but 
 generally brings only Lenine-Trotsky results.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE HIGH COST OF STRIKE "VICTORIES" 
 
 Carpenters through various strike "victories" 
 got a sixty-five per cent, increase in their rate of 
 wages in 191 9 but their actual earnings decreased 
 three per cent. 
 
 The coal miners as a result of the great coal strike 
 and all the maneuverings and politics and negotia- 
 tions that followed got an increase of fourteen per 
 cent, in wages. But because of a system which that 
 strike "victory" helped to perpetuate the average 
 skilled miner is getting fifty to sixty per cent, less 
 wages than he otherwise would be earning. 
 
 As a result of the clothing strike "victories," 
 wages were increased from about thirty-five dollars 
 a week to sixty-five dollars and seventy-five dollars, 
 and often more a week, for thirty-five per cent, less 
 work. But a year later, during what is normally the 
 busiest season of the year, half of all the clothing 
 workers were walking the streets. 
 
 As a result of various strike " victories " in 19 19, 
 many classes of textile workers got an aggregate of 
 
 128
 
 High Cost of Strike " Victories " 129 
 
 twenty-two per cent, more wages for a considerably 
 lessened production. But after months of idleness 
 during the latter part of 1920 the same workers were 
 glad to take up to a thirty per cent, reduction in 
 wages to get back to work for even part time. 
 
 In the steel industry, on the other hand, where the 
 strike failed, while wages were voluntarily raised from 
 114 per cent, to 150 per cent. — but on the basis of 
 full maintenance of production — during 1920 there 
 was practically no unemployment; the reduction of 
 wages which some of the smaller companies made, 
 due to the demand for reduced prices, were trivial in 
 comparison, and the largest steel companies had, up 
 to March, 192 1, not had to reduce wages at all. 
 
 The fact has already been emphasized at length 
 that throughout American industrial history higher 
 wages and shorter hours have been permanently 
 achieved principally because, through some increase 
 in efficiency, greater production has been achieved 
 and more goods could be made and sold because they 
 could be sold at a lower or relatively lower price. 
 
 After the war labor undertook to work on exactly 
 the opposite theory from this — that wages could be 
 raised and hours shortened indefinitely by mere 
 strikes irrespective of production or the consequent 
 price to the public. Labor undertook to force the 
 introduction of this theory at a time particularly
 
 i3<> The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 favorable to its temporary success when prices had 
 already been very materially raised, values were 
 very uncertain, and the whole country, because of its 
 after-the-war reactions and prosperity, was buying 
 very freely irrespectively. Because of these same con- 
 ditions manufacturers in many lines yielded to this 
 forced introduction of such a theory in their industry. 
 
 Thus at a time when already because of the war 
 there was a tremendous shortage in all lines, and 
 prices had already reached an unprecedented height, 
 strike after strike piled up a tremendous further 
 shortage in clothing, shoes, shirts, and a wide variety 
 of other necessities or near necessities. This short- 
 age sent prices sky-rocketing. x With these high 
 prices and as long as such prices lasted, manufac- 
 turers could afford to pay labor almost anything at 
 almost any terms of reduced production. They did, 
 and the workers in these industries went back to 
 work on such easy hours and high pay that they 
 began actually to believe their leaders' assertions 
 that "organization" and strikes were all that were 
 necessary in order to get rich quick. 
 
 But suddenly a great public reaction set in. Peo- 
 ple decided they would not continue to pay these 
 high prices. The war had taught them they could do 
 
 1 A study of the curve of retail cost of clothes (see page 2) in con- 
 nection with these facts is highly illuminating.
 
 High Cost of Strike "Victories" 131 
 
 without a great many things, and in the spring of 
 1920 they decided that they would do without even 
 very many of the ordinary necessities of life till the 
 prices came down. The public still continued to pay 
 high prices for food, coal, and such things that it can- 
 not exist without. But it stopped buying clothing, 
 furniture, and a wide variety of such products so 
 completely that there at once began to be a tre- 
 mendous — not oversupply but oversupply at the 
 price. As a result, by summer, factories began closing 
 down on every hand or materially reducing working 
 time. Labor for a time still theoretically enjoyed 
 the high wages which its strike "victories" had won 
 for it, but actually it continually got less and less 
 benefit from them in its pay envelopes. 
 
 But this was only the first item in the price that 
 labor has had to pay as a result of its initial "vic- 
 tories" in trying to introduce the glittering fallacy 
 that high wages can be had by some other means 
 than working and producing for them. The public's 
 refusal to buy, which started as a protest against ex- 
 orbitant prices in certain lines, continued and spread 
 in spite of widespread and sharp reductions in prices. 
 Partly as a reaction from the previous period of over- 
 spending and partly because the public has a way 
 when once thoroughly roused of keeping going, it be- 
 gan to demand not merely substantial reductions of
 
 132 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 former high price* but a reduction that at least ap- 
 proximated pre-war prices, and not only on the classes 
 of goods whose former exorbitant prices had started 
 the movement but in all lines. These lengths to 
 which the public went in its own retaliatory strike 
 not only continued and spread unemployment, but 
 made necessary the very material wage reductions 
 in many industries that marked the beginning of the 
 next production season. This would not necessarily 
 have been so much to labor's disadvantage if prices 
 should remain at the sacrifice level of the beginning 
 of 1 92 1. But there are many reasons to believe that 
 they will not, and the average employer after his ex- 
 perience of 19 1 9 and 1920, including his very ma- 
 terial losses from the enforced sale of stocks produced 
 at spring of 1920 costs and sold at fall of 1920 prices, 
 will undoubtedly for some time to come be a very differ- 
 ent man from whom to try to get new raises in wages. 
 
 But this second high price, in prolonged unemploy- 
 ment and material wage reduction, which workers 
 had to pay for their former strike "victories," was 
 itself evidence of a third, corollary loss, in that it 
 proved how conspicuously labor failed to capitalize 
 and so share in the opportunity for continued and 
 increased prosperity which our increased equipment, 
 our possible new world-markets, as well as the 
 condition and disposition of the American market
 
 High Cost of Strike "Victories" 133 
 
 held out right after the war to American energy and 
 productivity. 
 
 There is no question that these strike "victories," 
 at least for the time being, utterly carried away great 
 classes of labor with the idea of big money for short 
 hours and easy work. Whether or not labor will 
 have to pay a fourth big price for these victories 
 which led it to believe in such theories depends very 
 largely on whether or not it interprets the subse- 
 quent results of those theories in their true light, or 
 continues to allow itself to be deceived by the leader- 
 ship which propounded such theories and is already 
 busy at work explaining away their true results and 
 propounding further theories calling for further 
 strikes as a fallacious means of preventing the in- 
 evitable working out of their own fallacies. 
 
 While strike "victories" which perpetrate funda- 
 mentally unsound economic conditions must always 
 inevitably be expensive to labor there is no question 
 that in some cases this has not as yet become obvi- 
 ous to the worker himself. 
 
 Coal, for instance, is such an absolute necessity, 
 and coal production is so absolutely dominated by 
 the powerful coal miners' union that the average 
 coal miner has experienced no special unemployment 
 and no wage reduction. Moreover, the great coal 
 strike, although it cost the country, including a mil-
 
 134 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 lion other laborers, a billion dollars, got him a four- 
 teen per cent, wage increase which he still enjoys. 
 But it also strengthened the power of the system — 
 which has already been described — which keeps a tre- 
 mendous excess of workers in the coal industry and 
 working on an average of only half to two thirds of 
 the time, which means that to the average ambitious 
 miner it constitutes one of the heaviest handicaps 
 and taxes in industrial history. 
 
 Joseph Stewart, an unnaturalized Lithuanian, 
 twenty-eight years old, with three in his family, 
 worked in the Jerome mine, near Fayette City. He 
 is an ambitious coal miner whose case is reported in 
 the Senate investigation of December, 1919. By 
 working steadily with some overtime, Stewart earned 
 $3,070.20 for the nine months for which the Senate 
 had his record, or at the rate of four thousand dollars 
 a year. 
 
 Joseph Grandosky, an unnaturalized Austrian, is 
 another average skilled miner. He worked seven- 
 teen days less than full time during the same nine 
 months and worked no overtime. His record, accord- 
 ing to the same Senate report, shows that his earn- 
 ings for these eight and a half months were $1,792.67, 
 or at the rate of over $2,500 a year. Grandosky paid 
 an income tax on $2,345.73 in 1918. All this was before 
 the strike and so before the fourteen per cent, raise.
 
 High Cost of Strike " Victories " 135 
 
 The Senate investigation further showed that the 
 averaged more skilled miner, if he worked steadily 
 eight hours a day every day his mine worked, could 
 earn from $2,500 to $3,000 a year, and, if he worked 
 overtime, that much more in proportion. But in 
 order to give work to some hundred thousand or more 
 extra men and keep them in the union paying some 
 $200,000 or more every month into the union treas- 
 ury — which at present collects about $11,000,000 a 
 year — the miners are so discouraged from working 
 more than part time that few of them dare or care to 
 do it. So prevalent is this practice that in some dis- 
 tricts any man is branded as a "scab" who works 
 more than three days a week. 
 
 If the coal miners had not won their strike and the 
 union leaders who perpetrated this strike had been 
 totally defeated, if the hundred thousand or so extra 
 men who are not needed in the coal mines should go 
 back to the farms and the other industries from which 
 they came, and where they are vitally needed, and 
 the average skilled coal miner were thus permitted to 
 work regularly, he would become one of the best- 
 paid workers in American industry. 
 
 The coal strike got fourteen per cent, raise for all 
 miners. It helped maintain a system under which 
 the union is getting $2,000,000 to $2,500,000 extra 
 dues every year. But this can scarcely be said to
 
 136 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 compensate the skilled miner who but for this abnor- 
 mal system could work steadily and make from fifty 
 to sixty per cent. more. 
 
 In the building trades, also, the nation-wide short- 
 age of housing facilities, and the powerful hold labor 
 organizations had on the industry, continued not only 
 to maintain but to increase wages. But a special 
 statistical study of the carpenters' trade showed that, 
 while the rate of wages paid such workers thus in- 
 creased sixty-five percent., the actual earnings of the 
 average carpenter was three per cent. less. And it 
 is probable that if the facts in many other trades were 
 similarly analyzed they would reveal a similar condi- 
 tion of wage raises which were largely or wholly 
 fictitious, often chiefly because they were nullified by 
 the extent to which labor leaders' pernicious or un- 
 warranted interference handicapped building opera- 
 tions and so cut down the workers' employment. 
 
 In other ages when education was far less wide- 
 spread, the man who could read and write and figure 
 accurately was so much less common than the man 
 who produced things with his hands, that the man 
 who merely wrote out the reports or kept the books 
 or records of what labor did and produced received 
 a far higher wage than the men who did the pro- 
 ducing. 
 
 But the man of to-day who with his hands and
 
 High Cost of Strike "Victories" 137 
 
 brain actually produces is far more valuable to so- 
 ciety than is the man who merely makes figures or 
 reports about that production. 
 
 The man who produces is to-day having the value 
 of his work recognized on a new scale in his pay en- 
 velope. And every broad-minded, intelligent Amer- 
 ican knows that this is a good thing for both the 
 economic and social advancement of the whole 
 country. 
 
 The war with its upsetting of old standards and 
 its readjustments of many things on a basis of greater 
 fairness, and particularly in the way it brought home 
 to all the people the importance of labor, is prima- 
 rily responsible for the recent remarkable advance. 
 Strikes are not. Strikes on the contrary have gone 
 a long way toward taking away from labor the big- 
 gest advantages which the war brought. 
 
 There is no question, of course, that wages were 
 brought to their high war level, not by unions or 
 any other organized labor agency, but by the peculiar 
 conditions and demands of the war. 
 
 Immediately after the war Mr. Gompers an- 
 nounced to all employers that the whole power of 
 organized labor would work unitedly against any re- 
 duction of the high war wages. If Mr. Gompers had 
 also announced to all labor — and insisted — that the 
 united power of all organized labor would also work
 
 138 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 unitedly for a continuation of the kind of produc- 
 tion by labor that could make war wages profitable, 
 it is very probable that this highly desirable program 
 could have been carried out. 
 
 But instead of maintaining war production to 
 justify war wages, four million workers, chiefly 
 organized workers or workers who became organized 
 as a result of such strikes, started going on strikes in 
 which they themselves directly wasted 134,000,000 
 working days, and caused indirectly the total loss of 
 other hundreds of millions of working days, which so 
 further increased our production shortage that prices 
 went up sixty-five points higher even than the high 
 war level. 
 
 Thus, although employers did continue to pay the 
 high war wages, labor itself in effect at once began to 
 cut its own wages by forcing up prices on itself as 
 well as on the rest of the country. 
 
 But when prices began to go up, even though 
 chiefly because of labor's own failure to produce, 
 organized labor at once changed its demand — not in 
 order to increase production and help remedy condi- 
 tions but by calling more strikes for still higher 
 wages irrespective of production, and so continuing 
 the much discussed vicious circle of alternately in- 
 creasing raises in both wages and prices, of which 
 the public became more and more the helpless victim
 
 High Cost of Strike " Victories * 139 
 
 till it took matters into its own hands by its own very 
 effective strike for lower prices which lower prices 
 had a very widespread effect in bringing down wages 
 with them. 
 
 There have, however, been a sufficient number of 
 very conspicuous exceptions to these general facts 
 to indicate most convincingly that war wages might 
 have been kept up if organized labor had paid any 
 attention whatever to the necessary ways and means 
 of keeping them up. 
 
 The United States Steel Corporation is, perhaps, 
 the largest single employer in the country. Its 
 250,000 employees include skilled, semi-skilled, and 
 unskilled workers. Their one strike by their un- 
 skilled workers was defeated and none of their 
 workers are under the domination of organized 
 labor. The company, therefore, in spite of the 
 general falling off in efficiency of production was able 
 to maintain full efficiency of production among its 
 own workers. The wages of all these employees not 
 only went up considerably above the war level but 
 remained up through the following period of general 
 wage reduction. 
 
 The General Electric Company employs chiefly 
 skilled or semi-skilled workers. They are largely 
 union men but their one strike immediately after 
 the war for a reduced production efficiency was com-
 
 140 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 pletely defeated, and the company was therefore 
 not only able to maintain but to increase production 
 efficiency after the war. All wages went above the 
 war level and were not reduced during the following 
 period of general wage reductions. 
 
 The White Motor Truck Company employees are 
 chiefly skilled men. The recognized working prin- 
 ciple of both management and men has been put in 
 these words: "Production is the greatest essential 
 in a factory. For the whole community to maintain 
 a comfortable and humane standard of living, it is 
 necessary for every man in the community to pro- 
 duce consistently. This idea in industry will in- 
 evitably take all of us forward to a better sort of 
 industrial millennium than can be attained by any 
 other method. For the industrial millennium, if it is 
 to be attained, must come through intelligent work 
 intelligently directed; it cannot be made to jump out 
 of a box by pulling a string." There were no after- 
 the-war strikes in the White plant. Wages, always 
 high, increased materially beyond the war level and 
 were not reduced during the following period of gen- 
 eral wage reduction. 
 
 Out of over three thousand strikes in one year it 
 would seem that there must have been many in- 
 dividual strikes which were called only after a careful 
 consideration of all facts, and only as a last resort
 
 High Cost of Strike "Victories" 141 
 
 to enforce some reasonable and possible measure of 
 justice, and which, therefore, in spite of their cost, 
 may be justified from the point of view of the workers 
 and at least partially justified from the public point 
 of view. But, if so, such strikes were hopelessly hid- 
 den in the haystack of outlaw strikes, mania strikes, 
 graft strikes, futile strikes, and of strikes where 
 "victory" only brought or helped bring conditions 
 worse than those it sought to remedy. Moreover, 
 considering the reduction of standard working hours 
 and the large advance in wages, both actually and in 
 far greater proportion than to any other class, which 
 the war had already brought to labor — considering 
 also the special after-the-war conditions and the 
 special disposition of employers to pay any reason- 
 able or possible wage — there is no reason to believe 
 that such strikes, which might thus be justified, were 
 numerous enough to warrant classification. 
 
 The public, including a big proportion of labor 
 itself, has undoubtedly long since reached the con- 
 clusion that the chief result of the great after-the-war 
 strike epidemic was merely to pile up immense losses 
 for industry without getting very much in actual 
 results even for labor itself. A careful study of these 
 strikes can only reenforce this general conclusion by 
 showing that the actual losses, not only to industry 
 but to the public and to labor itself, were far greater
 
 H 2 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 than we had dreamed and that the results to every- 
 body, including labor itself, were chiefly less than 
 nothing — with one exception. There is one very small 
 special class which profited tremendously from these 
 strikes. 
 
 Again, the very fact that this after- the- war strike 
 phenomenon is popularly referred to as an "epi- 
 demic" or "mania," indicates the popular conception 
 that these strikes were chiefly due to upset industrial 
 conditions and labor's natural after-the-war feeling 
 of unrest — in other words, that these strikes were 
 merely the workers' way of manifesting a temporary 
 unbalance which other classes experienced and mani- 
 fested in other ways, and so were one of the unavoid- 
 able indirect expenses of the war which had to be 
 paid along with the other costs of the war. 
 
 Labor unrest as part of world unrest was unques- 
 tionably a big factor in the after-the-war strike situa- 
 tion. But it is impossible to have followed even 
 thus far the facts here presented without a growing 
 realization that this unrest was also constantly 
 stimulated and manipulated and led. 
 
 It is these two facts — first, that there was a "small 
 special class which did make a tremendous profit 
 out of after-the-war strikes"; and, second, that the 
 after-the-war labor unrest was not only "manipu- 
 lated and led" but was deliberately and unscrupu-
 
 High Cost of Strike "Victories" 143 
 
 lously "whipped" into a strike mania, which 
 furnished the simple clear explanation of the whole 
 strike problem and constitute a far more serious 
 indictment of these strikes than all their costs and 
 losses put together.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 STRIKES AS MERE INCIDENTS IN FIGHTS FOR 
 PERSONAL POWER 
 
 When Louis Fridiger, counsel for the B. R. T. 
 Union, was pleading passionately with the men not 
 to begin the Brooklyn car strike which rival leaders 
 were trying to instigate, his argument included noth- 
 ing as to the best interests of the people of Brooklyn 
 — it did not even discuss the best interests of the 
 workers — his whole interest was in the advancement 
 of the union from which he derived his power and 
 income, and his big argument and basic plea was 
 that ' ' such a strike will break up the best union in 
 the country." 
 
 It is a matter of court evidence that the Brother- 
 hood of Railroad Trainmen has a reserve fund of ten 
 million dollars in its treasury. 
 
 The Senate investigation showed that the United 
 Mine Workers collects a minimum of eleven million 
 dollars a year dues from its members. 
 
 Unquestionably many factors and conditions con- 
 tributed to the coal strike. All factions among the 
 
 144
 
 Strikes for Personal Power 145 
 
 coal union officials were undoubtedly agreed on the 
 strike's principal aim — that of keeping as many men 
 as possible in the union. But the coal strike was 
 forced at the time and in the way it was, in breach 
 of the union's written contract, against the sure 
 opposition of the government and public opinion, by 
 one group of coal union officials who were not in 
 power to compromise and possibly oust the coal 
 union officials who were in power; and the coal 
 union officials who were in power actually went 
 through with the strike in open defiance of the govern- 
 ment, and fought it out with such ruthless disregard 
 of public cost and suffering, primarily to keep for 
 themselves their offices and their power. 
 
 Political fights within unions, between individuals 
 or factions, for control of such immense numbers of 
 men as make up great modern unions, and for such 
 immense sums as great modern unions collect and 
 possess, and for the power which such control gives, 
 are the principal reasons back of many of the costliest 
 strikes we have had since the war. 
 
 All the underwear manufacturers in Cohoes, N. Y., 
 were shut down for over a month during the spring of 
 1920 — all their production stopped and thousands 
 of producers idle — simply and solely because of a 
 factional fight between two rival unions. 
 
 Ninety-five per cent. — nine and one half out of
 
 H 6 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 every ten strikes in the building trades in 1919, ac- 
 cording to a Senate investigating commission, were 
 called simply as incidents in fights between rival 
 unions for authority or jurisdiction or other forms of 
 power. Take a single instance — the doors that go 
 into modern fireproofing construction generally con- 
 sist of a core of wood covered with metal. For years, 
 all over the country, a fight has been going on be- 
 tween the carpenters' union and the metal workers' 
 union as to which has jurisdiction over the men who 
 hang this kind of door. In Boston, after a long 
 series of strikes over this question, it was decided 
 that this was a metal worker's job. In New York, 
 after a similar long series of strikes, it was decided 
 that it was a carpenter's job. 
 
 Again, one man used to set a locomotive headlight. 
 To-day when a headlight needs setting four men have 
 to do the job at more than four times the cost, be- 
 cause each man has to wait till another man does his 
 part and puts up his tools before he gets out his own 
 tools and does his part — all because of jealousies and 
 rivalries between different unions. 
 
 The printers' strike, which cut the wages of a 
 million and a half outside workers; part of the ship- 
 ping strike, which almost paralyzed eastern industry 
 for most of the spring of 1920, and a big proportion of 
 the other more costly strikes we have had, were called
 
 Strikes for Personal Power H7 
 
 and continued despite every public protest and effort 
 simply and solely because of some political fight 
 between union officials for political control of some 
 union or group of unions. 
 
 Practically all so-called "outlaw strikes" were of 
 this kind, the only real difference between them and 
 the strikes caused by jealousies and rivalries which 
 recognized labor leaders did sanction, being that in 
 the case of the "outlaw strikes" such jealousies and 
 rivalries were directed against, or contrary to, the 
 interests of the recognized labor leaders themselves. 
 
 The modern labor movement, of course, began 
 because the average worker, without capital and 
 absolutely dependent on his job, could not protect 
 his own rights or advance his legitimate interests 
 against his powerful employers. 
 
 Moreover, as industry progressed and the amount 
 of capital and power in the hands of the employer 
 grew, it was necessary that labor unions should 
 become larger and better organized in order to 
 have any chance to deal on equal terms with the 
 employer. 
 
 As the power of the unions grew, the number and 
 power of the individual labor officials grew, and also 
 the amount of money collected from union members 
 in dues grew. It is merely human nature that with 
 this growth of union power and union income rival-
 
 148 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 ries and jealousies for the control of that power and 
 that income should grow with them. 
 
 Take the case of the metal doors with wood cores. 
 Carpenters had always hung doors, and if they con- 
 tinued to hang them they could continue to pay dues 
 into the carpenters' union. 
 
 But when metal doors began to be used, the job of 
 hanging this kind of doors was one which could logic- 
 ally be claimed as a metal workers' job. If the metal 
 workers' union could enforce such a claim it would 
 mean that all men who have to hang such doors 
 would have to come in and pay dues to increase the 
 power and income of the metal workers' union. 
 
 This is a simple illustration on a small scale of a 
 condition that has grown up in and permeates all 
 organized labor from the simple local union to the 
 great national and international amalgamations and 
 federations, until to-day scheming and fighting and 
 maneuvering to increase the power of their particular 
 union or group of unions by increasing its membership 
 and the income it gets from its members, undoubtedly 
 demands a far larger part of the average labor leader's 
 skill and energy than any relation between the union 
 and the employer. 
 
 It does not, of course, make much difference to the 
 ordinary worker whether he belongs to one particular 
 union or another. Nor does the average union mem-
 
 Strikes for Personal Power H9 
 
 ber get any special benefit from, or have any special 
 interest in, the fact that his particular union has 
 100,000 or 200,000 members in the rest of the country, 
 or whether these members pay $1,000,000 or $2,000,- 
 000 a year into the general union treasury. 
 
 But the increase of the power and income of his 
 particular union does offer big advantages to the 
 union leader, because it means a corresponding in- 
 crease in his own prestige and power as the man who 
 controls them. 
 
 This is why professional labor leaders welcomed 
 and manipulated and exaggerated labor's after-the- 
 war unrest into a strike epidemic and took every 
 advantage of it to fight through strike after strike to 
 increase the power and income of their own particular 
 union or group of unions. This is why, irrespective 
 of its inevitable effect on industry, they dangled 
 before their followers the lure of wage increase after 
 wage increase as an incentive for more and more 
 strikes. This is why they did not scruple at attempt- 
 ing even such an industrial and public catastrophe 
 as the outlaw railroad strike. This is why also, that 
 as long as the present system of labor organization, 
 with its constant incentive to ambitions for such 
 labor-political power and income, continued to exist ; 
 and as long as labor leaders continue to have the un- 
 restricted use of the strike as an easy and convenient
 
 150 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 weapon for furthering such ambitions, there is little 
 question that labor leaders will continue to use strikes 
 in the same unscrupulous and costly manner when 
 ever they find it convenient and possible. 
 
 But again, the possibilities of power and prestige 
 which go with control over tens of thousands and 
 hundreds of thousands of union members and the 
 immense sums these pay in dues, result not only in 
 intense rivalries between unions, but between in- 
 dividual leaders or groups of leaders within a union, 
 for that control. And these intra-union rivalries also 
 have been the cause of some of our most costly strikes. 
 
 The bituminous coal miners' union has for a good 
 many years collected a minimum of over eleven 
 million dollars a year members' dues. How many of 
 these tens of millions of dollars may still be in the 
 treasury no one in the world but a few inside union 
 officials know. The Brotherhood of Railroad Train- 
 men has a reserve fund of ten million dollars in its 
 union's treasury. 
 
 There are other labor organizations whose mem- 
 bers also pay millions of dollars into the hands of a 
 few officials. 
 
 Management, which is generally secret — and as 
 far as the public knows responsible to no one — of a 
 fund of ten million dollars a year and perhaps of even 
 greater sums in reserve; the tremendous industrial
 
 Fights for Personal Power 15 J 
 
 and political power which their influence over hun- 
 dreds of thousands of union members gives to higher 
 union officials; the opportunity which present condi- 
 tions give to high union officials of publicly and con- 
 spicuously exercising their power, of being able to 
 fill columns of newspaper space with their interviews 
 and arguments with great corporation presidents, 
 Senators, Cabinet members, and even the President 
 of the United States, all offer a tremendous tempta- 
 tion and incentive to labor leaders to scheme and 
 maneuver and fight within the union with one 
 another, to obtain for themselves, or hold against 
 personal rivals, control of such financial and political 
 and conspicuously public power. 
 
 The engineering of big, conspicuous strikes, which, 
 whatever their effect on the public or on labor, could 
 be made to bring a technical victory for the labor 
 leaders who called or handled the strike, or the forc- 
 ing of such big, conspicuous strikes with the idea that 
 they would be defeated and so bring defeat on some 
 rival leader who had to call or handle them, have been 
 notoriously one of the chief means which labor lead- 
 ers have used in their struggle for control of union 
 power. 
 
 During the war Mr. Frank J. Hayes president of 
 the United Mine Workers of America, had been what 
 was known as one of the Administration labor men.
 
 152 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 In fact, he became so closely associated with the Ad- 
 ministration's ideas and policies that he went to 
 Paris with President Wilson as one of his labor ad- 
 visers on the peace treaty and the League of Nations. 
 During Mr. Hayes's absence in Europe the affairs of 
 the bituminous coal miners were in the hands of John 
 L. Lewis, acting president, and William Green, 
 secretary-treasurer. 
 
 It was common knowledge in coal circles that 
 certain powerful Western State officials of the United 
 Mine Workers had for some time previous to this, by 
 political maneuvering and by alliances with the more 
 radical element among the miners, been continually 
 increasing their power in union affairs, and it was 
 commonly admitted that they were aiming at control 
 of the national union. It is also obvious that the 
 prolonged absence of the union president in Paris 
 and reports of a break-down in his health made the 
 summer and fall of 19 19 a psychological moment for 
 seeking to increase this power. 
 
 Now the most obvious and generally used method 
 in labor circles of weakening your rival's hold on his 
 followers and increasing your own hold on them is to 
 promise that if they will follow you, you will get them 
 higher wages than your rival has been able to get for 
 them. Acting on this very simple and effective and 
 common practice this group of state officials proposed
 
 Strikes for Personal Power 153 
 
 and began a widespread agitation among all coal 
 workers for a sixty per cent, raise in wages or a 
 strike on November 1st if this increase were not 
 granted. 
 
 A coal strike in November, just at the beginning 
 of the winter, would be a national calamity. The 
 government would not allow it. Moreover, Mr. 
 Hayes, president of the union, who would have to 
 call such a strike, had personally signed a wage agree- 
 ment, under government supervision, which would 
 have to be definitely and publicly broken if the strike 
 were called November ist. In addition to this, Mr. 
 Hayes's close association with the Administration 
 before and at Paris combined to make it practically 
 impossible for him to call such a strike, and it would 
 obviously be futile for him to propose such an ad- 
 vance, in breach of his own contract, unless he 
 backed it with a strike. 
 
 On the other hand, the "sixty per cent, increase on 
 November ist or strike" had been so skillfully agi- 
 tated among the miners, and particularly among the 
 local leaders and delegates, and such a large senti- 
 ment had been created in favor of it that if Mr. 
 Hayes should oppose it at the union convention, 
 where it was to be brought up, there was the greatest 
 possibility that he might be defeated and ousted 
 from power.
 
 154 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 But whether because of these circumstances or 
 because his health actually would not permit, Mr. 
 Hayes, when the Paris Conference was concluded, 
 did not reassume the duties of his office, but went 
 directly to a sanatorium in Colorado. This left Mr. 
 Lewis, the acting president, and Mr. Green, secretary- 
 treasurer, face to face with this situation : 
 
 If they opposed the "sixty per cent, increase or 
 strike" there was a probability that the miners' 
 delegates would vote to carry this program over their 
 heads, which not only meant great loss of prestige 
 but the probability that the opposing faction that 
 originated and popularized the sixty per cent, in- 
 crease demands would come into full national power 
 at the next national election. 
 
 If, on the other hand, Mr. Green and Mr. Lewis 
 acquiesced in the ' ' sixty per cent, increase on Novem- 
 ber 1st or strike " they would still receive little credit 
 because the movement had been conspicuously origin- 
 ated and advanced by their opponents. Moreover, 
 as the officials in power, they would bear the re- 
 sponsibility before the government and public opin- 
 ion for calling such a strike; they would bear the 
 burden of managing the strike ; and if such a strike — 
 based on a breach of written contract, necessarily 
 bitterly opposed by the government and the people, 
 and one whose very threat would impose a tremen-
 
 Strikes for Personal Power 155 
 
 dous hardship on the people — should, as seemed in- 
 evitable under the circumstances, be defeated, Mr. 
 Lewis and Mr. Green would have to bear the blame 
 among all the union members for the defeat. And 
 this again promised well for their opponents at the 
 next national election. 
 
 Obviously Mr. Green and Mr. Lewis faced an 
 almost complete dilemma. The trap was so laid that 
 either to oppose the strike or to carry out the strike 
 seemed to mean defeat and loss of prestige and prob- 
 ably loss of office. Obviously, as a matter of prac- 
 tical strategy, there was only one way in such a 
 situation that any leaders could expect to keep 
 their prestige and their power. First, they would 
 have to substitute a program even more popular 
 with the men and for which they could claim the 
 credit; and, second, they would have to carry 
 this program through to victory, or at least to 
 enough victory to satisfy the men that they had 
 got for them everything it was possible for anyone 
 to get. 
 
 Messrs. Lewis and Green did exactly these two 
 things. They originated a new program of not only 
 a sixty per cent, advance, but that advance for thirty 
 hours' work a week. Then they fought to carry out 
 this program with every weapon and every means 
 in their power. As an incident to this fight over
 
 156 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 mere personal, labor-political ambitions a million 
 other laborers were thrown out of employment and 
 the country suffered over a billion dollars' loss. But 
 Messrs. Lewis and Green kept their jobs.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 STRIKING FOR MONOPOLY DOMINATION BY A CLASS 
 OF everybody's NECESSARIES OF LIFE 
 
 "Nothing in the way of good industrial relations 
 is to be expected from organized labor as represented 
 by the American Federation of Labor and the four 
 Brotherhoods. The only peace which can come out 
 of those organizations is the peace of an absolute 
 domination — not only of the American industries but 
 of the government itself." — Dr. Charles W. Elliott, 
 President Emeritus of Harvard University. 
 
 The "twelve-hour day" and "collective bargain- 
 ing" were the reasons publicly assigned for the steel 
 strike. But Wm. Z. Foster, who led this strike, him- 
 self states the real reason why the American people 
 had to pay some five hundred million dollars for such 
 a strike, when he says in his own book describing 
 this strike: 
 
 "As the war wore on — the situation changed 
 rapidly in favor of unions. The demand for soldiers 
 and munitions had made labor scarce; the steel 
 industry was the master-clock of the whole war 
 
 157
 
 158 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 program and had to be kept going at all costs. . . . 
 It was an opportunity (for) . . . one mighty drive 
 to organize the steel plants of America . . . such as 
 might never occur again." 
 
 Moreover, Mr. Fitzpatrick, the other most impor- 
 tant leader of the steel strike, entirely confirms Mr. 
 Foster by his testimony before the Senate Committee 
 that: " The labor organizations, realizing what tre- 
 mendous influence the steel industry has on all other 
 industries, made up its mind that it would have to 
 organize the steel industry, no matter at what 
 cost." 
 
 When the great Amalgamated Iron Steel and Tin 
 Workers' Union was asked to assist to win the steel 
 strike they replied that they would only help on con- 
 dition that they should have a fifty-one per cent, 
 control in the management and the result of the 
 strike. And the different unions who furnished the 
 $293,139.66 which was to be spent on "organization 
 propaganda " prior to the strike to arouse the workers 
 to a willingness to strike, put in this $293, 139.66 only 
 on condition that they should receive back $3.00 per 
 man, or about $1,500,000, if the strike were won. 
 
 Business agents of a garment workers' union ad- 
 mitted, according to court evidence, that their strike 
 was being called "to increase the funds of the in- 
 ternational union, which thereby would get new
 
 Labor- Monopoly Domination 159 
 
 members who would be required to pay $17.50 for a 
 membership book." 
 
 The Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen has a 
 reserve fund of ten million dollars in its treasury. 
 The Coal Miners' Union collects a minimum of 
 eleven million dollars a year dues from its members. 
 What its reserve fund is no outsider knows. There 
 are other big unions whose financial resources — 
 though they keep them very carefully hidden — must 
 be as great or nearly as great as these, and scores of 
 smaller unions whose incomes and war chests are in 
 relative proportion. 
 
 The Republican party, comprising very con- 
 spicuously over half of all the people of the country 
 was accused during the presidential campaign of 
 1920 as though it were a crime, of attempting to raise 
 fifteen million dollars in order frankly and openly to 
 put before all the people its ideas of what is for the 
 best good of all the people. 
 
 The great union leaders can and do command sums 
 many times greater than this, which are used in ways 
 that are largely hidden and unaccounted for to ad- 
 vance the interests of powerful and publicly irrespon- 
 sible organizations which at most represent less than 
 ten per cent, of the people. 
 
 Neither the President of the United States nor any 
 officer or group of officers in our entire government
 
 160 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 possesses the possibility of such power to injure all 
 the rest of the people as is possessed and was ex- 
 ercised by the coal union leaders. The basis of this 
 power is the fact that with the eleven million dollars 
 a year dues they can maintain a labor organization 
 which can absolutely control the labor in the coal 
 industry and that therefore has a monopoly domina- 
 tion over this great industry that is vital to the whole 
 nation. 
 
 In addition therefore to the fact that has already 
 been emphasized; namely, that such immense sums 
 offer a constant temptation to different factions 
 within the unions to fight for control of these sums 
 and the power such control gives — fights for which 
 power have been one of the causes of some of our 
 most costly strikes — the very existence of such sums, 
 under irresponsible labor leaders' control — the possi- 
 bility through strikes of raising other such sums and 
 thus acquiring more such power has created a condi- 
 tion of labor monopoly domination in certain great 
 industries and the ambition for labor monopoly 
 domination in more and more great industries which 
 is the real crux of the whole strike situation and the 
 most vicious menace which has ever threatened 
 America and Americanism. 
 
 In Russia, the small minority labor class to-day 
 completely dominates the whole government. In
 
 Labor-Monopoly Domination 161 
 
 Germany, the labor class minority has a dispropor- 
 tionate voice in the government and has in certain 
 crises absolutely dominated the policy of the govern- 
 ment. In England, the labor class minority is frankly 
 and openly working toward the domination of the 
 majority of the rest of the people. 
 
 Now, the means by which labor minorities have 
 thus dominated or sought to dominate has not been 
 through orderly processes of government, but through 
 getting a monopoly control of the production of the 
 necessaries of life, and then threatening to cut off 
 the necessaries of the people until they obtained the 
 individual or class advantages which they sought. 
 
 Powerful labor leaders in America to-day have 
 exactly such a monopolistic control in the basic coal 
 industry, 1 and they, through their absolute control 
 of the labor which is necessary to the production of 
 coal, exercised exactly this kind of control in the coal 
 strike. 
 
 The government itself ordered the union leaders to 
 call the strike off. The leaders went through the 
 form of sending telegrams to the local unions which 
 did not and could not bear the official union seal 
 
 1 " The organization known as the United Mine Workers of Amer- 
 ica and its branches, as conducted and managed at the time of the 
 suit and for many years before, was a common law conspiracy in 
 unreasonable restraint of trade." — Justice Pitney, United States 
 Supreme Court.
 
 1 62 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 without which, under union law, no union document 
 is valid. These telegrams, therefore, were not meant 
 actually to call off the coal strike as the government 
 ordered. They were not understood by the men as 
 an order to call off the strike, but merely as a sub- 
 terfuge, and they did not call off the coal strike. 
 The government said it would not treat with the 
 union leaders till the men had gone back to work. 
 But the government did depose Mr. Garfield, the 
 fuel administrator from power at command of the 
 union leaders and not only treated with but made 
 agreements with the union leaders before the men 
 went back to work. The union leaders did not get 
 all they tried to get out of the coal strike but they 
 did dominate the government sufficiently to demon- 
 strate to labor the possibilities of making even the 
 government yield to their organized power. x 
 
 Organized labor has also long had such a mono- 
 poly domination in many other industries. In the 
 building trades it has conspicuously had and exer- 
 cised such domination, in many cases just as un- 
 scrupulously as we now know Brindel exercised it in 
 New York. Nominally organized labor has such a 
 domination in the railroad field but fortunately most 
 
 1 " If you complain that four hundred thousand men held up the 
 government, what will eic, r ht million of them do, if they can, to hold 
 up the government?" — Garretson, President Order of Railroad 
 Conductors.
 
 Labor- Monopoly Domination 163 
 
 of the workers are of a class which has not in the 
 past permitted that domination to be actually ex- 
 ercised very far. 
 
 The war offered a particular favorable opportunity 
 for the extension of this monopoly domination of 
 industry through a more complete organization and 
 control of the labor whose work is absolutely neces- 
 sary to the operation of industry. As Mr. Foster 
 puts it "the gods were fighting on the side of labor " — 
 it was an opportunity to "organize" labor such as 
 might never occur again. As a result of this more 
 intensive "organization" and because of the vast 
 numbers of new workers who had come from all sorts 
 of miscellaneous jobs and minor industries into the 
 great basic "industries which were thus being 'or- 
 ganized,'" the union membership of the country 
 doubled during this period and the union member- 
 ship in many industries particularly affected by the 
 war increased many times that. 
 
 As a result, labor leaders exercised a degree of 
 power and influence they had never before ap- 
 proached. Even minor labor leaders held important 
 industrial situations in the hollow of their hands. 
 Brindel's curt instructions to a contractor to raise 
 his price from $175,000 to $400,000 on a job, and Mr. 
 Mahon's mere "no" over the long distance tele- 
 phone which forced two million people of Brooklyn
 
 1 64 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 to endure the Brooklyn Rapid Transit strike, are 
 far more typical than the public has ever appreciated. 
 As for the big labor leaders, it is well known that 
 their favor was sought even by presidents and 
 prime ministers. That it should be the supreme 
 ambition of labor leaders, and the basic policy of 
 labor organizations to continue such conditions after 
 the war is natural and obvious. 
 
 It is also obvious that when the war ended the 
 average worker too was very anxious to maintain 
 the advantages — particularly the new wage scale — 
 which the war had brought him. Moreover, the vast 
 numbers of men who had come from miscellaneous 
 jobs into the great industries and enjoyed all the 
 advantages which the war had brought to the regu- 
 lar workers in those industries were not only equally 
 anxious to keep their war scale of wages but were 
 particularly anxious to keep their special war jobs in 
 order the better to insure this. 
 
 The situation both in regard to the position and 
 ambition of labor leaders and the positions and 
 ambitions of the average worker pointed directly 
 and obviously to the logical line of strategy which 
 labor leaders at once adopted — that of demanding 
 a continuation of war wages and in addition a 
 decrease of hours so that all the new men who 
 had come into the "organized" industries during
 
 Labor- Monopoly Domination 165 
 
 the war could be kept in these industries and so in 
 the unions. 
 
 In pursuance of this strategy, labor officials, who 
 were still at that time preponderantly of the so-called 
 "conservative" as distinct from the radical group, 
 immediately and widely announced that the em- 
 ployers of the country were planning, at the end of 
 the war, to at once reduce labor to its former posi- 
 tions and wages. They therefore called upon all 
 labor to stand unanimously by its leaders in their 
 fight to keep for labor its war jobs and war wages. 
 
 The first big strike after the war — that in the Gen- 
 eral Electric Company plants — was a test strike on 
 this program. It asked for no increase in wages, 
 but did ask for decreased hours, so that the extra 
 workers who had come into the industry during 
 the war could be maintained in their jobs and in 
 the unions. 
 
 But the General Electric strike was a failure — 
 chiefly because the big majority of the better workers 
 who would be able to keep their jobs and their wages 
 on their own merits had no enthusiasm for a strike 
 which might risk their jobs and lose these wages, 
 merely for the sake of keeping in the union less 
 efficient workmen who could not keep their jobs on 
 their own merits. 
 
 Moreover this strategic program of the so-called
 
 166 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 "conservative" union leaders was at once influenced 
 by another important development. 
 
 The great majority of skilled workers in industry 
 who are always able to keep their jobs and get good 
 pay on their own merits may be union members and 
 firm believers in unionism as a constructive force 
 in industry, but they have always repudiated the 
 radicalism and labor chauvinism of the German or 
 Russian type that seeks a monopolistic labor domina- 
 tion of industry as a means to minority domination of 
 the country. 
 
 The big body of new and nondescript workers, on 
 the other hand, who came into the unions in such 
 numbers during the war and who feared that the end 
 of the war meant the end of their war jobs and high 
 war pay, became easy converts to this labor radical- 
 ism and began to give radical leaders an increasing 
 weight of following which made it possible for them 
 to get control of the union organizations in many of 
 our greatest industries. And in most others it made 
 them powerful enough to force the less radical leaders 
 to adopt radical programs to keep their power. 
 
 Moreover, radicalism at once won a conspicuous 
 and sweeping success by an almost complete unioni- 
 zation of the clothing industry. 
 
 In the clothing trades, workers' wages had already 
 gone up, because of the demand during the war, from,
 
 Labor- Mono poly Domination 167 
 
 perhaps, the lowest paid to $30, $35, and $40 a week. 
 While the work on uniforms and war equipment was, 
 of course, about to be discontinued the discharge of 
 four million soldiers, each with a considerable bonus 
 in cash, meant a big increase in demand for ordinary 
 clothing that was bound to continue the demand and 
 maintain wages in the clothing industry. 
 
 The great bulk of workers in the clothing industry 
 had never been skilled, and therefore never very well 
 organized. If they could be organized, however, this 
 very fact would put them more completely under 
 control of their leaders. And the numbers of work- 
 ers, of course, meant especially big sums in dues to 
 increase further the power of its leaders. 
 
 The tremendous demand for clothing created by 
 the discharge of four million soldiers offered a re- 
 markable opportunity which union leaders would 
 perhaps never have again to promise immense in- 
 creases in wages if the workers would join the union, 
 with a practical certainty of being able temporarily 
 to make good on that promise because of these special 
 circumstances. 
 
 In the beginning of 1919, therefore, union organ- 
 izers started an intensive campaign among those 
 disorganized or semi-organized workers, promising 
 them if they would join the union, the union would 
 get them twice even their high war wages. With
 
 1 68 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 such an incentive the union membership increased 
 sixfold. 
 
 As a result of this clever strategy another big basic 
 industry was put under the domination of men who 
 seek only their own or their class interest. And a 
 new source of income was created which must amount 
 to at least many hundred thousand dollars a year 
 with which to perpetuate and extend this domina- 
 tion. 
 
 The strangle hold which this labor monopoly thus 
 got on the clothing industry sent prices, as has al- 
 ready been emphasized, to a point where the whole 
 public openly rebelled, and through months of re- 
 fusing to buy clothes temporarily broke this hold. 
 But if these and other leaders had been only a little 
 less radical and had forced prices merely to a point 
 just short of where they would arouse general public 
 action the public would undoubtedly have had to 
 continue to pay indefinitely. Moreover, in the case 
 of coal and other more urgent necessities the public 
 cannot do without. 
 
 The failure of the General Electric strike and the 
 success of the clothing strike pointed certain very 
 conspicuous lessons which labor politicians were not 
 slow to see — that in their strikes for maintaining 
 their unions at their full war membership and 
 strength, first that they could not depend on sufficient
 
 Labor- Monopoly Domination 169 
 
 support from older skilled workers in strikes which 
 were obviously merely in the interest of the itinerant 
 war worker and his being retained in the union, and 
 second, that they could not hope to win such strikes 
 without the older skilled workers' help, and third, 
 that the one way to assure his active support was 
 through promising him a material increase in wages. 
 
 Moreover this very necessity of fighting for big 
 wage increases even above the high war level in order 
 to induce the better class workers to support these 
 strikes to maintain the unions at full war strength at 
 which strength it dominated their industries, of itself 
 made it even more necessary for such organizations 
 to dominate their industries in order to win their 
 fights for these wage increases. 
 
 In other words, both the strong rivalry of radical 
 leaders whose chief and specific aim was the domina- 
 tion of their industry by their union, and the very 
 strategic necessity of the circumstances, forced all 
 organized labor more and more into a position where 
 it had to make its chief policy that of completely 
 dominating its industry in order to maintain its or- 
 ganization. And in order to do this it had to keep its 
 members constantly in hand and ready to strike 
 through constant agitation and through continued 
 increases or at least promises of increases in wages. 
 
 Not only, therefore, does the very existence of such
 
 170 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 monopoly domination over industry by labor or- 
 ganizations carry the possibility of great injury to the 
 public, but the very means by which such domination 
 has had to be achieved necessitates an unscrupulous 
 attack on public interest by constant strikes, and 
 continual unjustified raises in wages. That this 
 was not only true under the special conditions during 
 and just after the war, but is generally true is amply 
 demonstrated by the labor history of the coal and 
 building industries which have been perhaps longest 
 and most thoroughly controlled by labor monopolies. 
 
 But labor leaders during the war and in the strike 
 epidemic period after the war in no sense limited 
 their efforts to extending and maintaining a domina- 
 tion in the industries already held. On the contrary, 
 not only through the great clothing and steel strikes 
 but through many lesser strikes they constantly 
 fought to extend their power and domination over 
 new industries. 
 
 For it is perfectly obvious that if the present 
 organization of five hundred thousand men and the 
 collection of eleven million dollars annual dues can 
 give labor leaders such a control of the coal industry 
 for instance, as makes it possible for them to keep 
 one hundred thousand extra men at work and paying 
 dues to them, and to otherwise dominate the condi- 
 tions in that industry so as to assure a continuation
 
 Labor- Monopoly Domination 
 
 171 
 
 of their power and income, that just in proportion 
 as they can similarly "organize" other great basic 
 industries they will have just that much greater 
 power and income with which to further their own or 
 their mere class interests. 
 
 It has long been a fundamental union policy to 
 work for a more and more complete control of our big 
 basic industries. But formerly union leaders had a 
 considerable respect for the power of public opinion, 
 and their method was usually to go slow and wait 
 for favorable opportunities. They generally let the 
 workers themselves take the initiative, and if a cause 
 for which they were striking was just and was other- 
 wise susceptible, with the right kind of presentation, 
 of getting public sympathy, the big amalgamated or 
 federated unions would come in as the champions of 
 the oppressed worker who were not strong enough 
 to fight their own battles, and in that way build up 
 their power in that industry. 
 
 But for the radical labor leaders who now dominate 
 organized labor or are in sufficiently powerful posi- 
 tions to force conservative leaders into radical poli- 
 cies in order to keep their jobs this process is entirely 
 too slow. 
 
 Formerly, also, any group of labor could not be 
 depended on to go immediately on strike because 
 some outsider told them to strike for some grievance
 
 172 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 which they had never thought of themselves or for a 
 union not yet in existence. But after the war the 
 strike epidemic, encouraged and manipulated as 
 has been described, soon become so widespread that 
 great classes of labor would stop work on practically 
 any pretext and on practically anybody's say-so. 
 
 Moreover, labor leaders soon found out that the 
 public could be made to stand for far more than they 
 had imagined or at least that it was not organized or 
 united enough to make its opinion count. 
 
 Therefore, whereas, under the old strategy of wait- 
 ing till the workers had a real grievance and them- 
 selves took the initiative in striking, it took years to 
 completely organize an industry and to build up the 
 power and the millions of dollars income which the 
 organization of great industries gives, radical labor 
 leaders became more and more convinced that, with 
 labor's willingness to strike and the public's supine- 
 ness, they could grab off a whole industry and make 
 millions of dollars in dues available immediately at 
 one stroke. 
 
 The idea was naturally vastly intriguing to the big 
 labor leaders and they lost little time in taking steps 
 to carry it out. But great basic "unorganized" in- 
 dustries are not numerous so competition sprang up 
 for the privilege of such "organization." Radical 
 leaders "organized" the clothing trade and radicals
 
 Labor-Monopoly Domination 173 
 
 won the privilege of leading in the 19 19 attempt to 
 "organize" the steel industry, but many other groups 
 of unions insisted on having a share in the efforts and 
 prospective profits. How keen this competition was, 
 and that some of the cooperating unions had a greater 
 interest in their own share of the prospective spoils 
 than in the success of the movement is strongly sug- 
 gested by Mr. Foster's recriminations in his book 
 describing this strike. 
 
 The extent to which such competition among 
 unions and leaders for the profits of engineering and 
 controlling labor organizations in new fields was 
 often carried is further strikingly suggested by the 
 fact that a meeting in New York City in September, 
 1920, which was to determine the control of a new 
 super-monopoly to control all New York unions and 
 at which Mr. Gompers himself presided, ended in a 
 free-for-all fight among rival labor leaders which 
 required the calling of extra police reserves. 
 
 Moreover, the fields for such efforts are so limited 
 and the prospective profits and power so great that 
 the failure of one such "organization" scheme, due 
 to the fact that a majority of the workers indicate 
 by refusing to strike that they do not want such 
 "organization " of their industry, only seems to whet 
 the labor leaders' ambition. 
 
 In August, 1920, just a year after the failure of the
 
 174 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 great and expensive steel strike of 1919, the executive 
 council of the American Federation of Labor met at 
 Atlantic City to map out a tremendous new campaign 
 to attempt to "organize" the steel industry in 1921. 
 Several interesting facts have already leaked out. 
 Thirty unions have been let in on the drive. The 
 Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin 
 Workers it is understood again refused to help such 
 a movement unless it received a fifty-one per cent, 
 control of the organizing committee — which presuma- 
 bly meant fifty-one per cent, of the power and the 
 income if the drive went over. Whether this par- 
 ticular faction succeeded in getting these demands or 
 not has not been announced. There is, of course, to 
 be a large war fund used for intensive propaganda 
 work to arouse the workers to a willingness to strike 
 if the leaders decide they want a strike. Secretary 
 Morrison refused to state the size of this fund. Nor 
 did he say how it had been subscribed, how it was 
 to be used, whether those who subscribed it were 
 promised five hundred per cent, on their "invest- 
 ment" as in the former steel strike, or what other 
 promises were made to those who subscribed it. 
 Secretary Morrison, however, most casually and 
 naively, did say: "I should not say that a strike is 
 contemplated. I should rather say that 'organiza- 
 tion' is the objective. "
 
 Labor- Monopoly Domination 175 
 
 In other words, the big steel industry, which is 
 almost as important to the country as the coal in- 
 dustry, is again to be the victim of tremendous labor 
 agitation, artificially forced from outside. The men 
 who are forcing this agitation are not themselves 
 connected with the steel industry, nor have they been 
 elected or given any authority that is known of by the 
 steel workers to represent them. They certainly do 
 not represent the users of steel or the public in general . 
 These men in their preliminary announcement, more- 
 over, make no mention of any consideration of public 
 interest. They make no mention of what it is pro- 
 posed to do for the steel workers. They are obviously 
 concerned chiefly with maneuvering and jockeying 
 with each other for special preferred positions in a 
 proposed fight to increase their own power. 
 
 The last steel strike cost the public nearly five 
 hundred million dollars. A bigger, better organized 
 steel strike would probably cost the public far more 
 than this. 
 
 But with, or perhaps without, a strike — it is ad- 
 mittedly merely a matter of strategy whether the 
 public must bear the cost of a steel strike or not — 
 there is the chance that labor leaders can get a 
 strangle hold on another great basic American in- 
 dustry, through which they can still further threaten 
 or punish the whole people as they have already
 
 176 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 threatened and punished them through their labor 
 monopoly control of the coal industry; there is a 
 chance that five hundred thousand new members may 
 be brought under their control who would pay about 
 ten million dollars a year into treasuries they control. 
 The public be damned !
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 STRIKES AND RADICALISM 
 
 Organized labor to-day is supposedly divided 
 into two groups according to its ultimate aims. The 
 so-called conservative group which it is publicly 
 claimed still controls the majority of the old estab- 
 lished unions as well as the American Federation of 
 Labor, is theoretically willing that private capital 
 and private energy should keep the burden and 
 responsibility and the nominal management of in- 
 dustry. Its leaders merely aim ostensibly, through 
 absolute monopoly of the labor market, to tax all 
 labor and to dictate how labor shall work, under 
 what conditions it shall work, what it shall be paid, 
 and so, only indirectly, dictate volume of production 
 and prices to the consumer. 
 
 But there has also grown up largely since the war, 
 as has already been emphasized, a powerful radical 
 group which controls labor organizations in a number 
 of industries and whose growth in and fight for con- 
 trol of the so-called conservative unions precipitated 
 some of our biggest after-the-war strikes. This 
 
 ia 177
 
 i ?s The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 group aims definitely and admittedly at the complete 
 breaking down of our present industrial system as 
 the first step toward complete control, ownership, and 
 management of all industry by these unions. 
 
 The socialist party, which is the chief political 
 expression of this radical industrial policy, which in 
 1900 polled less than one hundred thousand votes, in 
 1920 polled a million votes and claims several times 
 more followers, chiefly unnaturalized. 
 
 The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, 
 with their affiliated organizations, have grown to a 
 membership of over four hundred thousand. The 
 breaking down of the present industrial system is 
 stated in the preamble of their constitution as the 
 fundamental motive of their organization. 
 
 The leaders of the steel strike in 19 19, which called 
 out three hundred thousand workers, were radicals, 
 and the organization propaganda in connection 
 with the strike was ultra-radical. During the last 
 few years, radicalism has gained sufficient influence 
 in the United Coal Miners' Union with its five 
 hundred thousand members to force, in the way 
 that has already been emphasized, the great coal 
 strike of 191 9. Even the American Federation of 
 Labor and affiliated Brotherhoods with some four 
 million members has itself become so vitiated with 
 radicalism since the war that it has conspicuously
 
 Strikes and Radicalism 179 
 
 departed from many of its most consistent former 
 policies. 
 
 This growth in radicalism and the crystallization 
 and organization of the radical spirit into a powerful 
 fighting menace, which to-day has a permanent hold 
 on many of our great industries, and which is in a 
 position as never before to maintain its organization 
 and power, is the result of strikes and the possibility 
 of the unrestricted use of the strike weapon. 
 
 Americans in general have always been amusedly 
 skeptical as to the possibility of any menace to them 
 from the kind of men and the kind of ideas by which 
 radicalism is represented. They can see little danger 
 from a million socialist votes or even from several 
 times that number in our electorate of thirty million. 
 They can see little danger of the possibility, consid- 
 ering the whole heredity, history, and point of view 
 of the American people, that any radical revolution- 
 ary program can ever get a hold on any numerically 
 important proportion of average Americans — and 
 they are unquestionably right about this. They take 
 it for granted that minorities, no matter how noisy 
 they may become, cannot overthrow our industrial 
 or any other particular part of our social organiza- 
 tion, against the will of the majority. 
 
 While the sudden tremendous growth in radical 
 activity since the war, and the tremendous influence
 
 180 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 it has had on general industrial unrest and our 
 widespread strike mania, has been too obvious to be 
 denied, the average American has looked on these 
 as merely a by-product of the war, one of its un- 
 avoidable costs that must be borne and paid but 
 which will work itself out, then disappear as sud- 
 denly as it arose. For from the common-sense, self- 
 reliant American point of view it is difficult to believe 
 that any considerable number of other Americans, 
 or even of foreigners subject to American influences 
 and conditions, can continue to hold and act on 
 views that are so opposite to individual initiative, 
 practical common sense, and everything else that 
 America conspicuously stands for. 
 
 But such optimism completely overlooks three very 
 important fundamental facts in regard to the rise 
 and present strength of radicalism: 
 
 First, that there have come about in America, 
 certain fundamental changes in the environmental 
 influences to which millions of Americans have, for 
 almost a generation, been exposed and which have 
 been making for the very point of view which radi- 
 calism expresses, 
 
 Second, the fact that radical leadership has for 
 years been working with the easy tide of these influ- 
 ences and had already built up an immense unorgan- 
 ized following which, through the widespread strike
 
 Strikes and Radicalism 181 
 
 epidemic after the war, it was able to organize into 
 a concrete offensive force, 
 
 Third, and most important of all, the fact that by- 
 getting a bare majority control, or even a sufficiently 
 large minority to influence the control of our great 
 labor monopolies in our chief basic industries, radi- 
 calism has become a power and a menace out of all 
 proportion to its mere numerical strength. 
 
 It is an axiom of psychology that both individual 
 and group points of view are the products not only 
 of heredity but often even more of environment. 
 
 America was settled by men and women with ideals 
 and ambitions for personal liberty and personal eco- 
 nomic advancement. Generation after generation 
 the undeveloped portion of the country held out con- 
 tinually new incentives to ambitions for greater 
 personal freedom and wealth. Pioneer life was a life 
 of realities that constantly demanded individual self- 
 reliance, energy, and practical common sense so that 
 both heredity and environment bred and empha- 
 sized these characteristics in our race. 
 
 Farming scarcely less than pioneering demanded 
 these same qualities and for generations some three 
 fourths of all Americans, through a life in constant 
 touch with realities, where cause and effect worked 
 directly and obviously, learned from first hand ex- 
 perience of themselves and their neighbors that the
 
 182 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 one road to success was through individual initia- 
 tive, hard work, and hard common sense, while their 
 opposite led equally directly to the poor farm. 
 Moreover our early immigrants went almost entirely 
 to the land and whatever their heredity point of 
 view, learned through first-hand experience in the 
 same environment the same simple, practical phi- 
 losophy of Americanism. 
 
 As America grew and the needs for transporta- 
 tion, communication, and a more complex indus- 
 trial system developed, their creation offered a still 
 newer, bigger incentive to individual ambition. And 
 because, just as with pioneering and farming, they 
 offered practical problems and dealt with realities, 
 they rewarded that ambition in direct proportion to 
 the individual initiative, energy, and practical com- 
 mon sense displayed, and thereby emphasized and 
 idealized these characteristics still further. 
 
 In other words it cannot be over-emphasized that 
 our fundamental American characteristics of indi- 
 vidual initiative, energy, and practical common sense, 
 in no sense merely happened to develop, nor were 
 they arbitrarily chosen but, on the contrary, they 
 evolved as a logical, inevitable result of environment. 
 
 But the environment to-day in which a continually 
 larger portion of the American people — particularly 
 our ever-increasing foreign element — live and work
 
 Strikes and Radicalism 183 
 
 and think, is not only different from, but in many 
 ways the very opposite from, the environment which 
 created these characteristics and points of view 
 which we call American. 
 
 America is no longer an agricultural nation. Out 
 of twenty million families only seven million live on 
 farms and nearly half our people live in commercial 
 and industrial centers. 
 
 Now modern commerce and industry, on their 
 creative and executive sides, offer the biggest in- 
 centives for, and are themselves the most intensive 
 school in, developing initiative, energy, and practical 
 common sense among those who are intellectually- 
 able to measure up to their more advanced require- 
 ments. 
 
 For great classes of workers, however, modern 
 American industry is often merely a great compli- 
 cated machine with most of whose parts they never 
 come in contact, and most of whose operations they 
 do not understand and in which they are obviously 
 merely cogs. This great machine furnishes such a 
 worker his place to work, the machinery and tools 
 with which he works, the material on which he per- 
 forms some single, generally small, operation which 
 it tells him to perform and how to perform. On 
 Saturday his pay envelope is just as automatically 
 given him.
 
 1 84 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 Back of his work are real problems — of raw ma- 
 terial, transportation, equipment, financing, pro- 
 duction methods, and dispatch. Beyond his work 
 are problems — of finishing, assembling, marketing. 
 All of these are just as practical as any problems any 
 Americans have ever been called to face. But be- 
 cause he does not have to face them, these problems 
 have little reality for him, and he probably has at 
 most but vague theories about them. 
 
 Moreover his relations and point of view toward 
 the problems of his daily living are to a large extent 
 the same. His light is furnished him by pressing a 
 button — his water by turning a faucet. His food 
 comes to him in packages almost ready for the table. 
 Even his sport is furnished him by a professional 
 baseball team. There are a hundred and one real 
 problems upon whose practical handling by someone's 
 initiative, energy, and common sense, each of these 
 services which he receives almost automatically 
 depends. But they do not require the exercise of any 
 of these characteristics on his part. Because there- 
 fore he himself has thus no contact with the realities 
 of the problems of supplying what he wants or what 
 he gets he can hardly be blamed if he does not think 
 of what he wants or what he gets in terms of the real 
 problems involved. 
 
 Again our immigrants during the last decades have
 
 Strikes and Radicalism 185 
 
 come almost entirely from autocratic countries where 
 for generations they have been used to having their 
 lives prescribed and regulated for them. These im- 
 migrants with this hereditary point of view have 
 gone by millions into our industrial centers to add 
 to the forces of present industrial environment in 
 weakening and nullifying our typically American 
 individualism. 
 
 Many social thinkers — favorable as well as hostile 
 to our modern industrial system, have pointed out 
 this tendency of modern industrial conditions to 
 break down individual initiative and energy of the 
 less intelligent and less strong-minded worker. But 
 what has not been so widely pointed out is the fact 
 that it is psychologically impossible for these forces 
 merely to eliminate old characteristics and leave 
 their places negative and void. On the contrary 
 they inevitably tend to build up a positive opposite 
 point of view. 
 
 It cannot, therefore, be over-emphasized that if 
 normal American environment which forces the in- 
 dividual to face and solve his own problems has been 
 able to create the stern, difficult virtues of initiative 
 and energy to the point where these virtues become 
 positive, inherent, national characteristics, a change 
 in environment to one in which most of his problems 
 in life are solved for the individual and their results
 
 1 86 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 more or less automatically given him, must far more 
 inevitably, because such circumstances work with 
 well-known human weaknesses, tend to create a 
 positive inherent point of view that more and more 
 of the things he wants should be automatically 
 given him. 
 
 In exactly the same way the fact that so many of 
 the chief problems of his life are infinitely complex, 
 and cause and effect often so remote that he only 
 touches them at one or a few points, also tends in- 
 evitably to befog the point of view of the less in- 
 telligent worker and to develop the easy point of 
 view of accepting or building up merely plausible 
 and self-interested theories about the problems which 
 affect his life, quite irrespective of the practical 
 possibilities of such theories. 
 
 Hundreds of after-the-war strikes had their whole 
 psychological basis in the combination of these two 
 points of view. Strikes by American workmen 
 against the action of foreign governments — strikes 
 for four times former wages for two thirds former 
 work — strikes for wages which the strikers' own 
 leaders told them could not possibly be paid so that 
 the strike was foredoomed to expensive failure — 
 strikes for a thirty-hour week at a wage nearly twice 
 what the average worker gets for a forty-eight hour 
 week — are all neither more nor less than the active
 
 Strikes and Radicalism 187 
 
 expression of a blind conviction on the part of hun- 
 dreds of thousands of American workers that some- 
 body somehow ought to give them what they want 
 irrespective of all practical considerations. 
 
 This is the point of view which radicalism has long 
 since seized on, capitalized, encouraged, and on 
 which it itself has developed in America. 
 
 In spite of the widely different ultimate philoso- 
 phies which the different schools of radicalism theo- 
 retically advance, in the practical work within their 
 organizations — of increasing their following and their 
 hold upon it — all radicals invariably operate through 
 the easiest channels of human weakness, and all of 
 them always work with the tide of environmental 
 influences, under which their members and prospec- 
 tive members live. Thus for years all radicals, 
 irrespective of philosophical differences, have been 
 crystallizing, giving expression to, and reiterating this 
 one doctrine, which environment and human weak- 
 ness make it most easy for the less intelligent classes 
 of industrial workers to accept to-day, namely: 
 that the great complex forces of modern life, which 
 in some, to them, vague way automatically control 
 their lives, should in some equally vague way be 
 changed to influence their lives more favorably — to 
 give them more of the things they want. 
 
 But it is a psychological axiom that it takes ac-
 
 1 88 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 tion — the stimulus of conflict — the possibility of some 
 immediate, concrete result — to galvanize general 
 theories and points of view into dynamic forces and 
 specific organized effort. 
 
 Before the war, radicalism, because it was specifi- 
 fically excluded from union power, had no authority 
 to call strikes. Normal American conditions offered 
 little opportunity for other concrete action. Up to 
 the time of the war, therefore, radicalism was only 
 able to take advantage of a favorable environment 
 to sow its seeds — to crystallize and express and reit- 
 erate in terms of its own theories, these already 
 emphasized points of view which American indus- 
 trial environment had already made plausible. 
 
 With the war, however, just the conditions which 
 the radical forces needed for crystallization and or- 
 ganization arose. Hundreds of thousands of un- 
 skilled new workers were going into skilled work and 
 into the skilled workers' unions. The demand for 
 labor in the unskilled trades was constantly increas- 
 ing. Wages were constantly going up in all industry. 
 It was the great opportunity and radicalism seized 
 it. Working, at least at first, among the less skilled 
 or foreign workers, playing upon the spirit of unrest, 
 constantly capitallizing the feeling which they had 
 long been catering to and crystallizing, that some- 
 body ought somehow to give the workers whatever
 
 Strikes and Radicalism 189 
 
 they wanted irrespective of practical considerations, 
 and by constantly preaching strikes, inciting strikes, 
 and leading strikes for such aims, radicalism con- 
 sciously and persistently worked its way into, and 
 more and more into the actual even if not the 
 recognized control of, our great powerful established 
 labor organizations. 
 
 On November 4, 19 14, William Z. Foster, then a 
 well-known I. W. W. leader, wrote, "I am satisfied 
 from my observation that the only way for the I. 
 W. W. to have the workers adopt and practice the 
 principles of revolutionary unionism — which I take 
 it is its mission — is to give up the attempt to create 
 a new labor movement, turn itself into a propaganda 
 league, get into the organized labor movement, and, 
 by building up better fighting machines within the 
 old unions than those possessed by our reactionary 
 enemies, revolutionize these unions, even as our 
 French syndacalist fellow workers have so success- 
 fully done with theirs. 
 
 "(Signed) Yours for revolution, 
 
 "William Z. Foster." 
 
 Within four years, twenty-four of our most power- 
 ful so-called "conservative" trade unions made this 
 same William Z. Foster Secretary of the Special 
 Union Committee and Field General of the most
 
 190 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 important trade union fight that followed the war. 
 During this fight Mr. Gompers, the Brahma of so- 
 called "conservative" trade unionism and Mr. Foster 
 each assured the Senate Investigating Committee 
 that their point of view on labor matters was essen- 
 tially the same. 
 
 Less than one year after this Mr. Foster in his 
 book, The Great Strike (pages 255-265) after stat- 
 ing that the time is now come to strip off the 
 camouflage and show the "true nature and ten- 
 dency of trade unionism" says boldly and frankly, 
 ' ' For many years radicals in this country have almost 
 universally maintained that the trade unions are 
 fundamentally unrevolutionary. If they were to 
 look sharper they would see that the trade union 
 movement is traveling faster than any other body 
 towards the end they wish to reach. . . . Like 
 various other social movements (trade unions) have 
 more or less instinctively surrounded themselves 
 with a sort of camouflage or protective coloring 
 designed to disguise the movement and thus to pacify 
 and disarm the opposition. This is the junction of 
 such expressions as ' a fair day's pay for a fair day's 
 work.' ' The interests of capital and labor are identical, ' 
 etc. In actual practice little or no attention is paid to 
 them. They are for foreign {public) consumption. 
 . . . It is an indisputable fact that the trade union
 
 Strikes and Radicalism 191 
 
 always acts upon the policy of taking all it can get. 
 . . . They are as insatiable as the veriest so-called 
 revolutionary unions. ... In every country they 
 are constantly solidifying their ranks, building ever 
 more gigantic and militant combinations . . . and 
 . . . they are going incomparably faster towards 
 this goal than any of the much advertised, so-called 
 revolutionary unions." 
 
 Already in England, in France, and more conspicu- 
 ously in Germany and Italy, radical minorities 
 through the control of the great organized labor 
 monopolies are not only continually threatening and 
 constantly handicapping industrial progress and pros- 
 perity but constantly challenging and compromising 
 the will of the whole nation through the threat of 
 continually greater and more costly strikes. 
 
 Whether, then, we take Mr. Gompers's statements 
 at their face value that radicalism in our own country 
 is merely fighting for control of our great labor monop- 
 olies or whether we believe Mr. Foster that Mr. Gom- 
 pers's statements are merely convenient camouflage 
 for "public consumption," and that radicalism has 
 achieved such control that to-day the trade union 
 movement is actually "more revolutionary than the 
 so-called revolutionary unions themselves," the fact 
 remains that as long as such labor monopolies them- 
 selves are allowed to continue — as long as some few
 
 192 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 supreme labor leaders have the power, through the 
 unrestricted use of the strike weapon, to shut off, 
 whenever it suits their interest, the whole nation's 
 production of coal or clothing or some other necessity 
 of life, so long will radicalism, through the possession 
 of that leadership or the possibility of fighting for 
 that leadership, possess the single most powerful 
 weapon in modern social life with which to perpetuate 
 its menace.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 STRIKING AT THE ROOTS OF AMERICANISM 
 
 In 1220 — in what is known as the Dark Ages — 
 when Clan MacAlpine and Clan MacDonald got 
 into a dispute over the fishing rights on Loch Lomond 
 they, as a matter of course, immediately gathered 
 their warriors and marched against each other. 
 Cattle belonging to the innocent neutral farmers 
 along each line of march were slaughtered. Harvests 
 were trampled or burned. Neutral villages through 
 which they passed or fought were pillaged and many 
 innocent villagers killed. Such things were merely 
 the natural and unavoidable incidents of a system of 
 unrestrained private wars. 
 
 In 1920, when the carpenters and metal workers 
 get into a dispute as to which is to have the preroga- 
 tive of hanging metal doors with wooden cores, they 
 too, as a matter of course, immediately strike against 
 each other. The painters, finishers, and many other 
 workers have to stop work and go without their 
 wages until the doors are hung. Tenants cannot 
 move in. Costs and losses pile up and rents must 
 
 193
 
 194 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 later follow. Such things are merely the natural and 
 unavoidable incidents of unrestrained private strikes. 
 
 In the early years of the fifteenth century the 
 powerful Dukes of Warwick maneuvered the royal 
 houses of York and Lancaster into the bloody Wars 
 of the Roses, which brought slaughter or death by 
 starvation or plague to over a quarter of all the com- 
 mon people of England, in the hope that one of the 
 Warwicks might become king. 
 
 Within the last two years of the twentieth century 
 certain state leaders of the powerful Coal Miners' 
 Union maneuvered the national leaders into the great 
 coal strike, which meant a fight with the national 
 government and billions of dollars loss to the whole 
 American people, in the hope that they might them- 
 selves become the national leaders of the coal union. 
 
 In 1 62 1, one section of Eastern Europe, with one 
 religious point of view, believing theirs a divine 
 mission to bring the rest of eastern Europe to the 
 same point of view, ravished the whole country with 
 a war that turned nearly two thirds of the productive 
 land into a desert, and set all Central Europe back 
 two hundred years in progress and prosperity. 
 
 In 192 1, according to the announcements of big 
 union leaders, there is to be a drive to bring the great 
 non-union steel industry over to the union point of 
 view. If the way they have fought for the same
 
 Striking at Americanism 195 
 
 purpose in the coal industry, in the steel industry 
 in the past and in other industries is any criterion, 
 we can feel sure this struggle will cost the American 
 people hundreds of millions of dollars more. 
 
 When Charlemagne died in 814, and the last great 
 Roman Empire broke up, our ancestors faced the 
 problem of developing an entirely new political or- 
 ganization with only human nature as a guide and 
 motive force. 
 
 Great robber barons held the land and warred with 
 each other over every petty ambition or jealousy 
 without restraint or scruple, till no peasant in all 
 Europe could plant a crop without an even chance 
 that it would be fought over and destroyed before he 
 could harvest it. 
 
 To defend themselves from the barons, the mer- 
 chants and workers of the cities built strong walls 
 and trained or hired armies. But, once safe and 
 strong themselves, they began to use these armies 
 to settle their trading jealousies and extend their 
 power. 
 
 Even the peasants in desperation built for them- 
 selves safe retreats in the deep woods or mountain 
 caves, and banded together in camorras or other or- 
 ganizations for their own protection. But they, too, 
 once safe themselves, fell into the spirit of the age 
 and soon were fighting with barons and burghers and
 
 19 6 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 oppressing other peasants as unscrupulously as any 
 robber baron had ever oppressed them. 
 
 The Dark Ages were the dark ages, and all Europe, 
 instead of producing and going ahead, bled and 
 starved, was plague ridden, and stood still, chiefly be- 
 cause Europe was organized by groups and classes, and 
 all these groups and classes only schemed and thought 
 and fought to advance their own interests without 
 a conception of any common interests or rights. 
 
 On October 21, 1620, while different religious 
 groups were making a desert of Germany in order that 
 one group might dominate the rest — while Cavalier 
 and Roundhead were fighting a class war for control 
 of England, the Pilgrims, fleeing from government by 
 group and class interest, landed at Plymouth Rock 
 and drew up the Mayflower compact, dedicating the 
 new government in America to the interests of all 
 the people. 
 
 On August 29, 1920, three hundred years almost to 
 a day after the dedication of America to the interests 
 and rights of all the people, 1000 B. R. T. workers, 
 reversing the vote of 2000 fellow workers not to 
 strike, and by their closer organization, determination, 
 and threats forced 12,000 of their fellow workers out 
 of their jobs and wages, and a large proportion of 
 2,000,000 of their fellow citizens either to walk to 
 work or stay at home and lose their wages.
 
 Striking at Americanism 197 
 
 On July 4th, after the Civil War, which the Ameri- 
 can people fought to keep a slave-owning class from 
 dominating industrial and political life, Lincoln 
 reexpressed Americanism, in terms the whole world 
 has accepted, as "government of the people, by the 
 people, for the people." 
 
 On August 31st, a year after the World War, which 
 was fought that Europe, too, might be freed from 
 government by aristocratic and bureaucratic groups, 
 Patrick J. Shea, the local union official, who had 
 argued so strongly with the one thousand B. R. T. 
 men against the strike, held a long distance telephone 
 conversation with W. D. Mahon, president of the 
 Street Car Workers' Union, who lives in Detroit, in 
 order to try to stop the B. R. T. strike. Probably not 
 one per cent, of the two million citizens of Brooklyn, 
 N. Y., ever heard of Mr. Mahon, who lives in Detroit. 
 They certainly never elected him, or directly or in- 
 directly took any action that would give him any 
 right to represent them, or speak for them, or have 
 any power over them. Yet Mr. Mahon, who lives in 
 Detroit, Mich., gave arbitrary instructions over the 
 telephone that two million citizens of Brooklyn, 
 N. Y., must continue to be denied one of the most 
 important necessities of their business and social life. 
 
 A generation ago the whole American people were 
 forced to unite to protect the public interest against
 
 198 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 a special group of "capitalistic" robber barons who 
 had arisen through our rapid economic development 
 and who tried to put their special group interests 
 above the common interest through control of our 
 economic necessities by means of capitalistic mo- 
 nopolies. 
 
 Yet, within twenty years of our hard fought and 
 sweeping victory for the common interests of the 
 whole people against the special interests of these 
 modern capitalistic robber barons, our modern labor 
 camorras, organized doubtless for necessary self- 
 protection, are to-day making a more ruthless, un- 
 scrupulous, dangerous use of their new power to 
 promote their own special interests, through stopping 
 our economic production, than any trust magnate 
 ever dared attempt. 
 
 The anti-trust movement of a generation ago was 
 in no sense a reflection on capital. Except among the 
 more rabid elements, it did not involve any reflections 
 on great organizations of capital as such. Its whole 
 attack was merely against the type of big capitalistic 
 monopoly that was seeking to get control over the 
 production or distribution of the necessities of all the 
 people for the purpose of using that control for then- 
 own selfish interests and against the interests of the 
 rest of the people. 
 
 There is no question that American Labor has
 
 Striking at Americanism 199 
 
 always been one of the most important factors in 
 building up our national prosperity. There is no 
 question that labor organizations have often been 
 among the most important factors in advancing the 
 interests and efficiency of labor, and so the interests 
 and prosperity of the country. There is no question 
 that strikes, as often the only weapon of ultimate 
 resort in labor's legitimate competition with capital, 
 in many instances have been justified, and in spite of 
 the losses they have caused in wages and non-pro- 
 duction, have often proved a big net benefit not only 
 to labor but to the country as a whole. 
 
 But when as at present the great majority of 
 strikes are obviously and often blatantly mere weap- 
 ons in the hands of powerful, self-seeking organiza- 
 tions, or of factions in organizations, that are used 
 not only with a wanton disregard of public interest, 
 but often in a calculated and ruthless attack upon 
 public interest in order to force public interest to 
 yield to group chauvinism, the strike to-day becomes 
 the most powerful and sinister challenge to Ameri- 
 canism that the American people have ever been 
 called to face. 
 
 Big, conspicuous strike leaders themselves have 
 had a great deal to say recently about Americanism. 
 They have talked loudly and frequently of the in- 
 herent right of any free American citizen to work or
 
 2oo The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 not to work at his own volition. They have decried 
 loudly as industrial slavery the very idea that any 
 man should go to work or stop work at the mere 
 volition of some other man. 
 
 But a strike as has already been pointed out does 
 not merely consist of a man's working or not working 
 when he wants to. It is in its essence a conspiracy 
 among many men to stop work, and often to force 
 other men to stop work, always in order to injure 
 and coerce someone else. 
 
 History tells us that the robber barons "bleated 
 like lambs" about the fundamental right of self- 
 protection when they were forced to put their private 
 soldiers with which they had fought their private 
 wars under command of a central government which 
 represented, at least in some degree, all the people. 
 
 We all of us remember how this history repeated 
 itself — how, when the question came up of the right 
 of all Americans not to have the price of their neces- 
 saries of life artificially manipulated merely for the 
 benefit of selfish groups, our own capitalistic robber 
 barons cried to heaven about the fundamental right 
 of any American to do what he pleased with what was 
 his own. 
 
 The bleating of the robber baron about the funda- 
 mental right of self-protection, to justify or cloak his 
 private wars — the cry of the trust magnate about the
 
 Striking at Americanism 201 
 
 fundamental right of any man to do what he wanted 
 with what was his, to justify or cloak his own con- 
 spiracies for price manipulation — the wail of a labor 
 leader about the fundamental right to work or not to 
 work, to justify or cloak a system under which he 
 himself commands men to work or not to work in 
 order to promote his own or his class interests — all 
 are in exactly the same category. 
 
 To the rest of us, as outsiders, such invocations 
 and magnifying and twisting of smaller, less impor- 
 tant rights of individuals to try to justify the attacks 
 upon the bigger, broader rights of all the people, 
 merely indicate to what lengths of blindness or hypoc- 
 risy the selfishness of group or class interest always, 
 in every age, inevitably leads. 
 
 This weakness of human nature that, whereas, an 
 individual who rises to illogical or illegitimate power 
 may have the self-control and the discretion not to 
 become arrogant and flaunt that power, the group or 
 class that achieves illogical or illegitimate power has 
 invariably throughout history sooner or later become 
 so over-confident that it has recklessly over- played its 
 hand, is, however, very useful to the rest of society. 
 
 American public sympathy has always been, 
 naturally and openly, on the side of labor, because its 
 struggles were so frequently against the same big 
 capitalistic "robber barons" which the public itself
 
 202 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 was fighting and because in general in its fight with 
 capital labor seemed to be the under dog. This 
 sympathy for labor has naturally, at least in a general 
 way, included its leaders. 
 
 But the modern labor leader's over-confident, often 
 almost mad, insistence in flaunting his utterly un- 
 American doctrine of class rights, his increasingly 
 ruthless and open infringement of the most basic and 
 important rights of all the people to be fed and 
 warmed and clothed, in order that some small group 
 of the labor class may be able to draw full pay for 
 working three days a week or in order to put one 
 group of men instead of another group into union 
 power, has brought the whole labor question under 
 the analytical scrutiny of the whole American people, 
 and this scrutiny reveals with a clearness that cannot 
 be mistaken, that a great portion of the modern labor 
 movement is to-day seeking to build up a selfish 
 monopoly power in exactly the same way the capi- 
 talistic trusts sought to do a generation ago, by 
 getting a control of the necessities of life, which con- 
 trol it can use, and in many cases conspicuously is 
 using, to serve its own selfish interests irrespective of 
 the interests of the rest of the country. 
 
 On these grounds alone, the labor monopoly of to- 
 day is in exactly the same category, and every bit as 
 much a danger to the interests of the whole American
 
 Striking at Americanism 203 
 
 people, as were the capitalistic monopolies of a gen- 
 eration ago. 
 
 But the capitalistic monopoly was incorporated 
 and responsible under the law. It built new factories 
 and produced more goods and was otherwise chiefly 
 a constructive force. It was controlled by at least 
 able men who realized that their own self-interest 
 must limit their disregard of public interest. The 
 great modern labor monopoly, on the other hand, 
 has contrived to get itself largely exempted from re- 
 sponsibility before the law. The strike, which is its 
 chief weapon in serving its own interests, is in itself 
 entirely negative and destructive. The modern labor 
 monopoly is often controlled by men either so bigoted 
 or so arrogant through their rapid rise to power that 
 they overstep all bounds in flouting public opinion 
 and attacking public interest. Moreover, the great 
 labor monopoly, doubtless for these very reasons, 
 has, as public investigation after investigation is 
 more and more clearly showing, become a hot -bed 
 of sedition, bribery, blackmail, and corruption to a 
 degree never before known in any other American 
 institution. 
 
 But perhaps the biggest indictment of all against 
 these modern labor trusts is that they are thus bring- 
 ing into disrepute conservative and constructive 
 trade unionism, and perverting and betraying the
 
 204 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 great mass of labor which is depending on them for 
 guidance and leadership. 
 
 Both, therefore, on the grounds of what it is and 
 what it does, the modern labor monopoly constitutes 
 an open challenge as to whether America is to go 
 back to the class and group government of the 
 Middle Ages for the benefit of some of the people or 
 is to stay American for the benefit of all Americans.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 SUMMARY OF FACTS 
 
 Brindel, the drug clerk, became, almost overnight, 
 Brindel the millionaire labor czar to whom thousands 
 of workers paid two dollars to ten dollars a week 
 for the mere privilege of working, at whose command 
 ten thousand men would quit work and give up their 
 pay on any merest sham of a reason — primarily be- 
 cause of his particular cleverness in handling human 
 nature — in bluffing and cajoling and fooling his 
 followers. 
 
 Messrs. Lewis and Green perpetuated the coal 
 strike for weeks in spite of a government injunction, 
 and achieved a fair measure of success in spite of 
 their utterly illegitimate aims and methods, through 
 their consummate skill in muddying the waters of 
 facts and motives, in dividing public opinion, and in 
 manipulating and cleverly playing off every opposing 
 interest against every other. 
 
 The professional labor leader, because of the very 
 nature of his job, achieves his position chiefly 
 through a special ability to get and keep by whatever 
 
 ?°5
 
 206 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 means the situation may demand, the confidence of 
 his followers. It is a position where the chief means 
 to success and the daily stock in trade are a knowl- 
 edge of human psychology and skill in manipulating 
 human nature. And this is true no matter how 
 honest and sincere the individual labor leader may be. 
 For the higher labor leaders this also includes an 
 ability to gauge and manipulate public opinion, to 
 gain its sympathy where possible, and where impos- 
 sible to cleverly soften and divide and otherwise 
 nullify its hostility. 
 
 One of the oldest stand-by methods of attempting 
 to deceive the public as to a series of unfavorable 
 facts is to choose the least unfavorable, and, by ad- 
 mitting this with apparent frankness and adding to it 
 voluble arguments as to other unconnected favorable 
 facts, draw attention away from the balance of the more 
 unfavorable facts. Wide publicity was given in the 
 fall of 1920 to an estimate that the cost of strikes on 
 only one series of items amounted to eight hundred 
 million dollars. Mr. Gompers at once seized on this 
 figure and featuring it as though it represented the 
 whole cost of strikes, went on to spread wide the 
 sophistry that this was a cheap price for the country 
 to pay for the immense permanent benefit these 
 strikes had brought — just how he failed to explain — 
 to American labor.
 
 Summary of Facts 207 
 
 Another time-worn method of attempting to mini- 
 mize past failures has always been to try to pull 
 public attention away from such failures and make 
 it forget them by getting it interested in some sen- 
 sational new scheme. It was working on exactly 
 this principle of popular psychology that again, in the 
 fall of 1920, when present-day labor leaders most 
 needed to defend themselves before public opinion, 
 they began a widespread campaign for a conspicuous 
 new scheme of industrial relations cleverly calcu- 
 lated to seem to be similar to a plan to which many 
 employers had already given approval — the scheme 
 of union labor cooperation in industrial management. 
 
 In proportion as the many possible plans, some of 
 which are already under discussion, for protecting 
 the public and the great body of labor itself from the 
 tremendous costs which unrestricted strikes have so 
 conspicuously proved that they involve, shall be 
 crystallized, labor leaders will undoubtedly multiply 
 these efforts to thus complicate, muddle, and postpone 
 the issue.V A simple, concise summary of facts as to 
 what the unrestricted use of the strike weapon has 
 itself proved that it leads to, may therefore be 
 correspondingly valuable as a preliminary to the 
 consideration of some of the possible methods of af- 
 fording the public and labor itself such protection. 
 ^First: Strikes are not only costly to the industry
 
 2o8 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 involved or merely to industry and the country as a 
 whole. On the contrary, they are a direct and spe- 
 cific tax upon the average individual. They have in- 
 creased the price of his vegetables ioo per cent. ; the 
 price of his suit of clothes, $20 to $30 ; the cost of his 
 coal, 100 to 200 per cent., and the price he has had 
 to pay for many other things for months at a time in 
 proportion. 
 
 Second: Strikes cost the individual just as specifi- 
 cally and even more disproportionately and perma- 
 nently in many indirect ways. For instance, steel 
 strikes, coal strikes, railroad strikes, building strikes 
 tremendously increased the cost of building which 
 not only raised his rent in proportion but caused a 
 shortage which raised rents still further — in New 
 York City, an average of thirty-two dollars a month. 
 j/ Third: Strikes often cost out of all proportion to 
 their size or the number of workers involved. The 
 strike of a few hundred dock workers raised the price 
 of food to millions of families. The strike of two 
 thousand printers affected the jobs and wages of a 
 million and a half other workers. The strike of only 
 a few thousand railroad workers at a time for a few 
 months raised general prices over a billion dollars. 
 
 Fourth: Strikes often multiply their cost to the in- 
 dividual. The coal strike, for instance, kept a hun- 
 dred thousand unnecessary men in that industry
 
 Summary of Facts 209 
 
 and out of other industries where they are needed, 
 and so not only raised the price of coal but the labor 
 cost and so the price of other products proportion- 
 ately. 
 
 S Fifth: In order to assure victory, strikers have 
 become more and more unscrupulous and labor 
 leaders more and more skillful in thus making strikes 
 disproportionately costly and, in order to bring public 
 pressure to bear upon the employers, are deliberately 
 calculating these strikes at the psychological time 
 and directing them at the strategic points that will 
 injure the public most. The coal, outlaw railroad, 
 dock workers, and many other of the most conspicu- 
 ous strikes, deliberately attempted as the chief fea- 
 ture of their strategy the greatest possible injury to 
 the public. 
 / Sixth: Strikes injure labor most of all for they not 
 only cost the individual worker as part of the public 
 exactly as much as they cost other individuals, but 
 every strike in one industry that holds up necessary 
 material from another industry and so reduces the 
 amount of work that can be done, or transportation 
 strikes that keep men from getting to work or reduce 
 their working hours, cause labor alone to lose all its 
 income for all the time thus lost. 
 
 Seventh: Sixty per cent, of strikes in 19 19 caused 
 a primary loss of 134,000,000 working days and a 
 13
 
 2 to The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 secondary and indirect loss of probably twice as much 
 more. The total time loss that can be laid to strikes 
 in 19 19 must therefore have approached five hun- 
 dred million working days. The consequent wage loss, 
 loss of production at factory prices, loss of the vari- 
 ous other profits in handling and selling this produc- 
 tion must have approached ten billion dollars or as 
 much as the war itself cost in any one year. Profit- 
 eering cannot flourish and speculation cannot raise 
 prices except on the basis of a shortage. Shortage 
 also invariably raises prices out of all proportion to 
 the actual amount of the shortage. Strikes were, 
 therefore, the primary and unquestionably the largest 
 contributing factor to the increased cost of products 
 which followed the war, and this increased cost — from 
 207 to 272 — thus amounted to about thirty per cent, 
 on a total national production at ultimate consumer 
 prices, of over a hundred billion dollars. 
 
 Eighth: Professional labor leaders openly justify 
 these strikes on two main grounds — that strikes in 
 the past have been the chief means of bringing about 
 labor advancement, and that every American has an 
 inalienable right to work or not to work as he himself 
 sees fit. But the modern strike is not the exercise 
 by an individual of his right to work or not to work as 
 he sees fit. It is always a conspiracy on the part of 
 many individuals to stop working with the avowed
 
 Summary of Facts 211 
 
 purpose of injuring someone else, and more and more 
 with the avowed purpose of injuring an entirely inno- 
 cent public. In addition, in a majority of strikes the 
 conspiracy involves forcing many fellow-workers who 
 want to continue to work to give up their so-called 
 inalienable right to work or not to work as they see 
 fit. This theory of an individual's right to work or 
 not to work is no more a defense of the modern strike 
 than the theory that an individual has the right to 
 sell that which is his at any price that another man 
 will pay, is a defense against conspiracy of many 
 individuals to raise and fix prices. It is equally 
 illogical and unjustifiable to attempt to defend 
 unscrupulous present-day strike attacks against the 
 public on the ground that former strikes, merely 
 against an interested employer, were a contributing 
 factor to labor's advancement. Present-day strikes 
 can be judged only on their own effects on labor's 
 advancement and on public interest. 
 
 Ninth: Twenty-five per cent, of all strikes in 1919, 
 involving over a million workers, were condemned 
 by professional labor leaders themselves as being 
 unjustifiable. In addition to this, a conspicuous pro- 
 portion of other strikes had expressed aims which 
 make it impossible to set them down as anything 
 except mania strikes, due purely to a blind reaction 
 to the strike epidemic. Still another large group of
 
 212 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 strikes, whose number is being constantly increased 
 by judicial and legislative investigations, had as their 
 only real objects attempts to blackmail and graft. 
 
 Tenth: Only thirty per cent, of the strikes of 19 19 
 even claimed to be based on a demand for increased 
 wages, and only forty per cent, for increased wages, 
 shorter hours or both. During this period, however, 
 demand for goods of all kinds was so great and a 
 willingness to pay almost any price so general that 
 employers could and did meet practically any possible 
 demand as to wages and hours in order to get pro- 
 duction at any cost. This forty per cent, of strikes in 
 1919, that claimed wages or shorter hours or both as 
 their cause, were thus chiefly one of two kinds : either, 
 as was entirely obvious in many cases, the assigned 
 cause was not the real cause of the strike, or as in the 
 cases cited of the dock strike, the B. R. T. strike, the 
 steel strike, and many others, the demands were such 
 that because of special and peculiar circumstances it 
 was impossible for the employers to meet them. 
 
 Eleventh: The last of the more important types of 
 after-the-war strikes, are those consisting of the 
 large number in which the employers, feeling secure 
 in the temporary demand for goods at any price, 
 yielded, and as is always inevitable, added the extra 
 cost to the price of their goods. But the cost of the 
 victorious strikes in losses of production plus the
 
 Summary of Facts 213 
 
 raises in wages which the victories brought, proved 
 in many cases to be most expensive, not only to the 
 public but ultimately to the workers themselves. 
 The great textile and clothing industries, for instance, 
 where labor gained its most conspicuous strike vic- 
 tories, were the industries in which widespread and 
 lengthy unemployment first began to appear in the 
 summer of 1920 and in which wages have since been 
 most reduced, and it was chiefly the high prices in 
 these fields which these strike victories caused that 
 started the public movement of refusing to buy at 
 such prices — a movement whose widespread growth 
 was directly responsible for the similar conditions 
 and wage reductions that soon therefore had to follow 
 in other industries. 
 
 Twelfth: The chief result of strikes since the war, in 
 addition to their cost and in a great proportion of 
 cases their chief aim, was to advance the personal 
 ambition for money or power of the individual labor 
 leader and to strengthen the hold of these leaders, 
 both individually and collectively, on labor, on in- 
 dustry, and through the domination of industry on 
 the country itself. Ninety-five per cent, of all strikes 
 in the building trade were caused by fights between 
 individual leaders or factions for money or power. 
 The coal strike, which cost the country a billion dol- 
 lars, was directly caused by a fight for control and
 
 2H The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 management of the eleven million dollars a year in- 
 come of the coal miners' union which itself already 
 has a monopoly control over our national coal pro- 
 duction. The steel strike of 19 19, the agitation in 
 the steel industry which is already being prepared to 
 come to a climax in the summer of 1921, the clothing 
 makers' strike, all represent efforts of the leaders 
 of organized labor to obtain control of hundreds of 
 thousands of other workers and millions of dollars 
 in new annual dues in order further to extend their 
 monopolistic control over the industries which pro- 
 duce our necessities of life. And between and 
 through all these strikes radicalism was constantly 
 at work, stirring up labor unrest, instigating and 
 exaggerating every strike possible, and constantly 
 fighting for a greater and greater share of spoils and 
 control in order to extend its power, crystallize its 
 organization, and put its hold upon labor on a 
 oermanent basis. 
 
 ^Vlt is extremely valuable that the average man, 
 including the average worker who is the unit of 
 public opinion and public action, should realize 
 definitely and specifically the tremendous dollars and 
 cents cost which our after-the-war strike epidemic 
 inflicted, not only on the country but on him per- 
 sonally, because the cost represents one of the actual, 
 already proved results of the unrestricted use of the
 
 Summary of Facts 215 
 
 strike weapon in the hands of the leaders of our pre- 
 sent-day, self-seeking labor monopolies. But it is 
 even more important for the present and the future 
 that he should also realize that the very existence of 
 such great labor monopolies, already controlling the 
 production of many, and constantly striving to con- 
 trol the production of more, of our necessities of life, 
 is itself the biggest, most permanent, and most dan- 
 gerous result of the unrestricted use of the strike 
 weapon, because their very existence and develop- 
 ment along present lines unquestionably means the 
 constant repetition of strikes on a constantly bigger, 
 more costly scale, or else, as was practically the case 
 in our coal strike, public submission to their dictates 
 and will.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? 
 
 One group of twenty men working on the con- 
 struction of the Hotel Ambassador at Atlantic City 
 during the summer and fall of 1920, averaged $130 
 a week wages during the last two weeks of the job. 
 Yet five of them had to borrow carfare back to New 
 York. 
 
 On this same job the contractor's books show that 
 masons averaged $65 a week; carpenters and steam- 
 fitters, $60 to $70; plasterers, $90 to $100; scantle- 
 men, $80 to $90, and elevator men, $150 a week for 
 the whole construction period. Yet at the end some 
 twenty per cent, of all the workers in many of these 
 departments came to the management to borrow 
 money to get back to New York. 
 
 Not only much of labor itself, but many high- 
 minded men entirely outside of the labor ranks, have 
 long believed that in higher wages and better living 
 conditions lie the one ultimate solution of the strike 
 problem. But this is true up to a certain point only. 
 Exorbitant wages pile up a cost of production which 
 
 216
 
 What Are We Going to Do? 217 
 
 the rest of the country cannot stand. Mere higher 
 wages are at the root of the vicious circle, so much 
 discussed recently, which so keeps raising prices that 
 labor has to get higher and higher wages in order 
 actually to keep even. Mere higher wages have 
 proved in experience, not only in the Hotel Ambassa- 
 dor case but in hundreds of cases during the war and 
 since the war, to lead chiefly to an orgy of spending, 
 whose only result is to leave labor no better off actu- 
 ally but much more continually discontented. 
 
 Finally, mere higher wages do not touch the biggest 
 and most basic cause in the whole strike situation — 
 the use of strikes as a weapon in political labor fights 
 and ambitions. 
 
 Even, therefore, if the rest of the country could 
 afford it the mere raising of wages does not promise 
 any adequate solution to the tremendously costly 
 strike problem as it has existed since the war. 
 
 There is another large class of Americans to-day 
 who do not believe that we have to do anything at 
 all about the strike problem, at least at this time, 
 because the strike problem has already shown every 
 indication of solving itself. Moreover, they argue 
 that the very laws of cause and effect are always in 
 the long run bound to bring labor to its senses ; and 
 that though such a solution may be extremely expen- 
 sive to the country, it is so much more expensive to
 
 218 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 labor itself that sooner or later labor will be forced to 
 realize that for its own sake it cannot afford to take 
 advantage of special situations, as it has in the last 
 few years, and mulct them without regard to the 
 interests of the rest of the country. 
 
 There may be much actual logic in this point of 
 view, but such a solution savors entirely too much of 
 the law of "tooth and claw " to afford any progressive 
 or satisfactory solution to any problem of modern 
 civilization. 
 
 Nor is human nature as a whole sufficiently re- 
 sponsive to the lessons of human experience to permit 
 us to depend upon such a remedy. 
 
 There is no question that American employers, 
 with their minds bent wholly on competition in pro- 
 duction and sales, have in the past too often taken 
 a ruthless advantage of labor when circumstances 
 have put it in their power to do so. There is no 
 question that the advantage labor has taken of the 
 strategic position, which the events of the .last few 
 years have given it, it has largely excused and justi- 
 fied in its own mind because of much of the past 
 attitude of its employers. If the human relations in 
 industry are to go on only on the basis of the law of 
 the jungle — merely according to the primordial work- 
 ing out of unmitigated cause and effect — if the whole 
 relation between employer and employee is to con-
 
 What Are We Going to Do? 219 
 
 sist of a watching and maneuvering till circumstances 
 put one or the other at a disadvantage, in order that 
 they may take their revenge or get all they can while 
 the getting is good, there is little hope that even with 
 all its greater efficiency our present-day system of 
 industrial management can last. 
 
 In December, 1920, after the bursting of their get- 
 rich-quick bubble, created out of the soft soap theory 
 of striking for what you want instead of working 
 for it, a large part of the clothing workers had been 
 for months walking the streets. In the new wage 
 negotiations, therefore, the employers obviously had 
 the upper hand. The employers had just suffered 
 tremendous losses because of these hold-up strikes 
 and the public's resultant refusal to buy, and might 
 easily have justified to themselves, and, perhaps, to 
 the public, a policy of making the workers pay for their 
 own mistakes. Nevertheless the clothing manufac- 
 tures, while they did naturally and perhaps undiplo- 
 matically refuse to go on with the system of wage 
 settlement which the workers had used merely to 
 milch them, did, on the other hand, voluntarily offer 
 the workers a new wage arrangement which, under 
 all the circumstances, was not only fair but generous. 
 
 Judge E. H. Gary testified before the Senate Com- 
 mittee as to the policy of the United States Steel 
 Corporation in regard to wages : ' ' We have intended
 
 220 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 to more than keep pace with the increased cost of 
 living, which we have done. During the war we in- 
 creased wages eight times, always voluntarily. We 
 were influenced by the fact that our increased earn- 
 ings permitted us to do it and we did take into ac- 
 count also the idea of giving them what we conceive 
 to be the employee's share in the [company's] pros- 
 perity . . . which we always do." Moreover, after 
 the great 19 19 steel strike, in spite of the fact that the 
 strike was entirely defeated, in spite of the immense 
 loss it caused the company, wages were soon again 
 voluntarily raised "because increased earnings per- 
 mitted us to do it." Also, because of the company's 
 regular policy of giving "the largest percentages of 
 increase to those receiving the lowest wages," the 
 very unskilled and radical classes of workers who 
 alone struck received the largest voluntary wage 
 advances. 
 
 These two instances are typical of a widespread 
 attitude on the part of the big-minded management, 
 which big industrial responsibility is more and more 
 forcing to the top. The emulation of this kind of 
 management offers one of the two biggest hopes not 
 only for a satisfactory solution of the strike problem 
 but of the whole labor problem. 
 
 The White Motor Company is to-day paying its 
 labor no per cent, more than it was before the war.
 
 What Are We Going to Do? 221 
 
 Yet, in spite of this fact and in spite of the much 
 higher cost of material, the price of the White truck 
 is only ten per cent, more than it was in 19 14. The 
 reason is directly and wholly due to the fact that 
 employer and employees have conscientiously worked 
 out together and are loyally carrying out together an 
 increasingly efficient system of production that has 
 resulted in a tremendously larger margin of profit, 
 which they are sharing fairly with the public and 
 each other. 
 
 For years hundreds of large industrial concerns, 
 with large numbers of regular employees, have been 
 striving along many lines toward building up in their 
 own organizations better relations with their em- 
 ployees and cooperative efficiency systems for in- 
 creasing the profits of both employer and employees, 
 to act as preventives of serious misunderstandings 
 and strikes. 
 
 As a part of this general effort there is a growing 
 tendency to include another effort, which, because of 
 the influence of the worker's fundamental psychology 
 on the whole labor problem, the author has long 
 considered of paramount importance, namely, the 
 effort to bring about a better understanding and rela- 
 tion between the worker and his job. The influence 
 which the monotony of his job — the fact that it con- 
 sists often of some single operation which the worker
 
 222 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 has neither the incentive or opportunity to conceive 
 of in any other terms than the mere operation itself — 
 has on his whole psychology, including his point of 
 view towards his job, his employer and industry, and 
 life in general, has already been emphasized. If, how- 
 ever, the worker whose whole job consists, for instance, 
 in performing some single, simple operation on a bar 
 of copper, and who has always looked on his work 
 only in the narrow light of that single operation, can 
 be led, through industrial motion pictures, or through 
 lectures, or through being intelligently transferred 
 from one department to another, or through any other 
 method or combination of methods, to realize just 
 how his single operation combines practically and logi- 
 cally with all the other operations to produce a great 
 dynamo, upon which the speed of a giant battleship, 
 for instance, or the power to irrigate a thousand fruit 
 farms, or some other great modern industrial miracle 
 depends, there is the strongest probability that such 
 a new conception of the meaning and importance of 
 his job — such a new knowledge of its vital relationship 
 to the big creative efforts of modern life will give him 
 a very different point of view towards his job and 
 towards industry and life in general. 
 
 At the present time the practical value of many 
 kinds of efforts along such lines is receiving much more 
 serious attention than ever before. If attempts along
 
 What Are We Going to Do ? 223 
 
 such lines are practically planned to go far enough and 
 spread widely enough, there is no question that they 
 will act as a very valuable insurance against strikes 
 in these industries. 
 
 But, in the first place, such efforts are so far con- 
 fined, and many of them from their nature are con- 
 fined, to industries employing regular numbers of 
 skilled, or at least semi-skilled workers. Again, all 
 such efforts from their very nature, are confined to 
 the relationship between one unit of management and 
 its own employees. But labor unions as at present 
 constituted include under the same organization and 
 control the employees of many employing units. 
 Moreover, it has been the constant policy of these 
 great labor organizations to act, if not from the point of 
 view of the interest of the labor leaders themselves, 
 at least from the point of view of their ideas of the 
 interests of all the labor in their organizations. This 
 means that they frequently call strikes in an entire 
 industry which necessitates the striking of the em- 
 ployees in many plants where there is absolutely no 
 disagreement between employer and employees and 
 no cause for a strike. This means, of course, that in 
 spite of anything that any given employer may do 
 to build up better relation with his employees or to 
 institute systems that will increase their earnings, he 
 cannot in this way prevent strikes so long as labor
 
 224 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 unions are organized and function on the present 
 basis of constituting a labor monopoly in their in- 
 dustry. And this is merely one more illustration, 
 from a different angle, of how the monopolistic char- 
 acter of the modern labor organization continually 
 exaggerates labor trouble. 
 
 Late in the fall of 1920, organized labor itself pub- 
 licly presented a plan purporting to represent its 
 ideas as to how strikes could be minimized through 
 bringing about a better relation between employer 
 and employee. This plan in its outward form bore 
 a very distinct resemblance to what is commonly 
 known as the "Senate and House of Representa- 
 tives" plan which has already been adopted by many 
 employers with conspicuous initial success. On the 
 basis of this outward similarity of form, labor leaders 
 have taken the position before the public of assuming 
 that employers cannot reasonably object to such a 
 plan. 
 
 The so-called "Senate and House of Representa- 
 tives" plan constitutes a concrete putting into effect, 
 in a form to make clever psychological appeal, of the 
 new popular phrase, "industrial democracy" as that 
 phrase is popularly interpreted. The essence of this 
 plan is the formation within a plant of an organiza- 
 tion composed of representatives of both employers 
 and employees. This organization commonly con-
 
 What Are We Going to Do? 225 
 
 sists of a President, who is usually a chief executive 
 officer of the firm ; a cabinet or senate or both, gener- 
 ally in which the management has the majority vote ; 
 and a house of representatives composed of duly 
 elected representatives of all the employees. The 
 purpose of the organization is to decide, subject to 
 certain checks which its own composition obviously 
 imposes, certain types of questions of industrial 
 management and relations by a majority vote. 
 Novelty — the primary psychological appeal of the 
 identity of its form with that of the national govern- 
 ment — its relation to the widely popular phrase 
 "industrial democracy" — and the appeal of all of 
 these to the employee's feeling of self-importance, 
 all obviously make for the success of such a plan at 
 least until some really serious conflict of opinion arises 
 between employer and employee. 
 
 Democracy, however, does not necessarily consist 
 in control by majority vote. In American schools 
 and colleges, leadership and management must from 
 the very nature of the case be determined by proved 
 superior ability under conditions of equal oppor- 
 tunity. The French army is said to be the most 
 democratic institution in the world, but the poilu 
 does not vote for his officers or to determine plans 
 of organization or strategy. Again the democracy 
 is that of opportunity. 
 15
 
 226 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 American industry has always in the past held to 
 this ideal of the democracy of opportunity rather 
 than democracy of counting noses, on the grounds 
 that all human experience has demonstrated — and 
 only socialists and Bolshevikis actually deny — that 
 in industry, just as in an army, efficiency is of such 
 paramount importance to society that social ends 
 will be best served by a democracy of opportunity 
 which makes control a matter of proved fitness rather 
 than a democracy of voting, which makes it a matter 
 of average opinion. The election of army officers and 
 the determining of army strategy by the vote of the 
 average soldier in Russia and the temporary opera- 
 tion of the clothing industry in America on a policy 
 forced on it by the average worker's determination 
 to try out a theory of doubling his own wages for a 
 third less work and letting the public pay the differ- 
 ence, are both in exactly the same category, and both 
 brought results which no nation is strong enough or 
 rich enough to continue to endure. 
 
 The American people and certainly American 
 employers have no intention of actually putting the 
 management of industry under control of mere ma- 
 jorities of the workers. The fundamental question, 
 therefore, arises as to whether employers can afford 
 to commit themselves to the principle of majority 
 vote in industry and thus start such a dynamic, self-
 
 What Are We Going to Do ? 227 
 
 interested force as labor thinking along a line which 
 the employer is not willing to carry to its logical con- 
 clusion. Will not industrial relations be advanced 
 more surely and in the long run more rapidly if 
 instead of interpreting industrial democracy in terms 
 of "equal vote," which must ultimately lead to mis- 
 understanding, employers instead openly interpreted 
 industrial democracy and sincerely worked for it in 
 terms of equal opportunity ? 
 
 Organized labor's proposed scheme, however, for 
 giving the employee a voice in the management on 
 the basis of majority vote includes the plan of the 
 "closed shop" under which organized labor itself 
 controls that majority vote of the employees. In 
 other words, in its version of such a cooperative 
 management plan, organized labor proposes in addi- 
 tion to its present domination over the production, 
 cost and efficiency of an industry through the mono- 
 poly control of the labor in the industry, to acquire 
 also for itself a similar domination over more and 
 more of the actual executive management of the 
 industry. 
 
 It has been pointed out that strikes are increas- 
 ingly infrequent in the building trades because there 
 the labor leader completely dominates not only the 
 labor policy of the industry, but the making of prices, 
 awarding of contracts, and other purely management
 
 228 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 functions. It has also been pointed out what the 
 result of such a situation has been in the exorbitant 
 cost and consequent limitation of building and in the 
 permanent high cost of rent. A voice by labor on a 
 majority voting basis in questions of industrial man- 
 agement plus the "closed shop" would result in ex- 
 actly this same condition in any industry in which 
 such a policy were permitted. It would unquestion- 
 ably do away with the high cost of strikes but only 
 on the basis of a far higher cost of getting rid of these 
 strikes. 
 
 In the coal strike the labor leaders openly boasted 
 that they did not need seriously to consider their em- 
 ployers — that public opinion and the government 
 were their only real opponents. The coal strike was 
 also called on November i st at the beginning of win- 
 ter because that was just the time such a strike could 
 hurt the public most. In the building trades the 
 employer seldom thinks of resisting the big labor 
 monopolies. He yields, pays what he has to, and 
 passes the whole cost, with interest, on to the public. 
 Moreover, it is only when public opinion has been 
 aroused and some public action taken, as in the Lock- 
 wood investigation and the resultant prosecutions, 
 that such a situation can be even temporarily or 
 partially remedied. 
 
 And what is true of the coal industry, and the
 
 What Are We Going to Do ? 229 
 
 building industry is true to a greater or less degree in 
 the bulk of industries in which strikes have proved so 
 costly to the whole country — namely, that not only 
 does the public suffer most from strikes, but the 
 public alone, from the very nature of the situation, 
 can protect itself from the consequences of these 
 strikes. 
 
 That strike can no longer be regarded merely in the 
 light of conflicts between capital and labor, but be- 
 cause of the tremendous costs they are imposing on 
 the public are of vital public concern — that from 
 the very nature of the situation the public alone is 
 able adequately to protect itself against these losses, 
 and that the public has a right so to protect itself — is 
 to-day becoming more and more widely recognized. 
 
 As a result of the flagrant abuse of the strike 
 weapon and the tremendous losses which that abuse 
 has inflicted on the whole public, the city of Los 
 Angeles has, by amendment to its charter, which 
 cannot be changed except by a two-thirds vote of the 
 whole people, established the open shop principle. 
 
 Under the leadership of Governor Allen, the State of 
 Kansas has established a system of industrial courts 
 having complete jurisdiction over industrial disputes 
 that involve public interest. The decision of such 
 courts is final, and strikes in such cases are punishable 
 as crimes.
 
 230 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 On the face of it an industrial court, which shall 
 adjudicate controversies between employer and em- 
 ployee much as an ordinary court adjudicates con- 
 troversies between other individuals or business 
 interests, seems absolutely logical and fair and in 
 keeping with all the developments of progress and 
 civilization. 
 
 Labor, however, at once points out, and is right in 
 pointing out, that controversies between it and its 
 employers are essentially different from ordinary 
 controversies at law, in that they constitute labor's 
 means of competition. Competition is the basis not 
 only of all modern industrial progress, but to a large 
 extent of all progress. The law may prevent unfair 
 competition and courts perform a legitimate func- 
 tion in adjudicating cases where unfair competition 
 is claimed; but, far from being agencies for stopping 
 competition in general, the courts in recent years have 
 been one of the chief agencies in enforcing competi- 
 tion. 
 
 Now, labor unquestionably has an exaggerated idea 
 as to the extent to which it is inherently a competitor 
 of capital. It has been one of the greatest lessons 
 that business as a whole has learned in the last gener- 
 ation that it is entirely unprofitable to both sides to 
 carry competition too far, and modern business has 
 gained tremendously since it has realized that by
 
 What Are We Going to Do? 231 
 
 co6perating with its competitors up to a certain point, 
 through chamber of commerce, trade associations, 
 and other such cooperative organizations, it can often 
 so enlarge markets and increase business as a whole 
 that the individual competitor is better off with his 
 share of the new larger market than he would have 
 been even with a monopoly of the old market. In 
 other words, the most successful modern business 
 practice is that of cooperating with competitors and 
 rivals in improving business conditions and enlarging 
 markets and then competing with them for the share 
 of the profits in those better conditions and larger 
 markets. 
 
 In the same way, employer and employee have a 
 very big common interest in increasing their mutual 
 production, and labor both can and must realize that 
 there is every incentive for cooperation in thus in- 
 creasing the amount of profit that can be divided up. 
 But it is equally true that there is and must be an 
 inherent competition between employer and em- 
 ployee over the division of these profits. Contro- 
 versies between employers and employees are the 
 methods of such competition, and strikes are, in the 
 last analysis, very frequently the only adequate 
 weapon labor has in this competition. 
 
 'Hie industrial court, therefore, which would settle 
 controversies between capital and labor, and whose
 
 232 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 judgment would be final, while it would undoubtedly 
 eliminate strikes, would by that very fact practically 
 eliminate the very basis of competition between capi- 
 tal and labor and substitute paternalistic regulation 
 for this free competition. 
 
 Moreover, competition between capital and labor 
 is chiefly over the question of wages or working hours, 
 both paramount factors in cost of production and so 
 in determining prices. Courts, therefore, which 
 would arbitrarily settle such disputes would by that 
 very fact to a large extent arbitrarily regulate and 
 fix prices. 
 
 Up to a certain point and under certain conditions 
 the substitution of arbitrary regulation for free com- 
 petition, including the fixing of prices, is entirely in 
 keeping with modern economic development. For 
 years great corporations which have controlled im- 
 portant necessities of life have been especially classi- 
 fied as public service corporations, and because of the 
 special degree of public injury which would result 
 through any mismanagement have been largely 
 taken out of the field of ordinary business competition 
 and surrounded by both special privileges and special 
 restrictions, including the fixing of prices at which 
 they shall sell their service or product. The man 
 to-day who puts his money into such an enterprise 
 does so with full knowledge of these conditions.
 
 What Are We Going to Do ? 233 
 
 There is no reason why in the same way, because of 
 the special injury to the public through strikes in 
 such fields, that labor in such industries should not 
 be granted special privileges and also be specially 
 restricted as regards strikes. 
 
 But strikes in the building industry, in the coal 
 industry, in the steel industry, and in many other 
 industries which have never been specially classified 
 as public service have piled up tremendous costs to 
 the public. To put even such industries under this 
 special classification and withdraw them from the field 
 of ordinary business competition would involve un- 
 limited complications. The Kansas Industrial Court 
 for instance, has ruled that a miller, even though his 
 business is largely shut down because of dull times, 
 must, nevertheless, pay wages to his "skilled and faith- 
 ful ' ' employees. How long must he continue to do this ? 
 If his business is shut down to the extent that he is 
 making no money, must he borrow money for this pur- 
 pose ? What constitutes being a ' 'skilled and faithful ' ' 
 employee ? The tribunal which determines such ques- 
 tions is practically taking over the executive functions 
 of business. To withdraw the relations of capital 
 and labor in all fields which affect public interest 
 from a competitive basis and arbitrarily determine by 
 judicial decision such questions as these for all busi- 
 ness, which would to a large extent include the arbi-
 
 234 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 trary fixing of all prices to the public, would be so 
 radical that only the fact that it alone could protect 
 public interest would warrant such a step. 
 
 Canada has gone a considerable distance along 
 these lines, but has carefully avoided going to ex- 
 tremes, in the so-called Mackenzie-King plan for 
 adjusting labor disputes. Under this plan, strikes 
 and lockouts are prohibited until the matter under 
 dispute has been passed upon by an official tribunal. 
 This official tribunal consists of three judges — one 
 chosen by the employer, one by the employees, and 
 one by the government. The fact that the judges 
 are specially chosen in each controversy guards 
 against their being influenced by political considera- 
 tions which might be the case with a permanent 
 court. These judges have full power to subpoena 
 witnesses and compel testimony. They cannot en- 
 force a verdict but they make a complete public 
 report of the results of the controversy and public 
 opinion is depended on to do the rest. The plan is 
 simple, obvious, and perfectly fair and, although its 
 penal provisions have been frequently disregarded, in 
 general it has worked in Canada with great efficiency. 
 It could be adopted to American conditions quickly 
 with a minimum of complications, and it is hard to 
 see on what grounds labor itself could logically op- 
 pose it.
 
 What Are We Going to Do ? 235 
 
 Nevertheless, leaders of organized labor are fight- 
 ing all such movements as these with every energy 
 and every weapon they can command because their 
 adoption would unquestionably interfere with their 
 domination by putting an end to strikes which are 
 called merely to serve their own labor-political 
 ambitions. 
 
 The trusts in their hey day were strongly en- 
 trenched in politics, and it took the united efforts 
 of the whole people twenty years to get adequate 
 protection against the more unjust forms of trust 
 practice. Not only is organized labor strongly en- 
 trenched politically but it commands such a numeri- 
 cal voting power that this hostility will make the 
 widespread adoption of such revolutionary plans as 
 these extremely difficult and particularly difficult in 
 the great labor sections where some remedy is most 
 needed. 
 
 Nothing would suit the professional labor leader's 
 purposes better than to get the public into a general 
 discussion of some such strike remedy which would in- 
 volve the adoption of new principles and the creation 
 of new government machinery. For such a situa- 
 tion would give the labor leader just the opportunity 
 he needs to dissipate the present clear-cut public con- 
 viction as to the high cost of strikes and as to his 
 responsibility for them, into a mist of vague argu-
 
 236 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 ments which he could complicate and draw out 
 indefinitely. 
 
 What the present situation calls for is a remedy, 
 if possible, so simple and direct and obvious that it 
 can command immediate, widespread assent. There 
 are several such remedies available.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 MAKE LABOR OBEY THE LAW 
 
 The great majority of American business organiza- 
 tions have laid their own foundations and have arisen 
 strong and straight by their own initiative and energy. 
 
 But the American people have in the past exempted 
 certain types of business from this fundamental 
 business law of self sufficiency which all ordinary 
 businesses had to obey, and have given these special 
 classes of business special rights and privileges — 
 land grants and bonuses to our railroads — free 
 franchises, the special right of eminent domain and 
 public credit to our municipal corporations — special 
 tariff considerations and protection to our "infant 
 industries." And almost without exception all the 
 scandals and public problems of American business — 
 "buccaneering finance" — the alliance between "big 
 business and corrupt politics" — watered stock, secret 
 rebates, trusts — all have developed in these specially 
 privileged businesses and have resulted directly 
 because of these special privileges and exemptions. 
 
 The social organization of the middle ages with its 
 
 m
 
 238 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 robber barons, its walled and armed cities of artisans 
 and merchants, its camorras of peasants — all un- 
 subject to any common law and all fighting to in- 
 crease their own special rights and privileges, led 
 inevitably, as has already been emphasized, to what 
 is commonly referred to as the "dark ages" of all 
 history. And whether we go backward or forward 
 in history — to the Praetorians or Janissaries of 
 ancient empires or to the Junkers of modern Ger- 
 many — whether we consider the individual "male- 
 factor of great wealth" or the whole trust system of 
 a generation ago — or the individual labor leader or 
 the great organized labor monopolies of to-day, the 
 same rule holds, namely: that the power which is 
 not subject to the same law to which all ordinary 
 society is subject, but which is assisted to develop 
 by special privilege or special exemption outside of 
 ordinary law inevitably continues more and more to 
 center its attention and put its chief reliance upon 
 these special rights and exemptions — to fight for more 
 and more special rights and more and more exemp- 
 tions from ordinary law, and to think and act, and so 
 become more and more lawless. l 
 
 1 Theodore Roosevelt spoke frequently of the high personal 
 integrity and absolute personal sincerity of certain flagrant repre- 
 sentatives of plutocratic special privilege. But the social point of 
 view of these men — developed by the whole heredity and environ- 
 ment of their established system of "special privilege" — he con-
 
 Make Labor Obey the Law 239 
 
 The whole modern labor system is founded on, and 
 has developed logically and inevitably to its present 
 monopolisitic form and with its present predatory 
 point of view because it is founded on two kinds of 
 special exemptions and privileges. One of these is a 
 group of special social exemptions and privileges 
 which no other class enjoys — the other is a special 
 group of legal exemptions, which gives labor the 
 privilege of operating outside certain laws which 
 restrict and regulate all other classes. 
 
 For hundreds of years during the middle ages all 
 men had to belong to one established religious organ- 
 ization and subscribe to one established set of tenets 
 
 demned utterly and their consequent public acts lie ruthlessly 
 fought. 
 
 In exactly the same way there is no question of the sincerity of 
 some of our great labor leaders. But the possible personal sincer- 
 ity of men whose blind adherence to a labor monopolistic system 
 could justify to themselves, merely for the advancement of that 
 system, the raising of the price cf coal fifteen dollars a ton to the whole 
 public, can no more save such a point of view, as such, from utter con- 
 demnation than the possible personal sincerity of the men whose 
 blind belief in a plutocratic monopoly system, which led them to 
 raise the price of oil five cents a gallon to the whole people, did save 
 them and their system from utter condemnation and drastic modi- 
 fication. The very fact that it is possible to conceive of personal 
 sincerity in either case only proves again how reason as well as acts, 
 which begins with special privilege and continues outside of ordinary 
 law, inevitably tends to a greater and greater unconscious perversion 
 of point of view. Moreover, there is no question that all heredity 
 and environment in our modern system of labor monopoly, even more 
 than in our past system of plutocratic monopoly, has tended to bring 
 into leadership men of whose sincerity, the less said the better.
 
 240 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 or be branded as "heretics" and refused the ordinary 
 opportunity of earning their living or pursuing their 
 normal social life. Through hundreds of years our 
 forefathers fought and died for the privilege of joining 
 or forming the kind of religious organization they 
 chose, and subscribing to the kind of tenets which 
 their own conscience and intelligence dictated. Our 
 own country in a peculiar way was founded as a 
 refuge for those who rebelled against being forced to 
 become members of established organizations or 
 subscribe to fixed theories as to matters which per- 
 tain to their own interest and intelligence. From the 
 beginning of our history, it has perhaps been the 
 most fundamental of all American principles that no 
 man shall be forced to join any special organization 
 or subscribe to any fixed belief in order to enjoy all 
 the normal privileges in his pursuit of life, liberty, and 
 happiness. The laboring man in his relation to the 
 labor union and in pursuit of his job is the only ex- 
 ception to this basic American principle which has 
 been permitted to exist in American life. 
 
 The first fundamental principle on which the mod- 
 ern labor organization is founded is that in order to 
 get a job and continue to work, the laboring man 
 must join the union — that if he does not join this 
 established organization and subscribe to its fixed 
 tenets, he shall be branded as a "scab" and shall be
 
 Make Labor Obey the Law 241 
 
 denied all opportunity of earning his living for himself 
 and his family. 1 
 
 Again it has from earliest times been one of the 
 most fundamental principles of common law that 
 men shall not be allowed to conspire to injure 
 other men — that acts which are done through a con- 
 spiracy shall be judged on a different basis than 
 when the same acts are done by individuals on the 
 ground that a combination of many men to do an 
 injury always increases the possibility of injury in 
 geometric ratio. Therefore, the law has frequently 
 condemned conspiracies to do acts which, even in 
 themselves are not wrong, but which because they 
 are done by many men, may bring disproportion- 
 ate injury. Moreover, because of these facts the 
 whole tendency of the law is to become more and 
 more strict in interpreting and condemning conspir- 
 acies of all kinds among all classes of society — except 
 by organized labor. 
 
 The second fundamental principle on which the 
 modern labor organization is founded is that it is 
 
 '"With the rapid extention of trade unions, the tendency is 
 towards growth of compulsory membership in them and the time 
 will doubtless come when this inclusion will become general." — John 
 Mitchell. 
 
 This is demanded by the unions — that the shop shall be closed 
 against all employees who, not already belonging to the union of their 
 trade, refuse to join it. — Bridgemen's Magazine, Dec, 1905. Official 
 organ Iron Workers' Union. 
 16
 
 242 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 exempted from this otherwise universal law against 
 conspiracy, in that its members are granted the 
 special right and privilege of conspiring to injure their 
 employer irrespective of the extent of that injury. ' 
 
 The American people has tacitly acquiesced in the 
 assumption by organized labor of the first of these 
 special privileges and exemptions of forcing men to 
 join a union, and legally granted labor the second 
 special privilege of exemption from the otherwise 
 universal law against conspiracy — both on exactly the 
 same grounds that it granted the special rights of 
 public lands and bonuses to railroads, perpetual 
 franchises to municipal traction companies, and 
 special exemptions and protection under the tariff 
 to our embryo trusts; namely, because the public 
 believed that these special privileges and exemptions 
 
 1 A leading authority on labor law states the exact legal status of 
 the strike as follows : 
 
 "Where organized labor is concerned, the right to combine to 
 inflict an injury by withholding labor and inducing others to with- 
 hold their labor has been freely granted for over seventy-five years. 
 It has never been questioned where the injury inflicted by the with- 
 holding of labor was incident to a controversy over wages, hours, and 
 working conditions. The injury done in support of such a controversy 
 is held to be lawful and the combination inflicting the injury is, through 
 this special limitation of the idea of conspiracy, not in contemplation 
 of law a conspiracy. The law, however, is not so clear where the 
 purpose of the combination is to force the employer to deal ex- 
 clusively with the trade union or to hire or discharge a particular 
 man. And in all but a few cases the combination has been held an 
 unlawful conspiracy when the purpose of inflicting the injury is to
 
 Make Labor Obey the Law 243 
 
 in these special cases would contribute to serve the 
 public's own best good. 
 
 But just as railroads, traction companies, and trusts, 
 instead of using the primary special privileges and 
 exemptions which the public had granted them for 
 its own good, along normal lines to serve the pub- 
 lic interest, they merely used these primary special 
 privileges and exemptions as a basis and excuse for 
 obtaining or assuming more and more special privi- 
 leges and exemptions, and developing further and 
 further outside all the restrictions of ordinary law 
 till their whole system became both lawless and 
 opposed to the public good ; so has organized labor 
 used its primary special privileges and exemptions in 
 exactly the same way, and to exactly the same end. 
 
 compel someone to violate a contract or to do something which he 
 has neither power nor right to do. Thus it seems that a combination 
 of workmen to inflict an injury is, in law, a conspiracy or not a 
 conspiracy according to the purpose which the workmen have in 
 inflieting the injury. Thus workers are shielded by judge-made 
 law, which they so bitterly condemn, in any degree of injury which 
 they choose to or can inflict by withholding labor, no matter how 
 absurd their demands, if only it appear that they are unsatisfied as 
 to their wages, hours, or working conditions. This is unquestionably 
 the reason why strikers, irrespective of their real motives usually 
 assign the motive of bettering wages, hours, or working conditions." 
 According to technical legal definition therefor the right to strike 
 is regarded as a "special limitation to the idea of conspiracy" rather 
 than as an "exemption from the law of conspiracy." The author, 
 however, for reasons which are developed in the last chapter, prefers 
 the simple phraseology of basic fact to that of fine technical dis- 
 criminations and legal fictions.
 
 244 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 For beginning with its primary special privilege 
 and exemption which has enabled it to force other 
 workers to join its particular organization and sub- 
 scribe to its particular theories in order to earn their 
 living at their trade, organized labor has persistently 
 insisted on exercising more and greater special 
 privileges, many of which are both utterly un-Ameri- 
 can and unlawful, and which have been one of the 
 biggest factors in building up its tremendous mo- 
 nopoly power, not only over the worker, but against 
 the public. As a result of this continual assumption 
 of more and more special privileges entirely outside 
 of all general custom and law, the labor monopoly of 
 to-day not only forces the worker to join its organiza- 
 tion and subscribe to its theories — it not merely 
 prescribes the wages he shall receive and the hours 
 he shall work but it prescribes the kind of trade 
 he may learn, how long he must take to learn it, 
 the kind of work he must do, what employer he 
 may work for, and what employer he may not work 
 for, — even though he is out of a job and his family in 
 want. No matter how much his family may need 
 money, he is denied the right of working harder and 
 making more money. Frequently in spite of his am- 
 bition and ability he is prevented from taking any 
 advantage of opportunities for advancement. And 
 he is always likely to be called out on strike and
 
 Make Labor Obey the Law 245 
 
 forced to lose all of his wages for weeks and sometimes 
 months, even though this may be entirely against his 
 own interests and desires and frequently in spite of 
 the fact that he and a big majority of his fellow-work- 
 ers, because of their own interests and beliefs in the 
 merits of the case, have voted against the strike. ' 
 
 Again, beginning with its second fundamental 
 special privilege — that of being especially exempted 
 from ordinary law against conspiracy — organized 
 labor has also persistently insisted on exercising more 
 and more rights that are against the law as applied 
 to all other classes of Americans, and where this 
 continued to be impossible, of forcing through the 
 adoption of special laws and statutes which particu- 
 larly exempt it from such laws. For organized labor 
 to-day in addition to being the only class exempted 
 from the law against conspiracy — in that it is per- 
 mitted to conspire against its employer — has assumed 
 
 1 "You know what the usual standard of the (union) employee 
 is in our day. It is to give as little as he may for his wages. Labor 
 is standardized by the trade unions and this is the standard to which 
 it is made to conform. No one is suffered to do mere than the aver- 
 age worker can do ; in some trades and handicrafts, no one is suffered 
 to do more than the least skillful of his fellows can do within the hours 
 allotted to a days' labor, and no one may work out of hours at all or 
 volunteer anything beyond the minimum. 
 
 I need not point out how economically disastrous such a regulation 
 of labor is. . . . The labor of America is rapidly becoming un- 
 profitable under its present regulation by those who are determined 
 to reduce it to a minimum." — Woodrow Wilson (historian) 1909.
 
 246 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 in the use of the sympathetic strike, always con- 
 demned by the law, the right to conspire to in- 
 jure another outside employer with whom the men 
 striking have no relation whatever. It has assumed 
 the right of conspiracy to injure — by forcing his 
 men to conspire against him, an outside employer 
 who may buy goods made by any manufacturer 
 against whom the strikers have a grievance, and 
 finally it has conspired, as in the coal strike, the 
 outlaw railroad strike, and many of the largest and 
 costliest strikes since the war, simply and solely to 
 injure the public. 
 
 The primary special privilege granted labor ex- 
 empting it from the general law against conspiracy 
 to the extent of permitting it to conspire against its 
 own employer, offers no shred of legal justification 
 for conspiracies to injure other employers with whom 
 such conspirators have no relation, or for conspiring 
 to injure the public. Yet organized labor has for 
 years brazenly assumed and unscrupulously exercised 
 these utterly unlawful special privileges. Moreover, 
 when the Supreme Court finally in January, 1921, 1 
 reaffirmed one of these assumed special privileges 
 unlawful, Mr. Gompers, with that naive sense of 
 injury which is so characteristic of the mind which 
 has grown to consider itself beyond all ordinary 
 
 1 Duplex Printing Press v. Deering 254 U. S. — .
 
 Make Labor Obey the Law 247 
 
 laws, when it is forced to submit to any law, con- 
 demned the Supreme Court of the United States as 
 reactionary. 
 
 Labor has also, much as the "holding company" 
 did in trust days, taken advantage of certain legal 
 technicalities to keep itself outside of the law as 
 regards responsibility for its acts. 
 
 All ordinary individuals or groups of individuals 
 who wield power, handle money, enter into contracts, 
 or exercise other functions that affect other people, 
 must so organize — generally through incorporation — 
 that those whom their actions affect, may know who 
 is responsible for those actions — that those who have 
 a right to know may know how money is used — and 
 in general that the individuals who wield power or 
 commit acts may be made responsible for those acts. 
 Great labor organizations handle immense sums of 
 money, often running into tens of millions of dollars. 
 They often use this money not only absolutely with- 
 out regard, but absolutely contrary to public interest 
 and often not only absolutely without regard for, but 
 absolutely contrary to, the real interests of the 
 members of their own organizations who contrib- 
 uted it. 
 
 All other organizations who enter into contracts 
 must keep those contracts or pay legally assessed 
 damages for breaking them — and if they otherwise
 
 248 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 commit acts that injure other parties they must be 
 responsible in damages for their acts. Organized 
 labor enters into contracts, and breaks them without 
 scruple — often with immense loss not only to the 
 other party, but to the public — and otherwise con- 
 tinually commits acts that bring the greatest injury 
 to other parties and the public. 
 
 Yet for the very purpose of being able to wield 
 immense sums of money for its own secret and often 
 sinister purposes, and in order not to be forced to 
 divulge to anyone how that money is being used, or 
 to be responsible to anyone for its use — for the very 
 purpose of being able to break its contract with 
 impunity, and of doing other acts that injure other 
 people without being forced to take any responsibility 
 for those acts, organized labor has adopted and in- 
 sisted on an "association" form of organization which 
 will best contribute to its irresponsibility, has con- 
 sistently concealed its membership to assure its 
 irresponsibility, has refused to incorporate, has fought 
 every movement towards federal incorporation or 
 licensing or other regulation and has otherwise vigor- 
 ously insisted on remaining outside the fundamental 
 law of responsibility commensurate with power to 
 which all other classes of individuals or organizations 
 either submit or are forced to submit as a matter of 
 course.
 
 Make Labor Obey the Law 249 
 
 In addition to the special privileges beyond the 
 law as applied to all ordinary people which organized 
 labor has merely assumed and exercised, it has also, 
 largely with the club of the great labor vote, secured 
 the passage of certain statutes specially exempting 
 it from the operation of many other very wise and 
 important laws which all other members of society 
 must obey. 
 
 The Sherman-Anti-Trust Law was passed in re- 
 sponse to a nation-wide public demand that it be 
 made impossible for any special interests to get such 
 a control, either through ownership or special agree- 
 ment or through any other means, over our industrial 
 production or the means of distributing it, as would 
 make it possible for such special interests to shut off 
 or curtail or otherwise manipulate that production so 
 as to raise its price or otherwise use it for the benefit 
 of such special interests against the public interest. 
 
 But great labor organizations to-day, as has al- 
 ready been shown and emphasized, are doing exactly 
 what the great trusts were attempting to do a genera- 
 tion ago and what the Sherman anti-trust law was 
 passed to prohibit their doing — namely, to get such 
 a monopoly control in different industries as would 
 make it possible for them for their own interest to 
 shut off or curtail supply and thus unfairly raise 
 prices to the public. As a matter of fact, labor or-
 
 250 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 ganizations to-day are going far beyond anything any 
 trust ever dreamed of attempting, in that they have 
 established complete monopolies in industries, and 
 are not only artificially for their own interest so 
 shutting off supply as to raise prices, but often so 
 shutting off supply as to force the public for consider- 
 able periods to do entirely without many necessaries 
 of life. 
 
 Yet here again, by methods that have already been 
 described and because neither the public nor the 
 legislators at the time realized the lines along which 
 organized labor was actually developing, the passage 
 of another special statute — the Clayton Act — was 
 forced over specifically exempting organized labor 
 from the operation of the Sherman Law which all 
 other industrial and commercial individuals and 
 organizations are forced to obey. And it is unques- 
 tionably this very particular exemption, placing 
 organized labor entirely outside the operation of our 
 perhaps most necessary and valuable protective law, 
 which has been the biggest factor in making possible 
 the immense and sinister power which such great 
 labor monopolies as the United Mine Workers' Union 
 have and have exercised not only over all industry 
 but over all the people. 
 
 Moreover, organized labor has not only been built 
 up on special exemptions of law and special privileges
 
 Make Labor Obey the Law 251 
 
 which no other class enjoys; it has not only con- 
 tinually assumed and exercised more and more special 
 privileges and exemptions outside the law and often 
 definitely against the law; it has not only taken 
 advantage of certain technicalities and omissions of 
 the law to maintain a type of organization which can- 
 not be made responsible for its acts before the law ' ; 
 it has not only used the club of the great labor vote 
 to force over legislation granting it still further 
 special privileges and exemptions from all ordinary 
 law; but its leaders have continually and openly 
 advocated defiance of the law. 
 
 The right to conspire together to injure their own 
 employer through a strike is granted as a special 
 privilege to labor but the law prohibits labor, as it 
 prohibits everybody else, from conspiring to injure 
 outside third parties. When a Federal Court 
 enjoined such a conspiracy by labor, John Mitchell 
 in a public speech to the workers said : 
 
 1 Just as the present volume goes to press announcement is made 
 that the American Federation of Labor, with headquarters in Wash- 
 ington, is to build up an immense fund for "educational and de- 
 fensive purposes," to be used in strengthening the labor party in 
 general and also for putting it in the foremost ranks of the financial 
 institutions of the country. 
 
 To do this it has been decided to open a $100,000,000 trust that 
 will receive on deposit the savings of union men throughout the 
 country. Doing this as a trust will exempt it from Federal and state 
 bank regulations and from any taxes other than imposed upon an 
 individual.
 
 252 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 "I shall as one American preserve my liberty 
 and the liberty of my people [meaning his own in- 
 terpretation of those liberties] even against the 
 usurpation of Federal judiciaries." 
 
 And Mr. Gompers under similar conditions pub- 
 licly said: 
 
 ' ' I desire to be clearly understood that when any 
 court undertakes without warrant of law [meaning 
 his own interpretation of law] by the injunctive 
 process to deprive me of my personal rights [mean- 
 ing his own interpretation of those rights] . . . 
 I shall have no hesitancy in asserting and exercising 
 those rights." 
 
 Again, labor leaders have continually and openly 
 preached the general principle of disregard and de- 
 fiance by labor of the forces of law and government. 
 President Garrison of the Railroad Conductors' 
 Union publicly said : 
 
 "If you complain that 400,000 men [merely one 
 great labor monopoly] 'held up' the government, 
 what will 8,000,000 of them do, if they can to 
 'hold up' the government?" 
 
 But not content with preaching defiance of the 
 laws in particular cases, or general defiance of the 
 laws and government, labor leaders openly declare
 
 Make Labor Obey the Law 253 
 
 the actual right of great labor monopolies to function 
 outside of all ordinary law as a law unto themselves. 
 A labor union oath of membership reads, 
 
 "My fidelity to the union shall in no sense be 
 interfered with by any allegiance that I may or 
 may hereafter owe to any other organization, social, 
 political or religious, secret or otherwise." 
 
 which obviously includes and is interpreted to include 
 the laws and the government. 
 
 Frank Morrison, Secretary of the American Fed- 
 eration of Labor, in a carefully prepared public state- 
 ment made in July, 1920, says: 
 
 "The trade unions should be permitted to func- 
 tion without interference by any of these agencies 
 [the courts and the legislature]. . . . There can 
 be no question in modern industry which cannot 
 be determined quickly and satisfactorily through 
 the trade union philosophy." 
 
 Finally organized labor has constantly used threat 
 and intimidation to prevent or nullify every effort 
 or proposed effort to bring labor within the law. The 
 standard threat which organized labor holds over the 
 head of every elected judge to use the labor vote to 
 defeat him for reelection if he shall render, irre- 
 spective of the merits of the case, any decision against
 
 254 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 labor, is well known. The threats of organized labor 
 and later the strenuous attempts of organized labor 
 to defeat Governor Coolidge because he refused 
 in the police strike to yield to organized labor by 
 turning over the city of Boston to lawlessness, is 
 notorious. But what the American people perhaps 
 do not but should know, is the fact that by threats 
 directed through the local labor organizations at 
 home and pressure brought by the powerful labor 
 lobby at Washington, the Congress of the United 
 States has for years been so intimidated that every 
 appropriation made to the department of justice for 
 the prosecution of suits under the anti-trust since 19 14 
 has carried the express proviso that no part of such 
 appropriation can be used to bring such suits against 
 labor organizations. 
 
 A generation ago the whole nation became aroused 
 over the alliance between the capitalistic trust and 
 the corrupt politician. What the public to-day needs 
 to be aroused to, is the domination of the labor trust 
 over the intimidated politician. 
 
 When the great trusts and other "plutocratic" 
 monopolies, through their far less costly and extreme 
 infringement of the rights of all the people, finally 
 aroused and focused public attention on the necessity 
 of finding some remedy against the trust evil, Ameri- 
 can common sense saw at once that the cause of the
 
 Make Labor Obey the Law 255 
 
 evil was preeminently "special privilege" and the 
 development through clever organization manipula- 
 tion of a system that was largely outside the law as 
 ordinarily applied. American common sense also 
 saw that the simple obvious remedy against the 
 trust evil was to withdraw such special privileges and 
 exemptions and to reaffirm the general and basic 
 common law principles against monopoly, conspiracy 
 in restraint of trade, and other forms of unfair com- 
 petition in terms so specific and sweeping as to bring 
 every ingenious form of capitalistic monopoly within 
 the law and force it to obey the law. 
 
 In exactly the same way the simple and obvious 
 remedy against the strike evil and against the great 
 labor monopolies, which are founded on special legal 
 and social privilege, and have been built up on special 
 exemptions from many ordinary principles and laws 
 and which are chiefly responsible for the strike evil, 
 is to withdraw as far as may be necessary or desirable 
 those special privileges and exemptions, and other- 
 wise bring organized labor at least much more nearly 
 under the operation of the law as it is applied to other 
 Americans.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 AT THE BAR OF PUBLIC OPINION 
 
 Organized labor is to-day functioning outside the 
 law in four principal particulars : 
 
 First : Not content with its special exemption from 
 the law of conspiracy, which permits the workers to 
 conspire against their own employer, organized labor 
 is assuming and exercising the right of the 
 sympathetic strike, the secondary boycott, the right 
 to conspire to injure anyone it regards as unfriendly, 
 and finally the right to strike merely to injure or 
 coerce the public, all in open and flagrant violation 
 of the law. 
 
 Second : Taking advantage of certain legal techni- 
 calities and through other means, organized labor in- 
 sists on maintaining a form of organization which 
 practically exempts it from legal responsibility for 
 its acts and contracts. 
 
 Third: Organized labor openly preaches class 
 consciousness, class interests irrespective of national 
 interests, and separate class rights superior to the 
 rights of the people as a whole. Organized labor is 
 
 256
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 257 
 
 founded and has developed on, the practice of forcing 
 workers to join its class organization and subscribe 
 to its special class theories, and through its long 
 appeal to public sympathy for the worker has built 
 up a widespread and deep-rooted public acquiescence 
 in such practice. As a result of its being able con- 
 tinually to force more and more workers to join its 
 separate class organization and subscribe to its 
 separate class theories, organized labor is continually 
 building up a greater and more powerful separate and 
 antagonistic class within the nation, which is more 
 and more obviously inspired by different ideals, 
 which is more and more definitely actuated by differ- 
 ent interests, and which more and more brazenly 
 claims the right to be governed by different laws 
 than the rest of the people. 
 
 Fourth : This great separate class movement by 
 forcing over, through threats and intimidation, ex- 
 emption for itself from the operation of the anti-trust 
 and other laws has made possible the building up of 
 great labor monopolies with which it dominates many 
 and seeks to dominate all of our great basic industries 
 in order that it may dominate all the rest of the people 
 and force all the rest of the people to recognize its 
 special rights as a special privileged class apart. x 
 
 1 The English Coal strike is being called just as the present volume 
 is going to press. Cable dispatches quote the miners as specifically 
 
 n
 
 558 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 That strikes, and most other present labor evils, are 
 chiefly due to organized labor's insistence on operat- 
 ing outside the law is so obvious to every clear and 
 broad-minded thinker on the labor problem — it is so 
 equally obvious that the logical remedy for these evils 
 is to bring labor within the law — that most of the 
 widely advocated plans which seek to remedy the 
 strike and other labor evils are unanimous in seeking 
 to do this on the fundamental proposition of with- 
 drawing at least some of labor's special privileges 
 and exemptions — of bringing labor at least more 
 nearly within the law. 
 
 Where these various plans differ is in their judg- 
 ment as to which specific special privilege or exemp- 
 tion should be withdrawn from organized labor or as 
 to what special law, or general principle of law, labor 
 should be forced to obey in order to accomplish a 
 
 declaring: "Unless we are allowed to levy tribute as we would, we 
 shall make the mines valueless, even though in so doing we destroy 
 our own livelihoods, shut down every British factory and force 
 millions to starve or flee to other places of the earth." 
 
 Frank Hodges, secretary of the Miners' Federation has specifically 
 boasted: "If we go down to defeat the Nation will go with us" upon 
 which statement the New York Tribune comments editorially as 
 follows: "All of us, if there is not to be a return to Stone Age con- 
 ditions of life, must find ways to uproot the idea that association 
 with an industry gives one the right to control its fruits exactly as 
 he pleases. Under the leadership of modern radicalism selfish minor- 
 ities have developed a technique of mastery which must be countered 
 by a new technique of majority rule."
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 259 
 
 maximum of relief for industry and the public and at 
 the same time leave labor itself the maximum pro- 
 tection for its legitimate rights and interests. 
 
 One of the most simple and logical plans which has 
 yet been brought to public attention, and one which 
 commands a large following of very able thinkers on 
 the labor problem, is that which seeks to minimize 
 the strike evil and do away with the labor trouble 
 by withdrawing from labor its present special 
 privilege of practical exemption from legal responsi- 
 bility for its acts. Labor to-day enjoys this special 
 privilege by maintaining its organizations as "volun- 
 tary associations" which type of organization, be- 
 cause of present legal technicalities, cannot be sued 
 at law for damages, unless every individual member 
 of the association is personally made a defendant. 
 As the members of a labor organization frequently 
 number tens and even hundreds of thousands and 
 are generally scattered through all parts of the 
 country, it is obviously practically impossible to so 
 name each member as a defendant and therefore to 
 sue the association at all. 
 
 The means through which it is sought to with- 
 draw from labor this practical exemption from 
 responsibility before the law, is the enactment in the 
 various States of a law to the effect that all voluntary 
 associations may be brought into court and made
 
 260 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 responsible for their acts at law in the same way as a 
 corporation is brought into court and made respon- 
 sible for its acts, by serving the association in its 
 common name and making service of process on any 
 officer. 
 
 Now it is to be remembered that the law permits 
 workers to conspire together to strike for higher 
 wages or shorter hours or to attempt to force other 
 demands on their own employers even though such 
 strike may bring serious damage to the employer. 
 Therefore if such laws were passed, making labor re- 
 sponsible at law for its acts, employers could, never- 
 theless, not sue their own labor for damages caused 
 by such strikes. Thus such a law would in no sense 
 take away from workers the use of the strike weapon 
 for advancing their own legitimate interests, of even 
 their illegitimate interests, against their own employer. 
 Such a law would, however, make workers responsible 
 at law for breach of their contract — just as every 
 other individual and organization already is — and 
 it would make labor liable in damages for its il- 
 legitimate and unlawful strikes and its many other 
 widely practiced acts which are obviously unfair or 
 unlawful. 
 
 On the face of it such a law would seem to promise 
 to go very far toward stopping such practices just 
 as the fear of the law has gone very far toward
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 261 
 
 stopping similar unfair or unlawful practices in 
 other relations of life. Such an assumption, however, 
 overlooks many of the psychological and practical 
 facts which are at the basis of the whole present 
 labor trouble. 
 
 There already are adequate laws which make it 
 easily possible to sue labor organizations for damages 
 for its unfair or illegal act in ten States, including 
 New York. 1 But employers so seldom care or dare 
 to avail themselves of these laws that they have little 
 practical value in actually remedying the strike or 
 other evils of the present labor situation for either 
 employer or public. For instance one of the ablest 
 authorities on labor law in the country has stated 
 recently that the labor conditions brought out by the 
 Lockwood investigation had long been known to 
 those close to the local labor situation and that the 
 employers had been advised that legal relief could be 
 had against many of the most unbearable conditions 
 if the employers would fight the case. But knowing 
 well the many long and strong arms of the labor 
 
 1 The Statutes of New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Kentucky, 
 Michigan, California, Ohio, Montana, Rhode Island, and Maryland 
 already have provisions by which voluntary associations may be 
 sued at law;. though in some States, as in New York for instance, the 
 suit must be brought against the president or treasurer as repre- 
 sentative of the association, so that if these two officers by tempor- 
 arily leaving the State, or otherwise, can avoid service the suit can- 
 not be brought.
 
 262 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 octopus, the employers had feared to make the fight 
 and it was only when public opinion became thor- 
 oughly aroused, through the Lockwood investigation, 
 that even a beginning was made to relieve both the 
 employers and the people from the strangle hold of 
 this one instance of labor-monopoly lawlessness. 
 
 Moreover, it has been the history of the labor 
 movement in America, at least as regards bringing 
 general labor practices within the law, that mere 
 legal victories have not only been futile but 
 Phyrrhian — that they have not only not stopped the 
 development of irresponsible, monopolistic, and un- 
 scrupulously self-interested labor power, but have 
 unquestionably actually contributed to labor's devel- 
 opment along this line and outside the law. 
 
 Employers have won conspicuous legal victories 
 against labor lawlessness in the Danbury Hatters' 
 Case, the Toledo Telephone Case, the Arkansas Coal 
 Case, the Duplex Printing Press Case, and in many 
 other similar litigations. But these very defeats 
 for labor chauvinism have only served to furnish 
 additional and especially convincing ammunition for 
 the labor leader who has always argued that labor 
 must seek what it wants, not through the ordinary 
 processes of law and government, but through the 
 building up of a special class power expressed in the 
 organized labor monopoly which can dominate in-
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 263 
 
 dustry and through the threat of the strike, force 
 the law and the government to yield it what it 
 wants. ' 
 
 There is no question that such laws as exist, which 
 make organized labor responsible for its illegitimate 
 and unlawful acts, have, in the few cases where they 
 have been evoked, been of great value to the em- 
 ployer and in certain cases of great value to the public 
 in preventing mere labor lawlessness from wrecking 
 the employers' business or from continuing to deprive 
 the public of public necessities. No fair-minded man 
 but must admit that the mere legal technicalities 
 which organized labor uses to evade responsibility 
 before the law, should be so remedied that it is at 
 least possible to keep labor from breaking its written 
 contracts or committing other illegitimate or illegal 
 acts with impunity. But all the circumstances 
 surrounding the modern labor situation — the practi- 
 cal facts that employers and public officials, unless 
 forced to it as a last resort, are entirely unwilling 
 
 'In the Danbury Hatters' Case the Supreme Court declared 
 labor's action unlawful and granted damages to the employers. 
 These damages could easily have been paid by the union which called 
 the strike and whose leaders were responsible for the conduct of the 
 strike, by an assessment of about two dollars a member. The union, 
 however, refused to pay the damages and allowed them to be assessed 
 against the comparatively few union members who had property 
 obviously for the very purpose of forcing these men to become 
 martyrs to the labor cause whose fate could be used by organized 
 labor propaganda to intensify labor antagonism to the law.
 
 264 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 to seek such relief at law as they now can get for 
 themselves or the public through fear of the many- 
 long and strong and often hidden arms of the labor 
 octopus — the fact that every legal victory against 
 labor lawlessness has merely been used by labor 
 leaders as an argument for an increased labor law- 
 lessness, only serves to demonstrate further the fact 
 that has already been emphasized, and which neither 
 the lawyer nor the industrial leader can afford to 
 overlook, namely; that the modern labor problem, 
 including the strike problem, is not primarily a legal 
 problem as such, or an industrial problem as such, but 
 it is fundamentally a national social problem which, 
 because of the special circumstance surrounding it, 
 cannot only be adequately solved as a national social 
 problem by crystallized public opinion. 
 
 In other words, just as a generation ago the small 
 competitor who was discriminated against by secret 
 rebates, by price manipulation, and by other methods 
 of unfair competition, had little adequate legal 
 remedy and feared to use such legal remedy as he did 
 have against the great trusts and railroad systems, 
 so that it was necessary for the public itself to defend 
 not only the small competitor but public interests; 
 so in the same way and for practicaly parallel rea- 
 sons, there is to-day little hope of any adequate basic 
 solution for the strike or labor problem as it affects
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 265 
 
 the general average employer and the public, except 
 through public action or at least cooperative action 
 supported by strong public opinion. 
 
 Because of the very obvious parallel between our 
 great labor monopolies of to-day and the trusts of a 
 generation ago; because our labor monopolies of to- 
 day are infringing public right by shutting off the 
 supply and thus raising the price of the public's 
 necessaries of life, in exactly the same way and to a 
 much greater degree than the trusts did a generation 
 ago; and because through its experience with the 
 trusts the public is particularly familiar with this 
 method of procedure, perhaps the most obvious, 
 simple, and from many points of view the most 
 practical move to bring labor within the law, is to 
 prosecute the great labor monopolies under the 
 Sherman Anti-Trust Law. 
 
 It has long been generally thought that the 
 Clayton Act exempted Labor from the operation of 
 the Sherman Law. But in January, 1921, in the 
 Duplex Printing Press Case the Supreme Court de- 
 clared that the Clayton Act did not exempt labor 
 organizations from responsibility for damages for 
 acts in unreasonable restraint of trade of com- 
 modities moving in interstate commerce. Whether 
 or not the Supreme Court would also hold that the 
 Clayton Act is not a bar to the dissolution of labor
 
 266 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 monopolies under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act has 
 not been determined. But in any event the mere 
 repeal of the Clayton Act would at once make pos- 
 sible the dissolution of the great coal union monopoly 
 which the Supreme Court has already called a "Con- 
 spiracy in unreasonable restraint of trade" and which 
 has, and may at any time again that suits its own 
 convenience, shut off the entire production of coal 
 from the American people. It would mean that 
 another outlaw railroad strike, with its slow paralyz- 
 ing of traffic in all parts of the country could be made 
 absolutely impossible. : 
 
 Moreover such a dissolution would in no way 
 interfere with the normal or legitimate functioning 
 of trade unionism for it would merely mean that 
 labor organizations would be reduced to a size com- 
 mensurate with their normal functions and require- 
 ments which would be determined by a court on the 
 merits of each individual case, just as was the practice 
 in the dissolution of our great capitalistic monopolies. 
 
 As it has been applied by the courts in actual 
 
 1 To decide that the Clayton Act is not a bar to dissolution of 
 labor monopolies, the court would have to hold Section 6 of the 
 Clayton Act unconstitutional on the ground that it is class legis- 
 lation or give it a narrow construction. The repeal of the labor 
 sections of the Clayton Act itself, whose supposed force has already 
 been half destroyed by the Duplex Printing Press Case, would of 
 course make available without question a surer and quicker way of 
 breaking down the power of such labor monopolies,
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 267 
 
 practice the Sherman Anti-Trust Law has protected 
 the public against monopoly and the evils of mo- 
 nopoly control in any industry, so far as great capital- 
 istic monopolies are concerned, but it has not only 
 not interfered with legitimate business operations, 
 but has in the long run helped rather than hindered 
 the very type of organization against which it was 
 directed and which at first fought it most bitterly. 
 
 The Sherman Anti-Trust Law would undoubtedly 
 have the same effect if applied to the great monopoly 
 labor organizations to-day ; and not only would the 
 public gain tremendously by being protected from 
 the great nation-wide strikes that paralyze whole 
 industries, but the labor organizations themselves 
 would soon develop a healthier growth, which would 
 benefit the average worker as much as it would the 
 public. 
 
 The necessity, however, for strong public opinion 
 before any such remedy can be hoped for, has been 
 demonstrated by the fact that although the Supreme 
 Court has already declared certain of our great labor 
 monopolies to be "conspiracies in unreasonable re- 
 straint of trade ' ' Congress has not only refused to 
 take the initiative in providing for the prosecution 
 of such monopolies but has so yielded to organized 
 labor intimidation that it has publicly directed the 
 Department of Justice not to bring any such suits,
 
 268 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 In the industries where radicalism has had its 
 biggest hold and where the employers could obviously 
 not allow it to get an organized hold and in other 
 industries where especially skilled labor is required, 
 what is called the ' 'Open Shop Policy" as distinct from 
 the "Closed Shop" or organized labor policy, has 
 long been rigidly insisted on by the employers. This 
 Open Shop Policy has also existed as a matter of 
 course in many other industries or sections which 
 labor leaders have not had the time or ability to 
 "organize." 
 
 After the whole country's very realistic and ex- 
 pensive experience following the war as to the effect 
 of industrial domination by organized labor, a wide- 
 spread movement towards a general Open Shop 
 Policy began to be agitated in the beginning of 1920, 
 which was generally supported not only by employers 
 but by business men of all kinds who were sufficiently 
 in touch with industry to realize the actual condition 
 of the last few years. 
 
 The Open Shop Policy merely means a refusal by 
 employers to recognize labor claim to the "special 
 privilege" already referred to of being allowed to 
 force all workers to join the established union and 
 support the fixed organized-labor policy in order to 
 be allowed to work at their trade. The means, of 
 course, by which this special privilege is disallowed
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 269 
 
 is the very simple one of employing any worker and 
 paying him wages whether he belongs to the union or 
 not. The Open Shop Policy thus means that any 
 man can work where he wants to, at the trade he 
 wants to, and in general without the annoying and 
 often heavily handicapping restrictions already 
 emphasized, which organized labor in many instances 
 imposes on him. Moreover, the Open Shop makes 
 no restrictions on any workers joining any union or 
 on the organization of a union by all the workers. 
 It in no way limits the right or the opportunity of 
 any of the workers to bargain collectively with their 
 employer or to strike if they think it necessary to 
 protect their rights. But it does remove from the 
 workers the necessity so frequent under the labor- 
 monopoly policy, of being forced to strike for causes 
 in which they themselves have no direct interest. 
 On its face therefore the Open Shop seems utterly 
 fair and American. 
 
 The argument against the Open Shop advanced 
 not only by the very personally interested leaders of 
 organized labor but echoed by a large proportion of 
 undoubtedly perfectly sincere average union mem- 
 bers is twofold : 
 
 First: That the Open Shop is merely a cloak to 
 cover an attack on unionism through a refusal to 
 employ union members, or through the employment
 
 270 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 of union members only on condition they will drop 
 out of the union, or through some other discrimina- 
 tion against them. It is a fundamental principle of 
 the Open Shop Policy that it shall not so discriminate. 
 Whether or not this principle is lived up to depends, 
 of course, on the honesty of the individual employer, 
 and there is every reason to believe that the average 
 employer to-day, even if not sometimes in the past, 
 is keen minded enough to see that unfair discrimina- 
 tion against union men, far from relieving industry 
 from present labor-monopoly domination, will only 
 give organized labor a weapon with which to more 
 effectually reestablish that domination. It is there- 
 fore to be hoped that the influence of employers in 
 general as well as of public opinion will be strongly 
 brought to bear on any individual employer who does 
 attempt thus to discriminate. ' 
 
 Second : Organized labor has always loudly 
 claimed, and the average laborer unquestionably 
 believes, that strong union organization has been 
 
 1 "Of course, while the public recognizes the right of many men to 
 combine their dollars under a single control to purchase the labor 
 of many men, it will recognize the right of those many men to com- 
 bine their labor power under single leadership to bargain for those 
 dollars. Of course, if the public is called upon to condemn a policy 
 which excludes from their trade workmen who do not enter such 
 combinations, it will also condemn a policy which excludes workmen 
 who do enter such combinations. If the public calls for the open 
 shop, it will mean but one kind of shop — a shop in which there is 
 no discrimination." — Law and Labor.
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 271 
 
 chiefly, if not entirely, responsible for the wage in- 
 creases and the shorter working hours that all labor 
 now enjoys. That the basic reason which has made 
 high wages and shorter hours possible has been in- 
 creased efficiency in production, and that organized 
 labor has been frequently actually a handicap to such 
 advancement through its mistaken efforts to decrease 
 production has already been emphasized. But it has 
 also been pointed out that organized labor's constant 
 preaching and fighting for increased wages and 
 shorter hours has unquestionably been a big factor in 
 obtaining their share of the profits of increased pro- 
 duction efficiency for the workers themselves. As 
 regards more modern industrial history, however, it 
 has been pointed out and should again be emphasized 
 that the new standard of big-minded industrial 
 leadership has made the necessity of constant fight- 
 ing by the workers for a full fair share in the prosper- 
 ity of industry more and more unnecessary. Also 
 public opinion to-day as never before is convinced of 
 the social desirability of good pay and reasonable 
 hours. There is no question therefore that a general 
 Open Shop Policy in no sense contemplates or threat- 
 ens any sacrifice of the workers' past advances or any 
 unfair limitation of reasonable future advances. 
 
 Particularly in view of these facts and particularly 
 also until honest unionism has purged itself of the
 
 272 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 radical influences which are either forcing its leaders, 
 or offering its leaders the excuse, for making unionism 
 the mere tool of illegitimately furthering individual 
 or class interests against the legitimate interests of 
 the employer and the public — until honest unionism 
 shall suggest, and do what it can to effect, some more 
 satisfactory means of protecting the employer and the 
 public against the extreme danger and cost which 
 the unrestricted use of the strike weapon in the 
 hands of unscrupulous or chauvinistic unionism is 
 subjecting both employer and public, it is difficult to 
 see how public opinion can be expected to do other- 
 wise than approve of the employer for acting on the 
 most logical and ready-to-hand means he has for 
 protecting himself and American industry in general. 
 
 As a matter of fact employers, Manufacturers' 
 Associations, and Chambers of Commerce who are 
 back of the present drive against the labor monopoly 
 and the strike evil through the Open Shop Movement 
 unquestionably feel that they have public opinion 
 on their side. Moreover, they are unquestionably 
 right about this — up to a certain point. 
 
 There is every evidence that public opinion is 
 to-day against labor and on the side of the employer 
 as it has never been before. The basis of this condi- 
 tion of public opinion, however — and this distinction 
 must be carefully kept in mind — is not that public
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 273 
 
 opinion has become hostile to labor because it has 
 become favorable to the employer, but it has become 
 favorable to the employer because it has become 
 hostile to labor. 
 
 In a large measure the labor problem in the past 
 has consisted, or seemed to consist, of a question of 
 the best good of the few, as represented by the 
 employers, as against the best good of the many, as 
 represented by labor. When any question involves, 
 or seems to involve, such a proposition American pub- 
 lic opinion has unfailingly been in favor of the best 
 good of the many. Moreover there is every reason 
 to believe that in so far as the labor or any other 
 problem of the future shall constitute a choice 
 between the best good of the few or of the many, 
 public opinion in America will always be in favor 
 of the best good of the many. 
 
 In the present circumstances public opinion has in 
 no sense changed its inate point of view as regards 
 the best good of the many against the few, but 
 rather it has come to see that organized labor has 
 forced the labor situation to a point where, in the 
 question of the best good of the many against the few, 
 organized labor itself now constitutes the few and 
 the many consists of all industry — including a large 
 percentage of the workers themselves — and all the 
 public. 
 18
 
 274 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 Detroit, Michigan, has for years been an Open 
 Shop town and the Open Shop principle has here 
 become part of the popular industrial philosophy of 
 the community. Under this policy better wages 
 have been paid, workmen have been more prosperous, 
 there have been practically no labor troubles, and the 
 growth and prosperity of the city have been remark- 
 able. To the people of Detroit, therefore, whether 
 employer, laborer, or public, the Open Shop policy 
 represents, through long and intimate experience 
 with its actual workings, the best good of the whole 
 community. With such a public point of view the 
 Open Shop offers a sound basis on which labor 
 relations can be built with confidence. 
 
 For years the Pacific coast was generally referred 
 to as the Labor Union Paradise, and by the same 
 token it frequently represented the opposite of Para- 
 dise to employers, non-union workers, and the pub- 
 lic. After years of costly labor war9 — chiefly because 
 of fights between rival unions which included arson, 
 bomb outrages, and murder — public opinion in Los 
 Angeles years ago became so incensed at organized 
 labor that it insisted on the Open Shop and later 
 passed an amendment to the city charter — which 
 can only be revoked by a two-thirds vote of all the 
 people — making Los Angeles an Open Shop town by 
 law. For over a decade of the Open Shop, labor
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 
 
 ^75 
 
 troubles have been practically unknown, new factories 
 have moved in, wages are high, workmen prosperous 
 and in general actual results have far exceeded all 
 the reasonable expectations of those who hoped for 
 most from the Open Shop law. Because the Open 
 Shop policy in Los Angeles has thus been brought 
 about by a popular revolt against the tyranny of 
 organized labor and is based on a conviction born 
 of conscious experience by all the people, that it 
 represents the best good of the whole community, 
 the Open Shop policy in this instance again repre- 
 sents an adequate foundation upon which to seek to 
 build better and better labor relations. x 
 
 Scores of other individual American industrial 
 communities, because of their own past troubles with 
 organized labor or because of the satisfactory results 
 which other communities have achieved through the 
 Open Shop have, within the last year or two, also 
 declared for the Open Shop. In proportion as such a 
 change is based on local public opinion's conscious 
 hostility to organized labor methods and particularly 
 
 1 "In Open Shop Los Angeles the number of wage earners in the 
 period from 1899-19 14, increased from 5173 to 31,352 — an increase 
 of practically 600%. ... In the same period ... in closed shop 
 San Francisco where the industrial life of the city has been absolutely 
 dominated by organized labor, there was a decrease (notwithstanding 
 a great increase in the population on the whole Pacific coast) in the 
 number of wage earners from 32,555 to 31,758, in spite of the great 
 natural advantages which San Francisco had." — Walter Drew.
 
 276 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 as the Open Shop shall in actual practice result in a 
 definite reduction of labor trouble and in increasing 
 labor's contentment and prosperity and the pros- 
 perity of the community — in other words in pro- 
 portion as public opinion shall consciously accept 
 the Open Shop Policy as constituting a labor relation 
 which represents the best good of the whole com- 
 munity, to that extent does the Open Shop offer a 
 hopeful basis for a readjustment of labor relations. 
 Such local movements, however, even though they 
 may become very widespread and permanently 
 established, locally through a crystallized local 
 public conviction in their favor, do not, and in 
 themselves cannot hope to offer any adequate solu- 
 tion of many of the broader and more vital phases 
 of the strike and labor-monopoly problem. For the 
 great labor monopoly that dominates our coal 
 industry, our railroads, that seeks to dominate our 
 steel industry, that temporarily disrupted our 
 clothing industry, cannot be reached or affected by 
 scattered local public opinion or the consequent local 
 adoption of the Open Shop in even a great majority 
 of our industrial centers. Only national public 
 opinion can affect and reach our national strike 
 problem and our great national labor monopolies 
 and furnish any adequate foundation for a change in 
 the basic labor relationships in these fields.
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 277 
 
 Now national public opinion consists of 5,000,000 
 or more very closely organized labor unionists to 
 whom the Open Shop is anathema — of some 7,000- 
 000 farm families for whom industrial problems 
 as such have little conscious interest, l and of many 
 other millions in thousands of essentially non- 
 industrial towns who together distinctly outnumber 
 the population of essentially industrial communities. 
 
 In other words, national public opinion consists of 
 two great industrially experienced and industrially 
 interested groups, one of which, organized labor, 
 vigorously opposes the Open Shop, the other of 
 which, unorganized labor and the unorganized public 
 of industrial communities, is at least potentially 
 favorable to the Open Shop. In addition to these 
 thus opposed elements is a very much larger third 
 element which had had little or no personal experi- 
 ence with strikes or other labor problems, and which 
 neither has had or can have any first-hand experience 
 as to the actual workings of the Open Shop. Also 
 the effects of the strike evil and the labor problem 
 on this element have been chiefly indirect and 
 
 « The National Grange (the chief organization representing our 
 national farm interests) in its 1920 convention held in Boston 
 declared definitely for the Open Shop. This however in no sense 
 means that the individual farmer, even though he may approve of the 
 Open Shop movement in a general way, considers that he has any 
 such vital interest in the problem as is necessary to get his active 
 support for concrete national action.
 
 278 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 complicated by other factors. Having thus little 
 conscious interest in any mere industrial problem as 
 such, and having little personal consciousness of the 
 need or the sufficiency of the Open Shop as an in- 
 dustrial remedy, this large element going to make up 
 national public opinion will be correspondingly 
 difficult to arouse to an adequate support of the 
 Open Shop movement as a mere industrial program. 
 This difficulty is of course exaggerated by the counter 
 arguments of organized labor. 
 
 Moreover in spite of its supposed practical and 
 material mindedness American public opinion as a 
 whole has almost invariably been aroused over any 
 proposition only in proportion as its appeal is broadly 
 human or social or based on broad fundamental 
 principle. 
 
 The Open Shop movement unquestionably offers a 
 basis for labor relationships that is far more American 
 and far more in keeping with American laws and 
 principles than the present organized labor basis of 
 relationship which the American people have largely 
 accepted and taken largely for granted merely on the 
 basis of broad human sympathy. In its modern 
 conception it is fully as advantageous in most par- 
 ticulars and far more advantageous in certain par- 
 ticulars to the average individual worker. It is 
 at least far less susceptible of abuse than a labor
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 279 
 
 relationship based on industrial domination by labor 
 monopolies. In Detroit, Los Angeles, and many 
 other communities, the Open Shop has a record of 
 proved practical success in higher wages, more 
 content prosperous workers and a minimum of labor 
 trouble and unrest and consequently a maximum 
 of industrial and community peace and prosperity. 
 Moreover to-day the Open Shop movement has the 
 backing of a far greater number of our ablest practical 
 industrial, business, and economic leaders than any 
 other movement which seeks to correct the glaring 
 and costly evils of our present labor relationships 
 based on a domination by labor monopoly. 
 
 But admitting all this there is nevertheless strong 
 reason to believe that the Open Shop policy as a mere 
 industrial movement — as a mere attack on the evils 
 of organized labor — is too susceptible of interpre- 
 tation by casual public opinion as an attack on labor 
 itself, also and particularly the Open Shop policy as 
 it is at present preached and understood lacks a 
 sufficiently broad social appeal to arouse general 
 public opinion to the point of becoming convinced 
 that it should definitely give up its widespread and 
 deep-rooted past conviction as to the necessary basis 
 for labor relationships and definitely commit itself 
 to this particular different basis. 
 
 Yet unless and until public opinion does con-
 
 280 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 sciously decide to condemn the old and to definitely 
 commit itself to some different basis of labor re- 
 lationship, every victory for the Open Shop will only 
 serve as an added incentive to labor, as soon as 
 present public hostility is allayed, to revive the old 
 public point of view by new talk of labor oppression 
 and start a new campaign of industrial warfare to 
 regain its power. 
 
 For years the slavery question was fought on a 
 basis of law and on the basis of certain of the limited 
 individual questions involved. But when Abraham 
 Lincoln reexpressed the question as a whole on the 
 basic axiomatic truth that a "house divided against 
 itself cannot stand" — that "no nation can con- 
 tinue to exist half slave and half free," he put the 
 whole question in terms that the nation could and 
 did get together and fight and win on. 
 
 For a generation the trust question was fought 
 piecemeal, on industrial and legal grounds, with 
 the trusts constantly winning, till Roosevelt stated 
 the problem as a whole as a national social issue 
 between "private greed and public good." To such 
 an issue the American people immediately rallied, 
 and on such an issue even the Supreme Court at once 
 swept aside the carefully built-up legal technicali- 
 ties of fifty years and reversed even its own former 
 decisions as to the law.
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 281 
 
 There is no more basic or more axiomatic principle 
 of Americanism than that every American has an 
 "inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
 happiness." The right to earn his living subject 
 only to the laws and to his own energy and ability 
 is an axiomatic corollary, because it is absolutely 
 necessary to the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit 
 of happiness." 
 
 But due to special developments and conditions 
 in our modern economic and social life, hundreds 
 of thousands of Americans are to-day, without any 
 reason in law and irrespective of their own energy or 
 ability, facing this situation. On the one hand great 
 artificial combinations of fellow -workers are refusing 
 them the right to work, unless they will, irrespective 
 of their own interests and desires, join certain 
 organizations and subscribe to certain fixed beliefs. r 
 On the other hand great opposing combinations of 
 employers are sometimes likewise refusing them the 
 right to work unless they will refuse, irrespective of 
 their own interests and desires, to join these organi- 
 zations and subscribe to these beliefs. 
 
 The proposition therefore that: No man shall be 
 
 1 In many thousands of cases workers are being deprived of the 
 right to work at their trade even where they arc willing to belong to 
 the union because, on account of personal prejudice or infraction of 
 arbitrary rules, they are denied admission to or expelled from these 
 labor monopolies. Such workers are absolutely remediless.
 
 2«2 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 denied or refused the right to accept employment, nor 
 shall his employment be terminated or otherwise inter- 
 fered with, merely because of his being or becoming, or 
 because of his failure to be or become, a member of any 
 trade union or any similar organization merely con- 
 stitutes the definite application of an axiomatic 
 American principle to a special condition of modern 
 life which affects millions of Americans. ' 
 
 As a fundamental principle of American labor re- 
 lationships this can, and, in proportion as its signifi- 
 cance to the labor problem is appreciated it must, 
 command the assent of every impartial American. 
 
 Such a basis of labor relationship would do all that 
 its advocates claim the Open Shop does in that it 
 would make it impossible for the great labor mon- 
 opolies to force workers to join and pay dues to the 
 union and be subject to their restrictive rules and 
 
 1 Labor leaders to whom this proposition has been submitted have 
 not made any direct criticism of what is so obviously plain justice 
 and plain Americanism. They have, however, stated that the 
 Supreme Court decision in the Kansas and Adair cases would act as 
 a bar to all remedy along such lines. High legal authority, however, 
 holds the contrary in the following opinion which was rendered 
 on the legal soundness of this principle as here expressed: 
 
 "In the case of Adair v. United States, 208 U. S. 161, and again 
 in Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U. S. 1, the Supreme Court held that 
 legislation intended to make it a crime to discharge or refuse to 
 employ a man because of his membership in a trade union was 
 unconstitutional, in that it violated the guarantees of freedom of 
 contract. It is laid down in these cases that an employer may dis- 
 charge an employee for any or no reason; and the employer has the
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 283 
 
 regulations where these, as is frequently the case, 
 handicap the workers' earnings and advancement. 
 It would make it far more difficult if not impossible 
 for the union to force an artificial limitation of 
 production. It would make it impossible for the 
 great labor monopolies to force workers in any given 
 industry or shop to go on strike against their own 
 interests, or otherwise arbitrarily interfere with the 
 peaceful and satisfactory relations between indi- 
 vidual employers and their men. For such a prin- 
 ciple is of course merely the Open Shop principle itself 
 expressed in more broad, fundamental, and social 
 terms and with a double edge for the protection of 
 both worker and employer. 
 
 Because of this double edge such a basic principle of 
 relationships, particularly if it were established by law 
 — and for this reason it would be to labor's interest to 
 have it established by law — would remove labor's only 
 
 right to refuse to employ a union man, just as union men have the 
 right to refuse to work where nonunion men are employed. However, 
 a law, such as here suggested prohibiting discrimination in employment 
 against either union or nonunion men is free from the objection that 
 it limits freedom of contract in the interest of a particular class; and 
 if it is made to appear that such a law is necessary for the preserva- 
 tion of industrial peace and freedom, such a law may no doubt be 
 found to be within the police powers of the state under which the 
 legislature can limit freedom of contract for the preservation of the 
 public health, morals, safety or general welfare. The history of 
 legislation limiting hours of labor, minimum wage, payment of 
 wages in lawful money, etc., is in point."
 
 284 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 admitted objection to the Open Shop in that it would 
 guarantee the workers against any discrimination 
 merely because they joined, belonged to, or formed 
 a trade union. It would merely mean that the trade 
 union would have to seek its membership on the basis 
 of actual service instead of on the basis of force. 
 
 From the public point of view such a basis of labor 
 relationship would by these very facts go far towards 
 curtailing the power of great industry-wide labor 
 monopolies whose ambitions for greater power and 
 whose feuds to control that power have been the 
 cause of most of our most costly strikes. 
 
 Such a principle of course offers only the funda- 
 mental basis of labor relationship — it is of course only 
 the beginning of an attempt towards solution of the 
 strike and general labor problem as they have de- 
 veloped under organized labor domination. Public 
 interest may require in addition the dissolution of 
 certain great labor monopolies which threaten that 
 interest. Both labor's interest and public interest 
 may require a minimum living wage law — above which 
 workers will be paid in proportion to their ability 
 and ambition — to take the place of the present union 
 system of protecting the poorer worker by handi- 
 capping the better. Public and labor and employer 
 interest unquestionably demand provisions for making 
 both labor and employer live up to their contracts,
 
 At the Bar of Public Opinion 285 
 
 for in all human relations this is imperative to peace- 
 ful relations. Many other things must be done, and 
 continue to be done for better and better industrial 
 harmony and justice. But first of all labor relations 
 require an adequate foundation — a sound basic 
 principle to build on. 
 
 The present organized labor principle of industrial 
 relationships was born out of eastern European class 
 warfare and the longer and wider it has been applied 
 to American labor relations the more it has made for 
 class consciousness, class privilege, class antagonism, 
 and similar anti-Americanism. 
 
 Organized labor's fundamental principle of in- 
 dustrial relationships is to-day before the bar of 
 public opinion. It is indicted not only for the great 
 strike epidemic which cost the whole country billions 
 of dollars and every family in the country their share 
 of this loss, but chiefly on the grounds that that strike 
 epidemic was merely one symptom of a cancerous 
 foreign growth with which that principle has inocu- 
 lated our economic and social vitals and which from 
 its very nature it constantly works to exaggerate 
 and spread. 
 
 American industrial progress requires that that 
 principle shall no longer be permitted to vitiate and 
 threaten American industrial and social life — that 
 instead American public opinion shall definitely
 
 286 The High Cost of Strikes 
 
 decree some other basic principle for American 
 industrial relations which, as regards the worker and 
 the employer and the public, shall be 100% American. 
 The future of American economic and social de- 
 velopment, whether America is to be all American 
 or a hyphenated polyglot, depends on the verdict.
 
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