destruction of any firm which refused to participate in his boycotts, and encourage Mr. Parry to suppress by a gigantic blacklist among the 3,500 large firms of the National Association of Manufacturers, every labor leader who offended him. Nearly two hundred years ago (in 1706) one Hickeringill amused himself by firing a gun on his own property to keep ducks away from the decoy pond of his neighbor Keeble. The court held,1 and held rightly, that though Hickeringill had a lawful right to fire a gun on his own property in order to kill ducks for his own use or for any other purpose for which guns are ordinarily fired, he had no right to fire the gun merely and maliciously to deprive Keeble of possible ducks. No one can doubt the common justice of the decision. And as the social structure gets more complex, neighbors nearer, guns louder, and ducks rarer, the importance of the motive will grow, and the necessity for judging it become more imperative. Reform will come through emphasizing, not ignoring, the importance of the motive.

But all this presumes on the part of our courts greater knowledge of trade unions, wages and the history of labor than they have heretofore shown. In other words, the writer believes that there is some justice in the criticism which charges our courts with discovering malice where there is no malice, and failing to discover a legitimate interest where there is one. Take the extreme case of a strike to secure the discharge of a "scab," which is usually condemned on the ground that the primary object is to

1 Hickeringill v. Keeble, 11 East., 574.

injure the non-union man. On the contrary this is usually a secondary and incidental motive. The real object is to prevent a breach of those common rules upon which the maintenance of trade unionism depends. In the last six centuries the laboring population has risen from a condition of serfdom to a state of political freedom. In this struggle for economic equality, the victories have been won by the wage-earners themselves. When they did not pursue their interest they lost their interest. When they forgot to demand their full reward, they failed to receive their full reward. They had occasional encouragement and even an occasional leader from the employing classes, but in the main they fought their way against the opposition and not with the assistance of their employers. Their weapons were the strike and the trade. union. When the ponderous machinery of supply and demand was ready to give them a lift, its inertia and initial friction had to be overcome with a strike. When it had begun to thrust wages down, it was prevented from entirely degrading the wage-earner by the trade union. Always and everywhere the salvation of the working classes has been collective action; and while the wage system remains, their progress will continue to be dependent upon collective action. Every man outside of the combination weakens the combination. Nine out of ten nonunionists who receive as much as the union rate, may justly be regarded as parasites upon the world of organized labor, reaping where they have not sown, sharing the rewards but not the burdens of combination. And every

non-unionist who accepts less than the union rate makes the latter more difficult to maintain; for so far as we can determine it is not the strongest, nor the average, but the weakest and neediest laborer who exercises the most influence in determining the rate of wages. If these things are true, who can deny the immediate interest of trade unionists in preventing the employment of competitors who refuse to enter the union, and who insist upon exercising their right of inflicting damum absque injuria by lowering the rate of wages in general?

9. Strikes and the Public Welfare: In concluding this discussion, it is desirable to adduce certain additional evidence of a miscellaneous character, which will assist the reader in forming an opinion concerning the proper attitude of the disinterested citizen towards the strike and boycott:

(a) Does the strike pay the workingman? The answer of the ablest and most conservative labor leaders is that it does, and they may be supposed to know their business. The strike, they point out, often drags both employers and employees from a dangerous rut and facilitates the adoption of more efficient methods of work and production. Again, the morale of organized labor, the feeling of solidarity, is immeasurably stimulated, they believe, by the common conflict and the common sacrifices demanded in this conflict. "It is difficult to overestimate the gain from a righteous labor uprising," says John Mitchell, "and there are few moral forces more uplifting than the strike spirit that cements a vast army of crude

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men. More particularly they insist that strikes, recurrent strikes, are necessary to impress the employer with the power of organized labor, and prepare him for peaceable collective bargaining. In the section on statistics it was pointed out that 52 per cent. of the strikers gain all or some part of their demands. The defendants of the strike go farther and assert that both the losses and the relative frequency of strikes are greatly exaggerated. Thus we hear a great deal about the deleterious effect of strikes upon British industry. But in Great Britain, in 1902, while formal changes in the rates of wages were made affecting 890,356 persons, these changes were preceded by a strike in the cases of only 12,799 persons, less than 12 per cent. Moreover, labor leaders and many disinterested students assert that the time lost by strikers is exaggerated. Strikes, particularly in mining where the normal percentage of unemployment is very high, merely occupy time that would otherwise be spent in enforced vacations. In the Final Report of the Industrial Commission (page 864) it is pointed out that although on the average of the twenty years 1881-1900, about 330,000 persons were thrown out of employment annually by strikes and lockouts, this number constituted only about 3.36 per cent. of the persons employed in industries affected by strikes. The actual time lost by strikers in this period amounted to about 194,000,000 days. However, "spread over the whole period, this loss amounts to very much less. than one day per year for each adult worker. In other

1 Organized Labor, p. 313.

words, the workmen of the United States have lost less time from strikes and lockouts than from the celebration of the Fourth of July or any other legal holiday ***." Similarly, on the basis of the figures of the Department of Labor, Mr. Mitchell calculates that the immediate loss traceable to strikes amounts to only about 3 cents per month for each inhabitant.1

(b) But however profitable the strike may be for the workmen, it is destructive enough for the rest of society, and no manipulation of statistics can argue out of existence the ills which follow in its train-the violence, the class antipathy, the bellicose employers' associations, the interruption of industry at critical moments, and the destruction of that stability and confidence upon which the delicate system of modern industry rests. The most fundamental question is, therefore, how to get rid of the strike. This question will be discussed in Chapter VIII. At this point, however, a word should be said in common fairness about the responsibility for strikes.

When we reflect upon the enormous evils of the strike, we almost invariably lay them at the door of the workingman, and turn to the trade union or the labor leader for a defence and justification. But is this logical? Just as it takes two to make a quarrel, so it takes two sides to make a strike: the wage-earner, it is true, can prevent the strike by accepting the terms of the employer, but so also may the employer prevent the strike by acquiescing in the terms

' Organized Labor, pp. 309, 310. For obvious reasons no great reliance can be placed upon statistics of the money loss occasioned by strikes.