52 BROTHERHOOD OF MAN AND STRIKES. BROTHERHOOD OF MAN AND STRIKES. The brotherhood of man is usually regarded as a political sentiment. It is an economic fact in the sense that brotherhood means unity. Every facility developed by the resources of civilization for the exchange of commodities, persons and intelligence is today serving its preordained mission of unifying the economic conditions of the world. This is amply illustrated by the shifting of capital investments and purchase of commodities from one country to another. Stable conditions of government, a fixed unit of value and a favoring rate of wages determine the flow of products and investments. The workmen who are guided intelligently know that a victory at the price of continuous employment is the most bitter defeat they can be called upon to endure. The instances where trade has been driven from one locality to another by strikes that have been called successful are too numerous to admit of a doubt of their genuineness. Such strikes either aid in destroying the industry in which the workmen find employment or in turning it into new channels, which generally carry the trade into competing countries. The cabmen of Paris sought to gain an advantage by striking during the days of the exposition. After 26 days of idleness they accepted the terms offered them at the time they quit. They lost in wages $390,000 and learned that there are many competitors with BROTHERHOOD OF MAN AND STRIKES. 53 the cab. Some persons who never had used any other means of travel in the city, being forced to do so by the strike, have been broken of the cab habit. Strikes at Dunkirk, Marseilles and other places are unsettled and the trade of those places is going to Genoa, Hamburg and Antwerp. The unfortunate French workingmen are doing all in their power to kill the goose which lays golden eggs. France will never know what the mania for strikes has cost. When successful the strikes increase the price of labor, and this increase has driven business from France. Before the celebrated Creusot strikes that firm furnished locomotives to Europe. To-day it cannot do so. It no longer receives orders from foreign railways, and French railways are buying locomotives made in America. All this creates a very serious economic situation, which tends to force a serious decline in French industry. In England corresponding conditions are plainly visible. Every intelligent Englishman appreciates the gravity of the situation. The newspapers are continually calling attention to the decline and the nation's falling trade, due to the inroads of foreign products. The Daily Express recently said in a leading article: "We are losing trade by continuous measuring of strength between capital and labor. Every strike which occurs here means the loss of foreign orders and foreign trade and the consequent strengthening of keen rivals. The day will come when both em 54 BROTHERHOOD OF MAN AND STRIKES. ployers and employed will recognize that they have quarreled over a shadow and lost the substance. Both fight at present with no thought of the future. Meantime America, Germany, France and Belgium are taking advantage of every disruption of English trade." These lessons should teach those who act for capital and for labor to take a worldwide view of conditions before determining their attitude on any proposition. There are in this country great manufacturing industries, having manufacturing plants in several countries. They make sales in every country in the world. If conditions are changed in this country so that it loses its advantages as a manufacturing center the process of closing down works here and enlarging the output elsewhere will be no more difficult than the writing of an order. It is in such industries that workingmen receive the best pay and the most continuous employment. How little a man knows about actual business conditions who talks glibly in a letter accepting a nomination for the presidency of the United States, about "dissolving every private monopoly that does business outside of the state of its origin." The small caliber of his mind causes him to regard every large corporation as a monopoly. He is incapable of seeing in the magnificent record of manufactured exports that American workmen are being employed by foreigners, because many concerns are doing business "outside of the state of their origin" and that to DENYING THE RIGHT TO WORK. 55 dissolve them would cause more distress among American workmen than has ever come to them from any of the evils he decries. Of all strikes those made by politicians are the worst. in which power divorced from intelligence is used to destroy. They are industrial riots DENYING THE RIGHT TO WORK. Combinations of capital are charged with destroying opportunity to labor. Labor unions are guilty of denying the right to work to all who are not members of their trust. Freedom of labor is a fundamental condition for freedom of the people, for individual liberty. Infringements upon this freedom, from whatever source they may emanate, are justly looked upon with apprehension by all thoughtful persons who intelligently care for the general welfare. Combinations of capital create far more opportunities to labor than they destroy. This is a necessary condition of their success. The cause of capital combinations is to enlarge markets. To supply enlarged markets production must be enlarged. Enlarged production means enlarged employment of labor, or better wages, frequently both. Of a different character is the denial of the right to labor insisted upon by trade unions. It is a part of their program to maintain the wage scale in certain trades by limiting the number of those who may learn the trade. This method has been quite 56 ECONOMIC SCIENCE VS. PHYSICAL FORCE. successful, but it is losing strength through the teaching of trades in technical schools. To deny a yonug person an opportunity to learn a trade by means of which he may be able to earn an improved living is equivalent to impairing his physical or mental capacity. In a certain sense it cripples him for life. Any denial of this right, by whomever it is enforced, is cause of serious apprehension for every father and mother who have children to prepare for the battle of life. This is a far more serious question than any other raised by organized labor. ECONOMIC SCIENCE VS. PHYSICAL FORCE. "Savages are always warriors." With this truth the Cleveland Leader prefaces an editorial under the title of "Strikes More Costly than War." This article has reference to the recent coal mining strikes in Pennsylvania. A New York dispatch to the Denver News, under date of October 17, 1900, gives the cost of this great strike as follows: Duration of strike ... ..30 days ..142,420 Production anthracite coal in tons, decrease..4,000,000 Loss to miners Loss to operators (mine owners).. Loss to consumers ... Loss to dealers in increased prices. Total cost of strike 5,500,000 2,500,000 . $13,848,000 This is the tremendous loss inflicted upon them |