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BY VICTOR S. YARROS.

is a sort of truism that strikes are concomitants or symptoms of prosperity rather than of industrial adversity. The theory is that men do not take serious risks on a falling market," and that, as a rule, demands for wage advances, shorter workdays, and other improvements are made upon employers when their profits are substantial and their trade prospects bright.

The year 1905 has been a prosperous one, and employment has been abundant. Certain sections, especially in the South, have actually complained of a scarcity of labor in manufac turing industries. But the period of readjust ment that a revival of activity ushers in must have been well advanced when the year opened, for the twelvemonth under review has been characterized by comparative freedom from warfare really disturbing to national production and enterprise.

Strike statistics, like other statistics, may be used in a loose, misleading way. There are strikes and strikes, and a few labor-capital contests of one kind may be infinitely more significant or ominous-than scores of strikes of another kind. To determine the place of the year 1905 in a philosophical history of the industrial and social movement, it is necessary to estimate properly the character of the conflicts it witnessed, in addition to knowing their number and distribution.

According to the report of the secretary of the American Federation of Labor, there were 1,157 strikes during the year ended October 31. The record for the calendar year 1905 cannot be materially different.

The figures are distinctly surprising at first sight, but one must bear in mind that the great majority of the strikes of any year wholly escape, not only general, but even local, attention. It is somewhat reassuring to learn that not more than 107,000 working men and women were involved in the total number of strikes named. The inference from this item of information coincides with the general impression that, in a comparative sense, to repeat, the year has been tolerably peaceful. It has been an extraordinary one, nevertheless, in the fundamental truths it has brought home to organized labor. It has taught the public many lessons, though the important strikes-those that were more than local issues-may be counted on the fingers of one hand.

The year opened auspiciously with the settlement, by mediation and arbitration, of the stubborn Fall River cotton-mill contest. Governor Douglas, who had the confidence of the oper atives, induced them to make important concessions, and work was resumed in January at a reduced rate of wages under a promise of a subsequent increase if the price of cotton goods should justify it. The satisfactory adjustment of "the greatest strike in the history of the textile industry in America" was a notable achievement, for which Governor Douglas received high praise, and it should have materially strengthened the cause of conciliation and arbitration. (Recently, by the way, the wages of the cotton operatives were increased and another strike happily averted.)

THE NEW YORK SUBWAY STRIKE FIASCO.

Perhaps it had that effect, but, unhappily, it did not prevent the incomprehensible and disastrous subway-elevated strike in New York City, which occurred in the first days of March. This affair, foredoomed from the start, collapsed within five or six days. It might have injured the interests of organized labor gravely and deeply, but thanks to the right and courageous attitude of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the Amalgamated Association of Electric and Street Railway Employees,--national organizations to which the local unions involved in the strike owed allegiance,-no such deplor able result followed.

The strike in question was ordered against the Interborough Company, of which Mr. August Belmont was (and is) president. Mr. Belmont had just been elected head of the National Civic Federation and had taken an advanced position in favor of conciliation and arbitration in industrial difficulties. What grievances, if any, the strikers had was never made clear; at any rate, they acted abruptly, rashly, and, so far as the motormen in the company's service were concerned, in direct violation of a contract.

The officers of the local unions, in ordering and defending the strike, in demanding shorter hours for all the employees of the company, higher wages for all except the motormen, and the abolition of physical tests in favor of " "practical road tests," assumed an attitude that was inconsistent with the principles and traditions of the national associations named, the officers

of which were ignored and defied. It is true that the strikers accused the company of bad faith and violation of its agreement with their unions; but the charge was not substantiated by any specific, plain allegations, and, in any event, arbitration should have been proposed by the local leaders in harmony with the spirit of their agreement with the company.

After the strike had been precipitated contrary to the advice of the chiefs of the national organizations, the latter were brought upon the scene by the representatives of labor in the National Civic Federation, and the five thousand striking engineers and motormen were ordered back to work. The strike, in a word, was repudiated by the national organizations. It had forfeited public sympathy by the needless hardships it had inflicted upon the hundreds of thousands who depend for transportation upon the subways and the elevated systems, as well as by the lack of any substantial grievance or cause for complaint. The strike went to pieces, and the defeated unionists realized their blunder. They also realized the danger of breaking collective contracts and of disregarding the opinions of national leaders, whose position, experience, and responsibilities tend to render them cautious. and reasonable.

In commenting upon this melancholy episode the National Civic Federation Review remarked upon the "interesting paradox" it presented.

While many arguments in favor of the trade agreement by its advocates were nullified in this instance by the headstrong local leaders, the upholding before all the country of the responsibility of labor for its contracts is a lesson so valuable in itself and so beneficial to the cause of industrial peace as to make the outcome of defeat in reality a victory. This lesson is well worth all its cost.

It is gratifying to record the fact that influential organs of union labor did not hesitate to condemn the strike and vigorously criticise the course of the local leaders. One said that the defeat was richly deserved, while the United Mine Workers' Journal expressed itself as follows:

A strike cannot be won unless the reason for it appeals to public sympathy, and bad faith does not so appeal. A strike must be based upon grounds of justice and reason, and to remedy conditions that will bear the scrutiny of the just and the misrepresentations of the unjust. The subway strike lacked these essential features and failed.

THE CHICAGO TEAMSTERS.

The practical unanimity with which the New York affair was condemned, and the moral drawn therefrom, did not, however, serve as a preventive of another strike of infinitely greater

importance, one which was obscure in its origin, amazing in its progress and complications, and incomprehensible in every one of its aspects and stages. The reference is to the Chicago teamsters' strike of last spring and summer, a conflict which remains unexplained to this day, and upon which grand juries, "commissions," editors, and impartial observers vainly attempted to throw light. It is believed that the grand jury which investigated this strike and made a grave but curiously one-sided report upon it knew more than it felt justified in revealing to the public, much of the evidence it had heard having lacked legally sufficient corroboration.

The

The facts may be very briefly recalled. strike broke out suddenly in April, immediately after the municipal election which resulted in the decided success of the municipal ownership ticket headed by Judge E. F. Dunne. It was ostensibly a sympathetic strike, called against one Chicago firm (a large mail-order house in the center of the city) for the purpose-so it was alleged-of compelling it to reinstate eighteen union garment workers it had forced out months before in alleged violation of a contract with them. The garment workers had lost their strike; they had repeatedly and movingly entreated the local teamsters to come to their aid by refusing to carry the goods shipped by or to the struck house, and had as often been turned away empty-handed; the teamsters had shown themselves indifferent, skeptical, distinctly averse to a course that seemed futile and Quixotic and absurdly belated; the garment workers, defeated and discouraged, had abandoned the effort to bring about the sympathetic walk-out. When it came, it produced astonishment and bewilderment. "What do the teamsters mean, and what are they after?" were the questions on everybody's lips. They were not answered satisfactorily.

Some said that the garment workers had secretly and corruptly overcome the objections of the teamsters' local leaders to a sympathetic strike, but this was a manifest absurdity. Aside from any moral question, the garment workers were too poor to purchase sympathetic strikes in doubtful support of a lost cause. Another and more popular theory, especially among the "radicals," was that the strike was the result of an anti-Dunne and anti-municipal ownership conspiracy; that, in other words, the traction interests and employers friendly to them had induced" the teamsters' officers to order the strike and create industrial trouble and disturbance in the hope of discrediting the new mayor and his street-railway plans. This theory involved fraud and bribery and other criminal

features, and reflected profound discredit on employers and labor leaders alike. It did not account for all the facts, and as the strike developed the objections to the theory increased in number and variety. Finally, there was the theory of unfair business competition as the real cause of the strike, and known practices of certain employers in Chicago (to which the grand jury, without mentioning names, referred in scathing terms) lent it ample weight and color.

The

Whatever the truth was, the strike was mischievous and grotesque. It became doubly so when it was extended to other firms and express companies that refused to boycott the mail-order house. There was considerable violence in its first stages; indictments were returned against local and national leaders, including President C. P. Shea, head of the teamsters' national organization, and charges of graft and corruption were rife. Negro strike-breakers were imported, and race prejudice intensified the bitterness of the strikers and their unionist supporters. conflict resisted many attempts at compromise, and disgusted the community. At last the men capitulated, and the strike was called off on July 20. The employers concerned in it had sustained heavy losses, but these were insignificant beside the material and moral losses of the teamsters' locals. It left a sorry heritage of animosity, criminal charges, indictments, and dislike of unionism. It had solidified employers' opposition to agreements with unions and to the exclusive union-shop contract. Some day we may learn the true history of it; at present it is an unpleasant memory and a "horrible example."

Since July, but two strikes have challenged national attention, and while neither is to be put in the category to which belong those just reviewed, both are alike theoretically and practically important on account of the issues they present and the effects they are likely to produce. I refer to the eight-hour strike of printers in a number of cities, and to the trouble in the building trades of New York growing out of the controversy between the American Bridge Company and the International Bridge and Structural Iron Workers.

EIGHT HOURS FOR PRINTERS.

The former difficulty has assumed the aspect of a controversy over the "closed shop." It was not originally the intention of either side to make that the issue. The national organization of the printers, pursuant to a resolution long since formed, voted last summer to establish an eighthour workday in all printing houses. The National Typothetæ, the employers' organization,

determined to resist this movement on purely economic grounds. It alleged that the demand was in effect a demand for a material increase of the printers' already high wages, and that the employers could not concede it without forcing unreasonably high prices on the public. The printers denied these assertions and took the position that an eight-hour day would injure neither the employers nor their patrons.

In presenting eight-hour-day contracts to the employers (which, by the way, many of them signed without strenuous protest), the printers incidentally stipulated for the recognition of the "union shop." This point was of secondary moment, however, and has practically been lost. sight of in the contest, which is still in progress at this writing. The center of the strike is Chicago, where the employers have secured sweeping and unprecedented injunctions restraining the printers from approaching, following, visiting, or attempting to persuade non-union. men to join the union and the strike; from "picketing" the shops even peaceably, and from interfering in any way whatever, direct or indirect, with the employing printers or their nonunion workmen. Some of the clauses of these injunctions have been severely criticised at a mass-meeting addressed by neutral citizens and in the local press.

The outcome of this struggle is uncertain. The strikers are claiming steady progress, but the employers declare these claims to be unfounded and misleading. The strike is national, and in all probability neither side will emerge from it completely victorious. It is orderly and devoid of sensational features.

BUILDING TROUBLES AGAIN.

A

The difficulty in the New York building industry involves confused issues of fact and of principle. The housesmith's and bridgemen's union has certain alleged grievances against the American Bridge Company, one of whose subsidiary companies at McKeesport, Pa., employed a number of non-union men about a year ago. The grievances led to a strike and boycott. New York building firm is believed by the union above named to be interested in the American Bridge Company. A strike was declared against this firm in order to force the discharge of the non-union men at McKeesport. The firm, however, emphatically denies that it has any interest in the American Bridge Company, and, in any event, the strike against it is condemned as a deliberate violation of the arbitration agreement governing the relations between the members of the Building Trades Employers' Association and the powerful build.

ing trade unions. The association intervened in behalf of the building firm and tried to effect a settlement. Failing in that effort, it sanctioned the employment of non-union men by the complaining firm. This, in turn, resulted in an extension of the strike to other union men in its employ. After prolonged negotiations that ended in a sort of deadlock, the employers' association decided, as a last resort, upon a complete lockout of the unionists. Such a lockout

implies the collapse of the whole arbitration scheme, the suspension of the peace agreement, and reversion to the condition of chaos and warfare which prevailed in the building industry prior to the adoption of the arbitration agreement in its original form, which was more favorable to the unions than that now in question. At this writing neither side is disposed to proceed to extremes, the employers protesting that they are fighting for the arbitration agreement, not for the "open shop."

There are rumors of a "conspiracy," of a deal between the officers of the bridgemen's union and a competitor of the American Bridge Company, and there are those who believe that the strike is corrupt in its origin. The union leaders treat these charges with contempt, and say that the Sam Parks tactics have no place in their plans and campaigns. Many of the employers, apparently, either accept these assurances of the unions or else are unwilling to incur the risks and losses of an aggressive fight for the arbitration scheme now so deeply compromised.

CHAOTIC LABOR LAW.

The year ends less happily than it began for the industrial world. In addition to the troubles referred to, there are clouds on the horizon in more than one direction. Another anthracite strike is feared in consequence of the demands for recognition of the miners' union and for an eight-hour day that are to be made next spring. In Chicago and in other cities, employers' associations are announcing open-shop policies for the future. The decisions in "labor" cases, especially in the Western courts, have been strongly anti-union, in the sense that practices claimed by the organized workmen as legal and necessary to success, such as peaceable picketing, moral suasion of non-union employees, etc.,have been condemned as criminal. But labor is highly gratified at a decision of the New York

Court of Appeals unqualifiedly upholding closedshop contracts. This is indeed a notable union victory, in view of the continued prominence of the open-shop issue, and especially in view of certain earlier decisions in other States, according to which any closed-shop contract,-even one into which the employer enters voluntarily, absolutely without improper coercion on the part of the employees, and solely from motives of self-interest, is illegal, void, and contrary to public policy. Employers' organizations have given these anti-union decisions wide publicity. They have used them as potent weapons in their general attacks on the closed shop, arguing that, as law-abiding citizens and lovers of liberty and justice, they could not sign or countenance contracts that tended to create monopoly in labor, contracts that discriminated against the nonunion workingmen and deprived them of opportunities to earn a livelihood.

Now, the New York Court of Appeals, in a case involving a typical closed-shop contract between a clothing firm and a local, destroyed that strong position by holding that the contract in question was perfectly valid, proper, and legitimate; that there was nothing in public policy to prohibit it, in the first place, or to render it void or even voidable at any subsequent stage; and that the violation of such a contract by the employer entitled the employees to damages for the resulting loss. It will, obviously, be difficult hereafter to base opposition to the closedshop policy on high grounds of law, public pol icy, and fundamental principle.

The case, too, further illustrates and emphasizes the chaotic state of what may be called "labor law" in this country. Practices and acts which some courts severely condemn as vicious and reprehensible, other courts-sometimes in the same State even-pronounce wholly inoffensive and permissible. In these days of national and international unions it is often impossible for workmen to know where the limits of their freedom are, where they must stop in obedience to the law. One of the greatest needs in the sphere of industrial relations is more certainty in the law of labor, more coherence and harmony in judicial decisions and opinions bearing on the issues arising between the employers and the employed.

It cannot be said that the year 1905 developed any tendency toward such congruity or harmony.

POLITI

BY J. P. GERRIE.

OLITICALLY, economically, industrially, and in matters of religious significance the year just closed has been a most important and fruitful one in Canadian history.

In provincial politics, unusual changes have occurred. In Ontario, a continuous Liberal rule of nearly thirty-three years was brought to a decisive close. So long an administration of affairs by one political party is perhaps without a parallel. The veteran premier, Sir Oliver Mowat, who led the government for a quarter of a century, seemed to be invincible. His legislation was wise and progressive, his conflict with the federal authorities invariably triumphant for him, and his long career without a blot or stain. Summoned, in 1896, by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the new prime minister of the Dominion, to the cabinet of premiers," and subsequently to the lieutenant-governorship of Ontario, a great void was left in the office which he had so ably filled. The Hon. A. S. Hardy, Sir Oliver's trusted first lieutenant, and a man of unquestioned ability, stepped into the breach, but illhealth soon caused his resignation, and, a little later, his death. The hopes of the Liberal party next centered on the Hon. George W. Ross, who had been Sir Oliver's minister of education, and one of his most effective campaigners. Impar. tial and competent critics have placed Mr. Ross at the very front among the platform speakers of the continent. His personal integrity, too, has never been questioned.

THE CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT IN ONTARIO.

From the standpoint of political power, Mr. Ross held the premiership amid evil days. The majority which he inherited was small, and the first general election held during his term reduced this almost to the vanishing-point. Then came the sensational charge by a member of the opposition that he had been bribed by one of the ministry to support the government. The matter was investigated by a judicial commission, and the accused minister exonerated, but, in the minds of many people, there remained grave misgivings. Other charges of electoral corruption at the polls were heard. These were few, and on the whole no more chargeable to one party than to the other. Yet, in view of the long tenure of office and the peculiar position of the government, they told against the Liberals. The Prohibitionists were also murmuring dis

content because a further step was not taken toward the total suppression of the liquor traffic. After struggling along for a year or two with an almost impossible majority, Mr. Ross reconstructed his cabinet, and appealed to the country, early last year, to meet with an overwhelming defeat. The Conservative ministry, a novelty in the province, under the Hon. J. P. Whitney, has made a good start, and its further progress will be awaited with interest, and good will even of political opponents. The dismissal of certain license inspectors for seemingly no reason other than to bestow party rewards is at this present moment calling forth a good deal of unfavorable comment.

DOMINION POLITICS.

In Dominion national affairs the year will also be memorable. The general elections in the previous November resulted in a great Liberal triumph, and when parliament met, last March, Sir Wilfrid Laurier was more firmly intrenched in power than ever before. The session at once became interesting over a measure for the incorporation of two western provinces,-Alberta and Saskatchewan. A provision to retain separate schools was the bone of contention, and even good Liberals, who greatly admired Sir Wilfrid's skill in guiding the ship of state amid the shoals and the reefs of the Manitoba school imbroglio, were apprehensive that he was at last heading for the rocks. The speeches and debates were long, the protests and petitions many, but the measure was passed by a great majority.

What will the country say? was next queried. The first deliverance was the return by acclamation of the Hon. Frank Oliver, the new minister of the interior, from the heart of the scene of dispute. Later on, the Hon. C. S. Hyman, on assuming the portfolio of public works, was elected in London by a largely increased majority. Another election, however, was held on the same day, when the Liberal majority was greatly reduced. A few months afterward four more by-elections were held, which left the representations in parliament the same, though the Liberal majorities at the polls were smaller than in the general elections. In view of the school dispute, great interest centered upon the first general elections in the new provinces. The first was held in Alberta, with an unprece dented sweep for the Liberals, the Conserva

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