Should the state tolerate the existence of strikes or strike-unions? Legislation in the past most frequently gave a negative answer to the question, as well from a repugnance for high wages as for the self-help of the masses.[177-1] But even leaving the above reasons out of consideration, every strike is a severe injury to the national resources in general,[177-2] one which causes that part especially to suffer from which those engaged in the various enterprises and the working class draw their income. And, even for the latter, the damage endured is so great that it can be compensated for only by very permanently high wages.[177-3] How many a weak man has been misled by a long cessation from work during a strike, which ate up his savings, into lasting idleness and a devil-may-care kind of life. When employers, through fear of strikes, keep all large orders, etc. secret, the workmen are not in a condition to forecast their prospects and condition even for the near future. And in the end a dread of the frequent return of such disturbances may cause capital to emigrate.[177-4]
However, where there exists a very high degree of civilization, there is a balance of reasons in favor of the non-intervention of governments,[177-5] but only so long as the striking workmen are guilty of no breach of contract and of no crime. Where every one may legally throw up his employment, there is certainly no plausible legal objection to all of them doing so at once, and then forming new engagements. Coalitions of purchasers of labor for the purpose of lowering wages, which are most frequent though noiselessly formed, the police power of the state cannot prevent. If now it were attempted to keep the working class alone from endeavoring to correspondingly raise their wages, the impression would become general, and be entertained with right, that the authorities were given to measuring with different standards. Where the working classes so sensitively feel the influence of the government on the state of their wages, they would be only too much inclined to charge every chance pressure made by the circumstances of the times to the account of the state, and thus burthen it with a totally unbearable responsibility. Since 1824, freedom of competition has prevailed in this matter on both sides in England.[177-6] The dark side of the picture would be most easily brightened by a longer duration of contracts of labor.[177-7]
Whether the trades-unions, when they shall have happily withstood the fermentative process now going on, shall be able to fill up the void created by the downfall of the economically active corporations of the latter part of the middle ages, we shall discuss in our future work, Die Nationalökonomik des Gewerbfleisses. One of the chief conditions precedent thereto is the strict justice of the state, which should protect members of the unions from all tyranny by their leaders, and from violations of the legal rights of non-members.[177-8]
[177-1] Thus even 34 Edw. III., c. 9. Journeymen builders were forbidden by 3 Henry VI., c. 1, to form conspiracies to enhance the rate of wages, under pain of felony. Finally, 39 and 40 George III., c. 106, threatened any one who, by mere persuasion, should induce a workman to leave his master's service, etc., with 2 months in the work-house, or 3 months' imprisonment. In France, as late as June and September, 1791, all conspiracies to raise wages were prohibited under penalty, the incentive to such prohibition being the opposition to all intérêts intermédiaries between the intérêts particulier; and the intérêt general which is characteristic of the entire revolution. Compare the law of 22 Germinal, 11. The German Empire on the 16th of August, 1731, threatened journeymen strikers even with death, "when accompanied by great refractoriness and productive of real damage." (Art. 15.)
[177-2] The strike of the spinners of Preston, to compel equal wages with those of Bolton, lasted from October to the end of December, 1836. The spinners got from their treasury 5 shillings a week (previously 22½ shillings wages); twisters, 2 to 3 shillings; carders and weavers lived on alms. In the middle of December, the funds of the union were exhausted. Altogether, the workmen lost 400,000 thalers; the manufacturers, over 250,000; and many merchants failed. (H. Ashworth, Inquiry into the Origin and Results of the Cotton Spinners' Strike.) The Preston strike of 1853 cost the employers £165,000, the workmen, £357,000. (Edinburgh Rev., July, 1854, 166.) The North-Stafford puddlers' strike, in 1865, cost the workmen in wages alone £320,000. Concerning 8 strikes that failed, mostly between 1859 and 1861, which cost in the aggregate £1,570,000, of which £1,353,000 were wages lost, see Statist. Journ., 1861, 503. A great mortality of the children of workingmen observed during strikes!
[177-3] Watts assumes that the strikers seek to attain, on an average, an advance in their wages of five per cent. Now, a week is about equivalent to two per cent. of the year. If, therefore, a strike lasted one month, the increase of wages it operates must last one and three-fifths years to compensate the workmen for their loss. A strike that lasts 12½ months would require 20 years to effect the same, and this does not include interest on lost wages. (Statist. Journal, 1861, 501 ff.) However, it is possible that the striking workingmen themselves should lose more than they gained, but that, for the whole working class, the gain should exceed the loss; since those who had not participated in the strike would participate in the increased wages. Thornton is of opinion that employers have won in most strikes, but surrendered in the intervals between strikes, so that now English workmen receive certainly £5,000,000 more in wages than they would be getting were it not for the trades-unions. (III, ch. 3-4.)
[177-4] By the Norwich strike, about the beginning of the fourth decade of this century, what remained of the industrial life of that city disappeared. (Kohl, Reise, II, 363 ff.) Similarly in Dublin. (Quart. Rev., October, 1859, 485 ff.) In Cork, the workingmen's union, in 1827, allowed no strange workmen to join them, and, it is said, committed twenty murders with a view to that end. The builders demanded 4s. 1d. a day wages. This discouraged the erection of new buildings, and it frequently happened that they found employment only one day in two weeks. (Edinb.[TN 16] Rev., XLVII, 212.) When workingmen struggle against a natural decline of the rate of wages, they, of course, add to their misfortune.
[177-5] The grounds on which Brentano, following Ludlow and Harrison, justifies the intervention of the state, have a very dangerous bearing, inasmuch as they do not suppose, as a condition precedent, a perfectly wise and impartial governmental authority.
[177-6] 5 George IV., c. 95: "provided no violence is used." Further, 6 George IV., c. 129, and 122 Vict., c. 34. The law of 1871 declares the trades-unions lawful, allows them the right of registration, and thus empowers them to hold property. In France, the law of May 25, 1864, alters articles 414 to 416 of the Code pénal to the effect that only such strikes shall be punished as happen à l'aide de violences, voies de fait, manœuvres frauduleuses; also coalitions against the libre exercise du travail à l'aide d'amendes, défenses, proscriptions, interdictions. But these amendments were rendered rather inoperative by the fact that meetings of more than 20 persons could be held only by permission of the police.
[177-7] As, for instance, the coal workers in the north of England required a half year's service. So long as the trades-unions consider themselves, by way of preference, as instruments of war, it is conceivable how they oppose all binding contracts for labor. So now among the German journeymen book-printers, and so, also, for the most part, in England. (Brentano, II, 108.) In quieter times, when the trades-unions shall have become peace institutions, this will be otherwise. We cannot even enjoy the bright side of the freedom of birds without enduring its dark side! In Switzerland, breaches of contract by railroad officers are guarded against by their giving security beforehand; in manufactures, by the holding back of from 3 to 14 days' wages. (Böhmert, Arbeiterverhältnisse, II, 91, 388 ff.)