#50. Strikes and Lockouts.# #Workmen are said to strike, that is, to strike work, when a number of them agree together to cease working on a certain day for certain employers#, in order to oblige these employers to pay better wages, or in some way to yield to their demands. When one or more employers suddenly dismiss their workpeople altogether, in order to oblige them to take lower wages, or agree to some alteration of work, it is called #a lockout#, and a #lockout is nearly the same as a strike of the employers#. Strikes sometimes last for many months, the workmen living on what savings they have, and on contributions sent to them by workmen or unions in the same or other trades. The employers at the same time lose much money by their factories standing still, and they sometimes receive aid from other employers.
There is nothing legally or morally wrong in a strike or lockout when properly conducted. A man, when free from promises or contracts, has a right to work or not to work, as he thinks best, that is to say, the law regards it as beneficial to the country, on the whole, that people should be free to do so. Similarly, employers are free to work their mills or not as they like. Neither employers nor employed, indeed, must break engagements; men who have promised to work to the end of the week must of course do so; they are not free till their promise is performed. Again, nobody should be allowed suddenly to stop work in a way endangering other people. Enginedrivers and guards in America sometimes strike when a train is halfway on its journey, and leave the passengers to get to the next town as they best can. This is little better than manslaughter. Neither the owners nor the workmen in gasworks, waterworks, or any other establishment on which the public depends for necessaries of life, should be allowed suddenly to stop work without notice. The safety of the public is the first consideration. The law ought therefore to punish those who make such strikes.
#51. The General Effect of Strikes.# There is not space in this little work to argue the matter out in detail, but I have not the least doubt that #strikes, on the whole, produce a dead loss of wages to those who strike, and to many others#. I believe that if there had not been a strike during the last thirty years, wages would now be higher in general than they are, and an immense amount of loss and privation would also have been saved. It has, in fact, been shown by Dr. John Watts of Manchester, in his "Catechism of Wages and Capital," that even a successful strike usually occasions loss. He has said, "Allowing for accidental stoppages, there will not be in the most regular trades above fifty working weeks in the year, and one week will therefore represent two per cent. of the year. If a strike for four per cent. rise on wages succeeds in a fortnight, it will take twelve months' work at the improved rate to make up for the lost fortnight; and if a strike for eight per cent. lasts four weeks, the workmen will be none the richer at the end of twelve months; so that it frequently happens that, even when a strike succeeds, another revision of wages takes place before the last loss is made up; a successful strike is, therefore, like a successful lawsuit--only less ruinous than an unsuccessful one." If we remember that a large proportion of strikes are unsuccessful, in which case of course there is simple loss to every one concerned; that when successful, the rise of wages might probably have been gradually obtained without a strike; that the loss by strikes is not restricted to the simple loss of wages, but that there is also injury to the employers' business and capital, which is sure to injure the men also in the end; it is impossible to doubt that the nett result of strikes is a dead loss. The conclusion to which I come is that, #as a general rule, to strike is an act of folly#.