Thus a strike is always a form of warfare, and should be entered upon only after the same careful consideration that makes war sometimes a necessity. Under ordinary circumstances and upon general principles, no body of workmen has any more right to suddenly stop work without notice than railway managers have to stop a daily milk train. The end to be secured must be important enough to humanity to overbalance the injury of the strike itself.
Since a strike is an effort to produce a corner in the labor market, it will succeed in the end sought only when conditions for cornering the market are favorable. Even then the loss to the entire community is considerable. The injury to property, while directly borne by the profit-makers, is widely distributed. First, all wages stop and wage-earners suffer. Second, ability to pay debts ceases and capital owners suffer. Third, insurance companies have their risks increased and all insurers suffer. Fourth, the market for the products is demoralized and all consumers suffer. Fifth, almost always social disorder results, police expenses are greatly increased, and all taxpayers suffer. Sixth, in the end the relation between employers and employed is more strained and less free than before, so that all humanity suffers.
The chances of success, as indicated by the record of many years, are small, and apparent successes are often temporary. And yet the world recognizes the right of a body of laborers to strike, just as it recognizes the right of revolution to secure the general welfare. Formerly a combination of workmen in a strike was treated as a conspiracy and punished as such. Now the general rule is absolute freedom of combination with rigorous repression of fraud and violence. This enables any body of men to make a serious test of the conditions of a labor market, at the risk, primarily, of their own welfare, but with serious strain upon the general good. It leaves room for the possible breaking down of old customs, which are stronger than law, and it sometimes proves, like a war for liberty, a means of great enlightenment to those who take part in it. It is properly held as the last resort in the struggle for fair recognition of the rights and necessities of wage-earners.