The Cost of a Strike.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 31, 31 July 1902, Page 18

The Cost of a Strike.

There are still to be found in this Colony^a few persons whose limited view of their own interests prompts a condemnation of the legalised method of settling industrial disputes. To such we would commend for reflection the following figures, indicating the cost of the Pennsylvania anthracite coal strike for the first six weeks. The losb has be.'n estimated at over seven millions of money, made up as follows : — Loss to operators in price of coal, £3,104,000 ; to mine workers in wages, £1,554,000 ; to employes other than miners made idle by the strike, £384,000 ; to the business men of the coal region> £1,040,000 ; to business outside the coal region, £600,000 ; cost of maintaining coal and iron police, £80,000 ; cost of maintaining nonunion workers, £17,000 ; estimated damage to mines and machinery, £300,000. If the foregoing figures are analysed, it will appear that the employers lost far more than the operatives. And yet victory rested with the former, for the simple reason that the contest was, as all such contests are, one of endurance, in which the weaker must ever go to the wall. Like all such strikes, it was merely a ' conflict between empty stomachs and full purses.' A victory under such circumstances establishes no principle. It merely hardens the heart of the worker, and admonishes him to postpone further attempts to improve his condition until he is in a better position to enforce hi? demands. If any one will contend that this is a stable and desirable relation between labor and capital, we shall await his reasons with considerable interest.