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These are named in all of our contracts along with lightning, tornadoes, floods, and other "acts of God," if not directly, at least by inference It is plain enough, at any rate, that those who draw up the contract consider strikes and lockouts as wholly outside of their control, as they do the elements. It is the same old ignorance, the same desire to shift the blame.
Trade unionism is fighting for its life and thereafter for world conquest, while the enmity between capital and labour increases, with no evidence that a restored guild system is even approximately ready to take its place. Strikes and lockouts grow more and more numerous, and wider and more menacing in their scope.
The scared men and the men who are fooled about themselves in politics and business and who are trying to fool the rest of us, who are trying to make a great, simple, clean-hearted, clear-eyed, generous country like ours look and act every few weeks or every few days as if all the people in it could really do to express themselves to one another and to the world, was with lockouts, strikes, political deadlocks, minority holdups and party threats shall be turned out of office by the people and huddled away out of sight.
When wages are comparatively high and work is steady fewer men enter the extra-hazardous occupation of crime. Strikes, lockouts, panics and the like always leave their list of unfortunates in the prisons. Every lawyer engaged in criminal practice has noticed the large numbers of prosecutions and convictions for all sorts of offences that follow in the wake of strikes and lockouts.
The large development of industrial units with possible cessation of production and service, through strikes and lockouts, penalizes the public. The public is not content to see these conflicts go on, for they do not alone represent loss in production, and thus lowering of the standard of living, but also they may, by suspension of public service, jeopardize the life of the community.
All kinds of false ideas people have about one another which we are not seeing about us on every hand, false philosophies and religions, heresy trials, lockouts and strikes all the irrational things people say and do to each other thousands of miles away are being produced by the way people are being fooled by their own precious insides.
Many of these strikes and lockouts would not have occurred had the parties to the dispute been required to appear before an unprejudiced body representing the nation and, face to face, state the reasons for their contention.
Finally, just as we are earnestly seeking for procedures whereby to adjust and settle political differences between nations without resort to war, so we may well look about for means to settle the differences between organized capital and organized labor without resort to those forms of warfare which we recognize under the name of strikes, lockouts, boycotts, and the like.
Nevertheless, it is essential to improve the methods for reaching agreement between labor and management and to reduce the number of strikes and lockouts. We must not, however, adopt punitive legislation. We must not in order to punish a few labor leaders, pass vindictive laws which will restrict the proper rights of the rank and file of labor.
The general testimony is that labor is everywhere fully employed, and the reports for the last year show a smaller number of employees affected by strikes and lockouts than in any year since 1884. The depression in the prices of agricultural products had been greatly relieved and a buoyant and hopeful tone was beginning to be felt by all our people.
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