Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/410

 394 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

local union of Philadelphia naturally felt that its demands were reasonable and just.

A month before the strike was ordered, printed notices were sent to all the masters in the city, comprising about two hundred and seventy-five shops, notifying them of the demands of the journeymen and giving them a month in which to comply with the same, or to meet them in conference and arbitrate their differences. All of the shops in the city, except abcut twenty- five, refused outright to consider the notice. Now, the journey- men's union controls about eight hundred men, or about nine-tenths of the men engaged in their trade. When the time expired, and their demands remained unheeded, a general strike was ordered, and all the journeymen were called out except in the twenty-five shops whose masters had signed the demands. The masters ' union quickly convened and brought pressure to bear on these shops, under penalty of heavy fine, to retract their position. This brought all but one or two shops into line, and the journeymen in these shops were then quickly called out.

Thus the situation remained for a week, with all the shops (except the "scabs," which numbered about twenty-five) tied up, doing only such work as the masters and their apprentices could do, which was little enough, as some of them are unable to shoe a horse. The masters remained resolute in the belief that the journeymen would soon flock back to work, because of the fact that the highest-paid journeymen were averse to the strike. Their hopes were not realized, but they decided to hold out and import new men. An outside agent agreed to place forty new men in the shops under the condition that they should be employed permanently and not be turned off as soon as the strike was over. These men were not brought in, however, for the testimony of those who had employed men sent to them in this emergency was so unfavorable that the wisdom of a wholesale importation of new men was seriously questioned. The experience of those who had imported new men was like that in most strikes where the same expedient has been resorted to, viz.: the new men were either incapable or were quickly drawn into the union and the strike. The journeymen were busy proselyting, and even drew