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LEFT STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS 121 STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS invention of the steam engine and steam- driven machinery. Previously manufac- tu^ng had been in the hands of indi- vidual artisans, each independent of the other, each producing only for his imme- diate neighborhood. The use of machinery made large scale manufacturing possible. It necessitated, however, the assembling of large bodies of workers under one roof, where the ma- chines were installed. Of still more significance, it made the workers depend- ent on the owners of the machines for their means of livelihood. Industry was becoming complicated. But out of the new arrangement the master employer rose triumphant, supreme in power. That the masters, or manufacturers, realized their power became evident when they gradually began to cut wages and lengthen working hours, and to displace adult males with women and children. Before this economic oppression the workers stood helpless. No legislation had as yet been passed for their protec- tion, for the conditions were new. There remained only one means of defense, and that was organization. Through united action they might possess enough strength to bring the employers to terms. Their natural weapon of offense and de- fense would be unanimous action in refusing to work which, if widespread enough, would absolutely paralyze the in- dustry. Under such conditions was the strike originated. That the employers feared this wea- pon in the hands of their workingpeople was obvious from the fact that they had quickly used their powerful influence in having legislation passed in the British Parliament making it illegal for work- ingmen to combine in trade organiza- tion. This Act of Parliament compelled the workers' organizations to assume a secret character, and sabotage (g. v.) rather than the strike, became their weapon. To this they in many cases added personal violence against employ- ers and factory foremen and other forms of terrorism. Fortunately the injustice of the law forbidding organization among working- men while allowing it among employers, was recognized by men of the influential classes, and in 1824 the law was repealed. In France, where a similar law had been enacted, it was not repealed until 1864. From the date of the repeal of these laws begins the organized labor move- ment, whose chief weapon, potentially, if not actually, has always been the strike. In the United States no laws were ever enacted restricting the rights of the workers to organize, but as far back as the last decade of the 18th century strikes took place among the bakers and shoemakers of New York City and Phil- adelphia, in which the employers at- tempted to indict the leaders under the conspiracy laws; without success, how- ever. Strikes, however, were of compara- tively rare occurrence in the United States in the early part of last cen- tury before the Civil War. The Ameri- can workingman was a strong individual- ist, and he had many vocations into which he might turn if the conditions in one trade did not suit him. There was a scarcity of labor and a great many fields of activity. The first notable strike in this coun- try was the railway strike of 1877, which began on the Baltimore and Ohio railway, and spread throughout the East. A considerable amount of violence attended it and finally the Federal troops were called out. In 1883 there was a widespread strike of telegraph operators. One of the most memorable strikes of the early period was that of the steel workers at the Carnegie steel mills in Homestead, Pa., in 1892, during which scenes resembling those of the worst days of the French Revolution were enacted. The employers had called into the field large numbers of private detectives, and between them and the strikers armed conflicts took place which at times assumed the dimensions of pitched battles. In 1894 the American Railway Union, the president of which was Eugene V. Debs, the present Social- ist leader, called a general strike of rail- way employees in sympathy with the employees of the Pullman Company. The strikers sought to prevent the railway companies from using the cars of the Pullman Company, and refused to work trains which often carried the United States mail. Grover Cleveland, at that time President, made this the pretext for calling out the Federal troops, and the strike was thus forcibly suppressed, against the protests of the governors ol Illinois and several other states. An illustration of a strike in which the workers triumphed was that of 1906, when the printers of the whole country, through the International Typographical Union, demanded higher wages and shorter hours. The employers contested this effort bitterly, and it was three years before peace again prevailed in the industry, but the printers neverthe- less achieved their purpose. The result is that the printers are to-day one of the most solidly organized crafts in the country, and are probably the best paid hand workers in the country. During the fall of 1920, when the high war prices were dropping almost to pre-war