Page:Hine (1912) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/143

 back down! Their friend and adviser, the late Edward A. Moseley, shrewd and scheming, once told them that their best weapon is a threat of a strike and not the strike itself. By and by the bankers will learn these lessons and bargaining will be scientific and altruistic as well as collective and coercive.

Perhaps you are thinking that, like the minister who lectures the members present for the non-churchgoing of the absentees, I am taking too much of this out of you. We all know, as do the labor leaders, that no general manager ever went through a long strike, successful or unsuccessful, without ultimately losing his job. The directors start out with the best intentions of supporting him. As the struggle grows fiercer, the temporarily reduced earnings have a refrigerating effect on their feet. This cold storage is reflected by a message to the brain that the poor Mr. General Manager is so unfortunate; that he lacks tact. “He is so rash. He jumps right in. We told him he might go out to swim and hang his clothes on a hickory limb. We cautioned him, as all prudent mothers should, not to go near the water.” Everything in this world costs something, and nothing is more expensive than an unjust peace, a