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Its Struggles, Its Enemies and Fool Friends.

There is no necessity to worry about how labor and capital can be reconciled, for they are one and the same. How the laborers and the capitalists can be reconciled is entirely within the scope of proper inquiry, and to which the attention of both and of all students of economics and devotees to the social welfare may well give their best thought and attention. And it may lead to the conclusion that despite the clamor which we hear, and the conflicts which occasionally occur, that there is a constant trend toward agreement between the laborers and capitalists, employed and employer, for the uninterrupted production and distribution of wealth, and, too, with ethical consideration for the common interests of all the people.

No body of men deplores strikes more than do the organized workers, and one of their chief aims is to endeavor to reduce the number, if not to entirely obliterate strikes; but thinking men have no sympathy with the unqualified condemnation with which the delettante in society, the professoriate, the open and covert enemies of the workers, denounce them.

A strike or lockout is a disagreement between the buyer and seller of labor power in order to arrive at what each or both may determine to be a more rational and equitable condition upon which production and distribution shall proceed. There has never yet been full harmony between the buyers and sellers of anything in this world. When a strike or lockout occurs, wages and production are not destroyed; they are deferred.

Since the era of modern industry, there have always been periods or seasons of great activity in industry, followed by periods or seasons of stagnation and idleness.