Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/745

Rh The machinist trade involves a high, grade of intelligence, and its skilled operatives earn the best wages going. Their organization is one of the oldest, most compact, and best disciplined in the island. Its leaders are men of brains, discretion, and nerve. In deliberate preparation for this great contest, the organization had accumulated a maintenance fund of nearly two million dollars. They have been sustained by many evidences of popular sympathy, including generous contributions to their funds, and they have been careful to so conduct themselves as to win rather than alienate public support.

They have regarded themselves as the chosen champions of what is known as the "new unionism," and they knew that the whole status of trades-unionism in the immediate future of English industry turned upon their success or failure. It has thus been, on the part of the engineers, something in the nature of a vicarious struggle. They were giving battle for an abstract proposition, deemed by them vital to the future well-being of organized labor, not merely or chiefly their own group, but all branches of organized labor in England and everywhere. However widely we may differ with these men, however impossible and impracticable we may regard their demands, we must feel a genuine admiration for the grit and doggedness with which they have carried on a battle which for many months past has been seen to be hopeless. If they have failed, and failed disastrously, it is only fair to say for them that they have failed through no lack of courage or endurance.

On the other hand, let us look at the attitude of the employers, and the reasons which underlie it. From their point of view it was a struggle for existence, for the right to continue the industries in which their fortunes and future are embarked. To fully understand this it is necessary to explain the ostensible and the real reason of the lockout. It was precipitated on July 24th last, by the formal demand of the London branch of the engineers for the eight-hour day. This demand was the logical aftermath of the successful strike of the engineers for the nine-hour day back in 1870; the Amalgamated Association having been successful in that movement, it was the natural agency through which the eight-hour movement, upon which English trades-unionism has now resolved, should be pushed to an issue. The original demand for eight hours was confined to the London shops in accordance with the well-known trade-unionist plan of campaign. The iron masters of the provinces, realizing that the success of the movement in London must inevitably extend the eight-hour day to all the iron establishments of the kingdom, made common cause, and combined to lock out their employees pending the settlement of the London difficulty. The collision being inevitable, they determined to force into it certain other