Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/235

 idleness of workmen not directly involved in the strike; (b) Loss due to diversion of trade to other industrial centres in England and abroad; l (c) Loss due to stoppage of normal facilities for travel and for conveyance, including actual destruction of perishable goods.

2. As regards particular Classes. (a) Loss of profit to traders, owing to suspension of business while establishment costs were practically undiminished; (b) Loss due to enhanced prices of certain commodities; (c) Loss involved in unpaid wages and consequent diminution of standard of comfort and increase of debt of wage-earning classes. Against these items of loss may be set certain items of gain, e.. (a) Gain by dealers in certain commodities owing to enhanced prices, the period during which the prices were payable and the uncertainty of their maintenance from hour to hour rendering any share in the increase by landowner or wage-earner alike impossible; (b) Gain by certain industries, e.g. carting, which was employed to the utmost, and cabbing, both employed even for long distances. 3. As regards those directly bcolced, A. The Companies, The losses to the companies fall into six categories:

(a) Loss of traffic,

(b) Loss of interest upon receipts for deferred traffic,

(c) Loss due to damage of rolling-stock by inefficient servants einployed during the strike,

(d) Loss due to extra pay to employees during the strike: (1)in bonuses to ' loyal' employees; (2) in extra wages to ' blacklegs,'

(e) Loss due to the necessity of boarding a large number of employees during the strike,

(f) Loss due to claims for damage and delay of goods.

Against these items of loss may be placed the saving in unpaid wages to the men on strike.

The difficulty of expressing the total of these losses in figures is very considerable; but an estimate based on such figures as are available places the total of these items, under deduction of the itein of saving mentioned, at �200,000 for the three companies involved. s That this item is under the mark may be inferred froin the decreases in dividends of the three railway companies. The decrease in the G. and S.-W. Railway dividend at the rate of } per cent. per annum represents a loss of about �12,500; the decrease at the rate of 1] per cent. per annm in the Caledonian dividend represents a loss of about �75,000; whfie the decrease of five per cent. in the North British dividend represents a loss of about �200,000. The latter figure, however, is understood to include certain items of loss which are not attributable to the strike. The exact amount of loss auffered on account of the strike by the North British Company has not yet

a Perhaps the chief item of loss in this connection occurred in the coal trade, The )roduction of pig-iron in Scotland was at the time suspended, for other reasons. the six weeks of the strike the coal export trade was practically at a standstill. ttring The decrease in coal exp?rts during the six weeks of the strike amounted to 172,000 tons. This quantity, which but for the strike would have been supplied by Scottish collieries, was shipped from the Tyne, or taken from mines abroad, It represents actual lost trade to Scotland, The extent to which the strike influenced general business in this way was've.ry large. In this connection it must be noted, however, that the feeling that laborer was uprising, and that the courses both of wages and prices were uncertain, impelled employers in Scotland to allow business to go elsewhere.

a Much of this was total loss as shown by the slight increase and even by decrease in subsequent traffic returns.

This estimate was made prior to the declaration of the dividends of the companies. Gr. The Railway Strike, p. 24.