THE LIMITS OF THE RIGHT TO STRIKE.
AN epidemic of strikes is raging on the Continent, to the dismay of all Ministers of the Interior, who regard strikes as petty insurrections ; but the strike in Holland is by far the most important. The great battle of Capital and Labour, which may be the preoccupation of the next quarter of a century, is there being fought with a certain consciousness of its ultimate meaning which is apt to be wanting in more casual struggles. Employers and employed stand there prepared, at least in idea, to go all lengths rather than be defeated. The former appeal to the Legislature and to military force, while the latter are avowedly prepared to paralyse society, or even to threaten its continued existence. The strikers have suspended, as far as their power extends, the only practicable means of intercommunication by drawing out the servants of the railways ; they have arrested commerce by obtaining the adhesion of the dockers ; they have put an end to manufac- tures by attracting not only mill hands, but all artisans, including workers as much outside ordinary labour as the diamond-cutters ; and they threaten the supply of food by successful appeals to the Government bakers. They are even prepared to order that total suspension of all labour which has long been the dream of revolu- tionaries, and which, if it could be carried out for a week, would have all the effects of general insurrection. The employers, on their side, have convinced the Government that the right of combination must be placed under new restrictions, and the Cabinet has brought in Bills which, though the Deputies try to minimise their effect, would, as the workers clearly see, if rigidly interpreted, enable the Courts to punish any strike as a dangerous conspiracy. There is so much political sense in Dutchmen, and they are so afraid of German interference "for the protection of trade," that a compromise may shortly be arrived at ; but as we write it is war between Capital and Labour, war undisguised and intended to secure on one side or the other wide and lasting effects. It is war, too, in a really com- mercial and industrial State, full of great cities, and free from that overwhelming weight of a freeholding peasantry which in so many countries renders the success of an artisan revolt hopeless from the very beginning.
We cannot, however, think that the men, this time at any rate, will win. They cannot carry through a revolu- tion unless the troops refuse to fire, and in spite of some rumours, probably invented for a purpose, any such refusal is in the modern world to the last degree improbable. Discipline produces a morality of its own, which is in practice the base of almost all Governments ; and besides, disciplined soldiers cannot bear to be attacked by a mob, which usually begins by pelting and insulting them. Without a revolution the men have no ultimate resource. They have, and confess by their prayer to the international Trade-Unions for pecuniary aid that they have, no accumu- lated funds. They have no Poor Law to assure them against hunger, and as against hunger the great majority of average men have no nerve or power of resistance. Their adversaries, on the other hand, can wait, no doubt at a terrible sacrifice, but still they can wait ; and if they sit passive under the protection of the regiments, the men must ultimately yield, and, suffer external order to be re- established. That is well for the moment, for their sub- mission will avert a most serious political danger ; but a very grave question remains behind.
It is quite evident that the working class all over the Continent is gravely discontented with the share it receives • from the produce of its work, and with the insecurity which necessarily arises from the right of the paymaster to dismiss the employ4, and that strikes are assuming a more and more threatening character from the alliance of the strikers with extreme parties. It is becoming neces- sary, therefore, for politicians to make up their minds how far they intend to support the freedom of combination, and at what point, if any, that right must, if it is physi- cally possible, be restricted. In this country, where, as usual, a sort of working compromise has been adopted, all men being free to combine until they try to terminate the freedom of dissidents, it is generally held that the right loses its moral character when the strike clearly injures, or even greatly discomforts, the community. The feeling is that any body of workers has a right to strike, especially for an increase of wages, but that if those who serve the community, such as policemen, drainage repairers, gasmen, postmen, or bakers, exercise the right, they ought to be restrained, or at all events place themselves outside the pale of public sympathy. They are not coercing employers so much as dictating to the people at large. That seems sensible enough at first sight ; but as a principle it will not hold water, and in practice it would soon lead to a vast extension of conscription. There is nothing in the com- munity which gives it, any more than individuals, a right to hold slaves. Why is the right of a baker's journey- man to choose his field of labour terminated because if he exercises it Smith will have to make pancakes for himself? Or why must a gasman always make gas because if he does not Smith will be driven back upon the use of Roman lamps ? There is neither sense nor logic in such a proposition, and the advocates of restriction in such cases must discover some other formula. The utmost that society has a right to demand. in strikes of this kind is fair warning, so that it may not be taken by surprise, or exposed, as in the case of the drainage men it might be exposed, to what is practically a risk of murder. A strike of all who repair drains would mean an appalling outbreak of typhoid fever. Society has a right to prevent what is equivalent to crime even if it be not actual crime, such as the voluntary spreading of an epidemic, and has as much right to imprison drainage men who stop the flushing of drains as to imprison railway signalmen who are drunk on duty, or plague-stricken immigrants who break the laws of quarantine. We fail to see how that proposition can be denied, though of course the right of drainage men to depart one by one or in groups after fair notice remains intact. But then comes up the final question. Is there any kind of strike which the rulers of mankind, elective or otherwise, have a right to treat as insurrection, and suppress, as they would an insurrection, by an unhesitating use of military force? We suspect, though we see some difficulties in the way of the argument, that there is one. The world has never yet seen the experiment of a general strike, a suspension of all forms of labour at one and the same time, actually tried, and. does not know, therefore, with any precision what its effects would be. The Labour leaders of the Continent have repeatedly threatened that they would bring one about, but have always been constrained, either by saner advisers, or by their own electors, or by public horror, from giving effect to their words. If, however, the consequences would be such as most thinkers imagine, and as the strike leaders them- selves believe—viz., the instant paralysis of the social organism, and the death of multitudes from want—then, we conceive, such a strike would be morally indistinguish- able from insurrection, and might justifiably be put down by force. We cannot see any solid difference between the two outbreaks, even in motive, for the object of insurrection, as of a general strike, must be either the removal of grievances or the assertion of a right to more complete liberty of action. The authors of a general strike, in fact, declare war on the community as much as if they took up arms, and make themselves liable to the same terrible re- joinder,—namely, that they have appealed to force, and must abide by the results of their appeal. Fortunately, recourse to so extreme an experiment is unlikely, even upon the Continent, where in many countries the average rate of wages is too low to allow of civilised existence. It is opposed not only by all intelligent opinion, but by the force which always baffles Socialist agitators, the self-regard of the individual, who never can see why he personally should be so coerced and amerced for the presumed benefit, of a majority.
We look for a gradual decline in the danger from strikes, first, to the slow spread of intelligence, which always teaches men to prefer the action of Courts of Law to civil war; and secondly, to the gradual diffusion of comfort through a rise in wages. There is a slow rise going on in all the civilised countries, which becomes easier to em- ployers as it becomes more nearly universal ; and men whose labour makes them comfortable look instinctively askance at strikes. It is upon wages mainly that the comfort of workers depends ; and even in Holland a rise of three shillings a week upon the average rate would break the heart of the movement, as well as o'f those who are elected to its direction.
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