The Morality of the Strike

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921. Excerpt: ... Ill THE MORALITY OF THE STRIKE IN ITS RELATION TO THE END OR OBJECT SOUGHT 1. JUST AND UNJUST CAUSES IN justifying or condemning any particular strike, the object or end aimed at or desired by the strikers must be given primary consideration. For unless the object of the strike be morally good and one to which the laborers have some right in justice, they cannot be justified either in demanding that their claims be granted or in enforcing them by any means whatever, no matter how harmless. The laborers have no right to all that they can get if that term is to be taken to mean, as it generally is by the worker, that justice sets no limits to what he may demand or take, provided he can enforce such demands. The theory advanced by socialists that 45 the laborer has a right to the whole product, 1 is not only a radically incomplete theory of wage justice, but it is confronted by the final objection that its realization would involve greater evils and injustices than those it seeks to abolish. 2 Socialists forget that labor is but one of the necessary factors in production. Labor cannot get along without capital any more than capital can dispense with labor. Furthermore, they are bound together not only by mutual needs or interest, but also by mutual obligations. The claim of labor to all that it can get, and this only limited by what it produces, as set forth in the New York Socialist Call is altogether unjust and such a claim may not be enforced by peaceful, much less by drastic, strike methods. Such a theory, in the minds of the radical workman, means that there is no limit to what they may demand short, perhaps, of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, though Socialism would not hesitate at that, 3 and is no more justifiable than the cla...