were not considered. Taking the total for the period of twenty years, it is seen that 35.02 per cent of the whole number of persons thrown out of employment, in strikes whose results were obtainable, succeeded in gaining the object for which they struck; 16.72 per cent succeeded partly; while 48.26 per cent failed entirely in gaining their demands.

Table X.-Causes, etc., of strikes by industries.—This table includes the facts for all strikes which occurred during the twenty-year period, and furnishes data similar to those given in Tables VIII and IX, classified by the industries in which establishments under strike were engaged, instead of by States as in Table VIII, or years as in Table IX. The corresponding table for lockouts is numbered XXI.

Table XI.-Summary of causes, etc., of strikes for the United States.-This table summarizes the causes, etc., of strikes for all States, all industries, and for the entire period of twenty years, a line being given for each separate cause or object of strikes, without regard to the State, year, or industry in which the strikes occurred. The corresponding lockout table is numbered XXII.

The following shows the 20 leading causes or objects of the strikes which occurred during the twenty-year period beginning January 1, 1881, and ending December 31, 1900, together with the number and per cent of establishments falling under each: Leading causes of strikes, January 1, 1881, to December 31, 1900.

For reduction of hours and against being compelled to board with employer

Against task system..

For reduction of hours and against task system

For adoption of union rules and union scale.

For reinstatement of discharged employees...

868

For increase of wages, Saturday half holiday, and privilege of working for employers not members of masters' association

74

Against reduction of wages and working overtime.

750

For increase of wages and against use of material from nonunion establishment.
For increase of wages and Saturday half holiday

.64

An examination of the causes or objects for which strikes were undertaken during the period included in this report, as given in Table XI, shows that 20 principal causes included 76.86 per cent of all the establishments, leaving the remaining 1,382 causes active in only 23.14 per cent of the establishments subjected to strikes during the period. It is seen further that practically three causes, involving increase of wages, reduction of hours, and reduction of wages, cover the first four lines of the table, and that these included not less than 58.26 per cent of all the establishment involved in strikes during the last twenty years.

The following table shows for each of these 20 leading causes of strikes the per cent of establishments in which strikes succeeded, succeeded partly, and failed. A few establishments in which strikes were still pending or in which the results were not reported have not, of course, been included.

Results of strikes undertaken for the twenty leading causes, January 1, 1881, to December 31, 1900.

For reduction of hours and against being compelled to board with employer...

Against task system...

For reduction of hours and against task system.

100.00

For adoption of union rules and union scale.

For reinstatement of discharged employees..

40.67

1.96

57.37

For increase of wages, Saturday half holiday, and privilege of working for employers not members of masters' association.. Against reduction of wages and working overtime

100.00

100.00

For increase of wages and against use of material from nonunion establishment..

For increase of wages and Saturday half holiday.

77.64

15.09

100.00 7.27

Total

50.44

13.58

36.03

In the strikes undertaken to secure an increase of wages, which, as has been seen from the previous table, included 28.70 per cent of all establishments involved during the 20 years, success resulted in 52.77 per cent of the establishments, partial success resulted in 17.38 per cent, while in 29.85 per cent such strikes entirely failed. In the strikes undertaken for both an increase of wages and a reduction of hours 62.49 per cent of the establishments involved succeeded, 21.08 per cent succeeded partly, while 16.43 per cent failed. The results for strikes undertaken for a reduction of hours, against a reduction of wages, and for each of the other leading causes may be seen by reference to the table.

I am sorry that I have not before me the statistics that will enable me to tell you of the loss of life directly chargeable to the strike and lockout. This would surely be appalling, as is the industrial waste indicated.

COMPULSORY ARBITRATION IMPOSSIBLE.

Mr. Gompers said that he objected to the establishment of this tribunal for the reason that it would lead to compulsory arbitration, which I might say I firmly believe to be an impossibility under our form of Government.

His statement seemed to indicate that the gentleman discovered force in this bill, and nowhere can he interpret it as other than a moral force. Later he says that the tribunal would not have a "scintilla of influence with labor unions," or words to that effect, meaning, I suppose, that they would ignore the invitations and solicitations of such a tribunal.

A MOST BENEFICENT ARM OF GOVERNMENT.

In this conclusion I differ radically. The high character of the tribunal would invite confidence from all classes of people. They might come to use its facilities slowly at first, but finally, I firmly believe, and that within a short time, it would be regarded as the most profit

able and beneficent arm of our Government, by at least the rank and file of every organization-a Government that fears no foreign foe, but that must in the full working of the spirit of our Constitution guard the life, the liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of the least of her citizens. I am not of those who believe that all disorder is anarchy. Great disorders we have had, others we will have, and I do believe that we are the unset notes of the greatest harmony the world has known, and that we are waiting for the hand of the Master.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR OPPORTUNITIES.

Men, men, prosperity is crowding itself upon you; do not waste your opportunities.

In my own home, where the facilities for distribution have invited capital, and which city is now becoming perhaps the greatest manufacturing city of the world, I find a storm center for discord. Our police are distracted from the ordinary channels of their duty to guard the places where disorder reigns. Lockouts and strikes are the order of the day. I have before me the Washington Star, dated April 1, in which a Chicago dispatch says:

FATAL AFFRAYS.

Probably fatal affrays between union and nonunion men and vicious encounters between the rival organizations have marked a sudden revival of strike violence in Chicago. The more seriously injured of the victims were: Stanley Danosky, nonunion employee of Hammond Packing Company, fatally stabbed during labor dispute at stockyards-K. Mesisiane, union man, arrested; Frederick Drebus, pressman, employed by American Colortype Company, attacked at his house by Franklin union men-Morris Sanger arrested; John Flynn, union picket at Swift & Co.'s plant, shot by L. A. Huff, nonunion employee-will probably die; Robert W. McGinley, president of the International Pressmen's Union, beaten by members of Franklin Union, No. 4-S. Rimour Symere arrested; John Kaufman, nonunion machinist at Illinois Steel Company's plant, South Chicago, beaten, probably fatally, by six supposed union men.

Is it possible that it will still be contended that the strike is a good thing? Would you be able to make a convincing argument in support of that statement to the members of the families to which these dead bodies were carried? The wages of industrial peace is industrial prosperity. But this does not mean that any organization of men may not demand what they consider just and fair as compensation for their labor, submitting, however, such demands in regular and orderly manner to the representatives of this proposed tribunal. It is a court in which all men will stand equal. It would be as dignified a body as has ever been vested with duty in this world.

BILL IS UNDERTAKING TO CAPITALIZE MORAL FORCE.

It is an undertaking to capitalize the moral force of two thousand years of moral teaching. It is an undertaking to harvest the things of moral and ethical teaching in the particular application of these principles to the settlement of disputes between men. It would be the only court in which a moral obligation would have full standing.

I should welcome from any source intelligent constructive criticism of the bill to the end that it may have the best possible form to accomplish the purpose for which it was intended, and I sincerely hope that

it will never be in the power of the representative of either capital or labor of his own motion, as was suggested here, to "strike out all of the bill except the title."

Mr. VREELAND. You are not in favor of anything leading to compulsory arbitration?

HAVE NOT SLIGHTEST CONCEPTION OF COMPULSORY ARBITRATION.

Mr. FOSTER. I have not the slightest conception of it, although I will confess to you, Mr. Chairman, my estimate of the compelling power of this moral force.

Mr. VREELAND. Are not all our courts simply compulsory arbitration courts?

Mr. FOSTER. They are.

Mr. VREELAND. Each party presents what testimony he sees fit? Mr. FOSTER. He presents his own side.

Mr. VREELAND. But our courts are a system of compulsory arbitration, as I take it.

Mr. FOSTER. Yes. It may be that I overestimate the force of public opinion so directed, but I really look upon it as having as much force as an armed body of men.

Mr. VREELAND. I see you allude to this tribunal as a court this morning?

Mr. FOSTER. Yes, sir. I called Bishop Spalding's attention to it, and he objected to it. He thinks it is a poor word because it is not exactly what we mean perhaps.

Mr. VREELAND. If we consider it as a court it would have to pay some attention to its own precedents and decisions, I assume.

Mr. FOSTER. I do not know, Mr. Chairman, that we are confined to the legal interpretation of the word "court."

Mr. VREELAND. Oh, no; we are not.

Mr. FOSTER. We use that word. There are trade courts, and there are various organizations called courts, and the use of the word here was in its most general sense, and not in any way intended to be technical.

Mr. VREELAND. Yes; but unless we are to consider arbitration as a system of give and take, of compromises taking a part from one and at part from the other, if an arbitration tribunal is to proceed along judicial lines in determining with some exactitude the rights of parties, then would not such a tribunal be obliged to pay some attention to its own precedents and make its own constructions of profits and hours of labor and all matters pertaining to an arbitrary tribunal?

Mr. FOSTER. It is logical to believe that the accumulated information that would be acquired by such an organization would have an effect upon its decisions; but unless they had too strongly pride of opinion they would not be held by precedent to the embarrassment of a just verdict.

Mr. VREELAND. My mind goes back to the same question which I raised at the last hearing. A tribunal of that kind, being obliged to proceed somewhat on judicial lines, has to adopt some uniform scale to apply to similar cases. Suppose in two factories a hundred miles apart running under the same conditions they find a strike in one, where the employers are making 15 per cent on their investment. In another one they are making 10 per cent on their investment. Would not such

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a tribunal be obliged, in order to apply any unity of measurement to the disputes in question, to determine what in their opinion as a tribunal is a proper return upon the capital invested there?

Mr. FOSTER. Possibly so. That might be a part of the investigation that would be made by such a tribunal, and a source from which they would get information to determine according to right and equity the contention between two parties. I do not believe such evidence would be the chief basis of decisions of the tribunal, but considered only very exceptionally.

Mr. VREELAND. Now, the law court tries to proceed all the time with exactitude.

Mr. FOSTER. Yes.

Mr. VREELAND. They have an exact law or statute to apply as a scale. They have the testimony of witnesses, which they interpret to apply as an exact scale. Would not this tribunal be obliged to follow along the same lines, and, if so, how can an arbitration tribunal settle the income which should be paid upon capital invested in manufacturing or in transportation, or the hours of labor which the men should work? I am looking to the practical application of such a tribunal to practical questions.

ARBITRATION IS NO NOVELTY.

Mr. FOSTER. Arbitration is no novelty. It has been going on in one form or another since history began. It has lost nothing, in its general acceptance by the people, in its respectability as a mode of settling differences between men. The tribunal proposed would undoubtedly consist of very able, very intelligent, and very conscientious men. The work before them would be to adjust the differences between capital and labor according to their best judgment.

Mr. VREELAND. Right there is where the practical questions would arise, as to their best judgment. Can the judgment of any man determine, for instance, what the returns upon capital invested shall bethat is, such a judgment as will be accepted; can they determine the hours of labor or the conditions of labor in such a way that their judgment will be accepted?

Mr. FOSTER. In voluntary arbitration many commissions have made findings and conclusions that were accepted.

Mr. VREELAND. They have. I think it is generally agreed that arbitrations as a rule are a system of mutual concessions, in which they nip off of each side as a rule a proportion which will bring about a resumption of labor; but would it be your idea that a tribunal established along these lines would be such a tribunal as that of determining mutual concessions on each side?

Mr. FOSTER. I would expect that its judgments would be judgments of men, and would not always be perfect; but as near as the judgments of men are perfect, and under whose administration we are compelled to live and whose conclusions will have to govern in the affairs of nations and communities. That they would not always be perfect would probably be granted; but that they would be useful and always very nearly approximate equity and justice I think is also true.

Mr. VREELAND. Could they formulate any judgments along those lines which would be accepted? That is the question which bothers me the most.