For many years it was thought a necessary concomitant
of machine industry. The strike, however, antedates machinery and
was a practical method of protest long before there were unions.
Men in a shop simply agreed not to work further and walked out.
The earliest strike in the United States, as disclosed by the
United States Department of Labor occurred in 1741 among the
journeymen bakers in New York City. In 1792 the cordwainers of
Philadelphia struck. By 1834 strikes were so prevalent that the
New York Daily Advertiser declared them to be "all the fashion."
These demonstrations were all small affairs compared with the
strikes that disorganized industry after the Civil War or those
that swept the country in successive waves in the late seventies,
the eighties, and the nineties. The United States Bureau of Labor
has tabulated the strike statistics for the twenty-five year
period from 1881 to 1905. This list discloses the fact that
38,303 strikes and lockouts occurred, involving 199,954
establishments and 7,444,279 employees. About 2,000,000 other
employees were thrown out of work as an indirect result. In 1894,
the year of the great Pullman strike, 610,425 men were out of
work at one time; and 659,792 in 1902. How much time and money
these ten million wage-earners lost, and their employers lost,
and society lost, can never be computed, nor how much nervous
energy was wasted, good will thrown to the winds, and mutual
suspicion created.
The increase of union influence is apparent, for recognition of
the union has become more frequently a cause for strikes.
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