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The Cost of Strikes

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 25, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 33.

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The Cost of Strikes

It is a good thing to figure up the cost of strikes now and then and see how it pays to force the capitalists to the wall. The strikes in the shoe trade during the last year are footed up by the Shoe and Leather Reporter as costing in wages from $5,000,000 to $6,000,000. The Chicago builders' strike last spring cost $2,500,000 in wages, which would have been paid to 38,000 workers. This strike was a failure, so that no increase of wages can be counted as an offset. The strike of the coke workers in Pennsylvania down to June 25 had caused a loss of $688,820 in wages and about 10,000 men are still out. The recent strike of the elevated road employes in Brooklyn was a total failure, and has cost the men engaged in it their positions, worth altogether about $1,200 a day. When the Knights of Labor hold their next convention in Minneapolis, they may profitably devote a part of their time to the study of figures like these.—Sel.