THE NEW YORK BUILDING TRADES PARALYSIS
OF 1903.
ABOUT four years ago the wave of large capitalistic organiza- tion in this country reached and passed its highest point. Today the labor-organization movement appears to be forging to a similar climax a climax fraught with critical significance both for the larger interests of labor and for the general indus- trial situation in which workingmen, employers, and all classes are vitally concerned. For many years wage-earners have been organizing to resist the encroachments of capital ; now we have the singular spectacle of employers associating to resist arbitrary abuses of power and domination of industry by close-banded and militant labor. Narrow intolerance on one side, rashness and bad leadership on the other, have surrounded the controversy with a general atmosphere of demoralization, the only encouraging feature in which is the possibility that the more vicious elements may be gathered into the storm clouds now forming, so that when the tempest is over the industrial atmosphere may be purified for a long time to come.
Few of the recent labor contests have been more depressing, few more thoroughly typical of the low plane to which industrial controversy can be dragged by the intrusion of disreputable influences, than the building-trades paralysis which affected the metropolis during the greater part of 1903. This contro- versy involved no large question of the rights of workingmen, no issue of wages or hours, not even a dispute over recognition of organized labor. It began in local wrangles over certain abuses, took larger shape in violation of agreements on the part of important unions, was aggravated by a needlessly intolerant attitude of the employers, and gradually centered about the reckless leadership of a blatant demagogue whose power for evil was as great, apparently, as the secret of his influence is amazing to everybody not acquainted with the inner facts of the situation. To speak of Samuel Parks's "power of evil" in
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