income, while the North British ordinary shareholder lost about six months' income. The proportion of loss has thus fallen most heavily upon the companies, excepting the G. and S.-W., and least heavily upon the men.
CONCLUSIONS.
Study of the Scottish railway strike suggests the following:
1. Huge combinations of capital so employed as to involve the ministration of great masses of men are liable to the same evils as bureaucratic governments, and are subject to eruptions analogous to revolutions. Large numbers of subordinate officials with nominally limited but really extensive powers in the management of men tend to abuse these. When the combinations are employed in socially necessary functions, this real-administration results in public crises in which the public must bear the brunt of the loss.
2. The growth of large businesses is attended by periodical friction, owing partly to the want of adaptability of men (manual and administrative workers) to changing conditions, and to want of provision of adequate material resources on capital account during periods of transition.
3. There is not an unlimited number of highly skilled artizans from which efficient workmen may promptly be drawn. The artizan class has come to consist of a great number of strata, skill being spe.cialized highly and even localized on each plane. This gives an increasing amount of power to certain strata of artizans. Thus, the strike of a score or so of signalmen on one part of the N. B. system rendered that part of it useless; traffic upon it was therefore entirely closed during the strike. The widely extended paralys!s caused by the strike of at most 9,000 men was a significant and serious circumstance.
4. The increase of comfort, education, political power, and independence of feeling of the upper grades of the artizan class has rendered the dictatorial method of dealing with them customary in the earlier years of the century, and now surviving among railway officials, at once absurd and dangerous.
5. Although the railway strike might be classed among the conflicts between capital and labour, it would be more accurate to describe it as a revolt of labourera against inefficient organization of their industry. The charge against the railway companies is not that they have secured enormous gains by overworking their employees; but that having undertaken the function of public carriers, they have exercised this function inefficiently. They have organized their labourera badly, and their labourera have revolted.
6. The full effect of the strike cannot yet be seen, but even so far as may be discerned, it is fairly clear that it indicates that combined action among workmen is by no means ineffective in limiting the hours of labour in certain skilled industries, and that thus from the point of view of the labourer, resort to legislation is not always necessary for this purpose.
I The Glasgow City and District Railway (underground), was closed for traffic for five weeks during the strike.
The railway companies found it quite impossible promptly to replace the men who had struck, by equally efficient servants, not so much because of the possession by the men of an unusually high degree of skill, but because a peculiar kind of skill was required by the nature of the employment. This skill could be acquired but it took time to acquire it. Thus the number of men left out at the termination of the strike was insignificant. The numbers were approximately, Caledonian 300; North British 200; G. and S.-W. 30 of all grades.
