cent more for labor and for materials; consequently they would continue to live in their old houses, thus reducing the quantity of work to be obtained, thereby throwing hosts of workmen out of employment, and causing a surplus of labor to be offered in the market, to the depression of the wages of those mechanics who have a chance to work. Further than this, in the end, a scarcity of houses would ensue, causing an advance in rents, to the detriment of all workmen who do not own the dwellings they live in and must pay the advance in rents. The processes would be somewhat slow, and be combined with so many obscure influences, that men would hardly know of any change, but after a few years they would realize that somehow the number of people struggling for a bare living had in no wise diminished, and the hardness of their lot had been in no way ameliorated.
That laboring-men are gradually coming to see the truth in these things is seen in their changed views in relation to strikes. A few years ago prodigious efforts were made to get. men to strike. It was a favorite remedy with the leaders, and large promises of grand results were made and believed in. The strike was formerly the favorite panacea for keeping up prices of labor, but to-day the long-headed and wise men in the labor movement advise a resort to it only in cases of great aggravation, and not then until after all other known remedies have proved ineffectual. This change in sentiment could not have happened if former strikes had met expectations. It is asserted by labor-men that there is more distress among them than at any former time, and the good old days of thirty and forty years ago, when strikes were almost unknown, are pointed at as the true contrast of the present. If strikes had measurably succeeded, there would have been no ground for the assertion, for success could be proved only by showing an improvement in the circumstances of the classes for whose benefit they were instituted. If compensation after a strike is no better than it was before, it can not be said that the strike succeeded in securing better compensation; and, on the other hand, if compensation has been improved, the assertion that harder times prevail now than formerly must be untrue, and there is no reason why laboring-men should not keep on striking.
But it is said, in reply to this, that strikes are not favored now because the poverty of the working-classes is so extreme that a portion will yield before the proper result can be attained. This is the undoubted fact, and it is one which settles the case against inaugurating strikes. Men can not succeed in anything where their means are inadequate; and so long as laborers are poor, they can no more cease work long enough to make goods scarce than they can build ships and go into the carrying-trade. The circumstance of poverty is fatal to the luxury of frequent strikes, and
