It would be interesting to trace how much of
the subsequent exposure of conditions and attempts at
governmental control of this huge industry had their genesis in
this first attempt of the unskilled workers to secure a higher
standard of living. Certainly the industrial conflict when
epitomized in a strike, centers public attention on conditions as
nothing else can do. A strike is one of the most exciting
episodes in modern life, and as it assumes the characteristics of
a game, the entire population of a city becomes divided into two
cheering sides. In such moments the fair-minded public, who
ought to be depended upon as a referee, practically disappears.
Anyone who tries to keep the attitude of nonpartisanship, which
is perhaps an impossible one, is quickly under suspicion by both
sides. At least that was the fate of a group of citizens
appointed by the mayor of Chicago to arbitrate during the stormy
teamsters' strike which occurred in 1905. We sat through a long
Sunday afternoon in the mayor's office in the City Hall, talking
first with the labor men and then with the group of capitalists.
The undertaking was the more futile in that we were all
practically the dupes of a new type of "industrial conspiracy"
successfully inaugurated in Chicago by a close compact between
the coal teamsters' union and the coal team owners' association,
who had formed a kind of monopoly hitherto new to a
monopoly-ridden public.
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