Less than a generation ago, strike were considered illegal. Then there came a period in which they were considered fully justified and not at all illegal. Now we seem to be on our way back to the old days. By means of fines and imprisonment, efforts are being made to ban strikes. Of course, the leaers in our city and state have not expressed their attitude in so many words--but one can detect the melody of a half-sung ditty. A distinction is being made between strikes which are indirectly harmful to people not directly interested in the strike, and those which merely affect the few who are on strike. The former are labeled illegal; the latter legal. This distinction is in itself unjust; for as yet, no conflict between capital and labor has ever taken place without to some extent hurting the common people who were not especially or directly interested in the conflict.

Whenever a strike is in progress, we hear complaints of the slight amount of work 2 done by the mean who have laid down their tools in the hope of thereby compelling an increase in wages and a shortening of the working day--demands which had been denied these workers when requested by them. When, for example, a streetcar strike occurs, one will everywhere hear expressions of sympathy for the poor fellows who are compelled to talk back and forth from work, while the strikers are condemned. During a coal mine strike, the complaint is made that the poor people (how touching, this sympathy for the poor!) will freeze and suffer deprivation in other ways on account of the resulting coal shortage. If the butchers strike, the people will starve. When there is a railroad strike, the United States mail is being delayed. If the drivers strike, industry and commerce suffer. If the workers on a school construction job go on strike, they prevent the education of our youth. If sailors strike, it is mutiny....A strike at a gas plant makes the streets unsafe, etc. etc.

People do not realize that a strike is war, and in a war any and all weapons are allowed. It is not realized that the workers have the same invidable right and duty to defend and take care of their interests, which are daily being battered by capital, as has our government in defending our country against aggession by 3the armies of other powers.

The worker is no more a friend or brother of the capitalist than the American soldier would be a friend and brother of the Russian soldier in case war were to break out between this country and Russia.

a strike is war, and it is quite comical to notice the employers bringing suit against their former workers for losses sustained by virtue of the strike undertaken by the latter. Of course the workers have just as much right to sue the employers for damage in case the latter should be compelled, for lack of orders or because of similar business reverses, to stop work and discharge their workers.

We hope, however, that the workers will never become stupid enough to institute suits of the kind mentioned--at least not until the general public has become so devoid of reasoning power as to regard that kind of damage suits as justified in a country such as ours.