The following table shows the numbers of disputes, numbers of workpeople involved, and aggregate duration in working days in Australia in each of the years 1919 to 1926. As in many other countries, the years 1919-21 were years of great industrial dis turbance; the year 1919 alone accounted for over six million work ing days lost.
The following table shows the number of disputes, number of workpeople involved, and aggregate duration in Canada during the years 191'9 to 1926:— The strike of journeymen printers, New York, 1776, for an in crease of wages, is the earliest recorded strike in American his tory. Industrial disturbances before that time were disputes over price fixing. The distinct cleavage between labouring men and employers did not exist until late in the 18th century.
Prior to 1827 disputes were on a small scale, for higher wages or the ten-hour day. From 1827 to 1832 politics occupied labour, but between 1833 and 1837 there is record of 173 strikes. The panic of 1837 broke up the union movement.
After the Civil War unionism took on a national character. The first strike of national significance was on the Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio railroads, 1877, against a wage reduction. Several lives were lost, and much property destroyed, before the strike was lost, as depression strikes usually are. The Knights of Labor won their strike on the Gould railways in 1885, but lost the one in 1886. The lack of success of the Knights in their eight-hour strikes in 1886 helped the American Federation of Labor to assume the leadership of the American labour movement.
A lull in industrial conflict after 1886 was ended in 1890 by the eight-hour day movement. The carpenters made the first at tack and their strikes met with a large degree of success. The panic of 1893 precipitated numerous disputes over wages. About. 125,000 miners held out for three months in 1894 without secur ing their demands, while the Pullman strike that year was one of the most dramatic episodes in American labour history. The
American Railway Union (Eugene V. Debs, founder) declared a sympathetic strike, June 26, 1894, and refused to handle Pullman cars. Much violence and destruction of property occurred. Fed eral troops were brought in. In this strike the injunction first became important as a means of defeating strikes.
In 1897 the United Mine Workers tied up the whole bituminous industry except in West Virginia. After three months the union won a thorough-going victory, the settlement conceding the miners a 20% increase in wages, the eight-hour day, and union recogni tion. The strong hold of the United Mine Workers' Union on the central competitive field dated from this victory. The many strikes following the revival of prosperity in 1898 were mostly offensive efforts to secure better conditions in contrast to the defensive strikes of the depressed nineties. In 1902, 150,000 anthracite miners struck for a reduction of hours, increase of wages, and recognition of their union. After five months Presi dent Theodore Roosevelt intervened and arranged for arbitration.
The miners won a zo per cent increase in wages and a shorter working day but their union was not recognized.
Between 1905 and the World War the American labour move ment was on the defensive both against "open shop" employers and the courts. When the United States entered the war in 1917 the American Federation of Labor, upon request of the Govern ment, discouraged strikes in the essential industries. Those which occurred were mediated by Government boards. Four days after the signing of the Armistice the Amalgamated Clothing Workers demanded a 5% increase in pay for its members in New York City. The employers answered by a lock-out and the industry was tied up for 13 weeks before the union won both wage in creases and the 44-hour week. Strikes of the harbour workers in New York, the New England textile workers and telephone opera tors, actors in New York, Chicago and Boston, the printing trades, the longshoremen of New York, and the general strike in Seattle, evidenced a post-war militancy. The most important struggles were the steel, coal, and switchmen's strikes.