Eugen Peter Schwiedland · 1889
Schwiedland’s historical-statistical study interprets American strikes as instruments of working-class advancement and possible foundations of industrial peace. Drawing principally on the United States Commissioner of Labor’s report on strikes and lockouts in 1881–1886, it connects legal history, statistical criticism, and collective bargaining. Market conditions limit attainable concessions, but organization influences how workers fare within those limits.
The opening places industrial conflict within a succession of emancipatory struggles:
Gleichwie das vorige Jahrhundert der Zeuge der Emanzipation des dritten Standes war, ist das unserige der Schauplatz, auf welchem sich die, vom „fünften“ Stande sich allmählich abhebende Arbeiterklasse mächtig emporringt.
English translation: Just as the last century was the witness of the emancipation of the third estate, ours is the scene upon which the working class, gradually setting itself off from the "fifth" estate, mightily struggles upward.
The distinction between the rising working class and the “fifth” estate gives this account a selective social subject: workers capable of sustained organization. Formal legal freedom has not abolished inequalities of economic power. Schwiedland’s account of American coalition law follows the uncertain application of English conspiracy doctrine toward distinctions between lawful combination and punishable coercion. Democratic public attitudes also assist workers: sympathy with strikers can express civic identification rather than mere anxiety over poverty or inconvenience.
Statistical investigation makes these conflicts available for systematic comparison. Schwiedland situates the federal inquiry within an established practice of labour research:
Bereits im Jahre 1880 hatte das Bureau of Labor Statistics des Staates Massachusetts, das älteste der amerikanischen arbeitsstatistischen Aemter²), eine Arbeit über die Arbeitsstreitigkeiten in jenem Staate seit 1825 veröffentlicht.
English translation: Already in the year 1880 the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of Massachusetts, the oldest of the American labour-statistical offices²), had published a work on the labour disputes in that state since 1825.
His use of this evidence is critical. Investigators consulted employers, workers, unions, and newspapers, but their classifications could still embody judgments rather than established facts. Counting affected establishments risks turning one coordinated stoppage into numerous apparently separate disputes; examples from Missouri show how this can distort annual success rates. Missing cross-tabulations by industry and year further limit interpretation, while the smaller lockout series supports less confident generalizations.
The surge of strikes in 1886 receives both economic and organizational explanations. Prosperity can encourage demands, whereas depression produces defensive resistance. Rapid union growth also prompts workers to test their strength. Although Schwiedland accepts claims linking socialism and anarchism to foreign origins, he does not regard immigration as a sufficient explanation of American strike activity. Public sympathy, competitive self-assertion, heterogeneous membership, and weak union discipline also matter. Organization may initially multiply conflicts, yet its maturation should restrain poorly timed demands.
This developmental argument separates the causes of strikes from the conditions of their success. Schwiedland distinguishes defensive struggles against wage reductions from offensive demands for increases, then compares outcomes with evidence about depression and trade. Defensive strikes generally fare worse; expanding demand, prices, or profits make concessions more attainable. Economic conditions nevertheless do not mechanically fix wages. Skilled, organized workers with adequate strike funds can exert bargaining power within the available range.
The same reasoning challenges calculations that condemn strikes by comparing immediate wage losses with subsequent gains. Such accounts neglect prevented reductions, durable improvements, and the institutional achievement of collective bargaining. Disputes concern independence and organizational recognition as well as wages and hours. Yet conflicts over women, racialized workers, and non-union labour expose the exclusionary boundaries of the solidarity Schwiedland celebrates.
The concluding Hocking Valley example presents joint wage schedules and arbitration as outcomes of bitter conflict. Employers can accept concessions more readily when competitors face comparable costs; organized countervailing power can therefore stabilize production rather than simply disrupt it. This institutional lesson accompanies an appeal to extend labour statistics beyond America:
Und doch ließen sich, im Anschluß an die obersten Arbeiter-Versicherungsämter auch in Deutschland und Oesterreich, zur endlichen entsprechend umfangreichen Kultivierung der Arbeitsstatistik, leicht ähnliche Einrichtungen treffen!
English translation: And yet, in connection with the supreme workers' insurance offices in Germany and Austria as well, similar institutions could easily be established for the at last adequately extensive cultivation of labour statistics!
The study joins a defence of collective organization to a demand for better empirical knowledge. Strikes are historically productive conflicts whose consequences depend on economic timing, resources, and institutional development, not disturbances adequately judged by their immediate monetary cost.
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