Viktor Mataja: Review of Tenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor: Strikes and Lockouts, Vol. I (1896)

Mataja’s review evaluates the methodological progress and remaining deficiencies of American strike statistics. The report covers January 1887 through June 1894, continuing the earlier survey of 1881–1886. Moving from the report’s organization and data collection to its statistical units, descriptive categories, and aggregate figures, Mataja argues that the new volume substantially improves the representation of industrial conflict without fully exploiting its extensive evidence.

The report retains its predecessor’s analytical introduction and separate general tables for strikes and lockouts; further summary tables are promised for a later part. Both surveys gathered newspaper reports and supplemented them through inquiries among employers, workers, and their organizations. Mataja questions the reliability of retrospective collection: the earlier inquiry began only in 1886, while the new report does not specify when its investigations commenced.

The decisive improvement is the adoption of the strike or lockout, rather than the individual establishment, as the statistical unit. This makes it possible to distinguish a conflict’s scale and character from the number of workplaces involved:

Dass auf diese Weise gerade einer der interessantesten Punkte der Strikesstatistik verwischt wurde, bedarf keiner weiteren Beweisführung; offenbar ist es eben sehr wichtig zu erfahren, nicht blos wie viele Etablissements und in welcher Art sie betheiligt waren, sondern auch, wie die Conflictsfälle selbst beschaffen waren und welche Ausdehnung dieselben besassen.

English translation: That in this way precisely one of the most interesting points of strike statistics has been blurred requires no further demonstration; it is obviously very important to learn not merely how many establishments were involved and in what manner, but also what the cases of conflict themselves were like and what extent they had.

For Mataja, the choice of counting unit determines what industrial conflict becomes visible. Yet the introduction’s emphasis on comparison with the earlier survey partly obscures this advance, and its limited analytical use of the material disappoints him.

His comparison of the table headings applies the same principle to descriptive detail. Removing dubious averages for large groups of workers is defensible, but eliminating almost all information on wage levels goes too far. Conversely, specifying the amount of a demanded wage increase or reduction in working hours makes strike objectives more intelligible. Such precision remains uneven:

Ganz verschwunden sind freilich auch jetzt recht allgemein gehaltene Angaben über die von den Strikenden verfolgten Zwecke, bezw. die von ihnen erhobenen Forderungen nicht; so wird z. B. bei den sogenannten Sympathiestrikes blos angegeben „aus Sympathie für einen anderen Strike“, nicht aber, welcher Strike dies ist.

English translation: To be sure, statements couched in quite general terms about the aims pursued by the strikers, or the demands raised by them, have not even now entirely disappeared; thus, for example, in the case of the so-called sympathy strikes it is merely stated "out of sympathy with another strike," but not which strike this is.

The example exposes a relational gap: recording solidarity without identifying the supported strike leaves the connection between conflicts unexplained. Mataja likewise objects to categories that collapse distinct questions about motivation and results:

In eine Trennung von Ursache und Zweck der Strikes geht die Statistik nicht ein, ebenso sind in den Mittheilungen hinsichtlich des Ausgangs der Conflicte nur die alten drei summarischen Kategorien: erfolgreich — mit theilweisem Erfolge — ohne Erfolg — in Anwendung, ohne dass in der Regel ein Versuch zur Auflösung der Verlegenheitsangabe „mit theilweisem Erfolge“ gemacht würde.

English translation: The statistics do not enter into any separation of the cause and the purpose of the strikes; likewise, in the communications regarding the outcome of the conflicts, only the old three summary categories are employed — successful, with partial success, without success — without, as a rule, any attempt being made to resolve the makeshift entry "with partial success."

His criticism is therefore not simply a demand for more data. He calls for distinctions that explain conflicts: causes versus objectives, specific demands versus general labels, and differentiated outcomes versus an opaque designation of partial success. These omissions seem especially avoidable because the report supplies information that is harder to collect and sometimes less important, including employers’ losses and replacement workers recruited elsewhere.

The closing figures establish the scale of the undertaking: the two surveys together record 14,389 strikes, affecting 69,166 establishments and leaving 3,714,231 employees out of work. Lockouts occupy a considerably smaller place. Mataja postpones detailed numerical interpretation until the promised summaries appear, but concludes with a positive assessment:

Hoffentlich liegt das Werk bald vollständig vor, wird es sich doch sicherlich als eine wichtige Quelle für die Erkenntnis der Arbeiterbewegung in Amerika bewähren.

English translation: It is to be hoped that the work will soon lie before us complete, for it will surely prove an important source for the knowledge of the labour movement in America.

The review’s lasting relevance lies in its distinction between statistical abundance and explanatory adequacy. Mataja recognizes an important source for American labor history while showing how units of observation, contextual information, and classifications govern its interpretive value.