trike in June, when
the dockers in many places struck in sympathy, at the same time adding
demands of their own. When the seamen won their strike, they refused to
go back to work at several points, against the advice of their
conservative officials, until the dockers received what they were
striking for. With the dockers were involved teamsters, and these from
the first had agreed to support one another, for _they were both
connected with Mr. Mann's "National Transport Workers' Federation_." And
the railway strike was largely due to the fact that the railway unions
decided at least _to cooeperate_ with this federation. The dockers had
remained on strike at Liverpool in sympathy with the railway porters who
had struck in the first instance to aid the dockers, and at the first
strike conference of the railway union officials, forty-one being
present, it was voted unanimously "that the union was determined not to
settle the dispute with the companies unless the lockout imposed upon
their co-workers because of their support of the railroad men at
Liverpool and elsewhere is removed and all the men reinstated."

There can be little doubt that the railway strike would neither have
taken place at the critical time it did, nor have gone as far as it
went, except for this new and concerted action which embraced even the
least skilled and least organized classes of labor.

Accompanying this movement toward common action, "solidarity" of labor,
and more and more general strikes, was the closely related reaction
against existing agreements--on the ground that they cripple the unions'
power of effective industrial warfare. For several years there had been
a simultaneous movement on the part of the "State Socialist" government
towards compulsory arbitration, and among the unions against any
interference on the part of a government over which they have little or
no control--the railway strike being directed, according to the
unionists, as much against the government as against the railways. For
many years the government, represented by Mr. Lloyd George or Mr.
Winston Churchill, had acted as arbitrator in every great industrial
conflict, and had secured many minor concessions for the unions. As long
as no critical conflict occurred that might materially weaken either the
government or the capitalist or employing classes as a whole, this
policy worked well. It was only by a railway strike, or perhaps by a
seamen's or miners' strike that