.
It was a case of the worker's cupboard against the master's warehouse,
purse against bank account, poverty against wealth. The workers' chances
are slight in such a combat! A strike means that the employers on one
side, and the workers on the other, seek to force each other to
surrender by waiting patiently to see who first feels the pinch of
hardship and poverty. Employers and employees determine to play the
waiting game. Each waits patiently in the hope that the other will
weaken. At last one--most often the workers'--side weakens and gives up
the struggle. When the workers are thus beaten in a strike, they are not
convinced that their demands are unreasonable or unjust; they are simply
beaten because their resources are too small to enable them to stand the
struggle.

When the master class, the masters of jobs and bread, organized their
forces, they set narrow and sharp boundaries to the power of labor
organizations. Henceforth the chances of victory were overwhelmingly on
the side of the employers. The workers learned by bitter and costly
experience that they could not play the interests of individual
employers against other employers' interests. Meantime, too, they have
learned that they are not only exploited as producers, but also as
buyers, as consumers. For long, dominated by economic theories, the
Socialists refused to recognize this aspect of the labor struggle,
though the workers felt it strongly enough. They set their fine-spun
theories against the facts of life. Their contention was that wages
being determined by the cost of living, it mattered nothing how much or
how little the workers got in wages, the cost of living and wages
adjusted themselves to each other. But in actual experience the workers
found that when prices fall, wages are _quick_ to follow, whereas when
prices soar high, wages are _slow_ to follow. Wages climb with leaden
feet when prices soar with eagle wings. Because the workers are
consumers, almost to the last penny of their incomes, having to spend
practically every penny earned, that form of exploitation becomes a
serious matter.

But against this exploitation the unions have ever been absolutely
powerless. Workingmen have never made any very serious attempt to
protect the purchasing capacity of their wages, notwithstanding its
tremendous importance.[131] The result has been that not a few of the
"victories" so dearly won by trade union action have turned out to be
hollow mockeri