[Letter] August 23,[1892] [to F.H. Giddings]

August 23, [1892], n. p. 

Dear Friend,
       I have kept up a
thinking since the Central
strike has been pending;
and want soon to get
your notion of the outcome
of the cogitation. I encounter
comparatively few people who
sympathize with the men.
Now I think Webb is as
nearly all wrong and the men
almost as completely right
as is possible in a great
contest of this kind. Webb 
now claims the right to
ignore the men's interest in
the question of discharges,
at least in any collective
sense. He will turn off
whom he will, give no reason,
refuse investigation, and, when
pressed to the wall give vague
accusations of "drunkenness
incompetence etc," while still
refusing to try the cases of the
particular men affected. So
the case appears to me from
the press accounts. Am I
right or wrong?
 This is all introductory
to my cogitations - on this
Sunday A.M. I am of the
following conviction concerning
strikes, namely that it is
the duty of the state, instead
of aiming to prevent
strikes as inherently evil,
to make it possible to
inaugurate a strike at a
moment's notice, without
stopping or checking the
business operation affected.
How would it do for the
state to determine by a
general statute what shall
constitute a casus belli
between men and employers,
and to establish courts for this
preliminary determination.
Let the men present their
case to this preliminary court
(or let the employers do the
same) and let it be
authoritatively declared whether
there is or is not a
valid cause of a strike (or a
lockout). If there is let
it take place at once;
that is let the relation of
employers and employed cease,
but let the effect of the
cessation be to bring in
the state as a new
entrepreneur, taking the
capital from the company
and the labor from the
men, combining them
under its own direction,
and carrying on the
business in the interest
of (a) the public (b)
the men and (c) the
employers. Let it take
from the returns enough
to pay all costs; let
it pay the men a strike
stipend per day, and the
capitalists a strike
interest for the time that
adjustments of the original
difficulty may require,
and use the balance, if there is one, for a general
fund to meet labor
emergencies.
 Would the men
always submit to this
and work under the gun?
If not they would stand as
by their own act officially
black-listed. The
employers could be made to
submit anyhow.
 Any scheme whatever will
have its difficulties. The
aim is to weigh them and
find which are least. At
this writing I think they are
least in the case of this
scheme. What say you?

    Yours Very Truly,
         J. B. Clark

P.S. 
I see that this
hasty letter may convey the
idea that I think the plan
proposed is easy; also that
it is for general adoption
in all industries. Perhaps
the only present question
is something like this; is
some kind of temporary
receivership the thing to be
resorted to, not after strikes
are in progress and traffic
stopped, but before the
strike? Is this right in
principle, whatever may be
true of details? There would
be a question, in the case
of railroads, whether in
case a casus belli existed
between one order of workmen,
say firemen, and the co.,
a receiver would have to take
the whole business for the
time being. Also a lot of
other questions. I understand
the receivership has only been
advocated as a remedy when
the common carrier can
no longer do his work.

               J. B. C.