STRIKES.

If Mr. Ellis Parker Butler were writing "Pigs is Pigs" today, shrewd literary critics would most certainly declare his story to be an allegory characterizing America as the perplexed express-man and strikes as the guinea pigs, multiplying in geometrical progression.

The increase in strikes, however, is slightly more serious in its consequences than the increase in guinea pigs, for now we read that America is to be strangled by a general railway strike. Something must be done and done quickly. It is time for constructive, forceful, and yet liberal action.

Americans have always recognized the inalienable right to strike, and a law absolutely repressing that right would be dangerous not only in the effects on the workers, but in the enormous strengthening of governmental power for we should never forget that our government power for its citizens, and not they for it.

Although considerable strife and distress may be caused, few strikes can succeed without the backing of public opinion. As soon as popular sentiment has crystallized one way or the other, the strike is won or lost. Consequently, not only the most expedient but the faired dissaray of eliminating strikes would be by the creation of a government board of experts with full power to investigate industrial disputes and publish broadcast its findings. If this board consisted of experts of unimpeachable fairness--men like the late Henry D. Endicott--trusted by capital and labor alike, its recommendations would decide the issue. For either the employers or workers to refuse voluntarily to follow the investigation board's finding would be flying in the face of popular opinion. In the resulting disapproval would nullify any benefits the strike might have produced.

To prohibit strikes by law would be un-American; to continue with no agency for promoting industrial peace is suicidal. Only through the creation of a board with compulsory powers of investigation will the germs that breed industrial strife be destroyed. And with such a board functioning, the menace of strikes based on ignorance, misrepresentation, and falsehood would be removed; and industrial justice, one of the great promises of American life, would be measurably nearer fulfillment.