The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1919-09-22
The Development of a Spine

The Development of Spine
There has never been general strike which
has been successful, and there has never been
strike of any importance which has been sue
cessfu that did not have the support of the
public, says the Christian Science Monitor. These
are two facts to be carefully weighed by the un-
ions which are now voting on the question of a
general strike in support of the Boston police.
A general strike is much more serious affair
than people are apt to realize, for the simple
reason that very few people have seen one in
practice. A general strike is really in the nature
of war against society. When furnaces are
banked down, shops closed and all traffic
brought to a standstill condition of things is
reached which is no better at all than war, war
indeed it really is, and a public which is threat
ened with such a should realize what 1T
means. A strike of this nature attempted
few years before the great war, in Belgium, but
it failed to become thoroughly effective owing
to the want of harmony between the Walloons
and the Flemings. A little later serious effort
was made along the same lines in England, but
this too brokesdown before it got positively dan
gerous. Any person. however, who Travelled
through Belgium in those days. and saw the
countryside quieter than on Sunday afternoon,
and the towns .shorn of all the hustle of COM
merce, must have realized the same thing as
those who the troops bivouackng in the Lon
don parks, and the stations with their gates
closed like vast empty warehouses, and that was
that a general strike, even when only partially
successful, was capable of inflicting enormous
suffering and loss.
Men who have never seen a general strike may
vote tolerably lht-heartedly on the subject.
Newspaper readers who have never experienced
one may find the preliminary stages quite inter-
esting but the real thing when it does is an
experience no one is likely to desire to see re-
peated. It is, therefore, little to be wondered
at if, as is reported, Mr.. Goupers and his lieuten-
ants not particularly pleased with the efforts
Of those who forced the present conclusion by at
tempting to un;onEze the police force in Boston.
The great mistake of these organizers was their
failure to recognize the fact that the war, which
has undoubtedly played great part in demo-
cratzirg the world, has also reused the general
public out Of its pre-war supine condition of the
;elly fish, and endowed it with a backbone which
may eventually prove stronger than that of any
labor union. The strike organizers proceeded on
the suppositon, for which there consider
able excuse, that they could go any length with
out rousing the pubic into resistance. For once
however, they discovered that they were mis-
taken. They discovered, moreover, that the
general public" contained an enormous number
of men who yesterday were soldiers in France
and that these men had learned something OF
that disregard of ease and contempt for taking
things lying down" which had been foreign tc
the invertebrate jelly fish Of pre-war days.
When, consequently, the labor unions proceed
to vote on the question of general strike it is
we'll for them to remember that the striker is
going to be brought face to face with the Same
privations anybody else, and perhaps face tx
face with greater pr.vations than Other
people. The general strike is not something
after the manner OF tse strike in Lawrence, that
be prolonged indies initely, for the simple
reason that the industrial life of country can
not possibly be paraly z9d ad infiniturn. The gen
cral strike, if complete would bring the food sup
plies of the districts AFFECTED in danger of ex
haustion in few houGs, and if on realizing what
was happening, the strikers should attempt tt
repeat the rioting of Aast week in Boston, they
might find that they were face to face with pre-
ventative measures which did not exist upon the
earlier occasion.
The fact is that the. public seems to have
made up its mind pretty definitely on the ques