NEW YORK BUILDING TRADES PARALYSIS OF 1903 765
tion, and when, is not so easy to decide. It is not always and necessarily the large concern. It was a group of independent contractors, according to a further showing by the writer above referred to, that bribed the entrance of a new union of painters and decorators into the New York field, and then made a secret agreement with the newcomers to work for less wages than they were pledged to their fellow-union to demand.
The final outcome of the situation is not yet fully in sight. The group of new unions formed with the co-operation of the employers' association offers a convenient magnet for desert- ers from the strikers' ranks, and if the struggle should be long prolonged the magnet may prove all-powerful. Certain it is that the building industry in the metropolis is desperately demoral- ized, and in all probability resumption of work will be a gradual process, accompanied by equally gradual elimination of the old basis of relations with labor and substitution of a new modus operandi, with arbitration for its keynote. Probably there will be no dramatic finish, as in the coal and steel strikes ; no grand "declaring off " and beginning all over again; no specific cal- endar date on which it will be possible to say the trouble was settled and operations all along the line suddenly resumed. A silent transformation is going on. Its progress will be hard to follow. Perhaps in a year it will be possible to say that entirely new conditions are here, and state what they are. But not yet.
From the standpoint of labor, the moral effect of the New York struggle, as of all disputes where similar elements are allowed to control, has been most unfortunate. Very largely the impression that went out from the situation was that Parks virtually represented New York labor unionism and its present tendencies. It is true he exercised a control over affairs alto- gether out of proportion to his recognized leadership among labor men, but this is owing to the peculiarities of the building industry. The housesmiths happen to hold the key to all active operations in that none of the other divisions of work can pro- ceed except in the wake of the steel structural work. When the housesmiths are idle, everything else is blocked. That is why Parks, by holding his union aloof, could appear to dominate the
