During my first term it befell that our city was torn by strikes, all the union machinists in town walked out, then the moulders, and at last a great factory wherein automobiles were made was “struck,” as the workingmen say. It is impossible to give an idea of the worry such a condition causes officials. It is more than that sensation of weariness, of irritation, even of disgust, which it causes the general public. This is due partly to the resentment created by the interference with physical comfort, and even peace of mind, since there is in us all something more than a fear of disorder and tumult, in that innate love of harmony which exists potentially in humanity. But to the official there is a greater difficulty because of the responsibility to which he is held. People intuitively regard strikers as public enemies, and while the blame for the irritation caused by strikes is visited on the direct and apparent cause, that is, the strikers themselves; it is visited, too, on the official head of the local government, who is supposed to be able somehow to put a stop to such things. The general or mass intelligence will not as yet go much deeper than the superfices of the problem, or seek to understand the causes of economic unrest and disorder; it still thinks in old sequences and puts its trust in the weapons of the flesh. I think I shall never forget the first call I had from a delegation of manufacturers during the early days of those strikes. They came in not too friendly spirit, but rather in their capacity of “citizens and tax-payers,” standing on their rights, as they understood them, though they in common with most of us and with the law as well, had only the most hazy notions as to what those rights were, and perhaps still hazier notions as to their duties. “We come,” said the spokesman, “representing two millions of dollars’ worth of property.”