"'The Government found itself in need of men, and on going out to get them found itself in competition with private industry, which was equally hard pressed. Men who had never drawn more than a common laborer's wages found themselves at a premium in the market, and began to ask and receive extortionate prices, and to rove from place to place seeking still higher prices. "'Everywhere industry was hampered by what is known as the turnover, or the constant shifting of itinerant labor, in some cases the loss in efficiency running as high as 100 per cent. This is what is perhaps best described as the evil of the individualistic strike--the strike by the man, thousands of him, in different yards and factories all over the country, who is forever throwing down his tools and wandering away on the slightest rumor of higher wages elsewhere, who by his habit of roving never masters the details of any trade, and who in the mass accounts for a greater loss than all the organized strikes and walkouts in the land.'" INFLUENCE OF WAR CONDITIONS In the United States under war conditions labor unrest did not reach the intense form manifested in England. Nevertheless a great many strikes were reported. Surprise was expressed that the labor adjustment machinery of the War Department and of the Navy Department was not appealed to. Besides there was the National War Labor Board to take up mediation. Investigations in Bridgeport, Connecticut, showed an increase of earnings of 81 per cent. against an increase of living prices of 61 per cent. Yet at one time the Press reported strikes in over 350 machine shops in New Jersey--nearly all engaged in necessary war work--as well as trouble in many shipyards. Of course there was the explanation of foreign propaganda or a tendency toward industrial Bolshevism. Such explanations failed to account for the fact that American workmen as a whole were patriotic. Attention was called, on the other hand, to the warm tribute given by the Federal Fuel Administrator to the bituminous coal miners who had brought production past the 13 million ton mark in the second week in July, 1917, and the exceptional efforts of diligent and patriotic workers in the shipyard. A portion of the press emphasized the unreasonableness of striking while the laboring people enjoyed, during war time, immunity from service and immunity from the pressure of competition for wages. The Springfield _Republican_ protested against applying to the workingmen exaggerated standards of economic rectitude. "It is easy to be harsh in one's judgment even in the case of the strikes that occur. Why do they strike at all while the war continues? Have they no capacity for self-sacrifice for the country? These questions will be asked by many people whenever war work anywhere is checked in the least degree by workmen dropping their tools.