For many years, indeed, the struggle between employers and unions has been less acute in Milwaukee than in many other large cities, while wages and conditions are on the whole no better. The Milwaukee Socialists have repeatedly called the attention of employers to this relative industrial peace and have attributed it to their influence, much to the disgust of the more militant Socialists, who claim that strikes are the only indication of a fighting spirit on the part of the workers. Mr. Berger, for example, has explained "the rare occurrence of strikes in Milwaukee" as being due largely to the Social-Democrats of that city who, he says, "have opposed almost every strike that has been declared here."[154] Certainly the attitude of the Socialists towards the employers in one of the largest industries, brewing, has on the whole been exceptionally friendly, as evidenced among other things by the Socialists' appointment of one of a leading brewery manager (who was not even a Socialist) as debt commissioner of the city, and their active campaign for the brewing interests, including a denunciation of county option, though this measure has already been indorsed by both of the capitalistic parties even in the liquor-producing State of Kentucky, as well as elsewhere, and is favored by very many Socialists, not as a means of advancing prohibition, but as the fairest present way of settling the controversy. But even relative peace between capital and labor is not lasting in our present society and it will scarcely last in Milwaukee. Already there are signs of what is likely to happen, and the business-men admirers of Milwaukee Socialism are beginning to drop away. A few more strikes, and Berger and his associates may be forced to abandon completely their claim that it is to the interest of employers, with some exceptions, to elect Socialists to office. The situation after a recent strike in Milwaukee is thus summed up by the _New York Volkszeitung_, a great admirer, on the whole, of the Milwaukee movement:-- "The new measures which are taken for the betterment of the city transportation system, for the preparation of better residence conditions and parks for the poorer classes of the people," says the _Volkszeitung_, "did not much disturb Milwaukee's 'Best Society.' Rather the opposite. For all these things did not at the bottom harm their interests, but were, on the contrary, quite to their taste, in so far as they rather increased than injured the pleasure of their own lives. "But at last what had to happen, did happen. The moment a great conflict between capital and labor broke out in the great community of Milwaukee, the caliber of the city administration was bound to show itself....