5. _The great losses caused by strikes are the penalty of an unsolved industrial problem._ The losses to workers in wages, to employers and to investors in income and property, and to the public in interruption of business, aggregate an enormous sum. It is, however, impossible to estimate it at all exactly, as the losses are in many cases indirect and intangible. The strikers are concerned not with the balance of total losses and total gains to society as a whole, but with the net gain that in the long run accrues to them. It is true that there are indirect gains not easily calculable, as the advance of wages made to avoid a strike while the lesson of the consequences is still fresh. Opinion among workingmen is not a unit as to the value of strikes. A few years ago it seemed safe to say that strikes were declining as compared with the period of the early eighties. It is probably true, as is often said, that as laborers become educated they put less faith in strikes. The epidemic of labor troubles, marking the years from 1899 to 1903, gave no evidence of a decrease in the use of strikes, yet many of these were due to the recent organization in various trades. The coal strike of 1902, though doubtless due to real grievances, was opposed by the officers of the union, an unusually capable set of men, but the more violent and discordant elements overruled the more pacific counsels. The public is perhaps as favorable as it has ever been to the cause of labor, but it appears to have less patience with strikes than it had fifteen years ago, and strikes usually fail if not backed by public opinion. The public has not as yet thought out consistent conclusions on the question of the rights of the union. It is just now much impressed with the value of arbitration. As experience destroys the unsound sentiments, and divides the wise from the unwise measures, a peaceable solution of industrial differences must and will be found. § III. COMBINATION AND WAGES [Sidenote: Wages are raised by a labor monopoly]