Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1908-12-09
Roosevelt Does Effective Work
With a Measure Once Buried
and Forgotten
MEDIATION, NOT ARBITRATION
All Wages Disputes With Railway En-
pIoyes Settled During Year Without
Cont of MISUNDERSTANDING
Proves Failure, But Mediation is a
Grand Success.
Especial Correspondence).

effective administration of a law which
for nearly a decade after it passed was
dead letter, this country has passed
thru year of panic without single
roads.
Nothing like such record was ever
made, thruout year of financial de-
preston, including considerable
period Of acute panic, in any country
in the world
The Significance of the maintenance
Of the railroad wage schedule is appar-
ent when 1t is remembered that the
railroads employ something like L.
500 900 of men, and that they pay wages
that average very high. The beginning
of wage reductions by the railroad
systems would have marked it's inau-
guration in other lines OF business, and
year of depression might easily have
meant the loss to wage earners OF all
they had gained by the process of slow
accreton during a decade of prosper
ity and great business activity.
Roosevelt Revives Law.
IT regard this achievement as the
most remarkable, as it has thus far
been perhaps the least appreciated. of
the entire Roosevelt administration"
declared Commissioner of Labor
Charles p. Nell today When the panic
struck the country there We're some
people who recognized the overween-
ing Importance, of maintaining the
wage scales. Wages move upward by
slow and painful processes, even in the
best times; they are liable to sudden
and disastrous reductions, in bad times,
from which recovery is possible only
by the rigors of the hand over-hand
process Of climbing.
But this is not all. The duration and
intensity of the panic We're certain to
depend in large measure on the atti-
tude Of employers toward labor LII the
precedent of reducing wages had been
established early by the railroads, and
had spread thence, as would have been
inevitable, to other employments, the
eountry's capacity to buy, to consume,
to demand the products of industry,
would have been shortened Instead OF
going about the business of living IN
the usual way, people would suddenly
have felt the necessity to curtail eX-
penses. to wear their old shoes longer
to save something by wearing last
springs suit of clothes. That would
have reacted to the further depression
Of the business of making shoes ana
clothes and everything else. 1t would
have compounded the trouble.
"Therefore as matter OF the most
practical industrial psychology it was
necessary that the policy of reducing
wages should not be inaugurated The
railroads, because Of the governments
established regulatory power over
them, were the point Of greatest dan
ger and yet they also presented the
opportunity for the administration to
rnalte it's influence felt for the discour-
agement of such a tendency"
Arbitration Proves Failure.
/, Mr.. Neill has been in position to
Realize what has been accomplished,
and by what methods, toward conserv-
ing the scale Of wages and the stand
ard of living, because OF his service as
a member of the mediation board under
the Erdman law. This act, which for
nearly a decade was never invoked af-
ter 1t stood on the statute books, has
in the last year proved a marvel OF
practical efficiency in adjusting differ
ences between employers and en-
ployes.
Originally passed as both an arbitra-
ton and mediation act, the measure
was almost entirely devoted to a
scheme Of arbitration in industrial dis
putes. The mediation provision was
an incident and an after thought. 1t
was contained in a very few words in
the law, and nobody realized their
value.
Arbitration did not appeal to either
employers or employees. 1t involved
too much uncertainty. Each side was
fearful of entrusting it's case with ar
bitrators, and agreeing to stand by
the award, lest it should be betrayed.
So. as an arbitration measure, the
act failed utterly of its purpose.
The mediation provision was simple.
and ultimately appealed to disputants,
It created the chairman of the inter-
state commerce commission and the
commissioner Of labor as a mediation
board. Either side to an industrial
disagreement might invoke the good
offices of the mediators. If both sides
agreed to this, the mediators were
called into the case. They came in, not
as umpires or arbitrators, but as mu-
tual friends, to counsel and advise; to
conciliate rather than to irritate. They
had no power beyond this; and yet 1T
is a. fact that in no case in which they
have been summoned, have they failed
to negotiate a solution satisfactory to
both sides.
Work Extends Over Wide Area.
In a little more than two years since
this mediation provision came into
vogue for settlement of differences,
the mediators have considered disputes
which in the aggregate involved about
+f,ree-fourths of the railroad mileage
of the country. In one case they were
called in when the situation was
deemed by both sides entirely hope
| less. It involved the instant menace
of a strike that would have tied up
the whole railroad mileage west of
! Chicago. to the Pacific coast. They not
| only effected adjustment and avoided
a strike, but they sent away the lead
ers Of the labor organizations on one
side and of the railroad corporations
on the other, feeling more friendly
to each other than they had ever been
, before.
The latest achievement under the
mediation provision is the settlement
between the Pennsylvania system and