Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1916-08-17
President Lays Before
Them Plan For Set
ting Strike
TODAY's CONFERENCE
Rrotberhoods Asked to Agree to Fed
eral Arbitration Of Pay for Time
Over S-Hour Day

! Washington. Aug. 17-Six hundred
cbairmen of railway employers union
representing the railroad workers o1
the United States, arrived in Wash
ington on special trains last night tc
narticipate tomorrow in the mos,
momentous meeting in all the histor!
of organized labor.
President Wilson received these
men in the East Room of the White
House today. He laid before them
the Presidential plan for settling their
! differences with the railroads ant
thereby avoid the paralyzing revolt
which last night still threatened the
country.
Upon their acceptance or declina-
tion of his plan rests war or peace.
Officials of both sides still keer
scrupulously inviolate the silence i'm
posed on them by the President, but
it is possible to indicate what conces-
sions the workers will be asked to
grant as their share toward avertine
the strike.
The first and great concession, it is
understood, will be that the railroad
employees abandon their stand against
the principle of arbitration in the mat
ter of time and a half pay for over
time.
The railroad managers have agreed
to. the principle Of. a shorter work
day. They are willing to institute an
eight hour day, hut in the meantime
according to the terms of this con-
cession, non-partisan commission is
to investigate the practicability OF
the plan and to determine in addition
whether time and half pay after an
eight hour day would be wrongful
infliction upon the railroads.
The program which the unions must
accept or reject is said to amount to
this:
To continue work on an eight-hour
day basis.
To agree to a Federal investigation
of the problem of hours and pay.
That if the hour and half over
time pay is found by this investiga-
tion to be just the agreement will be
retroactive and the men will be paid
for their overtime at the rate of time
and half from the date of the
agreement.
That if the time and half is found
not to be practicable the men agree te
arbitrate the matter of a just over
time wage.
\: Both sides, behind locked and guard
ed. doors, spent yesterday feverishiy
at work compiling their estimates of
the cost to the railroads of tine-and.
a-half over time.
C. P. Neill, P. E. Crowley ana
Elisha Lee, representing the railroads
went to the White House and left
data to prove that an eight-hour day
and the time and a half would cost
the railroad companies S100,O00,0OC
year. The railroad brotherhood
claims that the wage increase would
cost only S2O,0OO,OOO.
Between these figures Federal ex.
perts have interposed an estimate
understood to be s3O,OOOO00. This es.
innate has been placed in the hands
of the President by Judge William L
Chambers, of the Federal Board Of
Mediation, who continues to be th'
Presidents chief adviser.
1t was not possible to find any chair
man among. the union contingent ar
irving last night who would admi
that settlement was possible, al
though there was a noticeable absenc
of the vindictive attitude which tn
). brotherhood leaders have displayet
during the last few days.
The chairman declared they had n
intention of receding from the posi-
tion laid. down. by the unions earl
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