Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-08-29

Gentlemen of the Congress 1 have
| come to you to seek your assistance
! in dealing with a very grave situation
which has arisen out of the demand
of the employees of the railroads en-
gagged in freight train service that they
be granted an S-nour working day,
safeguarded by payment for an hour
and a half of service for every hour of
work beyond the eight.
The matter has been agitated for
more than a year. The public has
been made familiar with the demands
| of the men and the arguments urged
in favor of them, and even more fam
iliar fifth the objection o fthe rail-
| roads and their counter demand that
| certain privileges now enjoyed by their
men and certain basis of payment
worked out through many years of
| contest be reconsidered. especially in
their relation to the adoption of an
| eight-hour day. The matter came
some three weeks ago to final issue
| and resulted in a complete deadlock
| between the parties. The means pro-
vided by law for the mediation of the
controversy failed and the means or
| arbitration for which the law provides
were rejected. The representatives of
the railway executives proposed that
the demands of the men be submitted
| in their entirety to arbitration, along
as to pay and conditions of employ
ment which seemed to them to be
either closely associated with the de-
| mands or to call for reconsideration
| on their own merits; the men abso-
lutely declined arbitration, ,es pecially if
any of their established privileges were
/ by that means to be drawn again in
question. The law in the matter put
no compulsion upon them. The 400,-
| 600 men from whom the demands pro-
| ceed had voted to strike If their de-
mands were refused; the strike was
imminent; it has since been set for
the fourth of September next.
VIII ParaIyze Nation
1t affects the men who freight
trains on practically every railway in
the country. The freight service
throughout the United States must
stand still until their places are filled,
| it, indeed, it should prove possible to
| fill them at all. Cities will be cut off
from their food supplies, the whole
commerce of the nation will be para
| lyzed, men of every sort and occupa-
tion will be thrown out of employ
ment, countless thousands will in all
! likelihood be brought, it may be, to
the very point of starvation, and a
| tragical national calamity brought on,
to be added to the other distresses of
the time, BECAUSE no basis of accom-
mediation or settlement has been
| found.
Just so soon as it became evident
that mediation under the existing law
! had failed and that arbitration had
been rendered impossible by the at
| titude of the men, l considered it my
! duty to confer with the representatives
of both the railways and the brother
hoods, and myself offer mediation, not
| as an arbitrator but merely as spokes-
man of the nation, in the interest of
| justice, indeed and as q friend of
both parties, but not as Judge, only as
! the representative of one hundred
millions of men, women and children
! who would pay the price, the meal
culable price, of loss and suffering
should these few men insist upon ap-
preaching and concluding the matters
| in controversy between them merely
as employers and employees, rather
! than as patriotic citizens of the United
! States looking before and after and
accepting the larger responsibility
which the public would not put upon
| them.
Speaks For S-Hour Day
ut seemed to me, in considering the
subject matter of the controversy that
the whole spirit of the time and the
/ preponderant evident of recent econ
omic experience spoke for the eight
/ hour day. It has been adjudged by
years a thing upon which society is
! justified in insisting as in the interest
/ of health, efficiency, contentment, and
a general increase of economic vigor.
THE whole presumption of modern
experience would, 1t seems to me, be
| in its favor, whether there was arbitra-
| ton or not, and the debatable points
to settle were those which arose out
/ of the acceptance of the eight-hour
day rather than those which affected
! its establishment. |, therefore, pro-
posed that the eight-hour day be
adopted by the railway managements
and put into practice for the present
as a substitute for the existing ten
hour basis of pay and service; that l
should appoint, with the permission of
Congress, a small commission to OBJ
serve the results of the change, care
fully studying the figures of the
altered operating costs, not only, but
also the conditions of labor under
which the men worked and the opera
ton of their existing agreements with
the railroads, with instructions to re-
port the facts as they found them to
| the congress at the earliest possible
day, but without recommendation;
and that, after the facts had been thus
disclosed, an adjustment should in
some orderly manner be sought of all
the matters now left unadjusted be-
tween the railroad managers and the
men.
Supreme Court Proposal
| These proposals were exactly in
line, it is interesting to note, with the
position taken by the Supreme Court
of the United States when appealed to
to protect certain litigants from the
! financial losses which they confidently
expected if they should submit to the
regulation of their charges and of
| their methods of service by public
legislation. The court has held that
it would not undertake to form a
! judgment upon forecasts, but could
base it's action only upon actual ex-
perience; that it must be supplied
with facts, not with calculations and
opinions, however scientifically at
tempted. To undertake to arbitrate
the question of the adoption of an s.
hour day in the light of results merely
estimated and predicted would be to
undertake an enterprise of conjecture.
No wise man could undertake it, or,
If he did undertake it, could feel as
sured of his conclusion.
BFotherhoods Accepted
'I unhesitatingly offered the friendly
services of the administration to the
railway managers to see to 1t that JUS
tice was done the railroads in the out
come. / felt warranted in assuring
them that no obstacle of law would be
suffered to stand in the way of their
increasing their revenues to meet the
expenses resulting from the change so
far as the development of their busi-
ness and of their administrative eff
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