Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1916-09-01
Congress Should Act
To Avert the Strike.

- The Presidents address to Congress on the i'm
pending railway strike is a fair and lucid state
ment of the conditions leading up to this crisis.
the public disaster which il threatens and the
-eessary means by which it can be and must be
ayerted. The railway executives having rejected
the just and expedient plan of settlement which
the President first proposed and all other efforts
and agencies having failed it becomes the impers-
tive duty of COnsiess to enact fortiwti such legiS
lation as : rsqU:rsi to save the country IRON an
unspeakable calamity.
Had the railroads accepted the eight-hour-day
principle. the one point which the trainmen I'M
swervingly insisted and submitted the collateral is
sues of overtime pay and increased operating ex-
penses to impartial inquiry and arbitration, the
troversy would have been relieved of its dangerous
elements and could have been worked out in an at
mosphere of amity and reasonableness. But rather
than yield this one question, in which the trend
of the times is plainly against them they have put
their and the publics interests to the utmost
hazard. President Wilson truly describes this
aspect of the case when he says:
The railway managers based their decision
to reject my counsel in this matter upon their
= conviction that they must at any cost to them
selves or TO the country stand firm for the prin-
eiple of arbitration which the men had re-
ll jected. / based my counsel upon the indisput-
able fact that there was no means of obtaining
arbitration. The law supplied none; earnest eff
forts of mediation had failed to influence the
men in the least. To stand firm for the princi-
pie of arbitration and yet not get arbitration
seemed to me futile and something more than
futile. because it involved incalcuable distress
to the country and consequences in some re-
spects worse than those of war, and that in the
S midst Of peace"
But the contention of the railroads and of the
trainmen alike is overshadowed by the i'm
mensely greater question OF how to protect the
public's imperiled interests Unless Congress acts
promptly. commerce will be paralized, thousands
Upon thousands Of men in every field of industry
will be thrown of employment the country's en-
tire structure of business will be shaken want
If not actual starvation will be felt in hundreds of
thousands of homes 1t is idle at this juncture of
affairs to speculate upon who would be blame
worthy for these terrible misfortunes. The fact of
immediate Importance is that Congress can avert
them by acting at once the Presidents appeal
for preventive legislation; and Congress cannot fail
to act without becoming itself responsible.
The Presidents recommendations include the
establishment of an eight-hour day as the legal
basis OF work and wages for railway employees en-
gagged in operating trains in interstate commerce;
the appointment of a commission to observe Gin
actual experience the results of the eight-hour
day as 1t affects operating expenses and othersin-
terests of the railroads. together with the interests
of the employees the strengthening of the mediation
law with view to preventing strikes and lockouts
while industrial disputes are being investigated:
and the improvement of the President to operate
the railroads in case Of military necessity. II is
also proposed that the Interstate Commerce Com
mission be explicitly authorized to consider, in
anesions of freight rates increased costs incident
TO the eight-hOur plan.
These recommendations afford the basis for eff
fectusI action the part of Congress The well
fare of a hundred million people, indeed, the Sc
curity OF the nation itself demands that there be
delay in putting them into effect.