New-York tribune., 1919-08-11
BY Threat

of "threats and undue insistence upon
the interest of a single class"
Immediately the leaders of the fifteen
railroad unions now assembled at Wash
ington issued statement, saying:
1--WE unite in definite assertion that
we have no DESIRE and had none, to i'm
press upon the public, by violence or
threat, our proposal that the railroads be
nationaized under trpartte control"
This reassurng statement is very
carefully worded. Clearly it is meant to
be limited
For one thing, to say that you do not
desire to use violent means is not the
same as to promise that you will not.
Lenne would say that he had no desire to
resort to terrorism. The wicked obsti-
macy of the bourgeoisie in refusing to be-
come proetarian obliged him to do so.
Secondly, the disclaimer relates ex-
plicitly to the Plumb bill, which, as the
statement says, is but one of "two dis
tirctly separate considerations that now
confront the people"
The other is the wage question
As to that the fifteen unite in senti-
nent as follows:
an the matter Of wages have sub
mittcd eminently just proposition.
If Congress and the President
cannot meet this request, it is still liv-
ing question, and shall have to try to
ind another solution"
Polite and subtle euphemism.
mother so{ation!
Three years ago the four railroad
brotherhoods demanded a standard
eight-hour day, with time and a half for
overtime, which meant in practice more
pay for less work; refused fatty to arb-
trate and rejected every solution but
their own and their own was described
by President Wilson in his message TO
Congress thus:
"rhe men absolutely declined arbtra-
"Cities will be cut off from their food
tion viii be paralyzed, men of every sort
of occupation VIII be thrown out of en-
poyment, countless thousands will in all
likelihood be brought. il may be, TO the
very point of starvation and a tragcal
national calamity brought on"
To avert this unimaginable disaster
the President urged Congress to pass an
;ol> Il
called the Adamson bill, and he signed
it with four pens on Sunday morning,
September a, 1916, just in time to save
the country.
The brotherhoods would otherwise
have been obliged to lay their hands at
the throat of their country at o'clock
the next morning.
The pens were distributed among the
heads of the four brotherhoods as souve-
Mrs of the providential manner in which
they had been spared a disagreeable
duty, and two months later they formally
called upon the members of their organi-
cations to vote for Mr. Wilson's re-
election
When the fifteen heads of railroad
labor unite in the assertion that they do
not desire to impose the Plumb plan on
the public by violence, but that as to their
wage demands, if the President and Con-
gress cannot meet them, they shall have
to TRY to find another solution" what do
they mean?
In the light of experience, what NAV
one fairly suppose them to mean?
But it isn't necessary to speculate. We
have the text.
There is now before Congress plan
proposed by the Director General of the
Railroad Administration and indorsed by
the President, which provides for prop
ery constituted body representing both
the public and labor, with power to pass
on railroad wage problems-a plan
which provides, that is to say, for arbi-
tration. And as to this plan Mr.. B. NJ.
Jewell, acting president of the railway
department of the American Federation
of Labor, says:
II Congress adopts the plan proposed
BY Director General Hines and Pyesi-
dent Wilson aVe will tie the railsvays