Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-02-13
A YOUNG RAIL UNION WOULD
ROUGH-HOUSE THE COUNTRY!
Threats Of Strike Come, Thus Far, only
From Helpless and Unruly Infant
Among the Brotherhoods

IHIedI Oh railway SIrlkS, nave Ine
youngest of the big unions. They were
not organized until the government took
control of the lines. Their recent ma
neuvers, organized independently of the
other big railroad brotherhoods, reveal
the reckless lack of self-control that is
inevitable when great energy is Joined
with inexperience.
The unions membership is made up
very largely of track-repair men. 1t in
cludes some carpenters and bridge work
ers. The maintenance -of-way men
could not tie up the rail system. But
they found, in their short life as a
brotherhood, that threats and gestures
were profitable. So it is not surprising to
find their organization now in the role of
the fierce tiger cub of unionism and de-
termined to rough-house the country.
1t happens, however, that the main
tenance-of-way men have a big dispute
on with the Federation of Labor, which
shows no disposition to support this
latest adventure in industrial terro-is ism.
The trainmen's brotherhoods, including
the engineers and firemen agree in the
general demand for wage increase. But
they have made it plain through their
spokesman at Washington, Mr.. Lee, that
they are not yet ready to go to the extent
of strike.
The older brotherhoods, being eX-
perienced, are more conservative. The
maintenance of-way mems organization
is, as we have said, young. 1t is head
long. But until it can convert all the
other brotherhoods to policy of wild
unwisdom it will not strike. Alone it
could not stop transportation.
1t may be admitted that the wages of
railway men have not kept pace with the
upward flight of living costs.
Whose wages have?
Railroad workers have had better op-
portunities than most people to meet,
without hardship, the economic stresses
of the period. Members of the train
mems brotherhoods are the aristocrats
of organized labor. If the President, the
public and the railway executives were
not now doing their utmost to make life
comfortable for the railmen the talk of
A vast strike now heard in Washington
and at the maintenance -of-way mems
Headquarters in Detroit would be less eX-
asperating.
There will be no strike if Mr.. Wilson
sustains Mr. Hines, whose view 1t is, ap-
parently, that the people of the country
should have a chance to recover from
their own immense difficulties before they
are compelled to assume additional bur-
! dens actually greater than they can bear.
All the older brotherhoods have car
| ried on their negotiations lately with pa
| tience and without violent talk. One
| belligerent union has sent its represent
atives to Washington to threaten the
| government and to take advantage of the
unsettled state of affairs in the railroad
administration.
These men are exalted with a sense of
power that is far from being justified.
| Thev represent carpenters who draw pay
| as high as that earned by locomotive en-
| gineers. They speak for track workers
| whose pay has been increased several
! times within the last few years. Yet
! thew are threatening the country with
| paralvsis in the demand for more.
This is not scientific. 1t is irritating
| and it is unfair, and, above all, it is un-
| wise.
| Recent events made it pretty clear that
YOU cannot tie up and paralyze any sys-
| tenn of essential utilities in any civilized
| nation. no matter what cause you at
tempt to serve by such method. The
| coal strike proved this. The British
railway men have an organization that is
| even closer than the American brother
hoods, vet the attempt to paralyze trans
portation in England for limited period
was failure.
Opinion not only outside the railway
mems organization, but within it, re-
volted. There is a hardening conviction
everywhere in the civilized world that
reason must be substituted for violence
and that even when injustice exists sin
cere minds must be given time to deal
with it cleanly and decently
IF the maintenance-of-Way men had
wiser leaders they would know all this
They would know that we, like the Eng
Itch are a nation of mechanics, Even
a General railway strike in either coun-
tr,T could do no more than cripple trans
nortation systems and disarrange sched-
ules.
The instinct of civilization is against
anv one who, for any reason, would apply
methods of brutal attrition to a whole
nation.
So schemes such as are talked of by
Incorporate leaders of one of the railway
unions will always be fought bitterly,
even by people who are ardent friends OF
labor unionism and believers in its logi-
cal purposes.
Some of the union leaders at Washing
ton, therefore, have been threatening
what they must know to be impossible
Their present appeals are illogical
; Neither the government nor the railroad
executives can take any more money out
of the pockets of the rank and file in
America to pay increased wages to one
, group of workers for the simple reason
| 4hnt thn nnnnle cannot afford to paw more