Arizona republican., 1921-10-17
The Railway Strike

No one foreten the extent of the railway strike to begin October 30. That it will be the greatest in the history of railroads, though we may reasonably expect How it will be ended is , matter of conjecture, but that 1t will be ended promptly may easily believe.
 is not at all likely that there will be such thing complete te-up' which the railroad work CTS predict. In way another some trains will be kept moving if it is decreed by the United States government that they shall move and there will certainly be such decree. for the United States government is the people of the United States.
 In a sense. this will be strike not against the owners of the railroad against the government; against order made by government board If the strikers should win, the government will have backed down. We do not think the government will back down. If it should so, every citizen who is not a striker but who is part of the government would something of humiliation; every striker would feel something of contempt.
 There is a plain trail from the present situation back to enactment of the Adamson law five years ago. Then for the first time the govern ment earned the contempt of citizens, railway work CTS and railway workers alike by yielding to an unjust and tmperous demand. That only small beginning of a series of surrenders. through which the government, the workers and the roads became demorazed.
 But for that 1t would perhaps not have been necessary government to engage in the costly experiment of railroad administration as a ure Simple legislation giving the government control but not direction the roads, for ice would probably been sufficient and the government would have been better and more eco- nomically than 1t served itself
 half million men, understand ordered to go out on october 30. Whether half million men are going obey that order we yet to see. But if so half million entirely too few to halt for long the business of the United of a determined government and the government cannot afford to be other than determined when challenged it is now.
 The worst result of the strike would not be the cutting of communication but it would be the intens- flying of the already serious unemployment situation. There are in this country 5.5oo,o00 men out of employment. this list 1t is proposed to add half million at single stroke. But millions more would be added from shops and factories which would be compelled to shut down for lack of materials Likewise throughout the country, in every city and town carpenters, brickmasons of every trade and craft would be thrown of em- ployment if the strike should be prolonged.
 We are not discussing the merits of the strike or the justice the proposed cut in That has been gone over by parties the dispute, the railway workers, the railways and the government. There is apparently nothing arbitrate and if there were there will be nobody to arbitrate it. Everybody will be involved in the encoming conflict.
 As to the right of the workers to refrain, in the orderly way they have so moved, from working, there should be dispute There, though their rights and privileges end Nor there be dis putting of the proposition that is the business of the government that the trains kept moving.