On July 12th the board met and organized, electing me as chairman. The decisions of the board were to be binding for one year and thereafter could be terminated by either side upon a thirty days' notice. For two weeks we held hearings, morning and afternoon, at the Oriental Hotel, Manhattan Beach, New York. When the hearings were over, the board adjourned until early September, when the work of making the awards was begun. Because of my nomination for Governor by the Progressive Party at the time, I found it advisable to relinquish the chairmanship of the board to Dr. Van Hise, although I continued my membership and active interest to the end.
The hearings were reported and consisted of 1250 pages of testimony. The questions that confronted the board were not alone whether or not the wages in a given case should be raised, but, if it was found that the rate was inadequate, by what margin should it be increased? It was fairly difficult to arrive at principles of standardization applicable to so many roads, and to fix a basis of differentiation for the many and complicated branches of employment. The whole subject, however, had our most careful and painstaking consideration. We took up the whole intricate problem of the running of railroads, with relation to the several kinds of work performed by the engineers, in passenger service, freight service, in switching, and in yard work, bearing in mind always that railways were public utilities and that the necessities and comfort of the whole people depended upon their functioning; and that therefore the necessity for uninterrupted service far transcended the interests of either the roads on the one side or the employees on the other.
Our decisions as finally printed made a book of one hundred and twenty-three pages. One of our chief recommendations was that National and State wage commissions be created which should function in relation to labor engaged in public utilities as the public service commissions functioned toward capital. I quote from the report:
Especially for the public utilities is it important that labor should have a just wage, and if the existing wages are not adequate, they should be increased. If a just increase in wages places the public utilities in a position that does not enable them to secure a fair return upon capital invested and maintain a proper reserve, they should be allowed to increase their rates until they are in that position.
Another point upon which we laid stress was the limitation of the right to strike:
While it is clear from the public point of view that a concerted strike of railway employees for a great region would be as intolerable as a strike of the postal clerks; on the other hand, the position of the employees is a very natural one. They feel under existing conditions that the power to strike is their only weapon of defense against employers and the only means by which they can enforce a betterment of their conditions of service. They realize, too, that the principle of concerted action, for all the railroads in a great section of the country, gives them a most effective weapon, and they are naturally loath to relinquish or impair it.
While this is the situation under the present conditions, and the railway employees feel that they cannot surrender their right to strike, the necessity would no longer exist for the exercise of this power, if there were a wage commission which would secure them just wages.
Finally, it is the belief of the Board that in the last analysis the only solution—unless we are to rely solely upon the restraining power of public opinion—is to qualify the principle of free contract in the railroad service. A strike in the army or navy is mutiny and universally punished as such. The same principle is applied to seamen because of the public necessity involved. A strike among postal clerks, as among the teachers of our public schools, would be unthinkable. In all these cases, the employment, to borrow a legal phrase, is affected with a public use; and this of necessity qualifies the right of free concerted action which exists in private employments.
However, if the principle be accepted that there are certain classes of service thus affected with a public interest and men who enter them are not free concertedly to quit the service, then these men must be guarded in the matter of wages and conditions by public protection; and this it is believed can best be done through an interstate wage commission.
The report was signed by six members of the board, Mr. Willard adding an explanatory statement. Mr. Morrissey wrote a dissenting opinion. For a number of years the findings of this board, with slight alterations, continued to be effective in adjusting wages for the different kinds of service among the engineers, and in governing conditions and number of working hours of the employees.
The President's Industrial Conference of 1919-20, of which I was a member, was of value chiefly in that it correlated the best ideas in practice throughout the country with regard to the prevention and relief of industrial unrest and the betterment in general of the relationship between employer and employee, and that it published suggestions based on these ideas, of which the main points were the following: