The following three years brought a duplication of the developments of 1903-1906. Again membership fell off only to return in the spring of 1909. Again the union demanded formal recognition, and again it was refused. Again the original award was extended for three more years. In the winter of 1912, when the time for renewing the agreement again drew near, the entire membership in the three anthracite districts was slightly above 29,000. Nevertheless, the union demanded a twenty percent raise, a complete recognition of the union, the check-off, and yearly agreements, in addition to a more expeditious system of settling local grievances to replace the slow and cumbersome joint arbitration boards provided by the award of the Commission. A strike of 180,000 anthracite miners followed on April 1, 1912, during which the operators made no attempt to run their mines. The strike ended within a month on the basis of the abolition of the sliding scale, a wage increase of approximately 10 percent, and a revision of the arbitration machinery in local disputes. This was coupled with a somewhat larger degree of recognition, but by no means a complete recognition. Nor was the check-off system granted. Strangest of all, the agreement called for a four-year contract, as against a one-year contract originally demanded by the union. In spite of the opposition of local leaders, the miners accepted the agreement. President White's chief plea for acceptance was the need to rebuild the union before anything ambitious could be attempted. After 1912 the union entered upon the work of organization in earnest. In the following two years the membership was more than quadrupled. With the stopping of immigration due to the European War, the power of the union was greatly increased. Consequently, in 1916, when the agreement was renewed, the miners were accorded not only a substantial wage increase and the eight-hour day but also full recognition. The United Mine Workers have thus at last succeeded in wresting a share of industrial control from one of the strongest capitalistic powers of the country; while demonstrating beyond doubt that, with intelligent preparation and with sympathetic treatment, the polyglot immigrant masses from Southern and Eastern Europe, long thought to be impervious to the idea of labor organization, can be changed into reliable material for unionism. The growth of the union in general is shown by the following figures. In 1898 it was 33,000; in 1900, 116,000; in 1903, 247,000; in 1908, 252,000; and in 1913, 378,000.[58] (2) _The Railway Men_