following year an award was made by a Presidential board of three, representing the employers, the union, and the public. The strikers, however, refused to abide by it and inaugurated a "vacation-strike," the individual strikers staying away on a so-called vacation, nominally against the will of the union officers. They finally returned to work. Both the steel and coal strikes furnished occasions for considerable anti-union propaganda in the press. Public sentiment long favorable to labor became definitely hostile.[90] In Kansas the legislature passed a compulsory arbitration law and created an Industrial Relations Court to adjudicate trade disputes. Simultaneously an "anti-Red" campaign inaugurated by Attorney-General Palmer contributed its share to the public excitement and helped to prejudice the cause of labor more by implication than by making direct charges. It was in an atmosphere thus surcharged with suspicion and fear that a group of employers, led by the National Association of Manufacturers and several local employers' organizations, launched an open-shop movement with the slogan of an "American plan" for shops and industries. Many employers, normally opposed to unionism, who in War-time had permitted unionism to acquire scope, were now trying to reconquer their lost positions. The example of the steel industry and the fiasco of the President's Industrial Conference crystallized this reviving anti-union sentiment into action. Meanwhile the railway labor situation remained unsettled and fraught with danger. The problem was bound up with the general problem as to what to do with the railways. Many plans were presented to Congress, from an immediate return to private owners to permanent government ownership and management. The railway labor organizations, that is, the four brotherhoods of the train service personnel and the twelve unions united in the Railway Employes' Department of the American Federation of Labor, came before Congress with the so-called Plumb Plan, worked out by Glenn E. Plumb, the legal representative of the brotherhoods. This plan proposed that the government take over the railways for good, paying a compensation to the owners, and then entrust their operation to a board composed of government officials, union representatives, and representatives of the technical staffs.[91] So much for ultimate plans. On the more immediate wage problem proper, the government had clearly fallen down on its promise made to the shopmen in August 1919, when their demands for higher wages were refused and a promise was made that the cost of living would be reduced. Early in 1920 President Wilson notified Congress that he would return the roads to the owners on March 1, 1920. A few days before that date the Esch-Cummins bill was passed under the name of the Transportation Act of 1920. Strong efforts were made to incorporate in the bill a prohibition against strikes and lockouts. In that form it had indeed passed the Senate. In the House