In October last they took the 12 per cent. cut in their wages--roughly speaking, half a billion dollars. They did not want to take that; the hot-heads in the organization talked "strike" and a national tie-up of our rail transport machine. If it could have been achieved it would have been a real national calamity. As it was, the country had a very bad state of nerves over the mere possibility of the thing. The strike was an impossibility. Many of the railroad executives in their hearts wanted it. With labor conditions as they were across the country, with the unwillingness (to put it mildly) of the average man to have his comfort and necessities interfered with no matter how much right or justice might be involved in the situation, the executives held all the cards. The leaders of the men knew that. Therefore there was no strike. Strikes are rarely popular when times are dull. Perhaps it is knowing this that a certain group of railroad executives--there is no great unanimity in the matter--is steadily pressing toward a further wage reduction of another 10 per cent. I shall refrain from comment upon the wisdom or unwisdom of such a further step at this time. That the very executives who are urging it are, I think, none too sure of their position is indicated by the fact that they are coupling the proposed reduction with vague suggestions that if it is granted they will reduce their freight-rates, at least, correspondingly. The idea of reducing rates to build up traffic apparently does not even come into the reckoning. * * * * * Would you understand this situation better? Then come back with me for a moment to those humming summer days of 1920 when the railroads of the United States were still in record-breaking traffic. It is June, 1920; a sluggish hot evening in the city of Chicago. Eight railroad engineers, members in good standing of their brotherhood, are set upon by a gang of organized thugs--in the picturesque phraseology of the railroaders, a "wrecking crew"--in the shadows of the great Northwestern Terminal, and so badly beaten up that they have to be sent to the nearest hospitals for treatment. Yet the Chicago newspapers of the very next morning announced with a sort of smug optimism that "satisfactory progress" was being made with the switchmen's strike. They predicted an early break-up of the entire "outlaw" walk-out (which had been in progress since the preceding April), and apparently without a definite knowledge that each ensuing twenty-four hours were seeing the whole outrageous business gain in its vicious strength.