Up to that time we had had almost every thing difficult and disagreeable in our railroad debacle except physical violence. It then seemed to have embarked upon this final phase of badly disordered industrialism. The Chicago imbroglio was not particularly exceptional. Brotherhood men all over the country, members of the most powerful unions that this land has ever known, literally went to their work nightly in fear and in trembling. In few of our big cities is police protection to-day at its highest point of efficiency--for a variety of reasons, which need no particular explanation here and now. This means, in turn, that rowdyism and thugism are at high-water marks. When these are organized by brains and financed with plenty of real money they seem to go all unchecked. And loyal railroaders of every sort suffer the penalty, in the first instance at least, with the dear old public as usual in the role of the greatest sufferer and the final judge. Outrageous as it really was, the outlaw strike was one of the most human that this country has ever seen. It came as the logical result of official stupidity and procrastination. In January, 1919, the various groups of railroad employees, appalled, as was every other form of worker, by not only the steady but the extremely rapid increase in living costs, made applications for wage raises beyond those that the labor commission originally had granted--the so-called billion-dollar increase. So did other forms of labor ask for wage raises--and got them. The applications of the railroad workers remained under consideration after eighteen months. The Railroad Administration, even though it continued in full control of our carriers for fourteen months after the wage applications had been filed, passed the buck--and permitted the national agreements. That was politics. The recently created Railroad Labor Board sitting out at Chicago was going over all the testimony again, making solemn and voluminous proceedings of a business that might be decided, tentatively at least, in a week of real work. That was politics again.