The wages of the trainmen, after the reduction in June, 1877, were as follows, to wit; Freight conductors: first class, two dollars and twelve cents per day; second class, one dollar and ninety-one cents per day; brakemen, one dollar and forty-five cents per day, and the day's work averaged from seven hours and twenty-five minutes, the shortest time, to eight hours and thirty-five minutes, the longest time. These wages were good wages for the amount of labor performed per day, and if the men could make full time, would amount to thirty-eight dollars and seventy cents per month for brakemen, and fifty-five dollars and twelve cents for first class conductors. This was higher wages than the same class of men could get in other employments and seemed to be, as stated by the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, some twenty per cent. higher than the wages paid in other lines of business, the company intending to keep the wages of its men about so much more than is paid in other occupations on account of the risk taken by the trainmen. It is claimed by the railroad officials that the depression in freight traffic on the railroads, both in amount and in price, required a consequent reduction in the expenses of the railroads, and the reduction of June, 1877, they asserted to be justifiable, under all the circumstances, and it is the opinion of your committee that, if before it had gone into effect, the men had been made fully acquainted with the reasons for the step taken, and the necessity of it, in short, treated as if they were reasonable men and entitled to consideration, very much of the dissatisfaction would not have existed, and the country might possibly have been spared the troublous scenes through which it passed at that time. No doubt the fact that a strike of the trainmen of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad had taken place at Martinsburg, West Virginia, on the 16th of July, and was gaining strength and headway, had its influence in determining the trainmen of the Pennsylvania railroad, at Pittsburgh, to commence their strike at that place, and, in consequence thereof, a much less grievance was needed than would otherwise have sufficed, as an excuse for their action. The fact, also, that the trainmen on other railroads were rapidly following suit, and stopping the running of freight trains on such roads, encouraged the men to persist in their course to stand out and prevent, by force, trains from being run on the Pennsylvania railroad.