Today ninety per cent of all the locomotive engineers in the United States and Canada belong to this union. But the Brotherhood early learned the lesson of exclusion. In 1864 after very annoying experiences with firemen and other railway employees on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad, it amended its constitution and excluded firemen and machinists from the order. This exclusive policy, however, is based upon the stern requirements of professional excellence and is not displayed towards engineers who are not members of the Brotherhood. Towards them there is displayed the greatest toleration and none of the narrow spirit of the "closed shop." The nonunion engineer is not only tolerated but is even on occasion made the beneficiary of the activities of the union. He shares, for example, in the rise of wages and readjustment of runs. There are even cases on record where the railroad unions have taken up a specific grievance between a nonunion man and his employer and have attempted a readjustment. From the inception of the Brotherhood, the policy of the order towards the employing railroad company has been one of business and not of sentiment. The Brotherhood has held that the relation between the employer and employee concerning wages, hours, conditions of labor, and settlement of difficulties should be on the basis of a written contract; that the engineer as an individual was at a manifest disadvantage in making such a contract with a railway company; that he therefore had a right to join with his fellow engineers in pressing his demands and therefore had the right to a collective contract. Though for over a decade the railways fought stubbornly against this policy, in the end every important railroad of this country and Canada gave way. It is doubtful, indeed, if any of them would today be willing to go back to the old method of individual bargaining, for the brotherhood has insisted upon the inviolability of a contract once entered into. It has consistently held that "a bargain is a bargain, even if it is a poor bargain." Members who violate an agreement are expelled, and any local lodge which is guilty of such an offense has its charter revoked. ¹ ¹ In 1905 in New York City 393 members were expelled and their charter was revoked for violation of their contract of employment by taking part in a sympathetic strike of the subway and elevated roads.