The meeting was an informal one. The proposition presented by the Committee was a demand that all the men be taken back in a body; that the former proposition of Mr. Stone, to pay as good wages as his neighbors, be accepted by the Brotherhood. Mr. Peasley stated that he had no power to act in the absence of Manager Stone and President Perkins, but that he would submit the proposition to these officials on their return from the East. He also said that the company desired peace with the Brotherhoods. No action was taken by Messrs. Stone and Perkins; the only result of the meeting was to strengthen them in their determination to fight the Brotherhoods to the end. All efforts to produce a boycott had failed. The only result of the union meetings held at various points was to convince the strikers that the boycott was not necessary, in fact that they had already won the strike. They continued their meetings, and were just as much out of the way of the company as though they had been locked up for months. In the meantime, and in fact from the beginning of the strike, the company had been moving heaven and earth in their efforts to bring victory out of what seemed hopeless defeat. Starting with an inferior grade of men, they have been constantly weeding out the poorer ones as fast as a more competent man appeared who was willing to work for them. A very great number of those originally hired have disappeared and better men have taken their places. Many competent men, who had been driven out of the Brotherhoods for dissolute habits, or from prejudice, and who had at first stood aloof from the trouble, had now come forward and entered the service. Beginning on the 27th of February with their business almost wholly destroyed, they have used every means in their power, and have left no stone unturned that promised to increase their traffic. In this they have not been unsuccessful, and their business is today probably as good as any other Western road. In their relation to the strikers, they have outwitted them at every point, and have used with fatal effect every weapon that came to their hand. The truth is that the old employes never had a leader, from the 27th of February until the present day; they have been under the orders and at the beck and call of this committee and that committee, and have trusted to this chairman and that chief until they were bewildered, and finally lost. The "Ides of March" was as fatal to them as to Cæsar. When the first boycott was lifted, their defeat was absolute and certain; as an evidence of that the action of the self-constituted Advisory Board, in sending road engineers into the yards in Chicago to take the switch engines given up by their brothers at the second boycott, the last of March, should have been deemed ample and sufficient.