Railroads -- United States; Railroads -- United States -- Employees
Therefore I do not think that it is going to be very hard for the
railroads to gain necessary advances in fares--particularly if they will
not forget one big thing. The success of the Twentieth Century Limited and
the other trains of its class ought not to be lost upon the railroader.
With service he can trade for increased rates. There are many large
opportunities for the railroad along these lines, in both freight and
passenger service. A progressive desire to enter into these opportunities
will probably bring the railroad many of the advances that it so sorely
needs. And I am not sure but that such a spirit would also do much toward
securing for it the very necessary unification of regulation--not alone of
its income but also of its outgo--that it so earnestly seeks at the
present time.
CHAPTER XIII
REGULATION
At the time that these lines are being written the railroads of the United
States are entering a veritable no man's land. The ponderous Newlands
committee of Congress has begun its hearing and accomplished little; so
little that it has asked and received an extension of time of nearly
eleven months in which to go into the entire question more thoroughly. We
all hope it does. The Adamson bill, establishing the so-called eight-hour
day for certain favored classes of railroad employees, is statute, but its
constitutionality is yet to be established. And the railroads are
preparing to fight it, in its present form, and to the bitter end. General
sympathy seems to be with them; it is quite probable that even the four
brotherhoods that fought for the measure--unlike the Pears Soap boy--are
not quite happy now that they have received it.
In the midst of all this confusion President Wilson, assured of a second
term of office and so of a reasonable opportunity to try to put a concrete
plan into effect, has emerged with his definite program, not radically
different from that which he evolved last August at the time of the
biggest of all crises between the railroads and their labor, but which was
warped and disfigured until its own father might not know it. His plan, as
now is generally known, provides not alone for the eight-hour day for all
classes of railroad employees, but includes the most important feature of
compulsory arbitration referred to in an earlier chapter.[17]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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