While this report served to prove that the conclusions arrived at long before by the great mass of the public were correct the strike was dying out before it was presented. In fact, the majority of the steel mills of the country had resumed nearly full operations by early in November. The strike gradually lessened in importance from the end of September and, although it was not actually called off by its leaders until nearly the middle of January it was to all practical purposes dead long before the end of the year. The story of the Industrial Conference called by President Wilson in an effort to bring together the conflicting forces of capital and organized labor and to work out a new industrial scheme rightly belongs with that of the steel strike. The decision of the President was unquestionably due, to some extent at least, to the imminence of the strike, his plans for the Conference having been announced at the time when the union organizers were attempting to get recognition from Judge Gary. While the conference was not called, ostensibly, to deal with the particular situation it is obvious that Mr. Wilson, realizing what a danger the strike would be to the country’s prosperity if it occurred, sought to avert it and at the same time to reduce to a minimum the danger of other conflicts between the two great opposing industrial forces. That he had the steel situation in mind was further indicated by his request to the labor leaders to postpone action until after the Conference--a request that was refused. To the Industrial Conference the President invited a number of men supposed to represent the three great groups concerned in industrial disputes--labor, capital, and the public. The country’s workers were represented officially only by the leaders of organized labor, Samuel Gompers, Matthew Woll, Frank Morrison and other prominent members of the American Federation, with some representatives of the railroad unions. The interests of capital were in the hands of the so-called employers’ group which included representatives of various commercial bodies, of the railroads, and of farmers’ organizations. The so-called public group also included a number of employers, among whom were Judge Gary; the late Henry B. Endicott, the Massachusetts shoe manufacturer who had gained a reputation for the interest he took in the welfare of his employees, and others; social workers and writers such as Ida M. Tarbell and Gertrude Barnum; two prominent Socialists, Charles Edmund Russell and John Spargo. To these were added Dr. Charles W. Eliot, educator; Thomas M. Chadbourne and Gaven McNab, lawyers; Bernard M. Baruch, erstwhile stockmarket operator but lately head of the War Industries Board, and several others.