ment. This feature was absent in the National War Labor Board and in the Railroad Administration's system of labor control, both of which we shall examine directly. Thus was arrested a distinctive process of strengthening and centralizing the influence of the American Federation of Labor. Whether these leaders, if they had been so pledged, could have succeeded in such a great task of control and coöperation is a question which can never be answered. One thing is certain: that through this divergence from the method of labor adjustment which had obtained earlier in the war, the American Federation of Labor in the later months of the war lost the further development of that element of strength which came from the necessity of meeting these written pledges.

It will always be an interesting query whether, if the war had continued for a considerably longer period, some form of compulsion would have been adopted by the government. It is true that in the latter part of the year 1918 the strikes in Great Britain showed that compulsory arbitration does not always compel. But there were during the last months of the war signs that part of general public opinion in this country was beginning to favor some form of official duress, and that many of the union leaders, feeling their own control inadequate, would not have been opposed to such a course. In the middle of August, 1918, an attempt to make participation in a labor strike ground for a draft registrant's losing the benefit of his deferred classification was defeated in Congress. But only a month later, on September 13, the President in his handling of the Bridgeport strike invoked what was in effect governmental compulsion. The War Labor Board, having been unable to agree upon a decision with reference to the machinists' complaints at Bridgeport, had unan

imously agreed upon an umpire to decide the questions at issue. The machinists, through the Bridgeport locals, had submitted their dispute to the umpire for arbitration; and the local organization, District Lodge No. 55, was now refusing to accept his award. The President, in an open letter addressed directly to the lodge, reviewed the situation briefly and closed with the following paragraph:

Therefore, I desire that you return to work and abide by the award. If you refuse, each of you will be barred from employment in any war industry in the community in which the strike occurs for a period of one year. During that time the United States Employment Service will decline to obtain employment for you in any war industry elsewhere within the United States, as well as under the War and Navy Departments, the Shipping Board, the Railroad Administration, and all other government agencies, and the draft boards will be instructed to reject any claim of exemption based on your alleged usefulness in war production.

A few days after the letter was published, the strikers at Bridgeport returned to work. A striker with that letter staring him in the face was practically under governmental compulsion. And yet neither in the issue of the American Federation's weekly news letter following the affair, nor in the October issue of the Federationist, nor in the subsequent issue of the machinists' official organ, the Machinists' Monthly Journal, was the President's course adversely criticized.

The indication of the whole trend of events seems to be that the national leaders in the American Federation in the latter part of 1918 were losing rather than strengthening their hold upon the local unions. The public on the other hand was reaching the conclusion, largely shared by many national labor leaders, that wages in war industries had advanced sufficiently to satisfy just demands; and that in view of the adjustments which could be expected from the War Labor

Board, interruptions to war industry by strikes were intolerable. Under such circumstances some sort of system for compulsory settlement of war labor disputes might have developed in America if the war had continued through 1919.

Two important labor adjustment agencies came into existence during the final ten months of the war - the National War Labor Board and the Railroad Administration's system for determining wages and conditions. In neither of them did the pledge of the international presidents to continuous production by the members of their respective unions appear as the foundation of control.

The President created the War Labor Board by proclamation on April 8, 1918. In February the Secretary of Labor had requested the managing directors of the National Industrial Conference Board, an employers' organization, to name five representatives of employers, and had also requested the President of the American Federation of Labor to name five representatives of labor; these ten men were to compose the War Labor Conference Board, which was to make recommendations for some system of labor adjustment and administration. The Board thus formed was augmented by ExPresident Taft, chosen to act as counsel for the employer group, and by Mr. Frank P. Walsh, formerly Chairman of the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations, acting similarly as counsel for the employee group. On March 29, 1918, this Board made to the Secretary of Labor its recommendation that there be established immediately a National War Labor Board of the same number and selected by the same agencies, "to promote and carry on mediation and adjustment in the field of production necessary for the effective conduct

of the War," except " where there is by agreement or by Federal law a means of settlement which has not been invoked." This recommendation was accompanied by a statement of principles (to be examined presently) agreed to unanimously by the Conference Board. On April 8, 1918, the President issued his proclamation formally establishing the War Labor Board.

On this new agency for labor control were five representatives of the American Federation of Labor, of whom two were international presidents, sitting in joint control of labor standards. Among the principles announced by the Conference Board in its report of March 29, was the statement: "There should be no strikes or lockouts during the war," - a principle to which the labor members of the National War Labor Board must be held to have committed themselves when they accepted appointment under the President's proclamation. But Mr. Johnston's adhesion to this principle as a "representative of labor " on the Board was very different from the same man's direct written pledge in the shipbuilding agreement, in his capacity as president of the International Association of Machinists, that disputes "shall" be submitted to an adjustment board and that "the decision of the board will, in so far as this memorandum may be capable of achieving such result, be final and binding upon all parties." It will be remembered how in October, 1917, several international presidents in the metal trades, bound by this written pledge, went on their own initiative to the Pacific coast, and, pitting their strength against a group of local union leaders, forced the return to work of employees in the shipyards at Seattle pending a consideration of their dispute by the Shipbuilding Labor Adjustment Board. If the national union leaders had been behind the National War Labor Board with similar pledges the

drastic action by the President in the Bridgeport case probably would never have been necessary.

But the National War Labor Board, altho it did not undertake through the medium of specific pledges, to strengthen the group of international presidents as an agency for control, did operate to strengthen immeasurably the general position of unionism in America. The President in his proclamation of April 8, 1918, declared that the War Labor Board was to observe the principles specified in the report of the War Labor Conference Board. Among the principles laid down in the Conference Board's report and thus made by the President's proclamation a basis for the work of the War Labor Board, were the following:

1. The right of the workers to organize in trade-unions and to bargain collectively through chosen representatives is recognized and affirmed. This right shall not be denied, abridged, or interfered with by the employers in any manner whatsoever.

2. The right of employers to organize in associations of groups and to bargain collectively through chosen representatives is recognized and affirmed. This right shall not be denied, abridged, or interfered with by the workers in any manner whatsoever.

3. Employers should not discharge workers for membership in trade-unions, nor for legitimate trade-union activities.

4. The workers in the exercise of their right to organize shall not use coercive measures of any kind to induce persons to join their organizations, nor to induce employers to bargain or deal therewith.

1. In establishments where the union shop exists the same shall continue and the union standards as to wages, hours of labor, and other conditions of employment shall be maintained.

2. In establishments where union and nonunion men and women now work together, and the employer meets only with employees or representatives engaged in said establishments, the continuance of such condition shall not be deemed a grievance. This declaration, however, is not intended in any manner to deny the right or discourage the practice of the formation of labor unions, or the joining of the same by the workers in said establishments, as guaranteed in the last paragraph, nor to prevent the War Labor Board from urging, or any umpire from granting, under the machinery herein provided,