Report

PREFATORY NOTE.

The following report regarding Labor Organizations, Labor Disputes, and Arbitration has been prepared in the office of the Industrial Commission and under its supervision. The subject of the relations between employers and employees is one of the most important which the Commission has considered. Doubtless the most powerful single factor in affecting those relations at the present time is organization of labor, and this is the first subject covered in the report. Particular interest attaches to all methods which tend to promote peaceful relations between employers and employees; and the practices of collective bargaining, conciliation, and arbitration accordingly constitute the subject-matter of a second section of the report. From time to time, however, peaceful relations are broken by strikes and lockouts and by other forms of industrial disputes. The statistics regarding these disputes have been presented and discussed, while a special part of the report is devoted to the discussion of the attitude of the courts toward various acts of workingmen in connection with labor disputes. The information regarding American labor organizations and regarding the American systems of collective bargaining and of arbitration and conciliation within the trade has been obtained largely by correspondence with the officers of organizations of employers and of employees. Schedules of questions were sent out to all national labor organizations and to a very considerable number of local organizations. The officers of the national unions have almost uniformly shown marked courtesy in filling out these schedules and in making answers to such specific inquiries as were later found necessary. They have also furnished in most instances the constitutions, reports, agreements, and other documents published by the unions. The officers of the American Federation of Labor have been of especial assistance in giving information regarding that body and its constituent unions. It is believed that, since the statements of fact contained in this report have been obtained almost wholly from official sources, they may be considered thoroughly authentic.

Doubtless because of the fact that the officers of local unions are in most instances actively employed in their trades, and also because the business of local organizations is conducted in a less systematic manner than that of national unions, it has been found impossible to obtain any considerable amount of information regarding local unions, except in so far as the officers of national organizations have furnished it.

The Commission is under obligations to Hon. Carroll D. Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor, for the use of documents in possession of the Department of Labor, and especially for furnishing advance sheets of the sixteenth annual report of the Department, covering the subjects of strikes and lockouts. By this means the Commission is able to publish a summary of the statistics contained in that report contemporaneously with their publication by the Department of Labor.

The text of that part of the report on Labor Organizations, Labor Disputes, and Arbitration which regards labor organizations has been prepared for the most part by Mr. Charles E. Edgerton, while the text regarding collective bargaining, conciliation and arbitration, and labor disputes has been prepared principally by Mr. E. Dana Durand. Both have, however, cooperated under the direction of the Commission in the preparation of the entire work.

The report on Railway Labor, which constitutes the second division of the present volume, has been prepared under the direction of the Commission by Dr. Samuel M. Lindsay, of the University of Pennsylvania. The statements regarding matters of fact contained in this report are based almost altogether on official documents and information. Schedules of questions were sent to the officers of the leading railroad companies, as well as to the officers of the leading organizations of railway employees, and in most cases the desired information was cheerfully and fully furnished. To the discussion of facts regarding railway employment-wages, hours of labor, and regulations as to entering employment, promotion and discipline, and other matters-has been added a compilation of the decisions of the courts regarding the liability of railway employers for injuries to their employees, a subject in which very general public interest has been manifested. The Commission is also under obligations to the Pennsylvania Railroad for having permitted the republication of a report submitted to it by Mr. Riebenack, its assistant comptroller, regarding the systems of insurance of employees on foreign railways, as well as to Mr. Riebenack himself. This report appears as an appendix.