The Outlook 1915-06-23

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The Outlook JUNE 23, 1915 Offices, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York THE CHICAGO CAR STRIKE The unavailing demand for higher wages led to the strike of fourteen thousand em- ployees of the traction companies of Chicago, after many efforts to arbitrate the issues between them and their employers had failed. The result was the complete tie-up for two days of the surface car and elevated railway systems of Chicago ; and two and a half mill- ion persons resorted to buses hastily con- verted from motor trucks and express wagons, and even to roller skates, for transportation. Features which made this strike a most remarkable one were its completeness, its brevity, and its freedom from violence. It was called off as the result of the arduous efforts of Mayor Thompson to bring about a compromise just as the dawn of the third day of this industrial conflict was breaking, and not a single case of violence was trace- able to the strikers. Great credit is due to Mayor Thompson, who, after working for arbitration before the strike, notified the strikers in unmistakable language that his single task thereafter would be “ ta guard the rights, lives, and property of the citizens of Chicago.” Before the strike had been in progress a day the City Council of Chicago passed an ordinance calculated to restrict the employ- ment of strike-breakers, but Judge C. C. Kohlsaat, of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, promptly ordered the receiver of the Chicago and Oak Park Elevated Railroad Company, which recently went into the United States District Court for a receiver- ship, to employ “such men as may be avail- able ” to resume operations on the road, and strike-breakers soon began to pour into Chi- cago from St. Louis, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and Detroit, only to be paid off and sent back whence they came. The three-year agreement between the companies and the employees recently ex- pired, after the operators had frequently expressed their dissatisfaction with it. When it went into effect, it gave the men higher pay than any street-car men east of the Rocky Mountains then enjoyed, but recently in Detroit, Cleveland, and Boston higher aver- age wage rates were adopted, and the Chi- cago motormen, guards, and conductors be- came dissatisfied. ‘They offered to submit their demands to arbitration before striking, but were willing to accept as an umpire only Governor Dunne, ex-Mayor Harrison, or one of several other gentlemen all held by the com- panies to be ‘‘ pro-labor.”” in sympathy. The companies offered to name one arbitrator, let the employees name a second, and have these two select a third, but this the em- ployees would not do. An all-night conference at the City Hall in which the Mayor, strike leaders, officials of the car companies, and members of the spe- cial Aldermanic Strike Committee took part, managed to find a compromise. Mayor Thompson was accepted by both sides as a third member of the Board of Arbitration, each of the sides to the controversy to appoint another member, and the men agreed to go back to work for their former wages, on the understanding that the wage question and some other points would be arbitrated, and that any changes that may be granted in wage rates will date back to June 1. Although the strikers gave in on some points, they claim that the outcome was a victory for them. So it was. It was also a victory for the car companies, for the city officials, and for the public, in that it was a victory for the practice of dealing with dis- putes between labor and capital in a spirit of fairness and open-minded magnanimity. LABOR CONDITIONS IN PENNSYLVANIA Governor Brumbaugh, of Pennsylvania, has just signed some bills of great importance to the betterment of labor conditions in that State. The most talked of is the series of acts establishing a plan of employers’ liability and 393-397