e
and Chicago Railroad, it amended its constitution and excluded firemen
and machinists from the order. This exclusive policy, however, is
based upon the stern requirements of professional excellence and is
not displayed towards engineers who are not members of the Brotherhood.
Towards them there is displayed the greatest toleration and none of the
narrow spirit of the "closed shop." The nonunion engineer is not only
tolerated but is even on occasion made the beneficiary of the activities
of the union. He shares, for example, in the rise of wages and
readjustment of runs. There are even cases on record where the railroad
unions have taken up a specific grievance between a nonunion man and his
employer and have attempted a readjustment.

From the inception of the Brotherhood, the policy of the order towards
the employing railroad company has been one of business and not of
sentiment. The Brotherhood has held that the relation between the
employer and employee concerning wages, hours, conditions of labor, and
settlement of difficulties should be on the basis of a written contract;
that the engineer as an individual was at a manifest disadvantage in
making such a contract with a railway company; that he therefore had
a right to join with his fellow engineers in pressing his demands and
therefore had the right to a collective contract. Though for over a
decade the railways fought stubbornly against this policy, in the end
every important railroad of this country and Canada gave way. It is
doubtful, indeed, if any of them would today be willing to go back
to the old method of individual bargaining, for the brotherhood has
insisted upon the inviolability of a contract once entered into. It has
consistently held that "a bargain is a bargain, even if it is a poor
gain." Members who violate an agreement are expelled, and any local
lodge which is guilty of such an offense has its charter revoked. *

* In 1905 in New York City 893 members were expelled and their charter
was revoked for violation of their contract of employment by taking part
in a sympathetic strike of the subway and elevated roads.

Once the practice of collective contract was fixed, it naturally
followed that some mechanism for adjusting differences would be devised.
The Brotherhood and the various roads now maintain a general board
of adjustment for each railway system. The Brotherhood is strict in
insisting that the action of this board is binding on all