tages relative to income, to the security of the job,
and to the stability of their organization, it is not surprising, in
view of the limited class solidarity among American laboring men in
general, that these groups of workers should have chosen to stand alone
in their wage bargaining and that their refusal to enter "entangling
alliances" with other less favored groups should have gone even to the
length of staying out of the American Federation of Labor.

This condition of relative harmony between employer and employe,
notwithstanding the energetic bargaining, continued for about fifteen
years until it was disturbed by factors beyond the control of either
railway companies or brotherhoods. The steady rise in the cost of living
forced the brotherhoods to intensify their demands for increased wages.
At the same time an ever tightening regulation of railway rates by the
Federal government since 1906 practically prevented a shift of increased
costs to the shipper. "Class struggles" on the railways began in
earnest.

The new situation was brought home to the brotherhoods in the course of
several wage arbitration cases in which they figured.[62] The outcome
taught them that the public will give them only limited support in their
efforts to maintain their real income at the old high level compared
with other classes of workers.

A most important case arose from a "concerted movement" in 1912[63] of
the engineers and firemen on the 52 Eastern roads for higher wages. Two
separate arbitration boards were appointed. The engineers' board
consisted of seven members, one each for the interests involved and five
representing the public. The award was unsatisfactory to the engineers,
first, because of the meager raise in wages and, second, because it
contained a strong plea to Congress and the country to have all wages of
all railway employes fixed by a government commission, which implied a
restriction of the right to strike. The award in the firemen's case,
which was decided practically simultaneously with the engineers', failed
to satisfy either side.

The conductors and trainmen on the Eastern roads were next to move "in
concert" for increased wages. The roads refused and the brotherhoods
decided by a good majority to quit work. This threatened strike
occasioned the passage of the so-called Newlands bill as an amendment to
the Erdman Act, with increased powers to the government in mediation and
with more specified conditions