e
employers. In San Francisco, where the grip of the unions upon the
industry was strongest, the employers turned on them and installed the
"open-shop" after the building trades' council had refused to accept an
award by an arbitration committee set up by mutual agreement. The union
claimed, however, in self-justification that the Committee, by awarding
a _reduction_ in the wages of fifteen crafts while the issue as
originally submitted turned on a demand by these crafts for a _raise_
in wages, had gone outside its legitimate scope. In New York City an
investigation by a special legislative committee uncovered a state of
reeking corruption among the leadership in the building trades' council
and among an element in the employing group in connection with a
successful attempt to establish a virtual local monopoly in building.
Some of the leading corruptionists on both sides were given court
sentences and the building trades' council accepted modifications in the
"working rules" formulated by the counsel for the investigating
committee. In Chicago a situation developed in many respects similar to
the one in San Francisco. In a wage dispute, which was submitted by both
sides to Federal Judge K.M. Landis for arbitration, the award authorized
not only a wage reduction but a revision of the "working rules" as well.
Most of the unionists refused to abide by the award and the situation
developed into literal warfare. In Chicago the employers' side was
aggressively upheld by a "citizens' committee" formed to enforce the
Landis award. The committee claimed to have imported over 10,000
out-of-town building mechanics to take the places of the strikers.

In the autumn of 1921 the employers in the packing industry discontinued
the arrangement whereby industrial relations were administered by an
"administrator,"[94] Judge Alschuler of Chicago, whose rulings had
materially restricted the employers' control in the shop. Some of the
employers put into effect company union plans. This led to a strike, but
in the end the unions lost their foothold in the industry, which the War
had enabled them to acquire. By that time, however, the open-shop
movement seemed already passing its peak, without having caused an
irreparable breach in the position of organized labor. Evidently, the
long years of preparation before the War and the great opportunity
during the War itself, if they have failed to give trade unionism the
position of a recognized nati