ing before and after and accepting the larger
responsibility which the public would put upon them.

It seemed to me, in considering the subject-matter of the controversy,
that the whole spirit of the time and the preponderant evidence of
recent economic experience spoke for the eight-hour day. It has been
adjudged by the thought and experience of recent years a thing upon
which society is justified in insisting as in the interest of health,
efficiency, contentment, and a general increase of economic vigor. The
whole presumption of modern experience would, it seemed to me, be in its
favor, whether there was arbitration or not, and the debatable points to
settle were those which arose out of the acceptance of the eight-hour
day rather than those which affected its establishment. I, therefore,
proposed that the eight-hour day be adopted by the railway managements
and put into practice for the present as a substitute for the existing
ten-hour basis of pay and service; that I should appoint, with the
permission of the Congress, a small commission to observe the results of
the change, carefully studying the figures of the altered operating
costs, not only, but also the conditions of labor under which the men
worked and the operation of their existing agreements with the
railroads, with instructions to report the facts as they found them to
the Congress at the earliest possible day, but without recommendation;
and that, after the facts had been thus disclosed, an adjustment should
in some orderly manner be sought of all the matters now left unadjusted
between the railroad managers and the men.

These proposals were exactly in line, it is interesting to note, with
the position taken by the Supreme Court of the United States when
appealed to to protect certain litigants from the financial losses which
they confidently expected if they should submit to the regulation of
their charges and of their methods of service by public legislation. The
Court has held that it would not undertake to form a judgment upon
forecasts, but could base its action only upon actual experience; that
it must be supplied with facts, not with calculations and opinions,
however scientifically attempted. To undertake to arbitrate the question
of the adoption of an eight-hour day in the light of results merely
estimated and predicted would be to undertake an enterprise of
conjecture. No wise man could undertake it, or, if he did undertake it,
could feel ass