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"The determination of said circuit court of appeals upon said questions shall be final, and, being certified by the clerk thereof to said district court, judgment pursuant thereto shall thereupon be entered by said district court.

"If exceptions to an award are finally sustained, judgment shall be entered setting aside the award in whole or in part; but in such case the parties may agree upon a judgment to be entered disposing of the subject matter of the controversy, which judgment, when entered, shall have the same force and effect as judgment entered upon an award."

Add the following sections:

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"SEC. The Interstate Commerce Commission shall create a division of railroad labor statistics, to be composed of a statistician and two advisory statisticians, one of whom shall have the confidence of representatives of employers and one of whom shall have the confidence of representatives of employees subject to this act. (This section should probably be modeled after those election laws which authorize political parties to name watchers and judges of elections.) The said division shall compile and maintain, up to date, all facts and statistics which either of the statisticians deems necessary or convenient in the arbitration or adjustment of said controversies, and shall furnish such information as may be requested by any board or official intrusted with duties under this act; and shall publish from time to time, and at least annually, the results of its investigations. Any member of such division not agreeing to any statement of fact thus furnished or published shall be permitted to state in the same paper the grounds of his dissent.

SEC. Whenever, in the judgment of the President, a controversy threatens to interrupt the business of employers subject to this act to the serious detriment of the public interest, the President shall appoint a board of investigation of three or more members, who shall investigate the facts and shall recommend to the President and the parties a reasonable plan of settlement of the controversy. This recommendation shall include the creation of a board of adjustment and the selection of an umpire as provided in section 4 of this act, to whom the recommendation shall be referred for interpretation, amendment, and enforcement. Such board of investigation shall have the powers of investigation provided in section 5 of this act, but no order of any court or public authority shall require any person to observe any recommendation of the board."

Amend section 10 to provide for compensation and expenses where needed.

(Thereupon, at 12 o'clock m., the committee adjourned until to-morrow, Friday, January 5, 1917, at 10 o'clock a. m.)

GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATION OF RAILWAY DISPUTES.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 6, 1917.

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE COMMERCE,

Washington, D. C.

The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m., at room 326, Senate Office Building, Senator Francis G. Newlands (chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Robinson, Cummins, Poindexter, Brandegee, Townsend, Thompson, and Lippitt.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. We will first hear from Dr. Crafts.

STATEMENT OF DR. WILBUR F. CRAFTS, SUPERINTENDENT AND TREASURER OF THE INTERNATIONAL REFORM BUREAU, WASHINGTON, D. C.

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Dr. CRAFTS. Mr. Chairman, the International Reform Bureau for 22 years has had in its platform as one of its many purposes "to substitute arbitration for both international and industrial war,' which we think have some very strong resemblances. I appear not in the interest of the railroad employers, nor yet of the employees. I think it is a supreme mistake to think this is "a conflict of capital and labor "; it is a three-cornered conflict, in which the largest interest is the interest of the public. Ninety-five per cent of the people involved, 95 per cent of the suffering, and 95 per cent of the interest in every way are the interests of the public-of those who are neither capitalists nor organized laborers. I have suggested sometimes that a cartoon would represent the case a giant with a pigmy named "Labor on one shoulder and another pigmy named "Capital" on the other. They are fighting around his neck and choking him, and through his gasps he says, "I see-there is a conflict-of Capital and Labor." The idea that the public has no interest in the matter, but simply to look on and suffer, is one of the curious cases of unconscious humor.

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Senator BRANDEGEE. The public is both capital and labor, is it not?

Dr. CRAFTS. Well, there are a great number that are not either capitalists or laborers in the usual sense of those words that are neither connected with organized labor nor employers of it. I am one of them. I have done a great deal of labor; I cut wood and did all sorts of work to get money to pay my way through college and have been through all sorts of hardships. I have often spoken at labor conventions. But I speak in this case as a humble representative of those people who are neither employers nor employees, and in the interests of the larger public.

Speaking of this matter of resemblance between strikes and war, now when we are forming all over the world an opinion that we must have a league of compulsory peace, we ought to be thinking in Congress of a league of compulsory industrial peace. The war that we call a "strike" is a war without any Hague rules to mitigate it-without even Queensbury rules. I would rather see a prize fight in the streets than a strike, because we would have some rules. I should rather see a real domestic war because we should have some Hague rules to go by. But when have have a strike all the violent elements of the community, all the criminal elements, rally around the strik ers, and we have no rules whatever. The injury to property comes closer to us in a strike ordinarily than it does in a larger war.

I desire to give three facts that seem to bear on the proposed legislation for restraint of strikes. The first is something I saw in Australia, where they settle industrial troubles usually in a civilized fashion. I was in Sydney, Australia, one day when a court, after a long, elaborate, and thorough study of the question, awarded $5,000,000 to the employees of the sheep shearers, the principal industry of that country-$2 a week additional, $100 a year apiece. They would have lost it in a week in a strike, but without any interruption of industry, referring the matter to the court, the people being heard on both sides, the facts of the increased profits of the industry being fully exposed, this award was made without any more excitement than an ordinary award in a civil court would arouseemployers and employees and the public accepting it as the civilized method of settling the disputes.

While there is no compulsory arbitration in Australia-there is in New Zealand-these questions are commonly settled in Australia also by referring them to a court. I am very much in favor of compulsory arbitration. That is more than this bill contemplates, but we should certainly go as far as the President recommends and say by law there shall be no railroad strike without compulsory delay for consideration, that the public may know something of the merits of the case-as they did not in the recent instance.

As we have followed Australia in the Australian secret ballot; as we have followed Australia in the eight-hour law; as we are following Australia in woman suffrage, we should ultimately--and that soon-follow the best part of Australasia, New Zealand, and become, through compulsory arbitration, "a land without strikes."

I have no objection to piano makers striking. I do not advocate any legislation with reference to strikes on luxuries; but I believe we need very stringent legislation to prevent strikes when they would interfere with necessities of life; and the regular operation of the railroads is as much a necessity of life as the regular circulation of the blood in the body. The body politic has for its veins and arteries the railroads, and to stop the railroads is just as certainly a case of murder at wholesale as to stop the circulation of the blood would be a case of murder at retail. I wonder that the people have not all seen that.

Coming back from Australia I was detained by strikes in British Columbia. I was beset by strikes when I got into the State of Washington. I was again unable to phone when I got to Butte. I felt as if I had come back from civilization into savagery; that I had gotten back beyond the Middle Ages into the days of chronic

violence in the streets when every man must carry his club or sword or gun. I have never gotten over the impression that we are a century behind Australasia in this matter of strikes. A strike takes us back beyond modern rules of war; behind the accepted judicial scheme of civilization, in allowing violence in the streets in connection with the settlement of an industrial dispute that usually involves only about 5 per cent of the population, whether it be a city strike or national strike.

And now for my second fact. I was recalling with Gen. Miles recently as to what President Cleveland did in a case like this. It is very pertinent and ought to be in the record. I have marveled that it has not been published far and wide in connection with the discussion of the postponed railroad strike that still threatens the whole Nation. I was a pastor in Chicago at the time when railroads entering Chicago were tied up by a strike-not so general as is now proposed. This is what happened. To the strikers were drawn all the violent elements, the disorderly, criminal elements in the community. They swarmed in the streets-young men also out for a lark-and we looked out on streets where paraded every element of violence-probably twice as many criminals and wild boys as there were strikers. The city was absolutely helpless until Gen. Miles came in with a few Federal troops. Before that we had gotten out with our guns and defended our own homes. It was an aberration from civilization; it was a relapse into a state of barbarism. The mayor, afraid of the labor vote, was not doing his duty in keeping order. Gen. Miles called at his office and called his attention to the situation; that the subtreasury and national banks were threatened; that mails were being delayed; and the channels of interstate com merce were congested; and asked what he was going to do about it. The mayor hemmed and hawed; did not want to interfere; was evidently afraid of the political effect of vigorous law enforcement by police and militia. Gen. Miles said to him, "You make this a Baltimore, and we will make it an Appomattox. You must keep open the channels of interstate commerce. You must not allow the mails of the United States to be stopped here. You must not allow the United States subtreasury to be robbed. The intimation was that in the name of the President of the United States he would take charge of the city of Chicago unless the mayor was able to handle the situation. It was not simply the case of a State keeping order in a city when the city authorities failed to do it. Had not the mayor heeded the warning we should have learned the power of the Federal Government to interfere in the interests of the country when the mails and interstate commerce are involved. The term 66 keep open the channels of interstate commerce was used. The circulation of the blood must be protected.

And now for the third instructive fact. I was in New York in the blizzard of 1895 when the whole city was put back into a state of nature, as if we had no streets; as if we had no railroads; as if we had no telegraphs; as if we had no fire department. We could not get to our grocers, and they could not get their supplies; and we found that on the second day we were getting near to starvation. There is no city in the country that has supplies for three days. The body politic is like the human body. The circulation of supplies for

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