on misstatements that had been made, and they were wondering whether it was a white elephant or a woolly horse, and they did sure play the Barnum & Bailey game. They fooled the public, and they got the public to believe that is, some of the public, not all, for there are several hundred thousand men and women that compose the public of this great Nation that never believed many of the things or any of the things that were published in connection with that movement.

We

Therefore, gentlemen, I trust and believe that there are many of you here who did not believe the statements, and those of you who have made a study of the practical end of railroading, the manner in which things have been conducted in the past, did not believe the statements that were made in the press of this country and paid for. We know. We tried to get into the press, to lay our case before the public. We did not have enough money. Oh, no. got into a few papers, and we had to pay pretty dear for an advertisement to put in there, pretty dear, and taking what we had to pay and the little space that we got in those few papers and comparing it with the printed matter that has been in the papers of this country, and the magazines and the editorials that they had, we figure that it cost anywhere from a million to four million dolars to fool the public of this country.

Senator TOWNSEND. Mr. McNamara, before you quit, may I ask if you would be satisfied with the law that was passed in August, without any further legislation?

Mr. MCNAMARA. I do not know what the law means.

Senator TOWNSEND. Well, that is what I am asking you--if you would be satisfied with it as it is or do you want Congress to enact some other legislation?

Mr. MCNAMARA. Senator, we do not want Congress to enact any legislation in connection with our rights of pay or working conditions. We want the right of collective bargaining, and we do not want that freedom taken away from us.

Senator TOWNSEND. Well, does the law, as passed in August, satisfy you and the men?

Mr. MCNAMARA. Evidently all the executives, through and by instructions of the 600 chairmen, directly representing the men in the engine and train service in this country, agreed to set aside for the time being the request that was made for punitive overtime, or time and a half, until such time as an investigation would be conducted by an appointed commission, which I understand has been appointed, but with no chance to go to work, and that the eight-hour day and the 124-mile speed basis would be put in effect on January 1, 1917, and remain in effect for a period of eight or nine months, until the investigation and report of such investigation could be made. The men have agreed to that. What later came after that I do not know. But here we are to-day with one commission investigating one thing, the railroads declining to comply with what you gentlemen have said and done, and they have taken it into the Supreme Court to decide certain questions, and it is liable to remain in the Supreme Court for years to come.

There is a question of placing the rates of pay and working conditions in the hands of a commission. I know by the press, if it is correct, that a question has been asked by the Supreme Court if

Congress could give the Interstate Commerce Commission the right to regulate wages and work for the men in engine and train service, and brighter legal lights than I am, for I do not know anything about law, stated that they doubted whether Congress could give them that power.

Senator TOWNSEND. Would you be satisfied if Congress had that power to do that thing?

Mr. MCNAMARA. No, sir; we are not satisfied with Congress in any manner tying us down with anything compulsory, or placing our destinies in the hands of any appointed commission.

Senator TOWNSEND. Let me ask you, if you can answer it more directly, what do you want Congress to do?

Mr. MCNAMARA. We are not asking Congress to do anything. We have never come in here. Gentlemen, there is one thing that the public has had impressed upon their minds. There is not a paper in this country that did not go out and say to those that were unable to get to Washington that we came in here and held Congress up at the point of a revolver. I want to say to you, and you gentlemen know, that such was not the case. Those executives and the other representatives of the men were invited here to Washington by the Chief Executive of this Nation. He made a proposition to them and, like good American citizens, they accepted it and gave up the punitive overtime, which the railroads claimed would cost them $100,000,000 a year. They gave it up. They did not ask the President to go to Congress and have a law enacted. Oh, no. And all of you in whom we have placed all the confidence in the world—there is none of the other representatives here, Mr. Wills, Mr. Doak, Mr. Clark, or McNamara, their legal representatives, who came to you and asked you to put that bill through, and still the press of this country told the people of the country that we were in here in numbers, holding a revolver up to the heads of the Senators and Congressmen here, demanding that that law be enacted. No; we deny such. We deny such. They gratefully and gracefully accepted what you gentlemen gave them. Have the others done so? No. But now we are opposing any further legislation to tie the hands. of the workmen of this country, until you gentlemen find a law and a way to compel those whom you have already passed laws for to put them into effect.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. McNamara, we gave Mr. Gompers to understand that he would be heard this morning, and I would suggest to the members of the committee that it would be well to hear Mr. Gompers now, and if they wish to question Mr. McNamara further later on he can be called before us.

Mr. MCNAMARA. Mr. Chairman, I am only too willing to give way to Mr. Gompers, and I am in Washington all during the session of Congress, and if at any time this committee desires to cross-question me, or ask me any questions, in connection with the affairs and the workings of the brotherhood that I have the honor to represent, ours is an open book, and we will give you our constitution; we will give you everything else. Our books are open to any committee or commission which you may appoint, and there is no juggling in there whatsoever, either in our laws or in our manner of applying the same. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Gompers, the committee would be glad to hear from you.

STATEMENT OF MR. SAMUEL GOMPERS, PRESIDENT AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. GOMPERS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, when, in the latter part of August, 1916, you had under consideration the bill now known generally as the Adamson bill, you accorded me the privilege of appearing before your committee. On that occasion I undertook to present some views upon the general subject of legislation, as it was proposed for the railroad employees, and at the close of that hearing the bill then immediately under consideration. I have in mind the general legislation as it was recommended by the President. I do not know whether the hearings then held are to be a part of the record of the hearings which you have conducted within this last week or two, and I would like to make inquiry, Mr. Chairman, for the reason that if it is to be regarded as a separate hearing, then I should like to make some reference to and probably repeat some things that I may have adverted to in my previous presentation of the matter to this committee; otherwise a mere reference to it is entirely sufficient.

The CHAIRMAN. I will say, Mr. Gompers, that the record of the last hearing will he made a part of this.

Mr. GOMPERS. Mr. Chairman, since I had the pleasure of appearing before this committee in August we have gone through some very interesting incidents in our country-a great political campaign, an election, and its result. I think that I may interpret as the verdict of the people that they viewed with satisfaction that something had been done by Congress in the interests, or supposedly in the interests, of the working people-the masses of the people of America. To me the question of the Adamson law, per se, is of little consequence. To me it is a declaration by Congress, at the suggestion of the President and later approved by him, the declaration that the eight-hour workday in principle is right. Its legal binding character, I will say, is of less consequence to me and to those I have the honor in part to represent, and is of less consequence to the interests and the liberties and the destinies of our country.

Since my appearance before this committee in August there have been held many meetings of labor organizations, local, State, and National. There has not been a meeting held throughout the length and breadth of this country of working people where the subject matter has been under consideration but what there has been a unanimous denunciation of any attempt to legislate any features of involuntary servitude, whether it be permanent or a temporary makeshift even for a moment. Indeed, the Trade and Labor Congress, an organization of the working people of Canada, went on record by a practically unanimous vote, demanding, even during the time when the Dominion, allied with the mother country, is in a state of war, demanding the repeal of the Canadian compulsory investigation act. The convention of the Colorado State Federation of Labor went on record, with one dissenting vote, demanding the repeal of the Colorado compulsory investigation act. The American Federation of Labor, representing the organized workers of America, has declared against the principle. Though the brotherhoods are not affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, there is a common polity and a common policy and a common interest. I have here, sir, the printed official proceedings of the American Federation of Labor, held in

Baltimore, Md., November 13 to 25, inclusive, 1916. In that report, on pages 78, 79, 80, and a part of 81, is the report of the executive council of the American Federation of Labor to that convention. I ask, without taking up the time to read it-I should like very much if you had the time so that I could read it, but I know how busy Senators are, and that it is not necessarily immediately of importance, and you have not very much time outside of your regular duties but I trust that what I have asked to be incorporated in the record may receive the attention of the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. What is it that you ask be inserted?

Mr. GOMPERS. Four pages of printed matter, being a part of the report of the executive council of the American Federation of Labor, made to the convention of that federation about six weeks ago.

The CHAIRMAN. If you will hand those pages to the reporter, they will be inserted.

(The matter referred to is here printed in full, as follows:)

THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS' STRIKE.

For nearly a century the labor movement of America has conducted a campaign for the establishment of a maximum' eight-hour workday. Since the formation of the American Federation of Labor a systematic movement has been conducted for eight hours. This movement resulted in splendid achievements in 1886, which was the beginning of the eight-hour workday as enjoyed by the several trades, and was again actively renewed in 1890, and has been followed up in every day and year since that time.

The campaign for the eight-hour workday, reported to the 1915 convention, has been continued during 1916. The successes of last year have been duplicated and amplified in the progress of this year, and in no one period in American history has there been greater progress in securing recognition for the eight-hour principle than during the past two years.

A notable movement for eight hours during the past year was that made by the railroad workers organized in the four railroad brotherhoods.

It was early in the year when the railroad men declared that the eight-hour workday ought to be enforced for all railroad workers in operating trains. Railroad men, particularly in the freight service, were subject to practically unlimited demands of their time. Freight service was regulated entirely in furtherance of the interests of railroad profits. Freight trains had been increased in length, and speed proportionately cut down, until it had become practically impossible for men in the operating service to make their runs within a normal workday. The men had to be always ready for service; they did not dare to leave their homes on most ordinary business or for a few hours' outing without first having telephoned to headquarters where they could be found. This company rule was rigidly enforced; the first violation of it meant discipline, the second dismissal.

The responsible nature of the work performed by the railway men in the operating service, the exacting demands upon health and vitality, the hazardous nature of the work, and the occupational diseases that inevitably followed convinced the men that the eight-hour day was for them a paramount issue. The shorter workday has been established as the primary step in conserving the lives and the working power of wage earners. It is not only a necessary step for conservation, but it is a necessary step for securing opportunities for workers and for enabling them to improve standards of work and life. The eighthour workday has demonstrated wherever it has been established that it results in more efficient and more productive workers; makes of them better men-a better citizenship.

The railroad men's demands for the eight-hour workday presented no new idea; they were based upon a well-established principle of welfare; a principle that can not be disputed, and therefore it is not properly a matter for arbitration. Because of the railway men refusing to arbitrate this principle which involves the principle of personal relations, they brought a halt to the efforts of the railroad managers to force them to submit all of the issues to arbitration, and brought their conferences to an end. It was then that the President of the

United States, as the representative of the Nation, requested the railroad men to come to Washington for conference. As a result of that conference, all of the 640 representative railroad men, in their respective divisions, who had been in the New York conference, were asked to go to Washington for a personal conference with President Wilson in the White House. The railway managers, and later the railroad presidents, were also asked to confer with the President. As a result of these conferences the President recommended that the eight-hour workday should be conceded as a right that ought not to be arbitrated, but that all other issues involved should be submitted for investigation and arbitration. In taking this position in regard to the eight-hour workday neither President Wilson nor the railway brotherhoods rejected the principle of arbitration, as the railroad presidents have wrongfully claimed. They took the position that the eight-hour day was a principle not subject to arbitration. In this they were in harmony with that demand by all the most ardent advocates of arbitration, of conceding that there are certain fundamental rights that are not arbitrable or not justiciable. When an industrial matter is the subject of dispute, all personal relations must be excluded from the purview of arbitration. Those matters are arbitrable which concern property and property rights.

When the railroad presidents refused to agree to President Wilson's suggestions, they left the railroad men no alternative but to strike, unless they intended to concede the whole case and to confess thereby that they were wrong in making their demands. It was then the strike order (previously decided by the men themselves) was issued. After the strike order was issued, President Wilson, in a joint session of both Houses of Congress, presented the following program which he thought necessary to deal with the situation:

First. The immediate passage by the Senate of a bill, which has already passed the House of Representatives, reorganizing the Interstate Commerce Commission and enlarging its powers.

“Second. The enactment of an eight-hour-day law for all railroad operatives on trains engaged in interstate commerce.

"Third. The establishment of a commission, appointed by the President, to investigate and report upon the working of the eight-hour-day system.

"Fourth. Explicit approval by Congress of any increase made in freight rates by the Interstate Commerce Commission which is rendered necessary by the adoption of the eight-hour-day law.

Fifth. A provision making illegal any railroad strike or lockout prior to the investigation of the merits of the case.

"Sixth. Provision for the Government to take any necessary action to keep trains running that may be needed for military purposes.”

The two essential features of the President's legislative proposals were the eight-hour workday and compulsory governmental institutions to regulate industrial relations in an occupation not owned or operated by the Government itself. The representatives of the railroad organizations felt the seriousness of the situation which confronted them. The proposal to establish compulsory institutions is a matter that involves and affects the interests of all of the wage earners in the country. It is a revolutionary proposition, totally out of harmony with our prevailing institutions and out of harmony with our philosophy of government. The representatives of the railroad brotherhoods asked for a conference with the representative men of the American Federation of Labor, then in Washington. This conference was the first held in the American Federation of Labor new office building. Its importance is evident. In that conference the railroad brotherhoods were again assured of the support and the cooperation of the American Federation of Labor in their struggle, and in the hearing which took place before the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce August 31 upon the legislation which President Wilson had recommended for enactment by Congress the wishes and the demands of the wage earners were presented by the representatives of the railroad organizations and by the president of the American Federation of Labor. The egiht-hour workday was secured for the railroad men, but the proposition providing for “compulsory investigation," carrying with t compulsory service, was not enacted.

The bill introduced in Congress for the declared purpose of preventing strikes and interruption of transportation is modeled after the Canadian compulsory investigations act. It provides that during a period when the demands for changed conditions are under consideration it would be unlawful for the railroad workers to strike. During this specified period it is the purpose of this law to compel railroad men to work even against their will.

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