the controversy may appeal to the chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Commissioner of Labor to put themselves in communication with the other party and endeavor by mediation and conciliation to bring about an amicable adjustment of the matters at issue.

Moreover, the mediators are without authority to intervene in any controversy upon their own initiative. Their intervention is conditioned, first, upon the receipt of a request for mediation under the provisions of the law from one of the parties to the controversy, and, second, upon the acceptance by the other party of the mediators' tender of friendly offices.

The law provides no powers of compulsion which may be used to induce either party to make a request for mediation. The employer is as free to resort to a lockout and the employees to inaugurate a strike as if the Erdman Act had never been passed. Even in cases where the provisions of the act are invoked by one party the other party is under no legal obligation either to accept the tender of friendly offices made by the mediators or to submit the matters at issue to the arbitration provided for in the law. In this respect the Erdman Act differs from the Canadian Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, which forbids either employers or employees in the industries to which that act applies to inaugurate either a lockout or a strike until after the matters in dispute have been submitted, in accordance with the provisions of the act, to an investigation and a report has been published by an investigation board.

At the time the Erdman Act was passed practically all the discussion was focused on its arbitration features and little attention was given to its provisions for mediation. Experience has shown, however, that the latter are the more important and efficacious features of the law. Of the 44 cases in which mediation under the act was invoked, only 8 have been carried on to arbitration. These figures do not show the whole disproportion, however, for in each of these 8 cases the greater part of the matters in controversy were settled by mediation and only a few of the points were carried to arbitration. In addition to these, 4 other cases have been arbitrated under the provisions of the Erdman Act, these cases having been submitted to

1 By an amendment approved March 4, 1911, this provision was changed and the authority was given to the President to designate any member of the Interstate Commerce Commission or any member of the United States Commerce Court to perform the duties and exercise the functions conferred in the law itself upon the chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission. From the time of the passage of the act up to the organization of the Commerce Court Hon. Martin A. Knapp had been the chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission and had taken part in the negotiations carried on under the mediation and arbitration law. Upon the organization of the Commerce Court he was appointed its presiding judge, and upon the passage of the amendment to the law just referred to the President, in March, 1911, designated the presiding judge of the Commerce Court to exercise for a period of two years the functions assigned in the original act to the chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

arbitration directly by agreement between the parties in controversy without first invoking the mediation proceedings of the act.

One section of the act provides for adaptation of the arbitration machinery to cases in which a majority of the employees involved are not organized. The other provisions are applicable to all employees covered by the act, whether or not they are organized. As a matter of fact, in all cases, either of mediation or of arbitration, the employees who were parties to the proceedings have been organized and have always been represented by the officials of their respective organizations. In mediation proceedings they have always been represented by officers of the national associations. This is due to the fact that before a dispute can reach a point which justifies invoking this act it has reached a point at which the employees concerned have given up the effort to secure an adjustment through their local representatives on the road involved and have turned the conduct of further negotiations over to their national officers.

Although the law applies equally to organized and unorganized workers, it is difficult to see how its provisions could be carried out with any degree of satisfaction except in cases where organized employees are dealt with. Much of the success which has marked the operation of the law thus far is probably due to the fact that the classes of employees with whom it deals are strongly organized and well-disciplined groups.

From the number of times that appeal has been made to the provisions of a law designed to obviate strikes it might appear that controversies of a serious nature arise with considerable frequency on American railroads. As a matter of fact, the record really indicates that the railways in the United States and their employees engaged in train operation have maintained more than ordinarily friendly relations. There are many railroads in the United States. Upon each of these roads there are six different classes of employees subject to the provisions of this act, and the schedules governing their wages and conditions of employment are being constantly reopened for readjustment.

During the period covered by the practical operation of this law there have been hundreds of cases in which either new agreements have been negotiated or existing agreements reopened and wage scales and working conditions readjusted through conferences between the particular road involved and one or another of the classes of employees covered by the provisions of the Erdman Act. On the average it is probable that hardly a week goes by in which some one of these classes of employees is not engaged in negotiations with some railroad in some part of the United States concerning changes in their existing agreements. A large number of these are settled. directly without the intervention of any of the national officials of

the organization concerned, and, as pointed out elsewhere, it is only upon the failure of the local representatives of the employees to secure a settlement and after the matter has been referred to their national organization and there has been a further failure to reach a settlement in negotiations between the road and the officials of the national organization involved that a case reaches a point where the provisions of the Erdman Act are invoked.

COURSE OF PROCEDURE IN A CASE OF MEDIATION.

CONDITIONS NECESSARY TO ACTION BY MEDIATORS.

The course through which the mediation provisions of the Erdman Act are invoked is ordinarily somewhat as follows: A controversy arises between a railroad company and one or more classes of its employees coming within the provisions of the act. This controversy may relate to proposed changes in the existing rates of pay or the existing regulations governing working conditions, or it may arise over some grievance growing out of a misunderstanding of the terms of the existing contract and involve no proposals for changed conditions. If no settlement can be reached by the local committee or the general committee directly representing the employees on the road or roads involved, the questions in dispute are referred by the employees to their national organization, and a grand officer, as he is termed, of that organization then takes the matter up directly with the road or roads involved and endeavors by direct negotiation to effect a settlement. If this effort fails, the questions in dispute and any proposal of settlement offered by the road are usually laid before the employees concerned, and they are asked to vote upon whether they are willing to inaugurate a strike unless some basis of settlement more satisfactory to their representatives than the one offered can be secured. If the vote of the men is in favor of a strike to enforce their proposals, the grand officer again opens negotiations with the road in a further effort to effect an amicable adjustment of the controversy. If these negotiations prove fruitless, or if at the outset it is apparent that no settlement can be effected directly by the parties concerned, one or the other of the parties to the dispute makes an application to the mediators designated in the Erdman Act, requesting them to use their friendly offices to bring about an amicable adjustment of the controversy and avert the threatened strike.

Under the provisions of the law applications for mediation may be made by either side. In the 48 cases of mediation and arbitration in which the act has been invoked, applications have in 19 instances been made by the railroad companies involved, in 13 cases by officers of organizations representing the employees involved, and in 16 cases by representatives of both parties to the controversy. The applica

tions made by the employees approach in number those made by the companies, but cover proportionately a much smaller mileage and involve a smaller number of employees. This is due to the fact that when a really serious strike is threatened it is naturally the company rather than the employees which invokes the friendly offices of the mediators.

TAKING A STRIKE VOTE BEFORE APPLICATION.

In a few cases applications, either made jointly or by the employees alone, have been made before a strike vote has been taken. In such instances the mediators, in deciding upon their action, have been governed by the gravity of the existing situation. The law itself provides that its machinery shall be utilized only when traffic either has been actually interrupted or is seriously threatened with interruption. Ordinarily it might be held that this condition does not exist until the employees involved have been polled on the question at issue and have strongly indicated their willingness to withdraw from service as a means of enforcing their proposals or remedying their grievances. But the law does not require the taking of a strike vote as a preliminary to invoking its provisions, and in each case the mediators are left free to exercise their own judgment as to whether or not the conditions assumed by the law exist.

As a consequence the action taken in such cases varies according to the nature of the controversy in which intervention is sought. It is not desirable that the provisions of the act should be invoked for the settlement of comparatively unimportant controversies, nor that they should be applied even in important controversies until the parties themselves have exhausted their efforts to reach a settlement, and until the public, in consequence, is threatened with serious inconvenience. On the other hand, it is sometimes undesirable and unwise to compel the employees to go to the expense of polling the road on the question of a strike, and at the same time to stir up the unrest and friction attendant upon that process. The mediators, therefore, have only required that they be satisfied that the parties to a controversy can not themselves reach an agreement, and that the dispute is of such a character that it might, if not settled, bring about a strike with consequent serious results to the public dependent upon the road involved. Applications of this kind, however, are exceptional. In the great majority of cases in which intervention is sought strike votes have actually been taken and strikes seriously

1 Formerly under the Canadian Industrial Disputes Investigation Act no appeal for a board of investigation could be made by the employees concerned until they had taken a strike vote. During 1910 the law was amended so that where a dispute directly affects employees in more than one Province, and such employees are members of the trade union having a general committee authorized to carry on negotiations in disputes, a declaration by the chairman or president and by the secretary of such committee to the effect that, failing an adjustment of the dispute, to the best of the knowledge and belief of the declarants, a strike will be declared, may be accepted as sufficient instead of a strike vote.

threatened before the cases were taken up under the provisions of the Erdman Act.

ACTION OF MEDIATORS UPON RECEIPT OF APPLICATION.

Where a joint request for mediation is received, signed by both parties to the controversy, there can, of course, be no question as to the willingness of both parties to meet the mediators and undertake negotiations through them. In case, however, a request for mediation is received from only one party to the controversy, the mediators notify the other party, and ask whether the party so addressed is willing to accept their friendly offices with a view to bringing about an amicable adjustment of the matters in controversy.

Applications for mediation usually come without previous notice and as a rule are made by telegraph. As has been indicated above, they are not ordinarily made until an acute situation has arisen and a strike threatened. It is essential therefore, if the Erdman Act is to be effectively administered, that action be taken quickly and that as little formality as possible be required in the matter of making and acting upon applications for mediation. Applications actually received vary from more or less formal ones reciting the provisions of the law to what might be called simple requests for the exercise of friendly offices.

FORMS OF APPLICATIONS AND REPLIES.

Below are given copies of applications actually received, showing the range of differences in form.

The two following are copies of applications made by representatives of the railroads:

TELEGRAM.

Chairman Interstate Commerce Commission,

Hon. MARTIN A. KNAPP,

Hon. CHARLES P. NEILL,

Washington, D. C.

Commissioner of Labor, Washington, D. C.

A controversy concerning wages has arisen between The Railroad Co. and the employees of said company employed as

The said Railroad Co. is a common carrier subject to the provisions of an act concerning carriers engaged in interstate commerce and their employees, effective June 1, 1898, commonly known as the Erdman Act, and the said controversy threatens to seriously interrupt the business of said carrier. You are, therefore, in accordance with the provisions of said act, requested by said Railroad

Co. to put yourselves in communication with the parties to such controversy and use your best efforts, by mediation and conciliation, to amicably settle said controversy, and if such efforts shall be unsuccessful to at once endeavor to bring about an arbitration of said controversy, in accordance with the provisions of said act.

Respectfully submitted.

President.