ABSTRACT
Luckily the President is thinking more about how to avert a railroad strike than about "principles". The President has proposed a commission of inquiry. That commission will have to develop into an interstate railway wages board. At first it will probably be limited to investigation and publicity. There will be great difficulties in this until the Interstate Commerce Commission fixing rates, service, wages and hours has developed a workable body of administrative law. By fixing wages for all railroad employees, and not merely for the strategically organized workers, the Commission will have endless power for the skillful disintegration of labor monopoly. The monopolistic attitude of the Brotherhoods could hardly survive small and wise discriminations in the making of wages. Their coercive power depends on large general demands for horizontal increases. Nationalization, which the President held up as a warning, is the goal towards which we are going by inevitable steps.
