intended by nature for this mission, since they
cannot discuss a question without losing their temper.... It may be laid
down as a fundamental principle without which no labor organization can
hope to exist, that it must carry out its contracts. No employer can be
expected to live up to a contract that is not regarded binding by the
union."

The other railway brotherhoods to a considerable degree follow the model
set by the engineers. The Order of Railway Conductors developed rapidly
from the Conductors' Union which was organized by the conductors of the
Illinois Central Railroad at Amboy, Illinois, in the spring of 1868. In
the following July this union was extended to include all the lines in
the State. In November of the same year a call to conductors on all the
roads in the United States and the British Provinces was issued to meet
at Columbus, Ohio, in December, to organize a general brotherhood.
Ten years later the union adopted its present name. It has an ample
insurance fund * based upon the principle that policies are not matured
but members arriving at the age of seventy years are relieved from
further payments. About thirty members are thus annually retired. At
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the national headquarters, the order publishes The
Railway Conductor, a journal which aims not only at the solidarity of
the membership but at increasing their practical efficiency.

* In 1919 the total amount of outstanding insurance was somewhat over
$90,000,000.

The conductors are a conservative and carefully selected group of men.
Each must pass through a long term of apprenticeship and must possess
ability and personality. The order has been carefully and skillfully led
and in recent years has had but few differences with the railways which
have not been amicably settled. Edgar E. Clark was chosen president in
1890 and served until 1906, when he became a member of the Interstate
Commerce Commission. He was born in 1856, received a public school
education, and studied for some time in an academy at Lima, New York.
At the age of seventeen, he began railroading and served as conductor
on the Northern Pacific and other Western lines. He held numerous
subordinate positions in the Brotherhood and in 1889 became its
vice-president. He was appointed by President Roosevelt as a member
of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission in 1902 and is generally
recognized as one of the most judicial heads in the labor world. He was
succeed