es to this principle of preference, namely,
that they will agree to prefer union men in the hiring of new
employes, subject to reasonable restrictions, and also to prefer
union men in dismissal on account of slack work, subject to a
reasonable preference to older employes, to be arranged by the
Board of Arbitration, it being understood that all who have worked
for the firm six months shall be considered old employes.

2. All other matters shall be deliberated on and discussed by the
parties in interest, and if they are unable to reach an agreement,
the matter in dispute shall be submitted to the Arbitration Board
for its final decision.

Until an agreement can be reached by negotiation by the parties in
interest, or in case of their failure to agree, and a decision is
announced by the Arbitration Board, the old agreement shall be
considered as being in full force and effect.

This came in force May 1, 1913.

The chairman of the Arbitration Board, making a statement, three
months later, in August, 1913, after defining the principle to be
"such preference as will make an efficient organization for the
workers, also an efficient, productive administration for the
company," went on:

In handing down the foregoing decisions relating to preference
which grew out of a three months' consideration of the subject,
and after hearing it discussed at great length and from every
angle, the Board is acutely conscious that it is still largely
an experiment, and that the test of actual practice may reveal
imperfections, foreseen and unforeseen, which cannot be otherwise
demonstrated than by test.

It therefore regards them as tentative and subject to revision
whenever the test of experiment shall make it seem advisable.

The Board also feels that unless both parties cooeperate in good
faith and in the right spirit to make the experiment a success,
no mechanism of preferential organization, however cunningly
contrived, will survive the jar and clash of hostile feeling or
warring interests. It hands down and publishes these decisions
therefore in the hope that with the needed cooeperation they
may help to give the workers a strong, loyal, constructive
organization, and the Company a period of peaceful, harmonious and
efficient administration and production which will compensate for
any disadvantage w