whole labor movement at their back and aided by a not unfriendly
attitude on the part of the national Administration, brought to bay the
greatest single industry of the country and overcame the opposition of
the entire business class.

The four brotherhoods made a joint demand for an eight-hour day early in
1916.[84] The railway officials claimed that the demand for the
reduction of the work-day from ten to eight hours with ten hours' pay
and a time and a half rate for overtime was not made in good faith.
Since, they said, the employes ought to have known that the railways
could not be run on an eight-hour day, the demand was but a covert
attempt to gain a substantial increase in their wages, which were
already in advance of any of the other skilled workers. On the other
hand, the brotherhoods stoutly maintained during their direct
negotiations with the railway companies and in the public press that
their demand was a _bona fide_ demand and that they believed that the
railway business did admit of a reorganization substantially on an
eight-hour basis. The railway officials offered to submit to arbitration
the demand of the men together with counter demands of their own. The
brotherhoods, however, fearing prejudice and recalling to mind past
disappointments, declined the proposal and threatened to tie up the
whole transportation system of the country by a strike on Labor Day.

When the efforts at mediation by the United States Board of Mediation
and Conciliation came to naught, President Wilson invited to Washington
the executives of the several railway systems and a convention of the
several hundred division chairmen of the brotherhoods and attempted
personal mediation. He urged the railway executives to accept the
eight-hour day and proposed that a commission appointed by himself
should investigate the demand for time and a half overtime. This the
employes accepted, but the executives objected to giving the eight-hour
day before an investigation was made. Meantime the brotherhoods had
issued their strike order effective on Labor Day and the crisis became
imminent. To obviate the calamity of a general strike, at a time when
the country was threatened with troubles on the Mexican frontier and
with the unsettled submarine controversy with Germany ready to flare up
any moment, the President went before Congress and asked for a speedy
enactment of an eight-hour law for train operatives without a reduction
in wages but wit