management, as was seen, the four
brotherhoods alone, the engineers, firemen, conductors, and trainmen
enjoyed universal recognition, the basic eight-hour day (since 1916),
and high wages. The other organizations of the railway workers, the
shopmen, the yardmen, the maintenance of way men, the clerks, and the
telegraphers were, at best, tolerated rather than recognized. Under the
government administration the eight-hour day was extended to all grades
of workers, and wages were brought up to a minimum of 68 cents per hour,
with a considerable though not corresponding increase in the wages of
the higher grades of labor. All discrimination against union men was
done away with, so that within a year labor organization on the railways
was nearing the hundred percent mark.

The policies of the national railway administration of the open door to
trade unionism and of recognition of union standards were successfully
pressed upon other employments by the National War Labor Board. On March
29, 1918, a National War Labor Conference Board, composed of five
representatives of the Federation of Labor, five representatives of
employers' associations and two joint chairmen, William H. Taft for the
employers and Frank P. Walsh for the employes, reported to the Secretary
of Labor on "Principles and Policies to govern Relations between Workers
and Employers in War Industries for the Duration of the War." These
"principles and policies," which were to be enforced by a permanent War
Labor Board organized upon the identical principle as the reporting
board, included a voluntary relinquishment of the right to strike and
lockout by employes and employers, respectively, upon the following
conditions: First, there was a recognition of the equal right of
employes and employers to organize into associations and trade unions
and to bargain collectively. This carried an undertaking by the
employers not to discharge workers for membership in trade unions or for
legitimate trade union activities, and was balanced by an undertaking of
the workers, "in the exercise of their right to organize," not to "use
coercive measures of any kind to induce persons to join their
organizations, nor to induce employers to bargain or deal therewith."
Second, both sides agreed upon the observance of the _status quo ante
bellum_ as to union or open shop in a given establishment and as to
union standards of wages, hours, and other conditions of employment.
This carried t