ecutives before the Railroad Labor Board, which was established under
the Transportation Act of 1920.

In the summer of 1919 employers in certain industries, like clothing,
grew aware of a need of a more "psychological" handling of their labor
force than heretofore in order to reduce a costly high labor turnover
and no less costly stoppages of work. This created a veritable Eldorado
for "employment managers" and "labor managers," real and spurious.
Universities and colleges, heretofore wholly uninterested in the problem
of labor or viewing training in that problem as but a part of a general
cultural education, now vied with one another in establishing "labor
management" and "labor personnel" courses. One phase of the "labor
personnel" work was a rather wide experimentation with "industrial
democracy" plans. These plans varied in form and content, from simple
provision for shop committees for collective dealing, many of which had
already been installed during the War under the orders of the War Labor
Board, to most elaborate schemes, some modelled upon the Constitution of
the United States. The feature which they all had in common was that
they attempted to achieve some sort of collective bargaining outside the
channels of the established trade unions. The trade unionists termed the
new fashioned expressions of industrial democracy "company unions." This
term one may accept as technically correct without necessarily accepting
the sinister connotation imputed to it by labor.

The trade unions, too, were benefiting as organizations. The Amalgamated
Clothing Workers' Union firmly established itself by formal agreement on
the men's clothing "markets" of Chicago, Rochester, Baltimore, and New
York. The membership of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers' Union rose to
175,000. Employers in general were complaining of increased labor
unrest, a falling off of efficiency in the shop, and looked askance at
the rapid march of unionization. The trade unions, on their part, were
aware of their opportunity and eager for a final recognition as an
institution in industry. As yet uncertainty prevailed as to whether
enough had survived of the War-time spirit of give and take to make a
struggle avoidable, or whether the issue must be solved by a bitter
conflict of classes.

A partial showdown came in the autumn of 1919. Three great events, which
came closely together, helped to clear the situation: The steel strike,
the President's Industria