t a fourteen percent
increase, which was entirely unacceptable to the union. The strike
continued and the prospect of a dire coal famine grew nearer. To break
the deadlock, on motion of Attorney-General Palmer, Judge Anderson of
Indianapolis, under the War-time Lever Act, issued an injunction
forbidding the union officials to continue conducting the strike. The
strike continued, the strikers refusing to return to work, and a
Bituminous Coal Commission appointed by the President finally settled it
by an award of an increase of twenty-seven percent. But that the same
Administration which had given the unions so many advantages during the
War should now have invoked against them a War-time law, which had
already been considered practically abrogated, was a clear indication of
the change in the times. In a strike by anthracite coal miners in the
following year an award was made by a Presidential board of three,
representing the employers, the union, and the public. The strikers,
however, refused to abide by it and inaugurated a "vacation-strike," the
individual strikers staying away on a so-called vacation, nominally
against the will of the union officers. They finally returned to work.

Both the steel and coal strikes furnished occasions for considerable
anti-union propaganda in the press. Public sentiment long favorable to
labor became definitely hostile.[90] In Kansas the legislature passed a
compulsory arbitration law and created an Industrial Relations Court to
adjudicate trade disputes. Simultaneously an "anti-Red" campaign
inaugurated by Attorney-General Palmer contributed its share to the
public excitement and helped to prejudice the cause of labor more by
implication than by making direct charges. It was in an atmosphere thus
surcharged with suspicion and fear that a group of employers, led by the
National Association of Manufacturers and several local employers'
organizations, launched an open-shop movement with the slogan of an
"American plan" for shops and industries. Many employers, normally
opposed to unionism, who in War-time had permitted unionism to acquire
scope, were now trying to reconquer their lost positions. The example of
the steel industry and the fiasco of the President's Industrial
Conference crystallized this reviving anti-union sentiment into action.

Meanwhile the railway labor situation remained unsettled and fraught
with danger. The problem was bound up with the general problem as to
what to