do with the railways. Many plans were presented to Congress,
from an immediate return to private owners to permanent government
ownership and management. The railway labor organizations, that is, the
four brotherhoods of the train service personnel and the twelve unions
united in the Railway Employes' Department of the American Federation
of Labor, came before Congress with the so-called Plumb Plan, worked out
by Glenn E. Plumb, the legal representative of the brotherhoods. This
plan proposed that the government take over the railways for good,
paying a compensation to the owners, and then entrust their operation to
a board composed of government officials, union representatives, and
representatives of the technical staffs.[91] So much for ultimate plans.
On the more immediate wage problem proper, the government had clearly
fallen down on its promise made to the shopmen in August 1919, when
their demands for higher wages were refused and a promise was made that
the cost of living would be reduced. Early in 1920 President Wilson
notified Congress that he would return the roads to the owners on March
1, 1920. A few days before that date the Esch-Cummins bill was passed
under the name of the Transportation Act of 1920. Strong efforts were
made to incorporate in the bill a prohibition against strikes and
lockouts. In that form it had indeed passed the Senate. In the House
bill, however, the compulsory arbitration feature was absent and the
final law contained a provision for a Railroad Labor Board, of railway,
union, and public representatives, to be appointed by the President,
with the power of conducting investigations and issuing awards, but with
the right to strike or lockout unimpaired either before, during, or
after the investigation. It was the first appointed board of this
description which was to pass on the clamorous demands by the railway
employes for higher wages.[92]

No sooner had the roads been returned under the new law, and before the
board was even appointed, than a strike broke out among the switchmen
and yardmen, whose patience had apparently been exhausted. The strike
was an "outlaw" strike, undertaken against the wishes of national
leaders and organized and led by "rebel" leaders risen up for the
occasion. For a time it threatened not only to paralyze the country's
railway system but to wreck the railway men's organizations as well. It
was finally brought to an end through the efforts of the national