Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1916 — ARBITRATION NECESSARY [ARTICLE]

ARBITRATION NECESSARY

If we could find some way to prevent by law radical action in tlfe way of strike or lockout until the government could all the facts and instruct public opinion, it would he worth while. We not only want to know what the men need, but what the roads are able to pay without impariring their service to the public. As between money that goes to favored stockholders by manipulation and money that is paid to employes in increased wages, I much prefer the latter, but there must be fair dividends. The welfare of the entire country demands that, for the railway investor is one of the chief contributors to that welfare. Without him we can have no further development of the country's chief industry, the industry upon which all our other industries depend. If ability to pay dividends is found to depend on authority to increase rates to meet the increasing cost of labor and supplies and taxes, ;m it is bound to b~, *1 en by all means let the roads into ease the rates To increase dividends to the vanishing point, thereby cutting off all new capital, means government ownership, and we ought not to approach government ownership in this country until government regulation has failed. It is now so far from being a failure that the United States has today the best system oi railroads in the world, with the best wages for employes and the best service to the public and by far the cheapest servfce in proportion to its quality. * * * To come-back to the present, 1 eee no way for the settlement of our labor disputes except by mediation, and if that fails, by arbitration, and we already have sufficient law for that purpose, if it is supplemented by some governmental device for getting the needed facts. I refer, of course, to voluntary arbitration. At the time the present mediation act was under discussion, preliminary to Its passage, there was some talk of providing compulsory arbitration. That talk has been revived in the course of the controversy now pending. But tb nited States ought

not to have campulsory arbitration, if it means, in its logical outcome, involuntary servitude. There w r ould be no point in compelling' the opponents to arbitrate, whether or no, unless you could compel them later, on to abide by the award of the arbitrators and, in the case of the men, make it obligatory for them to remain at work. On the other hand, if you admit the principle that they can all give up their jobs at once and combine to prevent others from taking their places, that, means that there is always the possibility of civil war. A strike of the dimensions of the one now threatened would be civil war. It is idle to ignore the fact that such a strike could not be won without force, and that the strikers would use force. And there would be nothing left for the public but to use force, too, in the shape of the military and every other agency at the disposal of the government to offset violence and keep the roads in operation. It seems barbarous and uncivilized, but civilization has not yet devised any other way. It will find a way eventually and there is no need for discouragement. Reason and persuasion go much further than they used to in these matters. When wo have learned how, they will go all the way in every contingency.— Son a tor Newlands in New York Times.