Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 102, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1917 — RAILROAD STRIKE IS AVERTED [ARTICLE]

RAILROAD STRIKE IS AVERTED

Supreme Court Holds the Adamson Law Constitutional. A decision of the supreme court Monday, holding the Adamson eight-hour law -constitutional and declaring congress to have the authority to use any power to keep open the channels of interstate commerce, has once more averted the threatened railroad strike. ' The court, through Chief Justice White, decided both carriers and their employes engaged in, a business charged with a public interest, subject to the right of congress to compulsory arbitrate a dispute affecting the operation of that business. The immediate effect of the decision will be to fix a permanent eight-hour basic day in computing wage scales on interstate railroads for which a nation-wide strike twice has been threatened, and to give, effective from January 1, this year, increases in wages to trainmen of about 25 per cent at a cost to the railroads estimated at from $40,000,000 to $50,000,000 a year. The decision is far-reaching in effect, in that it gives congress the power to adopt any measures it sees fit to avert a like situation in the future, and makes quite remote the possibility of another threatened strike. An agreement was reached late Saturday between the brotherhoods and the mediators whereby the strike hour was postponed fortyeight hours, and the supreme court decision coming within that time prevented any actual stop in the working of the railroads.