He is said to
have "had rare skill in formulating reasonable demands, and by
consistently putting moderate demands strongly instead of
immoderate demands weakly he kept the good will of railroad
managers, while steadily obtaining better terms for his men." In
this practice, he could not succeed without the solid good will
of the members of the Brotherhood; and this good will was
possible only in an order which insisted upon that high standard
of personal skill and integrity essential to a first-class
engineer. Arthur possessed a genial, fatherly personality. His
Scotch shrewdness was seen in his own real estate investments,
which formed the foundation of an independent fortune. He lived
in an imposing stone mansion in Cleveland; he was a director in a
leading bank; and he identified himself with the public affairs
of the city.
When Chief Arthur died, the Assistant Grand Chief Engineer, A.B.
Youngson, who would otherwise have assumed the leadership for the
unexpired term, was mortally ill and recommended the advisory
board to telegraph Warren S. Stone an offer of the chieftainship.
Thus events brought to the fore a man of marked executive talent
who had hitherto been unknown but who was to play a tremendous
role in later labor politics. Stone was little known east of the
Mississippi. He had spent most of his life on the Rock Island
system, had visited the East only once, and had attended but one
meeting of the General Convention. In the West, however, he had a
wide reputation for sound sense, and, as chairman of the general
committee of adjustment of the Rock Island system, he had made a
deep impression on his union and his employers.
Pages:
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131