Born in
Ainsworth, Iowa, in 1860, Stone had received a high school
education and had begun his railroading career as fireman on the
Rock Island when he was nineteen years old. At twenty-four he
became an engineer. In this capacity he spent the following
nineteen years on the Rock Island road and then accepted the
chieftainship of the Brotherhood.
Stone followed the general policy of his predecessor, and brought
to his tasks the energy of youth and the optimism of the West.
When he assumed the leadership, the cost of living was rising
rapidly and he addressed himself to the adjustment of wages. He
divided the country into three sections in which conditions were
similar. He began in the Western section, as he was most familiar
with that field, and asked all the general managers of that
section to meet the Brotherhood for a wage conference. The roads
did not accept his invitation until it was reenforced by the
threat of a Western strike. The conference was a memorable one.
For nearly three weeks the grand officers of the Brotherhood
wrangled and wrought with the managers of the Western roads, who
yielded ground slowly, a few pennies' increase at a time, until a
satisfactory wage scale was reached. Similarly the Southern
section was conquered by the inexorable hard sense and
perseverance of this new chieftain.
The dispute with the fifty-two leading roads in the so-called
Eastern District, east of the Mississippi and north of the
Norfolk and Western Railroad, came to a head in 1912.
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