*
The other recommendations of the President were made to await the
pleasure of Congress and the unions. To the suggestion that
railway strikes be made unlawful until their causes are disclosed
the Brotherhoods were absolutely opposed.
* This was on Sunday. In order to obviate any objection as to the
legality of the signature the President signed the bill again on
the following Tuesday, the intervening Monday being Labor Day.
Many readjustments were involved in launching the eight-hour law,
and in March, 1917, the Brotherhoods again threatened to strike.
The President sent a committee, including the Secretary of the
Interior and the Secretary of Labor, to urge the parties to come
to an agreement. On the 19th of March, the Supreme Court upheld
the validity of the law, and the trouble subsided. But in the
following November, after the declaration of war, clouds
reappeared on the horizon, and again the unions refused the
Government's suggestion of arbitration. Under war pressure,
however, the Brotherhoods finally consented to hold their
grievance in abeyance.
The haste with which the eight-hour law was enacted, and the
omission of the vital balance suggested by the President appeared
to many citizens to be a holdup of Congress, and the nearness of
the presidential election suggested that a political motive was
not absent. The fact that in the ensuing presidential election,
Ohio, the home of the Brotherhoods, swung from the Republican to
the Democratic column, did not dispel this suspicion from the
public mind.
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