PRE-WAR PRINCIPLES AND METHODS 33 
war period, were designed primarily to protect wage-earn- 
ers on the lowest margin of the industrial scale. This 
additional conception—that of compensation for produc- 
tive efficiency—had for its purpose the establishment of 
the claim of the more skilled workers for a larger partici- 
pation in profits and revenues. It was first advanced in 
1913 in a wage arbitration by the Brotherhood of Locomo- 
tive Firemen and Enginemen, and in the two succeeding 
years was also vigorously put forward by the Brotherhood 
of Locomotive Engineers and other railway labor organ- 
izations. The exhaustive analyses of railway operating 
and financial performance which were developed, and the 
comprehensiveness with which the theory was worked out, 
may be best seen from the presentation made jointly by 
the engineers and firemen to an arbitration board sitting in 
Chicago in 1915, to pass upon a wage dispute between 
these two classes of employees and all the railroads west 
of the Mississippi River. Summarily stated, it was as 
follows 1 
During recent years the Western Railroads have made 
extraordinary gains in operating efficiency. By the installa- 
tion of locomotives of greater tractive power and cars of 
greater capacity, by the addition of a greater number of cars 
to freight and passenger trains, by the elimination of curves 
and the reduction of grades, and also by the strengthening of 
roadbed and structures, remarkable increases in freight train 
loads have been accomplished, and it has been possible to 
move a constantly increasing volume of traffic, or of ton 
and passenger miles. These developments have been attended 
oy a three-fold effect upon Engineers and Firemen: 
oT eel 
1 Briefs submitted by Presidents W. S. Carter and Warren S. Stone, and 
W. Jett Lauck, Economist, in behalf of Brotherhoods of Locomotive Engineers 
and Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen. Western Arbitration, 1914-1915, 
under auspices of United States Board of Mediation and Conciliation, pp. 
La Stockett, “The Arbitral Determination of Railway Wages,” Chap- 
ter .