184 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

officials of the railroads as being inefficient or wasteful. As a
whole, we consider that the operating and mechanical officials
have an extraordinary and unimpeachable record. They have
been the victims of improper or misguided financial mismanagement.
 Had the financial directors of the transportation
industry been as efficient, as honest and as unselfishly devoted
to their duties as the operating and mechanical officials of the
railways, the transportation industry in this country at the
nresent time would be without parallel for service and efficiency,
 would be tremendously profitable and there would be
no railroad financial or labor problems. The shortcomings
of railway management at the present time are the result of
the inherited as well as the existing evils of the concentration
 of the financial control and management of the transportation
 industry.

The general conclusion of the railway labor organizations
 in 1921, therefore, was that altho the productive efficiency
 of employees had constantly increased, the operating
efficiency of the transportation industry had been seriously
impaired by permitting physical inadequacies in roadway,
equipment, and other facilities to develop. As a consequence,
 it was asserted that these inadequacies should be
corrected and wages permitted to remain as they were.
[n succeeding railway wage adjustments and arbitrations
extending to the present time the productive efficiency principle
 has been given a prominent place by railroad employees
 in negotiating with management and in presenting
their cases to arbitration boards. Street railway employees
also laid stress upon this point in submitting their case to
the Federal Electric Railways Commission in 1919. The
principle has also been constantly advanced in individual
street railway arbitrations in various cities.* It also played
a prominent part in 1920 in the presentation of the requests
1 Proceedings of the Federal Electric Railways Commission, Washington,