294 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

restricted to two objectives: (1), regularizing employment
by adding to the average number of days worked each year,
and (2), building up wage rates to an adequate basis. It
has been decided that it is more essential to the perinanent
well-being of employees and of the arrangement itself to
concentrate upon raising wages to a proper basis, and upon
establishing satisfactory working conditions, including the
length of the work-day and work-week, annual vacations
with pay, and similar standards, before extending the plan
to include a participation in revenue gains over and above
the regular wage scale.
This method of procedure is unquestionably based on
sound reasoning and the best industrial practise. Cooperative
 gains should at first find expression in proper standards
 of work and compensation. Under the conditions of
railway operation and regulation, progress in extending a
plan of this kind must also be necessarily slower than in
private enterprises.
The railroads in certain designated territories usually
deal with employees as a unit so far as rates of pay and
industrial relations are concerned, the procedure for negotiation,
 mediation, and arbitration being provided by federal
legislation. As a consequence, the “B. & O. Plan” must
adjust itself to this situation until it has been accepted by a
larger number of railroad systems, in order that it may become
 the subject of a general determination of policy.
The Transportation Act also provides that revenues in
excess of a 6 per cent. return on the property investment
of the carrier shall be divided with the Government, and
the Interstate Commerce Commission would not for this
reason probably look with favor upon a division of net
revenue gains between management and employees of certain
 railroads until some general basis of understanding
had been reached. It is, therefore, probable that the