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 .
