The War in Europe did not immediately improve industrial conditions in America.  The first to feel its effects were the industries directly engaged in the making of munitions.  The International Association of Machinists, the organization of the now all-important munition workers, actually had its membership somewhat decreased during 1915, but in the following year made a 50 percent increase.  The greater part of the new membership came from the “munitions towns,” such as Bridgeport, Connecticut, where, in response to the insatiable demand from the Allied nations, new enormous plants were erected during 1915 and shipment of munitions in mass began early the next year.  Bridgeport and surrounding towns became a center of a successful eight-hour movement, in which the women workers newly brought into the industry took the initiative.  The Federation as a whole lost three percent of its membership in 1915 and gained seven percent during 1916.

On its War policy the Federation took its cue completely from the national government.  During the greater part of the period of American neutrality its attitude was that of a shocked lover of peace who is desirous to maintain the strictest neutrality if the belligerents will persist in refusing to lend an ear to reason.  To prevent a repetition of a similar catastrophe, the Federation did the obvious thing, pronouncing for open and democratized diplomacy; and proposed to the several national trade union federations that an international labor congress meet at the close of the war to determine the conditions of peace.  However, both the British and Germans declined.  The convention in 1915 condemned the German-inspired propaganda for an embargo on shipments to all belligerents and the fomenting of strikes in munitions-making plants by German agents.  The Federation refused to interpret neutrality to mean that the American wage earner was to be thrown back into the dumps of depression and unemployment, from which he was just delivered by the extensive war orders from the Allied governments.

By the second half of 1916 the war prosperity was in full swing.  Cost of living was rising rapidly and movements for higher wages became general.  The practical stoppage of immigration enabled common labor to get a larger share than usual of the prosperity.  Many employers granted increases voluntarily.  Simultaneously, a movement for the eight-hour day was spreading from strictly munitions-making trades into others and was meeting with remarkable success.  But 1916 witnessed what was doubtless the most spectacular move for the eight-hour day in American history—­the joint eight-hour demand by the four railway brotherhoods, the engineers, firemen, conductors, and trainmen.  The effectiveness acquired by trade unionism needs no better proof than the remarkable success with which these four organizations, with the full support of the whole labor movement at their back and aided by a not unfriendly attitude on the part of the national Administration, brought to bay the greatest single industry of the country and overcame the opposition of the entire business class.