This episode of the summer of 1916 had two sequels, one in the courts and the other one in a negotiated agreement between the railways and the brotherhoods.  The former brought many suits in courts against the government and obtained from a lower court a decision that the Adamson law was unconstitutional.  The case was then taken to the United States Supreme Court, but the decision was not ready until the spring of 1917.  Meantime the danger of a strike had been renewed.  However, on the same day when the Supreme Court gave out its decision, the railways and brotherhoods had signed, at the urging of the National Council of Defense, an agreement accepting the conditions of the Adamson law regardless of the outcome in court.  When the decision became known it was found to be in favor of the Adamson law.  The declaration of war against Germany came a few days later and opened a new era in the American labor situation.

Previous to that, on March 12, 1917, when war seemed inevitable, the national officers of all important unions in the Federation met in Washington and issued a statement on “American Labor’s Position in Peace or in War.”  They pledged the labor movement and the influence of the labor organizations unreservedly in support of the government in case of war.  Whereas, they said, in all previous wars “under the guise of national necessity, labor was stripped of its means of defense against enemies at home and was robbed of the advantages, the protections, and guarantees of justice that had been achieved after ages of struggle”; and “labor had no representatives in the councils authorized to deal with the conduct of the war”; and therefore “the rights, interests and welfare of workers were autocratically sacrificed for the slogan of national safety”; in this war “the government must recognize the organized labor movement as the agency through which it must cooperate with wage earners.”  Such recognition will imply first “representation on all agencies determining and administering policies of national defense” and “on all boards authorized to control publicity during war time.”  Second, that “service in government factories and private establishments, in transportation agencies, all should conform to trade union standards”; and that “whatever changes in the organization of industry are necessary upon a war basis, they should be made in accord with plans agreed upon by representatives of the government and those engaged and employed in the industry.”  Third, that the government’s demand of sacrifice of their “labor power, their bodies or their lives” be accompanied by “increased guarantees and safe-guards,” the imposing of a similar burden on property and the limitation of profits.  Fourth, that “organization for industrial and commercial service” be “upon a different basis from military service” and “that military service should be carefully distinguished from service in industrial disputes,” since “the same voluntary institutions that organized