in all cases in which the existing law required it, while in all other cases the question of hours of labor was to be settled with due regard to government necessities and the welfare, health, and proper comfort of the workers.”  Fifth, restriction of output by trade unions was to be done away with.  Sixth, in fixing wages and other conditions regard was to be shown to trade union standards.  And lastly came the recognition of “the right of all workers, including common laborers, to a living wage” and the stipulation that in fixing wages, there will be established “minimum rates of pay which will insure the subsistence of the worker and his family in health and reasonable comfort.”

The establishment of the War Labor Board did not mean that the country had gone over to the principle of compulsory arbitration, for the Board could not force any party to a dispute to submit to its arbitration or by an umpire of its appointment.  However, so outspoken was public opinion on the necessity of avoiding interruptions in the War industries and so far-reaching were the powers of the government over the employer as the administrator of material and labor priorities and over the employes as the administrator of the conscription law that the indirect powers of the Board sufficed to make its decision prevail in nearly every instance.

The packing industry was a conspicuous case of the “new course” in industrial relations.  This industry had successfully kept unionism out since an ill-considered strike in 1904, which ended disastrously for the strikers.  Late in 1917, 60,000 employes in the packing houses went on strike for union recognition, the basic eight-hour day, and other demands.  Intervention by the government led to a settlement, which, although denying the union formal recognition, granted the basic eight-hour day, a living wage, and the right to organize, together with all that it implied, and the appointment of a permanent arbitrator to adjudicate disputes.  Thus an industry which had prohibited labor organization for fourteen years was made to open its door to trade unionism.[88] Another telling gain for the basic eight-hour day was made by the timber workers in the Northwest, again at the insistence of the government.

What the aid of the government in securing the right to organize meant to the strength of trade unionism may be derived from the following figures.  In the two years from 1917 to 1919 the organization of the meat cutters and butcher workmen increased its membership from less than 10,000 to over 66,000; the boilermakers and iron shipbuilders from 31,000 to 85,000; the blacksmiths from 12,000 to 28,000; the railway clerks from less than 7000 to over 71,000; the machinists from 112,000 to 255,000; the maintenance of way employes from less than 10,000 to 54,000; the railway carmen from 39,000 to 100,000; the railway telegraphers from 27,000 to 45,000; and the electrical workers from 42,000 to 131,000.  The trades here enumerated—­mostly related to shipbuilding and railways—­accounted for the greater part of the total gain in the membership of the Federation from two and a half million members in 1917 to over three and a third in 1919.