with suspicion and fear that a group of employers, led by the National Association of Manufacturers and several local employers’ organizations, launched an open-shop movement with the slogan of an “American plan” for shops and industries.  Many employers, normally opposed to unionism, who in War-time had permitted unionism to acquire scope, were now trying to reconquer their lost positions.  The example of the steel industry and the fiasco of the President’s Industrial Conference crystallized this reviving anti-union sentiment into action.

Meanwhile the railway labor situation remained unsettled and fraught with danger.  The problem was bound up with the general problem as to what to do with the railways.  Many plans were presented to Congress, from an immediate return to private owners to permanent government ownership and management.  The railway labor organizations, that is, the four brotherhoods of the train service personnel and the twelve unions united in the Railway Employes’ Department of the American Federation of Labor, came before Congress with the so-called Plumb Plan, worked out by Glenn E. Plumb, the legal representative of the brotherhoods.  This plan proposed that the government take over the railways for good, paying a compensation to the owners, and then entrust their operation to a board composed of government officials, union representatives, and representatives of the technical staffs.[91] So much for ultimate plans.  On the more immediate wage problem proper, the government had clearly fallen down on its promise made to the shopmen in August 1919, when their demands for higher wages were refused and a promise was made that the cost of living would be reduced.  Early in 1920 President Wilson notified Congress that he would return the roads to the owners on March 1, 1920.  A few days before that date the Esch-Cummins bill was passed under the name of the Transportation Act of 1920.  Strong efforts were made to incorporate in the bill a prohibition against strikes and lockouts.  In that form it had indeed passed the Senate.  In the House bill, however, the compulsory arbitration feature was absent and the final law contained a provision for a Railroad Labor Board, of railway, union, and public representatives, to be appointed by the President, with the power of conducting investigations and issuing awards, but with the right to strike or lockout unimpaired either before, during, or after the investigation.  It was the first appointed board of this description which was to pass on the clamorous demands by the railway employes for higher wages.[92]

No sooner had the roads been returned under the new law, and before the board was even appointed, than a strike broke out among the switchmen and yardmen, whose patience had apparently been exhausted.  The strike was an “outlaw” strike, undertaken against the wishes of national leaders and organized and led by “rebel” leaders risen up for the occasion.  For a time it threatened not only