It should be added that the Central Wages Board had also ordered a 2s. per week increase because of a ten points rise in the cost of living, which in June stood at 150 per cent, increase, and in September was 161 per cent, above the normal, warranting a further 2s. from October 1st.
In securing these advances from the companies the Executive did not forget its obligations to its own Office Staff of some twenty loyal workers. Advances were very properly conceded to them to meet the ever-increasing cost of living, and in 1918 there was instituted a superannuation scheme on a joint contributory basis, to make provision for old age retirement of each member of the staff.
The Conference of 1920 had decided that men of the supervisory grades should be admitted to membership of the Society, and might, if they chose, have their separate district branches and do their own business. These grades included locomotive foremen of all ranks, locomotive inspectors, relief supervisors, and officers of control. Many of them took the opportunity to join, and supervisors' branches became a new feature of the year, destined no doubt to increase and multiply in future years. Messrs. Oxlade and Mackereth, of the Executive, were called upon to handle trouble which developed at Hull, a strike taking place over the seniority question, and a settlement being secured by correspondence between the General Secretary and Sir A. Kaye Butterworth.
The Anglo-Polish crisis, and the threatened war by England upon Russia, caused the Executive to proceed to London in August, to a conference of all trade union executives, which resolved upon the creation of a Council of Action, in which every executive vested authority to call out their members. The Society at once issued circulars to branches asking all members to act according to any instructions received from the National Council of Action. Happily, the threat of common action served its purpose, and the strike did not supervene.
Mr. Bromley had been attending the International Socialist Congress at Geneva, and its sittings had just concluded when the
