The New York Times/1916/11/22/Fears Industrial Board
FEARS INDUSTRIAL BOARD.
Trainmen’s Official Warns Against Corporations’ Organization.
G. H. Sines, Vice President of the Railroad Trainmen, in an interview last night, said that it was the belief of the responsible executives of the four railroad brotherhoods that the recently organized eight-billion-dollar National Industrial Conference Board was a conspiracy of corporate interests to offset the sweeping tide of progressive legislation and the Adamson eight-hour law in particular.
“The railroad brotherhoods,” Mr. Sines continued, “are cognizant of this enormous combine and what it portends. It contains all the elements of reaction, elements which, if allowed to prevail, will result in an industrial upheaval of the gravest consequences. The National Industrial Conference Board is likely, more than any one thing else, to bring the grievances of not only the brotherhoods but the entire laboring class of the country to a crisis.”
The reason the brotherhoods were opposed to President Wilson’s suggestion for Federal investigation before the calling of strikes, Mr. Sines said, was that experience had shown that the railroads utilized that time to prepare for trouble which rendered them invincible. The brotherhoods were helpless under such conditions.
Mr. Sines denied that the brotherhoods intended to fly in the face of injunctions and call a strike if the Adamson law was declared unconstitutional. Such action, he said, might have been taken if the law had been repealed by a hostile Congress, but the Supreme Court of the United States was the last rsort.