The National civic federation review Volume 1-2

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 Excerpt: ...authority of executive officers at sea is not to be arbitrated. Sympathetic strikes present issues that are not arbitrable. The last great railway strike in this country, that of 1873, is an illustration. The original trouble was a strike in the manufacturing shops of Pullman Car Company. An effort was made to tie up every railroad in the country that hauled Pullman cars, out of sympathy. The railway companies were under contract with the Pullman Company to haul its cars. To the suggestion of arbitration, they replied: "We have nothing to arbitrate. We have done nothing to cause you to strike. We would be penalized if we broke our contracts with the Pullman Company. Your affair is with them, not with us." On the other hand, a labor organization does not regard provisions of its constitution or by-laws as arbitrable. Thus the constitution of the American Federation of Musicians forbids its members to play with non-union musicians, fining them for the first and second offenses and expelling them for the third. Accordingly, last winter, the local union of musicians in New York declined to play with a lady harpist until she joined the union. This was not a question of gallantry, to be arbitrated by a commission expert in artistic etiquette; it was a question of the union's constitutional law, that left no ground for arbitration. These examples might be multiplied indefinitely. They serve to show that there is a considerable range of questions, varying in different industries, that are regarded by either employers or wage-earners as outside the scope of arbitration. The second assumption of the advocates of compulsory arbitration, that the verdict of the public is necessarily infallible, is not surprising. That assumption is extremely common and ancien...