He urged the railway executives to accept the
eight-hour day and proposed that a commission appointed by himself
should investigate the demand for time and a half overtime. This the
employes accepted, but the executives objected to giving the eight-hour
day before an investigation was made. Meantime the brotherhoods had
issued their strike order effective on Labor Day and the crisis became
imminent. To obviate the calamity of a general strike, at a time when
the country was threatened with troubles on the Mexican frontier and
with the unsettled submarine controversy with Germany ready to flare up
any moment, the President went before Congress and asked for a speedy
enactment of an eight-hour law for train operatives without a reduction
in wages but with no punitive overtime. He coupled it with a request for
an authorisation of a special commission to report on the operation of
such a law for a period of six months, after which the subject might be
reopened. Lastly, he urged an amendment to the Newlands Act making it
illegal to call a strike or a lockout pending an investigation of a
controversy by a government commission.
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