The railway industry has served as an experimental
laboratory for public control of labor relations. The strategic position of
the railway industry in the American economy and the consequent in-
convenience to the public if railway service is interrupted, the rapid rise
of the railway train and engine service brotherhoods to economic and
political prominence, and the early recognition by the judiciary that
Congress had the right to regulate railroads, all led to agitation for
federal intervention in railway labor matters. Then, in the 1930's, Con-
gress placed the air-line industry under existing railway labor legisla-
tion. This chapter reviews the Railway Labor Act and examines the
effects of this legislation on the two industries over which it has jurisdic-
tion.

In 1888 a law was passed which provided for voluntary arbitration
under government auspices of any railway labor dispute and for in-
vestigation of the causes of and means for adjusting specific contro-
versies by a board composed of the Commissioner of Labor and two
additional persons appointed by the President. The arbitration section of
this law was never invoked, and only one investigation was made -- in
the Pullman strike of 1894 -- and then not till the strike had been de-
feated with the assistance of the injunction and the use of federal troops. ¹

The failure of the 1888 legislation led to the enactment of the
Erdman Act of 1898, which, as slightly amended by the Newlands Act
of 1913, governed railway labor relations till World War I. Both laws
stressed mediation and recourse to voluntary arbitration if mediation

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