Americans

hope that the Republicans would concur and avoid a split. The Republicans, however, nominated Hughes and Fairbanks, and Justice Hughes immediately resigned his seat on the Supreme Court to enter vigorously upon the canvass. The unpopularity of Colonel Roosevelt with the German vote was surpassed only by that of President Wilson, who was renominated by the Democratic Conven- Hyphenated tion without contest. The German intrigue to tie the hands of the United States in the World War ran parallel to the feelings of Americans of German descent who were unable to believe the truth of the charges made against Germany by her enemies. The bitterness with which they believed that Wilson's policies had favored England and injured Germany was aggravated by their resentment at the charges of "hyphenism" made against them. Some weeks before the outbreak of the war, while dedicating a monument to a great Irishman, Barry, who laid the foundations of the American navy in the Revolution, Wilson had defined the hyphen. "Some Americans," he said, "need hyphens in their names because only part of them came over, but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name." In his succeeding speeches upon the issues of the war he denounced without restraint the hyphenated Americans who acted in American affairs not as Americans, but as naturalized Europeans.

The hope of the Progressive Party that its nomination of Roosevelt would force the Republicans to accept him failed doubly. The old party nominated Hughes; and Roosevelt declined to run independently, after it was too late to choose a substitute. His desire to defeat the Democratic ticket made him unwilling to assist it by dividing the Republican vote. In the ensuing canvass he gave his support to Hughes, without quite believing that the latter deserved to win.

The task of the Republican candidate was to play both ends against the middle. In his speeches Hughes felt bound to satisfy the Progressives without alienating the

conservatives, and to hold the interest of extreme proAllies without forfeiting that of Germans who desired to punish Wilson. It weakened his chances when it was learned that he had given audience to Jeremiah A. O'Leary, a leader in the movement to punish Wilson; and it helped Wilson when the President's reply to the overtures of the same leader was made public: "I should feel deeply mortified to have you or anybody like you vote for me. Since you have access to many disloyal Americans and I have not, I will ask you to convey this message to them." It injured Hughes also when in California on the stump he accepted a banquet served by "scab" waiters and left the State without even meeting its progressive and popular governor, Hiram Johnson.

Wilson and the Adamson Bill

The difficult task of President Wilson was to hold together the vote of 1914, and to defeat the united Republican Party, which no Democrat had done since the Civil War. He stood on the record of Democratic achievement and of fundamental loyalty to America. His followers in the West and South, sensing the drift of the pro-German or pro-Ally endeavors, translated this latter issue into the phrase, "He kept us out of war"; and the women, newly enfranchised in the Western States, appear to have voted on this phrase. In August a national calamity in the form of a strike of the four railway brotherhoods appeared on the horizon, and such a strike was called for Labor Day. After a conference with the railroad managers and leaders of the unions, Wilson exerted his influence over Congress and induced it to avert the strike by making the principle of the basic eight-hour day mandatory upon interstate railroads. The strike was avoided, but the Adamson Law by which Congress fixed the wages of the trainmen became a new issue in the canvass.

The first returns from the election in November, 1916, Reëlection indicated that Hughes was the choice, but later of Wilson returns conveyed the unusual fact that although he carried every New England State except New Hamp

shire, all of the Northwest but Ohio, and every Middle State but Maryland, he was defeated by the accumulated votes of the farther West and South. Hughes was defeated by political mismanagement in one or two doubtful States, but the reëlection of Wilson by whatever means, in opposition to the densely populated States of the North and East, marked a revolution in political influence paralleled only by the victories of Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Jones and Hollister, The German Secret Service in America (1918), and Count Bernstorff, My Three Years in America (1920), give different accounts of the attempts to influence American thought. The Fatherland (1910-) gloried in its German sympathies, and made no concealment of its desire to control politics with a German vote. The World's Work and the Providence (R.I.) Journal contain many articles intended to nullify German influence, while the New York Times Current History (1914–) is an invaluable assemblage of documents relating to the war. Of somewhat direct bearing upon the election are W. L. Ransom, Charles E. Hughes, the Statesman as Shown in the Opinions of the Jurist (1916); Jacob G. Schurman, Addresses of Charles Evans Hughes, 1906-1916 (1916); William Howard Taft, Our Chief Magistrate and his Powers (1916); and Speeches of William Jennings Bryan, Revised and Arranged by Himself (1911). There is no compilation to take the place of Stanwood's History of the Presidency, whose second volume ends with the platforms of 1912. F. L. Huidekoper, The Military Unpreparedness of the United States (1915), is useful upon military topics, as is the Army and Navy Journal.

CHAPTER XLVI

LABOR

THE Adamson Law was enacted on September 3, 1916, under Administration pressure backed by the threat of a railroad strike. The four railway brotherhoods involved in the struggle were among the best organized and most responsible trade unions in the United States. For many years it had been their boast that they procured their results by collective bargaining. They defended their threat to tie up the transportation of the country by the assertion that the railroads were now so unified in their policies through interlocking directorates and gentlemen's agreements that they could maintain a common plan in the face of demands from their employees.

Wages and cost of living

Wage increases were demanded by the brotherhoods to meet the rising cost of living. For nearly twenty years the index curve of average retail prices had been gradually rising, and since the outbreak of the war in Europe the increase in many directions had been spectacular. All labor in America was unsettled because of the demand for workmen and the cost of living. The double effect of the World War was to stop the annual supply of cheap labor from Europe that had averaged over a million a year for ten years before the war, and to increase the demand for American goods for Allied consumption. The enlargement of munitions plants was only one aspect of the growing demand for labor. The effects produced by European causes were intensified by domestic developments, such as the increase in the number of motor cars in use, that produced new objects for expenditure and called for help to supply new needs.

With new opportunities competing for their services and with the supply of labor no longer increasing, it became possible for organized labor to gain victories of a sort un

usual in preceding years. The Adamson Law was denounced by Judge Hughes at Nashville the day The Adamafter its passage. He pointed out that the meas- son Law ure was enacted under pressure rather than upon its merits and charged that it was a party move to win the vote of organized labor. The act as it passed Congress was less than the program for which the President had asked. He insisted upon the recognition of the eight-hour day, but also asked for powers that would make the repetition of such a situation improbable, by requiring and giving time for a public investigation of the controversy at issue before permitting such a strike to be precipitated. The demand of the employees for an eight-hour day was declared to be a demand for wage increase in disguise, the real intent being not to limit the working day, but to secure time and a half for overtime over eight hours. The unions declared that in the absence of such a law their members were frequently forced to work sixteen hours or more at a stretch, to their injury and to the danger of the traveling public.

The law provided that the new working day should become effective January 1, 1917. Before that date the railroads attacked the law in the courts and procured a district court decision that it was unconstitutional. They let it be known that pending a final decision by the Supreme Court they would not pay the overtime provided by the Adamson Law, but would hold it in a separate fund for the benefit of the employees. A new strike to force the railroads to obey the law at once was declared in March, 1917, but was postponed at the request of the President while a special commission consisting of Secretaries Lane and Wilson, and Daniel Willard, chairman of the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense, brought pressure upon the railroad companies. These yielded on March 19, and later in the day the Supreme Court by a vote of five to four upheld the constitutionality of the act, and asserted in a dictum that it would have been possible for Congress to compel the unions to arbitrate their grievance. Among the five justices making the majority in this decision were