After the Pullman strike various elements in the
community were unexpectedly brought together that they might
soberly consider and rectify the weakness in the legal structure
which the strike had revealed. These citizens arranged for a
large and representative convention to be held in Chicago on
Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration. I served as secretary
of the committee from the new Civic Federation having the matter
in charge, and our hopes ran high when, as a result of the
agitation, the Illinois legislature passed a law creating a State
Board of Conciliation and Arbitration. But even a state board
cannot accomplish more than public sentiment authorizes and
sustains, and we might easily have been discouraged in those
early days could we have foreseen some of the industrial
disturbances which have since disgraced Chicago. This law
embodied the best provisions of the then existing laws for the
arbitration of industrial disputes. At the time the word
arbitration was still a word to conjure with, and many Chicago
citizens were convinced, not only of the danger and futility
involved in the open warfare of opposing social forces, but
further believed that the search for justice and righteousness in
industrial relations was made infinitely more difficult thereby.
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