Railroad Strike Negotiations

At the risk of setting his recovery back, the President held the usual Cabinet meeting this afternoon to confer about the railroad situation. After the meeting, he sent the following message to LE Sheppard, acting president of the Order of Railway Conductors; WG Lee, president, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen; WS Stone, Grand Chief Engineer, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers; WS Carter, president, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen; and Elisha Lee, chairman of the Conference Committee of Managers, in New York:

“I deem it my duty and my right to appeal to you in this time of national peril to open again the questions at issue between the railroads and their operatives with a view to accommodation or settlement. With my approval a committee of the Council of National Defense is about to seek a conference with you with that end in view. A general interruption of the railway traffic of the country at this time would entail a danger to the nation against which I have the right to enter my most solemn and earnest protest. It is now the duty of every patriotic man to bring matters of this sort to immediate accommodation. The safety of the country against manifest perils affecting its own peace and the peace of the whole world makes accommodation absolutely imperative and seems to me to render any other choice or action inconceivable.

WOODROW WILSON"