Page:Engines and men- the history of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. A survey of organisation of railways and railway locomotive men (IA enginesmenhistor00rayniala).pdf/130

 doing your interests would not be best served by the adoptions of the same:—

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The views of branches are invited upon this programme.

Very naturally, the branches decided in favour and allowed the Select Committee to go by default. But the Executive had, in my view, made a mistake, and I fancy the Executives of 1910 to 1920 would have gone a firmer way about it. They would have asked for a programme to be endorsed to lay before the Committee, along with trenchant evidence of enginemen's conditions, which were grievous in the extreme in those days. An opportunity was missed, and, as a result, evidence which might have been on record is not on record. The letter to branches says that the agitation existed in several industries, and it should have been backed up. It advises branches to obtain interviews with directors who would not recognise the Society, and, following on the decision, it sharply