The Adamson Eight-Hour Act of 1916

Congressional Action Designed to Avert a National Railroad Strike

Jan 30, 2009 Michael Streich

Woodrow Wilson - Library of Congress

When nearly half a million railroad workers threatened to strike and disrupt interstate commerce, Woodrow Wilson went before Congress requesting emergency legislation.

In August 1916 union officials representing 400,000 railroad workers threatened a nationwide strike unless their demands for an eight-hour work day and wage parity with their existing ten-hour work day were met. Such a strike had the potential to the cripple the nation. Additionally, President Woodrow Wilson saw the possible strike as a catastrophic event hindering the preparedness policies. The United States had remained neutral in the global world war, but that could change in the future, despite Wilson’s pending election pledge to keep “us out of war.” The solution was the Adamson Eight-Hour Act of 1916.

Arbitration and Legislation of the Adamson Act

A ‘hands-on” president who, like Theodore Roosevelt, exercised fully the inherent prerogative power of the chief executive, Wilson called the leaders of both sides of the labor dispute to the White House. Acting as arbitrator, Wilson proposed the eight-hour work day, but without wage guarantees. Although acceptable to the railroads, the workers rejected the deal, insisting on guarantees not to lower existing wages and calling for overtime compensation of one and a half times the rate of regular wages.

Realizing the importance of an unhindered flow of interstate commerce, President Wilson appeared before the Congress on August 29th, pressing the chamber for emergency legislation to halt the impending strike, set for September 4th. The result was the Adamson Eight-Hour Act, granting workers in the railroad industry an eight-hour workday if the affected rail lines were operating in interstate commerce. Workers wages would not be cut by the reduction in hours.

Additionally, the Act allowed the President to set up a three-man commission to “observe the operation and effects” of the Act. According to the Act, eight hours would be “deemed a day’s work.” Further, the Interstate Commerce Commission was tasked with granting an increase in freight rates for railroad companies in order to meet the increase in wage expenses.

Court Challenges to the Constitutionality of the Act

Woodrow Wilson, who more than once rejected progressive acts of Congress on the basis that such acts might be challenged on constitutional grounds, must have been aware that the Adamson Act carried with it the threat of a court challenge. These were still the days in legislative history when presidents vetoed bills they felt could not stand the test of constitutionality.

The Act was challenged in the courts and struck down as unconstitutional by the United States District Court for Western Missouri. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court. In Wilson v. New (1917) the high court voted 5-4 to reverse the lower court decision, citing the emergency nature of the Act and it’s conformity to the “public character” of interstate rail transportation.

The conservative dissenters, however, argued that the Adamson Act violated the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Technically, the law took from one party and gave to another without compensating the first party. Additionally, the Act stretched the notion of interstate commerce since it was not a law of regulation.

The Adamson Act not only averted a potentially damaging strike involving 250,000 miles of railroad that directly impacted the entire economy, but it helped better prepare the United States for the impending war commitment in 1917. Also, President Wilson was quite aware that the reality of such a strike might negatively affect his presidential reelection campaign, although some Wilson historians discount this as a motive and highlight his moral sense of justice, pointing to similar legislation Wilson supported earlier.

Sources:

Leon H. Canfield, The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson: Prelude to a World in Crisis (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1966).

Henrick A. Clements, The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson University of Kansas Press, 1992).

Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution: It’s Origins & Development 5th Edition (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976).

Copyright Michael Streich. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.