1.  That the firm agrees to this principle of preference, namely, that they will agree to prefer union men in the hiring of new employes, subject to reasonable restrictions, and also to prefer union men in dismissal on account of slack work, subject to a reasonable preference to older employes, to be arranged by the Board of Arbitration, it being understood that all who have worked for the firm six months shall be considered old employes.

2.  All other matters shall be deliberated on and discussed by the parties in interest, and if they are unable to reach an agreement, the matter in dispute shall be submitted to the Arbitration Board for its final decision.

Until an agreement can be reached by negotiation by the parties in interest, or in case of their failure to agree, and a decision is announced by the Arbitration Board, the old agreement shall be considered as being in full force and effect.

This came in force May 1, 1913.

The chairman of the Arbitration Board, making a statement, three months later, in August, 1913, after defining the principle to be “such preference as will make an efficient organization for the workers, also an efficient, productive administration for the company,” went on: 

In handing down the foregoing decisions relating to preference which grew out of a three months’ consideration of the subject, and after hearing it discussed at great length and from every angle, the Board is acutely conscious that it is still largely an experiment, and that the test of actual practice may reveal imperfections, foreseen and unforeseen, which cannot be otherwise demonstrated than by test.

    It therefore regards them as tentative and subject to revision
    whenever the test of experiment shall make it seem advisable.

The Board also feels that unless both parties cooeperate in good faith and in the right spirit to make the experiment a success, no mechanism of preferential organization, however cunningly contrived, will survive the jar and clash of hostile feeling or warring interests.  It hands down and publishes these decisions therefore in the hope that with the needed cooeperation they may help to give the workers a strong, loyal, constructive organization, and the Company a period of peaceful, harmonious and efficient administration and production which will compensate for any disadvantage which the preferential experiment may impose.

The published pamphlet, under date January 28, 1914, concludes: 

There have been no cases appealed from the Trade Board to the Board of Arbitration since January, 1913.  During the last six months of 1913 there were not more than a dozen Trade Board Cases.  So many principles have been laid down, and precedents established by both of these bodies, that the chief deputies are in all cases able to reach an agreement without appeal to a higher authority.