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Show 1 1 lllTlTl Brotherhood Strike Vote to Be Announced at 10 o'Clock Today. NEW YOKK, Atiff. 7. George W. W. Hanger of the United States board of mediation and concilliation announced here today that as a result of a conference confer-ence between representatives of the Switchmen's Union of North America and the railroads, both sides had agreed to settle their differences by arbitration. arbitra-tion. The differences between the switchmen switch-men and the railroads are in no way connected with those pending between j the four railroad brotherhoods of fire- men, engineers, conductors and train-men. train-men. The demands presented last i March are, however, virtually the same ! as those of the brotherhoods, an eight-hour eight-hour day, and time and a half for overtime, over-time, hastern and middle western roads are involved. The members of the i union number 30,000. I The questions at issue will be settled by arbitration, Mr. Hanger said, under ! tho Newlands act, which requires a j board of six arbitrators, two to be selected se-lected by each side and the remaining ; two to be chosen by the arbitrators al- 1 ready selected or by the federal board. ; The task of counting the votes of ap- : proximately 400,000 railroad employees j on the question of authorizing a general gen-eral strike in tho event that their de- ! mands for an eight-hour day and time j and a half pay for overtime are finally j denied was completed just before noon i today, it was announced at headquar- tors here of the four railroad brotherhoods. brother-hoods. Although no official statement could be obtained as to the result, it was learned from an authoritative source that tho vote was overwhelmingly in favor of a strike. The full returns will be known at 10 a. m. tomorrow, when the leaders of the men, A. B. Garretson. president of the Order of Railroad Conductors; W. S. Stone, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers; W. 8. Carter, president of the Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, and W. G. Lee, president presi-dent of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, will resubmit their demands to the railroad managers. Mr. Garretson, the official spokesman, spokes-man, said today that the order for the general strike would not be given until un-til all efforts to reach an amicable agreement failed. While reiterating that tho men will not consider the railroads' rail-roads' plan of arbitration under present conditions, he hinted that if a different differ-ent form of arbitration is proposed than under the Newlands act the men will meet the railroads half way in avoiding a general strike. |