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quired. All questions of salaries and wages are brought before
the Executive in careful reports from the respective heads of de¬
partments or superintendents, showing the length of service of
the employe, his original remuneration, his last increase of pay
and the proposed increase, and these recommendations are made
the subject of careful comparison, not only with the compensa¬
tion given in simdar positions in the several departments of the
Company, but with the rates of salary or wages prevailing out¬
side the Company. Thus the employes feel assured that their
services are fairly considered, and the question of their pay
regularly brought to attention, without effort or appeal on their
part, and this method of handling rates of pay has helped
to bring about the present satisfactory relations between the
Company and its employes.

A year ago the wiring contractors making electric installa¬
tions throughout the city were notified by the electrical workers
that on the ist of January, 1898, an increase in wages from ^3
to $4 per day would be required. As the end of the year ap¬
proached, there was reason to fear a serious strike which would
be disastrous alike to the contractors and the workers, and
detrimental to the interests of this Company. In view of the
wide and cordial relations of this Company with both sides, I
felt it desirable to take advantage of those relations to promote
an adjustment of the difficulty, and I wish to express my satis¬
faction with the courteous way in which my communications to
the Electrical Contractors' Association and to the Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers No. 3, the Union in question, were re¬
ceived, and the agreeable nature of the consultations with indi¬
vidual members. The disagreement, in which there were griev¬
ances on the part of the employers as well as a demand for an in¬
crease of wages on the part of the employes, was brought to a
happy termination in the last week of the year through an arbi¬
tration arranged by the United Building Trades' Association on
the one hand, and the representatives of organized labor on the
other, and I have been gratified at the courteous acknowledg¬
ment of the position of the Company in endeavoring to promote
such a result. The agreement is for two years, and concessions
are made and granted on both sides, and the electrical workers
are entitled to great credit and to the thanks of the community