public and should be avoided.

(4) Agreements or understandings which are designed to obstruct directly or indirectly the free development of trade, or to secure to special groups special privileges and advantages are subversive of the public interest and cancel the doctrine of equality of rights and opportunity, and should be condemned.

(5) The public interest is conserved, hazard to life and property is reduced, and standards of work are improved by fixing an adequate minimum of qualifications in knowledge and experience as a requirement precedent to the right of an individual to engage in the electrical contracting industry, and by the rigid inspection of electrical work, old and new.

(6) Public welfare, as well as the interests of the trade demands that electrical work be done by the electrical industry.

(7) Cooperation between employee and employer acquires constructive power, as both employees and employers become more completely organized.

(8) The right of employees and employers in local groups to establish local wage scales and local working rules is recognized and nothing herein is to be construed as infringing that right.

Committees, five members of the IBEW and five from the Contractors were appointed to work out a plan for setting these principles into action. The two committees met January 26, 1920 and adopted a resolution setting up our Council on Industrial Relations.

Mr. L K. Comstock, who has often been called “the Dean of the Electrical Contracting Industry,” and who with Charles P. Ford of the Brotherhood, has been cited as co-founder of the Council, died January 1, 1964 at the age of 99. We were fortunate to receive from him several years ago, accounts of some of the incidents that marked the beginnings of the forum that was to one day spell peace for the electrical industry.

Mr. Comstock said that setting up the Council was most certainly not all easy sailing.

“There were those who said the proposal had no merit,” said Mr. Comstock. But there were enough who recognized the merit to push it through. And the result? Mr. Comstock said: “The Council taught us how to create and maintain friendly relations, labor and management, and to eliminate the strike. This elimination has been productive of savings of many millions of dollars, which have accrued to employer, employee and the public. It has set a new and original pattern of labor relations and has proved its efficacy and usefulness to all parties concerned.”

The plan for the Council as set up, by a resolution was ratified by the Executive Council of the IBEW and

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