Plumb Plan League

Glenn Edward Plumb
Glenn E. Plumb - Author of Plumb Plan
Born	1866 Clay County, Iowa, United States
Died	1 August 1922 (1922-09) (aged 55) Washington, D.C., United States
Nationality	American
Occupation	Lawyer
Known for	Plumb Plan

Glenn Edward Plumb (1866 - 1 August 1922) was an American lawyer who was famous for proposing a radical plan for cooperative railway ownership, the Plumb plan, in 1918. He founded the Plumb Plan League to support the proposal. Despite strong support from organized labor, including railroad workers, miners and farm workers, the plan was not adopted.

Glenn Edward Plumb was born in Clay County, Iowa in 1866. He became a lawyer, and was counsel for the City of Chicago when they were fighting against promoters of street railways. Plumb was a member of the legal department of Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne's administration in Chicago, as were J. Hamilton Lewis and Clarence Darrow. They attacked corporate tax evasion and corporate privileges, winning a notable victory when the Supreme Court struck down the "eternal monopoly" laws. In Blair v. City of Chicago, 201 U.S. 400 (1906) Plumb and Clarence Darrow both represented the City of Chicago. They argued that the street railways did not have an irrevocable right to use Chicago's streets, but required city council authorization.

Plumb was appointed counsel for sixteen major railroad workers' organizations. By late 1917, during World War I, the railroad system in the eastern U.S. had virtually come to a halt. Problems included a shortage of labor due to low wages, and policies designed to maximize profits that prevented movement of empty cars at a time when most traffic was from west to east. On 26 December 1917 the Federal government of Woodrow Wilson took over control of the railroads. Plumb was in favor of making this arrangement permanent, and defined a cooperative structure in his "Plumb plan". He set up the Plumb Plan League to promote the plan in February 1918.

The Armistice with Germany took effect on 11 November 1918. The railway labor unions wanted to retain government control after the armistice, but on 2 December 1918 President Wilson told Congress that the railroads had to be returned to their owners. Later that month in a referendum of railroad workers 306,720 out of 308,186 voted to keep government control. The Railway Employees' Department of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) put its weight behind the Plumb Plan League. The Plumb plan was supported by labor leaders such as Warren Stanford Stone of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, who felt it should be extended to other industries. Workers should be given an incentive to make their industry productive, and a reward for their effort.