Thomas DeWitt Cuyler

It is likely that Thomas de Witt Cuyler will be most clearly remembered for his achievement in holding the railway managers together for conciliatory action but absolute fair play, in the railway shopmen’s strike of last summer. As President of the Association of Railway Executives, he had to keep in line on the one hand those uneasy managers who were willing to restore to the strikers all their former privileges, regardless of pledges to loyal men or new recruits, and on the other hand those executives who did not wish even to negotiate with labor. Exactly what happened in that unlucky conference of Cuyler with President Harding, when the White House next day sent out a public recommendation that the managers surrender the whole principle of justice for which they had been standing, nobody knows. Those who knew Cuyler have never doubted that the misunderstanding was the President’s.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1923 Century Association Yearbook