“1st, The qualifications for the position of fireman on all the railways in America should be as follows: The applicant should be from eighteen to twenty-four years old, able-bodied, and in good health, with a good common-school education, and a fair knowledge of arithmetic, and of sober and steady habits. All applicants should be required to make application in their own handwriting, signing it in the presence of the master mechanic, or the person he may appoint to hire that class of men. In selecting men for firemen, great care should be exercised. The master mechanic should endeavor, so far as lies in his power, to select energetic, smart, and active young men,—men of nerve, and presence of mind, quick to act in cases of emergency which may occur in the position they may be selected to fill in the future. If we select men of that kind, there will be very little difficulty in educating them up to the proper standard to fill the place of engineers.
“2d, There should be three grades of firemen, classed as junior, intermediate, and senior firemen,—the young man just commencing, to be classed as junior fireman, and so on up to senior fireman; the senior fireman receiving the highest pay for his services, the others in proportion. When a fireman has fired four years, and is worthy of promotion, and fully competent to run a locomotive, there may be no vacancies in the engineer force on the road by which he may be employed. In that case we recommend that he receive a small amount more per day than the senior fireman (say from fifteen to twenty cents per day more), and be ranked as veteran fireman. On the road which one of your committee represents in this convention, this custom has been in vogue for a number of years, and has worked exceedingly well. All the engineers on this road have been educated under this rule, and to-day no engineers in the country rank higher than they do.
“Proper care should be taken, in selecting young men for firemen, as to their ability to distinguish colors in a practicable, common-sense way. We recommend that all railroads having a sufficient number of employés to justify them in so doing, have a reading-room and library for their firemen and engineers, in which the other employés could participate. The library, to some extent, should consist of works on the locomotive engine that a man with a fair education could understand. While we do not think it essentially necessary, still we believe it would be beneficial to some extent to let firemen work one year out of the four in the shop and round-house, so that they might obtain a more perfect knowledge of all the parts of the locomotive.
“Young men consisting of the class we have mentioned, are certain to make good runners; and there will be no difficulty, at the proper time, in selecting good junior engineers from among that class of men. All opportunities possible should be given firemen to get such knowledge of the theory and movements of the different parts of the locomotive as would be beneficial to them when they enter on their career as engineers. To accomplish this end, monthly lectures might be given in the reading-room by men of good practical common sense, who fully understand what they are talking about. If possible, these lectures should be given by one of the engineers. The firemen would learn more from him, as they would better understand what he was saying; he having formerly been one of them.
“Your committee is convinced, that, if the mode recommended by them is adopted generally throughout the country, a large majority, if not all, of the firemen, would be educated to a point from which there would be no difficulty in selecting men who will make good and reliable engineers.
“3d, The fireman now being competent to run a locomotive, and being placed in charge of one, has yet some few things to learn that he did not have the opportunity of learning, from the fact that he was not running the engine. While he may run carefully, and avoid accidents, he has to learn to run his engine with economy in the consumption of fuel and the cost of repairs. To learn this, and to give the young engineer an opportunity to become a first-class man in his occupation, we recommend there be three grades of engineers,—first, second, and third grades,—and that the remuneration they receive be according to grade; the fireman just promoted ranking in the third grade; after one year’s service he enters the second grade; when two years have passed, he enters the first grade, and becomes a first-class locomotive engineer.”