The Young Train Dispatcher

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

The company which owned the mine owned the town,—not the residences only, but the stores, the barber-shop, the bakery, the boarding-house, and even the saloons. The money which it paid out in wages flowed back to it, practically undiminished, through one of these channels; and these minor industries contributed in no small degree to the handsome dividends, issued quarterly, which the mine paid. Perhaps if the stockholders had known just how these dividends were earned, they might not have received them so complacently; but none of them thought it worth while to inquire—or perhaps they feared to investigate too closely the sources of so satisfactory an income.

The town was not upon the railroad, which passed about half a mile to the east of it. Two spurs of track connected the mine with the main line, but these spurs were used solely for the company’s business, and no passengers were carried over them. Hence it was necessary for every one wishing to leave the town to tramp half a mile along a road muddy or dusty, according to the weather, to the little frame shack on the main line, which served as a station for the town. It may be that the exertion needed to leave the town was one reason why so many persons, once they had arrived there, remained, and never thereafter emancipated themselves from bondage to coal-dust, nor saw the sky except through the black clouds arising ceaselessly from the dumps. To only one class of person did the town turn a cold shoulder, and that was to the labour organizer. The company was most anxious to keep its men free from the “union” microbe, which was working such disastrous results upon the dividends of other mining enterprises; it believed that it was the best and most proper judge of the wages which its men should receive. Therefore, whenever a union man struck the town he found himself unable to secure a place to sleep or food to eat—he had to get out or starve; when he asked for employment, he found all the places taken and no prospect of a job anywhere. The company, however, was generous; if the applicant happened to be out of money, he could always secure the funds necessary to take him away from Coalville.

The train pulled up before the little Coalville station on time; and Allan reported at once for duty and relieved the day man, who lived at Athens, and who hurried out to catch the accommodation, which would take him home.

For twenty minutes, Allan devoted himself to looking over the orders on the hook and getting acquainted with the position of trains; then his attention was attracted by a heavy bumping on the floor of the little waiting-room. It sounded as though a heavy trunk was being brought in, but when he looked through the ticket-window, he saw two men rolling a heavy chest end over end across the room.

The Coalville station contained three rooms. At one end was the waiting-room, with a row of benches along the wall; in the centre was the office, about six feet wide, in which the operator worked; and beyond it was another room where freight for Coalville was stored until it could be hauled away. There was a door from the office into both waiting-room and freight-shed as shown in the diagram.

It will be seen that the station had been constructed just as cheaply as possible. The passenger traffic to and from Coalville was not such as to require elaborate accommodations, and the freight for the town was allowed to take care of itself the best it could.

The men who were bringing in the chest stopped where they had it in the middle of the waiting-room, and one of them, looking up, caught Allan’s eye as he looked at them through the ticket-window.