Our Railroads To-Morrow

by Edward Hungerford

In fact I may go much further and state quite bluntly that no plan for the reorganization of our railroad system of the United States now has any real prospect of success that does not recognize in its fundamentals the need of a radically changed status for labor.

It matters not that there are now five or six millions of workers temporarily out of employment, that the railroad strike of October, 1921, was called off because organized labor saw naught but defeat in it; the fact remains that in the future labor must be given just and proper representation in the initial management and so must be forced to assume its own proper share of the responsibility for the uninterrupted and steady development of our rail transport facilities. That it must be given a fair wage is now beyond the point of controversial discussion. There may be, and probably will be, plenty of future discussion as to just what constitutes the fair wage and the fair working condition for the railroader, but the fact remains that if these both are not kept fair and just there will not be sufficient railroaders coming forward to maintain the human side of the machine. Here is a self-evident fact of which our reformers sometimes quite lost all track.

With this principle in mind I believe that the directorate of the United States Railroad, divided into three groups, should have one of these composed of directors elected by the classified employees of the roads. Assuming that fifteen or twenty-one would be the right size of directorate—in order to avoid too clumsy and unwieldy a body—from five to seven men would represent labor, a similar group the public (probably being appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate), while the third group would be elected by the stockholders of the company. It might be found more practicable to have a separate set of fifteen directors for each of the regional railroads and, by making these directorates almost exclusively local, so serve still further to keep the management of these regional roads alert to the service of their individual roads, right here and now.

The point is that whether there is one board of directors or twenty-five or twenty-six for the future rail transport organization of the United States, labor must have its representation there. This, in addition to the possible sharing of one-third of the dividends over 6 per cent. which already I have suggested, would form a generous gift to labor. For it labor must in return make a generous offering. For despite sentiment, I believe that is the usual economic principle in the making of gifts. The gift that labor must make in return in this instance is its recognition that any combination of employees in restraint of trade—no matter under what name—is illegal and against the public weal. Strikes of any form unquestionably are combinations in restraint of trade. To-day they are legal. They must be made illegal, both in law and in universal public opinion. This, of course, cannot affect the right of the individual railroader to leave his job if he desires. That, of itself, also is fundamental. Certain it is that no railroad should want a man who is disgruntled and dissatisfied for very many hours in its employ.

Of late it has rather become the fashion among many otherwise thinking people of a degree of mentality to ascribe the many troubles of our railroads in this country either to the “high” wages that they are paying their employees or to over-regulation on the part of various governmental commissions, both State and Federal. Of the wage question I have said my last words in this book. Nor is the highly controversial question of regulation—or of so-called over-regulation—worth much discussion.

From time to time some gifted (but uninformed) soul bursts into the public prints with the highly original suggestion that we should in some mysterious and occult fashion return to the days before 1887 when regulation of our rail carriers was an unknown art in these United States. It all has a rather fascinating sound, particularly to such people who may have been the witnesses or the victims, direct or indirect, of some of the ridiculous rulings that these commissions—particularly the State ones—occasionally hand down. Unquestionably there have been many foolish decisions. Unquestionably many of them have contradicted and offset one another. And the dabbling of the professional politician into the delicate centers of a transportation machine, of which he really knows nothing at all, has brought us a very great deal of trouble. But—

I do not believe that any thinking railroader or patron of the railroads—no matter what his job or what his degree or station in life—really would go back voluntarily to those uncouth, unregulated days of 1886 if he could possibly avoid it. In thirty-five years many things are forgotten. It once took our magazine muck-rakers nearly two decades to set down the great business evils that arose in those very days that now seem halcyon to us largely because thirty-five years have aided us so largely in the business of forgetting.

Then there is the chap who cries for the return of a Hill or a Harriman—I do it myself at times; I had and still have much admiration for each of them—a Hill or a Harriman who with the wave of some mystic, magic wand will make all transportation things right once again. We Americans fairly worship a character of that sort, even though we may have largely created him within our own imaginations. We love to fall prone at his feet.

Yet even as one of those who from time to time cry aloud for a Hill or a Harriman, I am quite ready to admit that perhaps the slow but certain progress of our American civilization has now brought us beyond the necessity of bold, blunt captains of industry such as these two big and picturesque figures of our recent history. It is possible, please remember, that if either of them had been given the supreme control of all our railroads they might not have made such an overwhelming success of it. It is possible that even under their wizard hands there might have arisen distrust and discontent, both upon the part of the patrons of the railroads and of their workers. Remember that we do move. And 1922 cannot be 1886. Or 1896. Or 1906. Or even 1916. And perhaps it is just as well that it should never be any of these years. Why turn the clock backward anyway? It is much better to be looking forward.

Looking forward may yet bring us government ownership and operation of our railroads. Just now I do not see it. Yet sometimes we move pretty rapidly here in the United States and charge about face, with an astounding swiftness.