“We never heard one word of it, Billy,” he said.
“Billy” stayed two more days in that town. On the second afternoon he called a mass-meeting of the shop-workers in the biggest hall in the city. They came, enough of them at least to fill the place to its very rafters. He put the piece-work proposition to those men. They ratified it overwhelmingly. The next day the shop reopened and from that day to this has been a humming center of revivified railroad industry.
There also is still another side to this vexed shop situation, and it too is a big side. I should not be fair if I did not give it at least passing attention.
With their insistence that their shops return to the piece-work system—and it seems to be a perfectly fair demand—the railroads are using every endeavor to bring back their shopmen to the high quality of workmanship that they attained before the days of the World War, and which has not come back since then—not until very recently at least and under the spur of widespread unemployment across the land. Yet, our railroads as a rule—there are a very few exceptions—have been most lax in employing modern or scientific methods of spurring up the production of their shopmen, in quality as well as in quantity. A year and a half ago I made an extensive tour of some of the most forward-looking manufacturing plants in America and found there for myself many ingenious plans for stimulating the interest, the enthusiasm, and the productive ability of the men. Shop committees, education, bonus systems—all these and many other well-tried devices at work, and successfully at work. I was appalled when mentally I compared these factory plans with those of the average railroad shop, which rarely has any at all.
One other thing of even greater importance. In these days no more than those, there still is no assurance to the shop-worker of continued employment. The great haunting fear of being “laid off” forever is just ahead of him.
I recognize clearly the difficulties that would await any systematic attempt to insure continuous employment to the worker in the railroad or any other sort of shop. Yet the fact remains that the railroad shops have not always been as fair as those in outside industries in keeping a well-filled pay-roll, even in seasons of great depression and stress. That such a neglect of human obligation reacted against them in the war-time days is not to be doubted. No really permanent solution of the railroad shop problem—it would be pathetic to regard the process of leasing out the shops to outside corporations as any long-time solution—can afford to ignore this factor.
I have known a railroad under orders from the men away up at the top—the president or the board of directors—to make sweeping and senseless reductions in shop and maintenance forces in order to make a quick showing of apparent savings in operating costs, for financial purposes known best to those same men, higher up. The futility of such moves needs no discussion; what is saved to-day on necessary maintenance of rolling-stock or other physical plant of the railroad must be expended to-morrow, and generally in larger measure. They would be laughable were it not for one thing, the human misery that almost invariably follows in their trail. How very much greater the wisdom that now and then and again tempts a railroad to use a dull season for the repair or even the reconstruction of its equipment, for the rebuilding of lines or even the construction of new trackage!
Therefore I am repeating—and adding—that no permanent solution of our railroad problem can be reached that ignores the right of the faithful and loyal employee to continuous service. It may be necessary to cut his wage. That is a situation that may confront any man in any business or profession. But save for fair cause he has an inherent right to continuous employment. This should be put down as a real fundamental of the railroad industry.
Railroad industry! Railroad tradition! Railroad morale!