Give them a chance. Let us have a scientific way of developing them once again; let us have a scientific yet a simple and humane way of studying out these surpassingly great problems of the human factor in our railroad operation; in the hours and conditions of his working, the cost of his living, the reckoning of his compensation. To such a problem—a problem within a problem—we now have arrived. And we shall begin its consideration.
CHAPTER VII
SOLVING THE RAILROADS’ HUMAN PROBLEM
In some of the real wisdom that wrote certain portions of the present Transportation Act it was decided that the newly created Railroad Labor Board should be kept entirely separate and distinct from the Interstate Commerce Commission. The one had neither authority nor jurisdiction over the other. They were even apart geographically; the one at Chicago, the other at the national capital. There was a definite and convincing reason advanced for this segregation. It was argued, with genuine good sense, that the business of wage-making should be kept entirely separate and apart from that of rate-making. In other words, wage-making was to be based upon living-costs—the sort of thing that the Lane Commission tried to do, even though hurriedly, and that the railroads themselves had failed to do.
That the Railroad Labor Board, once appointed, took its new task seriously, I do not for a moment doubt. I think that it tried and still is trying to solve the entire question in a really scientific and human fashion. It is a political board, to be sure. It could hardly escape being a political board. But I believe that it is rather better than the majority of its kind. It is a common experience here in America that these newly created boards are likely to rank higher in their personnel at their outset than after they have become old stories and pliable in the hands of the professional politicians.
Yet I am not at all sure that the Railroad Labor Board was a necessity, not at any rate as a permanent organization. We Americans are all too prone to create boards and commissions for almost every sort of conceivable situation. We dote upon chairmen and upon directors. We adore secretaries and under-secretaries and under-secretaries to under-secretaries and all the rest of it. It is a national weakness, and an organization like our Railroad Labor Board is after all but a single expression of that weakness.
Contrast that cumbersome method of ours with one which was adopted in Great Britain but a year or two ago and which so far has apparently given absolute satisfaction to both the rail workers and their employers over there.
Under the wage agreements between the railway workers of the United Kingdom and their executives the wage-scales have been fixed upon a basis which permits them to rise or fall as the cost of living rises or falls. These agreements were signed more than a year ago. The official charts issued by the British Board of Trade, and held by all save a few of the most radical of labor leaders to be both accurate and impartial, are taken as the basis of the railway wage. The charts come as the result of repeated and regular investigations by the Board of Trade agents into house-rentals, clothing, foodstuffs, and all the other essential factors that enter into living costs. Upon them an arbitrary reckoning of 125 points was fixed as the maximum that these should reach after the period of after-the-war readjustment was fixed.