This little conference of Meyers was, in 1872, developed into the first organized branch of the railroad Young Men’s Christian Association. General John H. Devereux, the general manager of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway; Reuben F. Smith, of the Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad, and Oscar Townsend of the Big Four Railroad were chosen directors of the branch. Henry W. Stage, a train-despatcher on the Lake Shore, was earnestly and intensely enthusiastic in this work; and because of his zeal and enthusiasm, together with that of George Meyers, this branch was successful from the outset.
The Lake Shore Railroad, whose headquarters were in that same Union Depot at Cleveland then was and still is a pet property of the Vanderbilt family, also owners of the great New York Central system. The heads of that family began watching the Cleveland experiment with unusual interest. The reports that came from them were unusual. That scheme of the depot master’s seemed to be making a better grade of railroader in and around Cleveland, and any institution that bettered the type of railroaders interested the Vanderbilts. So the thing that Meyers had founded soon had wealthy patrons and strong friends.
The Vanderbilts kept their shoulders to the wheels of the railroad Y. M. C. A., kept it out of the ruts and from falling. They saw it introduced here and introduced there on their group of railroads; saw it spread to other lines; and finally, Cornelius Vanderbilt himself built a splendid club-house for railroad men at the great terminal of his road in New York City and turned it over to the management of the railroad Y. M. C. A. That house, standing almost in the shade of the Grand Central Station, after a quarter of a century, still ranks as one of the distinctly fine club-homes of a city that is opulent in club-houses. It is still dedicated to simplicity, to democracy, to decency, and to good fellowship.
There is not a railroader coming into the big passenger terminal—from either the New York Central or the New Haven system—who is not welcome to it, day or night. Engineers, firemen, conductors, trainmen all come into its hospitable door after a long hard run to find the clean comfort of good meals, bath, comfortable beds, good fellowship awaiting them. There is the peculiar and the successful field of the railroad Y. M. C. A.; perhaps as much as any, the real reason for its pronounced success.
Few railroaders in train service can leave their homes in the morning, “double their runs,” and be home at night. The hard part of the business is that in most cases a man will have to spend one night, occasionally two nights, out on the run. The difficulties of this are not readily understood without a slight examination. In a large city the railroader finds that it is a shabby sort of a hotel or lodging-house that can come regularly within his scheme of economy. When he strikes the little town, or frequently the big terminal or division freight-yard around which is no town at all, the problem only multiplies. J. M. Burwick, a veteran conductor of the Duluth & Iron Range Railroad, told that problem in his own sincere way last year at a big dinner of railroad men in St. Louis.
“I left home a beautiful morning in ’72,” said Mr. Burwick. “I went down to Lafayette and to my first boarding-house; and up to that time I don’t think any railroad man ever found a boarding-house except it was tied up to a saloon. I was in a place like that. Another place I was running into was where they made a division point in a corn-field. The company built a large building for the benefit of the men, and then they rented it to be run as a hotel. But the man in charge ran it to make money, and the steak he cut with his razor. I know he did, because it was so thin. At other places we had to sleep in a hot yard, in a hot caboose not fit for a man to try and sleep in; and then we had to stay awake on the road that night.”
That was Burwick’s testimony as to the conditions just before the coming of the railroad Y. M. C. A. An engineer from the New York Central, a man who had slept many nights in that comfortable club-house at the Grand Central, went up into Canada a few years ago and took an engine on a division running out of Kenora. The only place that a railroad man could find board and lodging in that town at that time was a boarding-house with the saloon attachment, and he was welcome there for but a limited time, unless he was a reasonably liberal patron of the saloon. The engineer—his name is McCrea—changed that order of things and established a branch of the railroad Y. M. C. A., which in four years gained 300 members and threatened to close the saloons of the place.
This is what New York Central McCrea did for
the men of the Canadian Pacific up at Kenora
