The street railroad systems in the large cities, together with a few of the larger interurban systems, have recently begun to adopt systematic methods of keeping in touch with their employees. The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, operating a great system in a part of metropolitan New York, and employing more than 15,000 men, was a pioneer in this work. It found that while the railroad Y. M. C. A. was efficient for the club-house work on steam railroads, there were local conditions in Brooklyn that made it best for the company to build and operate its own club-houses.
The first of these was remodelled from an old car-barn. It became a very interesting club, with reading-rooms, baths, a barber-shop, a gymnasium, class-rooms for evening study, and a theatre, seating some 1,200 folk. For the theatre the railroad hires vaudeville actors, and gives its great semi-official family free entertainments—followed by dancing and refreshments. On very especial nights the talent is furnished entirely by the trolley-men and very effective talent it is, too. On all nights the music is furnished by the Brooklyn Rapid Transit band, made up entirely of street-car men and men from the elevated roads of the system. The railroad company has furnished the music, the uniforms, the instruments, and the directors—all that the men have had to furnish is their time and interest, and these they have furnished in such good measure that there is a waiting-list now large enough to equip a second full brass band.
The Brooklyn system has also begun to establish model restaurants in its outlying barns, where clean and good food is furnished to the men at cost. The street railroad is, in some such cases as these, confronted with a steam railroad problem. Many of the big car-barns are in sparsely settled suburbs of the city where the only eating-places have been saloons or their adjuncts. The street railroad can no more afford to have its men in saloons, than its bigger brother. To take from them the one decent excuse for being in such places it is establishing its restaurants, where the men can have cleaner and better food than in the saloons, and without the risk to the railroad.
The Brooklyn road and the other large systems have adopted the relief and pension funds; the idea seems to spread as rapidly among the electric as it did among the steam railroads. Some of them have added odd and efficient “kinks” of their own. For instance, the Boston Elevated Railway makes presents of gold at New Year’s Day, ranging from $20 to $35 each, to each of its men who has a clean record for courtesy to patrons, and Boston gains a reputation through that for the uniform courtesy of her trolley-men. The Boston Elevated has also inaugurated a policy of giving free legal advice to each of its employees who may need it. It has always been a perquisite of high railroad officers to avail themselves of the road’s legal department for their personal needs. Under the Boston plan this perquisite is extended to every man on the road—the young motorman who had foolishly gone to a loan shark, and who is now being harried by him; the old conductor who wishes to convey a house or draw a will. The road’s legal department will advise him sincerely, in his own best interest. It will draw up his legal papers, do anything for him except take his case into court, and even then it will advise an honest and capable attorney for him. As for that motorman who went to the loan shark when he found an immediate need of fifty dollars, the road stands ready to advance him the money upon good cause, and will charge him only a nominal rate of interest until it has gradually repaid itself from his wages. His division superintendent is empowered to hear his story with sympathetic ear, and to arrange for the loan.
Employees’ magazines have been decided factors in both bringing and keeping the railroad in touch with its army of men. The Erie was a pioneer in this work five years ago; the plan has since been adopted with signal success by the Northwestern, the Illinois Central, the Santa Fe, the Pere Marquette, and some other lines. These little magazines, made interesting enough in a general way to catch and hold the attention of their readers, are sent out each month to every man on the system with his pay-check.
They spread railroad interest and railroad enthusiasm among their readers. On one page they tell of styles for the engineer’s wife, and on the next they show an economical use of coal for the engineer; and so they may help to pay their way. They tell of errors and mistakes among the railroad’s employees, without mentioning names, so that men may profit by them and act differently. But they print the names of the railroaders who do the good things, the novel things, the practical things, the economical things, the heroic things, out along the line. And this roll of honor is a long one.
But it is not always in the big things that a railroad keeps in touch with its men, sometimes it is in very small things. Some time ago, a division superintendent on the Erie Railroad decided that for each of his engineers who kept his engine in particularly good order for a given length of time, he would have the number plate on the front of the boiler painted in red. “We will have the Order of the Red Spot,” laughed Superintendent Parsons, of the Susquehanna Division, as he signed a bulletin announcing the thing. Now that was a little thing. The cost of painting that red spot on the breast of some proud locomotive was but nominal; but listen to the result!
A big Erie officer was up the line a few months later, and was loafing in a junction-town on the Susquehanna Division, waiting for a through train. He walked down to the end of the station platform and there stood a passenger locomotive waiting to take a train in the other direction. It belonged to the proud Order of the Red Spot, an order of which this particular officer had not heard; and the engineer was already about it with his long-handled oil-can. The officer did not reveal his identity, but said:
“Waiting to take out a special?”