In this connection some studies made recently by Harrington Emerson, the distinguished efficiency engineer, are of particular interest. Mr. Emerson, while attached to the president’s office of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, has had opportunity to study the railroad situation at close range and in a very practical way. He has placed his carefully developed theories in regard to the man in the shop and his wage into a study of the railroader and his pay-envelope. He has gone back into transportation history and found that at first employes were paid by the day. But long hours either on the road or waiting on passing sidings worked great hardships to them. As a more or less direct consequence the men in train service formed unions and succeeded in establishing the peculiar combination of pay upon the mile and the hour basis—which has obtained ever since in general railroad practice. If a train or a locomotive man was called for duty, even if he never left the station, he received a full day’s pay. This, in Mr. Emerson’s opinion and in the opinion of a good many others who have studied the situation, was as it should be and the principle should have been adhered to. But to it was tacked the piece rate of the mile. If a train or locomotive man made one hundred miles it was considered a day’s work, even if made in two hours. In this way the piece-rate principle became firmly established alongside of the hourly basis.
“What was the result on railroad operation and costs?” asks Mr. Emerson and then proceeds to answer his own question. He calls attention to the cars weighing 120,000 pounds and having axle-loads of 50,000 pounds that are being run upon our railroads today and expresses his belief that because in our established methods of railroad accounting, operating costs include train men’s wages, but not interest on capital invested in locomotives, cars, trains and terminals; railroad managers, driven by the need to make a showing long since began to plan more revenue tons per train-mile in order to keep down or lessen train-crew wage-costs per ton-mile. This was very well as long as it led to better-filled cars and trains, but the plan quickly expanded into heavier locomotives and heavier cars which necessitated heavier rails, more ties, tie-plates, stronger bridges, reduced grades, and a realignment until all that was gained in tonnage-mile costs was lost in increased obsolescence, unremunerative betterment, and other fixed charges. Even as good a railroader as Mr. Harriman was once led to regret that railroads were not built upon a six-foot gauge instead of the long-established one of four feet eight and one-half inches, because he felt that this would enable him still further to increase train load in proportion to train crew.
A good many railroaders have said that we have reached and long since passed the point of efficiency by increasing our standard of car and train sizes. Mr. Emerson is not new in that deduction. But he puts the case so clearly in regard to the confusing double basis in the pay of the trainmen—the vexed point that is before the Supreme Court of the United States as this book is being completed, because the Adamson so-called eight-hour day omitted the mileage factor, to the eternal annoyance of those same trainmen—that I cannot forbear quoting his exact words:
Piece rates to trainmen should be abolished. The work of trainmen should be classified. There should be short hours and correspondingly high pay for men working under great strain. There should be heavy penalties attached for overtime, although it does not follow that the man who puts in the overtime should receive the penalty. Society wants him to protest against overtime, because it may be both dangerous to the public and detrimental to the worker. The worker should not be bribed to encourage it.
It is evident that pay by the hour with penalties for overtime would encourage lighter and faster trains. Lighter and faster trains would increase the roads’ capacity as well as car and locomotive mileage. Capital expenses would drop. The savings made would be available to increase wages and to pay higher bills for material and to pay better dividends.
Beyond this there is little more to be said—at least pending the decision of the highest court in the land. But no matter how the Supreme Court may find in this vexatious matter, the fact remains that the union man in railroad employ will continue to be paid upon this complicated and unfit double method of reckoning—clumsy, totally inadequate (built up through the years by men who preferred compromise) and complicate an intelligent and definite solution of a real problem.
Some day, some railroader is going to solve the question; and, in my own humble opinion, a genuine solution, worked from the human as well as the purely economic angle is going to rank with the bonus and other indications of an advanced interest on the part of railroad executives in the men as a step toward a betterment of the relations between them.
In my opinion such steps as these that I have just outlined not only would go far toward solving the frequent “crises” that arise between the railroads and their employees, but would tend greatly to prevent the depreciation of the human equipment of the road. Remember that this labor problem is one which presses hard not only upon the body politic, but upon the whole human structure of our country. Its solution, as well as the solution of the physical question, must be not only immediate, but economic and financial.