Nor are still higher things overlooked. For over forty years it has been customary for workers in the Midland Railway locomotive department at Derby to meet in one of their mess-rooms at breakfast-time, and, while having their meal, take part in a short religious service conducted by one of their number, a harmonium being provided as an accompaniment to the singing. On the day preceding the Christmas holidays the service is devoted entirely to Christmas carols or appropriate anthems.
A distinct advantage offered by the railway service is that, subject to the ability and good conduct of the individual, employment once obtained with a railway company offers a tolerable assurance of permanent and regular work. Railway companies do not run the same risk of becoming bankrupt, and of having to wind up their business, that ordinary commercial companies do, and though slackness of work may, indeed, lead to unavoidable reductions of staff, or to reduced time, in the locomotive and carriage works, the full staff will be required on the railway itself to keep it going, whatever the amount of traffic. Should the traffic fall off, and become non-remunerative, it is the shareholders who will suffer rather than the railway servants engaged in the running of trains.
This fact is of the greater importance because there may be in the railway service certain actual disadvantages, thus referred to in the "Report of the Departmental Committee on Railway Agreements and Amalgamations," issued in May, 1911:—
"The contention of the railway servants as to the specialisation of their industry and the peculiar difficulty they find in changing their employment has a substantial foundation as regards many classes of railway servants. Men leaving one railway can seldom rely upon obtaining employment on another, except in the lower grades, as the companies usually have their own men waiting promotion. The value of a railway servant often consists largely in a special skill which is of no worth in other employments."
On the other hand, the Departmental Committee recognise that "one of the main inducements to compete for admission to the railway services is the strong presumption of the permanence of employment during good behaviour"; and they further say that "while it would seem that the rates of pay to all ranks in the railway service do not compare unfavourably with those given in other commercial and industrial occupations, the railway companies undoubtedly profit in the quality of their services by the large range of selection they enjoy owing to the competition for situations under them."
On the subject of railwaymen's wages, various considerations arise which tend to make any general assertions, or even carefully prepared "averages" in respect thereto, of little real value.
The range of employment, from unskilled to highly skilled, is so great in the railway world that to lump together all the different grades, and then strike a so-called "average," which gives too high a figure for one large body of men and too low a figure for another, must needs be far from satisfactory.
General averages are further reduced by the inclusion therein of a large number of boys. The table given on pages [405]-6 shows that the total number of railway servants employed on December 31, 1910, was 608,750; but in this total there are no fewer than 43,584 boys (including signal-box lads), and their wages, as boys, must needs reduce the average of the wages paid to the adults. If, for example, we add together the six shillings a week paid to a boy of fourteen or fifteen employed as engine-cleaner and the thirty shillings a week paid to a certain grade of signalmen, we get an "average" of eighteen shillings a week for the two; but no one could argue that this result would give a real idea of actual conditions.
Then the average for the United Kingdom is below the average for England and Wales because of the inclusion in the former of the wages paid in Ireland, where the scale is distinctly lower than is the case of England and Wales; whilst the inclusion in the figures for England and Wales of the wages for numerous small and none too prosperous lines gives a general average below what would be the actual average on the lines of the leading English companies.
Subject to these considerations, I reproduce from the Board of Trade "Report on Changes in Rates and Wages and Hours of Labour in the United Kingdom, in 1910," two tables which give the average weekly earnings of railwaymen in (1) the United Kingdom, and (2) various parts of the United Kingdom separately. The figures are based on information supplied by twenty-seven railway companies, employing over 90 per cent of the total number of railway servants in the United Kingdom; they relate to workpeople employed in the coaching, goods, locomotive and engineers' departments, exclusive of clerical staff and salaried officers; and they refer to actual earnings (including overtime), and not simply to rates of wages. The tables are as follows:—