A History of Inland Transport and Communication in England

by Edwin A. Pratt

I have here sought to give a comprehensive survey of the railway service, as a national industry, alike from its economic and from its human side, conveying some idea—even if wholly inadequate—of its extent and widespread ramifications, and showing the various influences, educational, social and otherwise, that are eminently calculated both to create a "railway type" and to give to the service characteristics that distinguish it in many respects from any other of our national industries.

While not being, perhaps, actually an ideal industry—and there are very few workers, of any rank, who would be prepared to admit that their occupation in life was absolutely free from drawbacks—the railway service offers, as we have seen, many advantages. It is, in fact, really a "service," and not simply a means of employment. One might regard it as the equivalent of a civil service operated on commercial lines. Workers in all of the many classes or grades "enter the service," as they are accustomed to say, when they are young, and they generally do so with the idea of spending their lives in it, and retiring on superannuation allowance or a pension in their old age.

Railway managers, too, want workers who come to stay. In the United States women typists are being gradually got rid of on the railway because they so often retire at the end of two or three years and get married, the experience of office work they have gained in that time being thus lost to the company. Consequently American railway managers are now showing a preference for male workers who will regard the service in the light of a future career rather than in that of a temporary employment.

That the railway service is a popular one is shown by two facts: (1) the invariably large surplus of candidates over available vacancies; and (2) the long-service records of many of the railway workers.

In regard to the former of these points, it will suffice to say that the chairman of one of the leading English railway companies has stated that in 1906 the number of applicants for appointments on the staff of his company alone in excess of the number for whom places could be found was over 19,000.

As regards long service, instances of from forty to fifty years' work for one and the same railway company are so common that they hardly call even for passing mention. More exceptional was the case of the worker on the Great Western whose father had served the company for forty-one years, and who himself retired at the end of forty-two years, leaving a son who had then been with the company twenty-three years—a total of 106 years for one family, during three generations.

In another instance four generations employed successively on the Great Western showed a total of 147 years; but even this record is surpassed by that of a Cardiff family. The founder of the dynasty joined the Great Western in 1840. He remained with the company forty-two years, and left with them two sons, of whom one served forty-five years, and the other forty-two years. Each of these two sons had five boys, and all ten followed the example of fathers and grandfather in becoming servants of the same company, keeping their positions for periods ranging from six to thirty years. The fourth generation is represented by four members, one of whom has already been with the company for over ten years. The total service of those members of the family who were still working on the Great Western a year or two ago was 147 years, and the aggregate for the four generations was then over 800 years. Each of the workers concerned has been employed in the locomotive department.

Notwithstanding the general popularity of the railway service, agitations and strikes have occurred from time to time; though down to 1907 most of these arose in connection with questions of conditions of labour in regard to particular lines of railway.

In 1907 an agitation was promoted by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants in favour of what was called a "National All-Grades Programme" of demands for higher wages, reduced hours, etc.; and there was a further demand that the negotiations in respect thereto should be carried on through the officers of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. The companies declined to grant the concessions asked for in the "Programme," alleging that to do so would involve them in a wholly impracticable increase in their working expenses. It was subsequently stated that acceptance of the "Programme" would have increased the expenditure of the companies by between £6,000,000 and £7,000,000 per annum; that the cost to the London and North-Western Railway Company alone would have exceeded £500,000 per annum, equal to 1¼ per cent of the company's dividend; that on the London and South-Western it would have been equal to a two per cent dividend on the ordinary stock; and so on with other companies in like proportion.

In the result the demand for the concession of the "Programme" became subordinate to the demand of the A.S.R.S. for "recognition"; but this, again, was refused by the railway companies on the ground, not alone that the membership of the society included only a minority of the men qualified to join but, also, and more especially, because "recognition," involving the carrying on of negotiations through the union leaders, would, it was argued, lower the standard of discipline in a service where considerations of the public interests, and especially of the public safety, made it a matter of paramount importance that a high standard of discipline should be maintained.