Disabilities and Retraining
If you were engaged in transportation before you were disabled, you are probably still interested in this work, and would return to it if you did not feel that your disabilities unfitted you for your old job. If you wish to go back into transportation and can not take up your old job or a new one in that field without retraining, you want to know how to get retraining and how retraining will help you. Retraining and devices may help you to get your old job again. Retraining ought to do more than simply this. It ought to get you a better job than you had before. It is to help you to analyze and see your own possibilities as they are related to the various transportation occupations that this booklet is written.
Divisions of Transportation
In general, transportation is performed by steam railroads, by street railways, by wagons and automobiles, and by boats. Of these agencies, steam railroads employ the largest number of men in so far as regular occupations are concerned. We shall, therefore, consider first the occupations and trades connected with the operation of steam railroads.
PLAN No. 962. PART I. STEAM RAILROADS
Railroading in the United States is a gigantic enterprise. In 1916, a prewar year, our railroads possessed about 65,000 locomotives, 2,342,000 freight cars, 55,000 passenger cars, and 98,000 company service cars. There were 259,000 miles of single track and enough of double track to raise this figure to 293,000 miles of main track. In addition there were 102,000 miles of sidings. Employees of railroads numbered 1,654,000 and were paid $1,403,968,000 as their compensation for the year 1916. Obviously, among so large a number of employees operating so varied an equipment are found many different trades and occupations.
Safety on Railroads
Railroading is attended with personal risk for many of the employees, but only in a small number of cases is a man who is disabled in the service of a railroad rendered unfit for further service. Many of the older railroad men have suffered injuries of some sort, since the use of safety devices is relatively recent. Quite a number of injured men have in the past been given office, clerical, or watchmen’s work, since there is a vast amount of such work to be done, and it involves comparatively little personal risk.
Factors Controlling Promotion
For the man who lacks a technical or college education there is almost a dead line to promotion into the higher offices. For instance, the wide-awake section hand can become a section foreman, then a construction gang foreman, a supervisor, and perhaps a roadmaster. But he can hardly ever hope to become an engineer of maintenance of way unless he acquires in the meanwhile an extended knowledge of civil engineering especially as applied to railroading. The disabled soldier or sailor, if unfitted to pursue his old occupation, can secure this very desirable training through the Federal Board for Vocational Education. He can thus secure an advancement that he might not otherwise have obtained.