Confessions of a Railroad Signalman

by James O. Fagan

Now, after all that has been spoken and written on the subject of efficient and safe railroad service, the problem remains, as at the beginning, essentially personal, social, and ethical in its nature. Nearly all questions in regard to it must, sooner or later, be thought out in this direction by railroad employees and managers. We may continue to work over and reconstruct our rules and to multiply our safety devices until we compel trains to creep from station to station; yet the problem will remain unsolved, the needless and disgraceful sacrifice of life will continue, until trainmen, enginemen, and managers put their heads together and agree to adopt a new code of railroad morals. My meaning when I allude to railroad morals should be clearly understood.

On nearly all railroads a given rule is obeyed at one point and disregarded at another, on account of different sets of conditions. This conduct leads to accidents when men who have habitually disobeyed the regulations at points where such action is harmless undertake to behave in the same way under conditions when a strict observance of the rules is vitally important. Generally speaking, managers are cognizant of this state of affairs, and thus in a measure they are morally to blame for it; but I do not think that they realize the extent of the evil, for the reason that any organized out-of-door supervision is unknown, and thus the report of an accident, that is to say, the result of these practices, is usually the first and only information on the subject that reaches the manager’s office. The blame for accidents that happen in this way cannot be said to rest upon any particular class of employees or to depend upon their intelligence or length of service. Among the culprits you will find some of the oldest and most experienced men as well as some of the greenest. This goes to show that the trouble is inherent in the system, and a part of the everyday life and character of armies of railroad men.

But in a straightforward investigation of this nature it is particularly desirable to get hold of all the facts that can be used in any way to throw light on the situation, and there is only one method, as yet untried, for properly securing and emphasizing these facts. Let us call this the confessional method. In the hands of a competent witness it can be depended upon to furnish us with all the information necessary for a thorough comprehension of our subject. This confessional method has nothing to conceal. It has no axe to grind, no interests to protect. It is born of a heartfelt appreciation of the seriousness of the situation on our railroads. Mindful of the ever-increasing and lamentable loss of life caused by the unstudied indifference and negligence of employees, as well as by the blindness of the authorities to the real issues and dangers, it approaches and takes hold of the problem somewhat in the spirit of the King in “Hamlet,” when in an agony of remorseful retrospection he exclaimed, “Try what repentance can: what can it not?”

That there is an urgent call for this confessional method of supplying the facts in this railroad business is capable of easy demonstration. When an accident takes place on a railroad, some kind of an explanation or reason for its occurrence is immediately called for. Consequently there is a lining up of opposing interests. A certain management has to be vindicated, certain employees to be defended. In the investigation that follows, an array of facts defensive and otherwise is brought forward in the interests of the opposing parties; but evidence and facts that are likely to reflect on both men and management, and perhaps on the handling of the case or of other cases by the Board of Railroad Commissioners, are studiously avoided. The facts that are suppressed in this way usually contain the heart of the whole business, and are the very points in which the public is profoundly interested. An illustration in point will make this doubly clear.

About a year ago, in an accident near Troy, N. Y., five passengers were killed and many were injured. A special passenger train crashed into the rear of a regular passenger train. There is a sharp curve in the track a short distance above the scene of the collision. Had the special been handled carefully round this curve instead of recklessly, the accident would not have occurred. Caution, of course, is necessary in running round sharp curves, and the rules on all railroads are plain and emphatic on the subject. But the authorities who investigated this accident treated it as an isolated instance of individual carelessness. Within a period of six months these gentlemen are called upon to pass judgment on probably twenty wrecks, every one of them bearing the same earmarks of disobedience as this disaster near Troy, yet no one ever dreams of hunting up a common cause for dozens of accidents that are exactly similar and brought about in the same way. To be precise, this accident at Troy was the result of a habit. At a glance we perceive that the public is a hundred times more likely to be interested in the uprooting of such a bad habit as running recklessly round curves than it is in placing the responsibility or punishing the offender in any particular instance. Yet who ever heard of a verdict that placed the blame for an accident on a habit? The reasons for the oversight are obvious. A dangerous habit, long continued and unchecked, is a decided reflection on men and management, and, indeed, on the Railroad Commissioners, whose vigilance it has escaped; and consequently no evidence or facts in regard to these bad habits are ever permitted to find their way into investigations. It will be evident, therefore, that the confessional method can be profitably employed in supplying a few missing links in our knowledge of actual conditions and methods of operation on the railroads.

A YARD WRECK

To begin with, it will be well to take note of an estimate, made after a careful study of the figures, that fully eighty-five per cent of the fatalities that occur on our railroads can be directly traced to the negligence of employees. Regardless of the accuracy of this estimate, it certainly points to a very serious state of affairs. In studying the nature of these accidents and the conditions under which they take place, one cannot help being impressed with the fact that almost every possible way in which trouble can occur on a railroad is foreseen and provided for by some rule or safety device. So carefully has the ground been studied and worked over, that in every case of preventable accident it can almost be taken for granted that an employee is to blame. That is to say, the management of a railroad is always found to be impregnably protected by the rules and regulations from any direct responsibility. But, after all, this is only one side of the shield, for clearly the moral responsibility of a railroad manager cannot be said to cease with the printing of a batch of rules or the erection of a system of signals. It is not only necessary that rules should be plain and sufficient in themselves to prevent accidents, it is also equally essential that reasonable and systematic efforts should be exerted to enforce them. On a railroad, as elsewhere, the means employed for the supervision of personal conduct and for the enforcement of necessary rules are all included in the term discipline. Without some organized and effective system of discipline no industrial establishment of any kind can be successfully administered. On railroads in particular, the department of discipline is intimately related to the interests of the traveling public. Let us then examine in a practical manner the nature and methods of the discipline that is in force at the present day on what may be considered the most important railroad in New England. A little personal experience will throw the necessary light on the subject.

Some time ago, happening to notice that important regulations were being habitually ignored by a certain class of employees, the writer called the attention of the management to the matter. In this way, from time to time, many cases of simple negligence, which had no serious consequences, were reported to superintendents. Thinking it all over, the writer finally became anxious to find out just what disposition was made of these reports. For it must be apparent to any thinking person that the practical value of any system of discipline must always depend upon the efforts that are put forth and the success that is achieved in checking and in preventing the repetition of these instances of what may be called trouble in the bud. The reports to which I refer were acknowledged by the management, and there the matter ended. But as I happened to be studying the subject at the time in a systematic manner, I was by no means satisfied with this abrupt conclusion. So I made an investigation on my own account, and easily discovered that practically all other interested employees were unaware of and had not been notified in regard to the violation of these rules because, as the men explained, nothing had happened. That is to say, it was necessary to hurt somebody or smash up a few carloads of freight before any efforts could be exerted according to the rules to put a stop to the negligence. This became very clear to me, when, upon making further inquiries, I was informed that the men had been disciplined to the full extent of the rules. Now my object in the investigation was not to get at the nature or the amount of the discipline, but simply to be able to arrive at an estimate of its value in checking and restraining others from committing similar mistakes. In this way I soon arrived at the conclusion that a system of discipline that works in the dark in this way is of no practical value whatever. It is a weakness of management, which positively undermines the operating department and leads the way to all sorts of disaster and loss of life. Its continued existence in practical railroad management is a standing menace to the safety of the traveling public. As a matter of fact, lives are still being frequently sacrificed and much property is almost daily being destroyed as direct tribute to this incomprehensible system of discipline.

The exact method by which this system is put into operation, and the regulations which govern employees in regard to it, will be understood from the following extracts from general orders on the subject, issued by what is sometimes considered one of the best-managed railroads in the country:—