Confessions of a Railroad Signalman

by James O. Fagan

It is, of course, unnecessary to dwell upon the tremendous importance of the railroads as a factor in our national life. Their ramifications are like countless veins or arteries penetrating every nook and corner of the continent. Backward and forward through these arteries there passes and repasses an endless procession of commerce and travel. In times gone by these huge systems of national and international intercourse have, for the most part, been directed and kept in working order by boards of management more or less personal and irresponsible in their methods of administration. But within a few years a great change has taken place. A new partner, in the person of the railroad employee, has literally pushed his way into the manager’s office. So important a factor has he now become in the councils of a railroad corporation that hardly a move can be made in the operating department without first consulting his rights and wishes. Not only is the power and influence of the railroad employee at the present day an important factor in railroad management, but, in the opinion of competent judges, the time is not far distant when manager and employee will meet on equal terms and together legislate for the interests of all concerned. Now, granting the ever-increasing power of the employee in framing the rules and influencing the management, what is there to be said about the division of responsibility? The question calls for the most serious consideration of railroad men. Manifestly, it also concerns the public interest; for, in criticising conditions on our railroads, public opinion should be thoroughly informed concerning the situation, so that in all fairness it may call for remedies and reform from the right quarter.

At the present day, when an accident happens on a railroad and lives of passengers are sacrificed by reason of the carelessness or neglect of employees, practically the whole moral and financial responsibility is immediately assumed by the management Heartfelt regret is at once expressed by the highest authorities, the injured are visited by sympathetic officials, and every conceivable kind of bill or expense is at once acknowledged and paid. On the other hand we, the employees, singly and collectively, ignore the whole business. We simply stand back and let the press and the authorities figure out reasons and remedies for themselves. We neither adopt resolutions of sympathy nor pay out a single dollar to benefit the families of the dead, or to alleviate the sufferings of the injured.

Considering the division of power, does this adjustment of responsibility appeal to any fair-minded person? It has occurred to some of us that if we or our organizations were assessed in hard cash in proportion to our responsibility for some of these preventable accidents, the casualty lists on our railroads would very quickly assume microscopic proportions. An “Employees’ Liability Act” would, of course, be looked upon as an absurdity; yet if unprejudiced judges were to analyze a few of our accidents, they would quickly conclude that the idea is sanely and soberly logical. They would simply consider the matter in the light of fair and square taxation with unmistakable and ample representation. It must not be forgotten that the manifestation of power by railroad labor is to be looked for not so much in the wording of schedules and agreements as in what the managements of railroads under pressure feel constrained to refrain from doing. The fairness and cogency of this argument may not “be as deep as a well” nor “as wide as a church door,” but I think, in the words of Mercutio, “’tis enough.” The questions and considerations that arise in this way in regard to the interests of the public, the management, and the men, are all comprehensively included and can be profitably discussed under the simple caption of loyalty,—on the one hand, loyalty of the men to their employers, and, on the other, loyalty of the employers to the men.

No sincere well-wisher of the railroad employee will question the importance of the relation that exists, or that is supposed to exist, on American railroads, between labor and loyalty. Volumes have been written about loyalty in the abstract. For the most part politicians and teachers of national morality and patriotism have monopolized these arguments. The former would sink individualism in the interest of the machine, the latter for the good of their country. Granted the purity of their motives, the efforts of these people are entirely praiseworthy; and yet the significance and importance of loyalty in the industrial life of the nation can by no means be said to be included in the teachings of either politician or patriot. On American railroads, in particular, the question of the loyalty of employees to the corporations and to the interests of the public is vastly more important than a superficial glance at the subject would lead one to suppose. Understanding as we do the ever-increasing influence of the employee, the problem which we have now to consider relates to what at the present day he is doing with his power, and to what, with his ever-increasing importance, he intends to do with it in the time to come. The future holds in it the answer to these questions in terms of selfishness and abuse of power, or in terms of loyalty to himself, the corporations, and the public.

To attempt to give a definition of loyalty to apply to and to cover this railroad business would simply be time and effort thrown away. It is one thing to impress upon learned and critical readers that individualism is in error and that loyalty is “willing and practical devotion to a cause that is outside of the individual and larger than he is.” It is quite another affair, and altogether more important, to reproduce our philosophy in terms of actual conduct and behavior. Not one railroad man in a thousand has either the time or the mental training to study theories, and from the teachings of professors to work out rules for his daily guidance; yet it is manifest that the most useful and wholesome ideas can be put to little practical utility in this railroad business until the employee is aroused, and some practical interpretation of them brought home to him with unmistakable sincerity and emphasis. While, therefore, it is unnecessary to supply railroad men with a definition of loyalty, it will be just as well to call attention to some of its most important features.

Loyalty then, as applied to the railroad service, means the safety of the traveling public so far as human safeguards can be depended upon. Again, comparing the service as it actually is with what it might be, loyalty means the elimination of numerous petty delays, and at times serious blockades, which, at the present day, on many railroads, are so annoying to the traveling public. This matter of delays to passenger trains is quite an important feature, and it is surprising how much the personality of the men and their interpretation of loyalty to the public interest figure in the problem. Furthermore, a stricter interpretation of loyalty by employees on any given railroad can easily be shown to mean a positive reduction in operating expenses to the tune of thousands upon thousands of dollars. These additional resources placed at the disposal of the management would mean, of course, funds wherewith to satisfy the never-ceasing demands of employees for better conditions and increase of pay. Finally, loyalty means fidelity; and with fidelity comes sympathy; and with sympathy comes practical and earnest coöperation between management and men, without which safe and efficient service is liable to be a mere delusion and will-o’-the-wisp.

Now, while it is a pleasure to bear witness to the steadfast loyalty, frequently under trying conditions, of numerous individual employees, it is nevertheless the duty of the unprejudiced investigator to call attention to the fact that the tendency of the forces that are at work in this railroad business at the present day, on the part both of the men and of the management, is simply and positively to eliminate loyalty as a useful and essential factor in the administration of affairs. While the public, the management, and the men are mixed up in the responsibility for this unsatisfactory condition, the blame for the lack of sympathetic coöperation, which is only another term for loyalty, that exists among us, must, to begin with, be laid at the door of the employee himself. This is by no means the hasty opinion of an individual thinker. Professor Royce, an eminent authority on the subject, in a lecture delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston, describes the situation very emphatically in the following language:—

“The trades-unions demand and cultivate the loyalty of their members; but they emphasize the thesis that to be loyal to his union the laborer must disregard certain duties to the community at large and to the nation, duties which loyalty to loyalty seems obviously to require.”

By loyalty to loyalty, Professor Royce means “the maximum of loyalty to the world.” But professors and students of industrial conditions are by no means unsupported in their conclusions. That labor leaders themselves are aware of the inherent weakness of our position may be inferred from the following extract from an editorial in “The International Railroad Employee” for November, 1907.

“I may not lay claim to either the age or wisdom to advise my brother workers what to do, but if you will consider some of my suggestions relative to your actions and surroundings, and talk them over among yourselves, I am sure you will be able to find the world brighter for you. You seldom, if ever, give any serious thought to bettering your condition except by hoping for better wages. Your ideals begin and end with wages, and so long as that be true there is no possibility of your condition being bettered.”