Confessions of a Railroad Signalman

by James O. Fagan

Surely this is a most uncomfortable and damaging confession. Interpreted in terms of railroad service, it should have the effect of causing the public to sit up and think it all over. With all our education and enlightenment, is it really a fact that the ideals and humanity of the American railroad man can be crammed into a nutshell in this way by honest and practical investigators, and labeled “wages”? At the present day the assertion that corporations are soulless has almost the nature and force of an axiom. It would now appear, according to the authorities just quoted, that the policy and ideals of labor, as represented by the American railroad man, are not only soulless but brainless as well.

So far in this discussion we have been dealing with theories and opinions. It now remains to be seen, by actual example and illustration, upon what ground or basis these theories have been advanced. In plain English, what is the actual and manifest cost, in character and dollars, of this lack of loyalty to the world at large which is a distinguishing feature of railroad life at the present day? It is hardly fair to call it a lack of individual loyalty, for at heart the American railroad man is thoroughly loyal; but, unfortunately, the systems of labor organization and management under whose direction he works, practically call upon him to renounce his personal principles in the interest of schedules and agreements which constitute the machinery of the operating department.

It may, of course, be taken for granted that managers of railroads are well aware of the importance and value of practical loyalty in all branches of the service; and yet when one examines the evidence with a view to ascertaining what they actually do for its encouragement, one is driven to conclude that there must be some kind of a hitch somewhere. As an illustration let us take the following incident, which is almost an everyday occurrence:—

Freight train No. 1 pulls into a yard a few miles outside the terminal. The train and engine crew are on overtime; that is to say, every hour they remain out on the road means a great many dollars in wages over and above their regular pay. Before long, another freight train, No. 2, overtakes train No. 1. Instead of pulling into the yard and doing its work in turn, this second train runs up the main line and backs in ahead of train No. 1, thus putting it in a pocket. In this way train No. 1 is delayed three or four hours, thus causing the engine to be late for the return service; and altogether an extra and entirely unnecessary expense of perhaps fifty dollars is entailed upon the railroad.

A few days later, the writer, happening to meet the engineman of train No. 2, spoke to him in regard to the affair. He appeared to be very much surprised that his conduct should be questioned or criticised in any way. He had supposed it was every man’s duty to shift for himself; to jump another train whenever an opportunity presented itself, and to get to his destination as quickly as possible. The question of the interest of the company was a side issue, to which he paid little attention. If loyalty of this kind was a matter of importance to the company, why, he contended, was the attention of the men not called to such matters in some emphatic way? So far as he was aware, the management had little to say on any subject except as its views were set forth in the rules and regulations. In his opinion it was every man for himself on the one hand, and every official for himself on the other; and whenever their interests or opinions clashed, it became the duty of the management and the grievance committee to settle the differences. This engineman was not far wrong so far as concerned the actual conditions of his daily work; and yet the management of a railroad takes a good deal more interest in such matters than this man had any idea of.

Some time ago a vice-president of one of our railroad systems addressed a gathering of some five hundred railroad station-agents and clerks. He had a good deal to say to the men about loyalty. He tried to impress upon his hearers that railroad men should think less about their wages and their material prosperity and more about character and the duties they owed to their employers and to the public. The prosperity of the men was in every way dependent upon the prosperity of the road; consequently, every act of loyalty, every little economy, was a genuine factor in obtaining satisfactory results and returns for the road. In the matter of supplies, for example, employees could do splendid work for the road if they would only put their minds to it. But it was not such an easy matter nowadays to put a stop to waste in some departments, even when its practice was shameful and persistent. Of course, it was an easy matter to find fault with a station-agent if he used a pint of ink over and above his allowance; but when the operating department consumed thousands of gallons of oil per year more than was absolutely necessary, the problem became much more complicated. However, seeing that reporters were excluded from the hall, he would venture to say that in the single case of oil it was possible for engine crews, by the exercise of the simplest loyalty and regard for the prosperity of the road, to reduce the expenditure in that one item to the extent of many thousands of dollars per year. But, of course, in the interest of harmony it would never do to tell enginemen and firemen that they are deliberately wasteful or lacking in loyalty to their employers.

To say the least, one gets the impression from these remarks that railroad officials are called upon to pursue their labors with something in the nature of a “sword of Damocles” suspended over their heads. However, it must not be supposed that instances of loyalty on a railroad are few and far between. On the contrary, from time to time the attention of the management is directed to instances of conspicuous and profitable loyalty.

Some time ago one of the largest freight yards in the western part of the state enjoyed a very unenviable reputation for breakages of draw-bars, derailments of cars, and all sorts of unnecessary delays to passenger trains. Finally a change was made in the yard-master. The new man began operations with heart-to-heart conversations with the yardmen. If they had grievances he was ready to straighten them out. The men had his sympathy and backing, and in return he requested their coöperation in order to convert the record of the yard from the worst to the best on the system.

Working in this sympathetic yet practical way, in a year’s time he had succeeded even beyond his expectation. While handling a much larger volume of business, the operating expenses and the bills for breakages were reduced many thousands of dollars.