Confessions of a Railroad Signalman

by James O. Fagan

During the palmy days of what may be called autocratic management, when a railroad man started out in the morning, the paymaster, or the office-boy, for that matter, could have told you the exact amount the man would have been entitled to on his return. The employee was willing, and in fact had agreed, to travel or to work from a point A to a point B for a certain fixed sum. So far as his pay was concerned, it made no difference whether he covered the distance in eight hours or eighteen. If a yard-master delayed him for two or three hours before starting, and if he lost half a day on the road by reason of wrecks, disablement of locomotive, or a washout, so much the worse for him. His duty was to go from A to B and to do what he was told to on the way, without question, even if it took him from sunrise to sunrise to cover the distance. There was no help or rescue in sight, no appeal from the discipline in those days; and if the work was not to his liking, the world was wide, and a dozen men were ready to step into his place.

Nevertheless, the one-sidedness and injustice of the whole proceeding were manifest to everybody, and from year to year it remained to be talked about, objected to, and brooded over. But with ever-increasing business and complication of conditions, a much better educated class of men found their way into the railroad service. In moving a train from place to place, greater intelligence was required. A conductor to-day can frequently run from one end of the road to the other in a purely mechanical fashion; but in the early days of railroading, with a single track, a confusion of flags and train orders, and a multitude of unforeseen difficulties awaiting him at every station, it took little less than genius to make a successful railroad man.

The really heart-breaking story of the hardship and heroism of the trainmen of those days has never been written, but a touch of the stern reality and pathos of it all can be imagined from the single consideration, that of seventeen freight conductors who in the year 1883 ran trains through the Hoosac Tunnel, only five in the year 1888, that is, five years later, were still to be found on the pay-rolls. In nearly every instance, death in violent form had removed the others. Of course, as we all know, the most popular type of heroism is to be looked for on the battlefield; but there are hundreds of railroad veterans on the streets to-day, undecorated and unremembered, whose services to the country are all worthy of popular sympathy and national gratitude.

As a result of these extraordinary conditions and the continual killing of employees, a new and more intelligent class of men was called upon, in course of time, to undertake the dangerous duties of railroad service. With increased intelligence and broader mental equipment, the thinking process in the brain of the railroad man expanded, and very naturally his awakened attention was not exclusively centred on the business of his employers. It soon became known to officials, and to the world, that we had grievances. Before long, rumblings of discontent were heard on all sides. Between ourselves we began to discuss matters of right and wrong. The men got together in groups, in small gatherings. Here and there, all over the country, little Runnymedes were attended by all conscientious, determined railroad men. With an ever-increasing demand for our services, came consciousness of importance and power. Attention was called to the injustice, the inconsistency of the situation. We petitioned and agitated for trifles. Inch by inch ground was gained. Frequently we were beaten back, sometimes routed, at other times the battle was drawn; but after every encounter, regardless of result, the ghost of the future remained on the field to disturb the slumbers of the management. So, through the years, the struggle proceeded, concession followed concession, until all kinds of injustice and favoritism, and in fact the whole system of purely autocratic management, had gone by the board, and fair play for the railroad trainman was an accomplished fact. For the future, to ask was to receive. Face to face with organizations of determined men, with the crops and manufactures of half a continent waiting to be moved to the seaboard, what was a management or a combination of managements going to do about it?

Thus, by evolution and revolution, a mighty change has come over the scene. To-day, when a railroad man makes a trip from point A to point B, it is altogether different from the performance to which I called attention at the beginning of this essay. At the end of his trip, the man now takes out his pencil and does some figuring. Neither the superintendent nor the paymaster has the slightest idea what the engineman’s, the conductor’s, or the brakeman’s bill for a day’s work is going to be. If a man is delayed on a road by the negligence of a fellow employee, the company will have to pay for the extra time. If he makes a straight trip, with one or two stops, he has a certain rate; if in the performance of his duties he is called upon to make an extra stop or to pick up a car of perishable goods, he will call for a special rate and much more money. His day’s trip frequently bristles with possibilities in the way of special rates and overtime. In the matter of overtime, he may have the opportunity to be just or unjust, as it pleases him; anyway, the company is at his mercy. Again, if at the end of a hundred-mile run, or thereabouts, for which an engineman would receive from four to five dollars, he is requested to take his engine out on the road again and move a car a distance of twenty feet, he will turn in his bill to the company for a greater amount than a gate-tender or a switchman would receive for his whole day’s work, from six in the morning until six at night, without a minute for meals.

Again, if a man gets into trouble, he is called into the office for an investigation. If it turns out that the accident was unquestionably the fault of the employee, he, of course, is liable to be disciplined for it in some way; but if as a result of the accident, the whole road is tied up for twelve hours, and he remains on duty half a day longer than his usual time, he will receive payment for this overtime in full, regardless of the fact that he himself was wholly responsible for the delay.

Far from criticising this state of affairs, I consider the demonstration I have given of the exact status of the railroad man at the present day a magnificent tribute to righteous and necessary organization. Up to this point the public has had no cause to complain, and discipline has not been interfered with. The treasury has borne the whole burden. While it is doubtless true that the liberal terms and concessions to which I refer have been brought about, so to speak, at the point of the bayonet, nevertheless many privileges and advantages are enjoyed by railroad men, which cannot be said to owe their origin to compulsion or pressure of any kind. The care shown by nearly all railroads for the welfare of the employee, and the millions of dollars that have been expended for his social and intellectual betterment, must also be taken as direct evidence of square and honest treatment. To combat the evils of the saloon, and in the interest of good citizenship, both on and off the railroad, the corporations have gone extensively and expensively into the construction and maintenance of reading-rooms and hospitals, as well as relief, savings, and loan associations. There is, indeed, a fine sense of business judgment hidden away in these different methods of looking after the interests of the employees, and there is hardly a road in the country that does not recognize the principle that to obtain competent, trained assistants, especially in the operating department, it is essential that the men be surrounded with all sorts of inducements to remain in the service, and to be loyal to the interests of their employers. This philanthropic and betterment work is to be found on all railroads, and conspicuously so on the Baltimore & Ohio. The following particulars of relief and betterment work on the above railroad may be taken as a lesson of what corporations with souls are doing in the interests of employees.

Membership in the Relief Department of the Baltimore & Ohio is compulsory on the part of all employed in the direct operation of the road. The employees themselves have part in the direction of the affairs of the organization. The company makes all collections and payments, under its guarantee of responsibility for every penny coming into or going out through its hands. The company also pledges itself to pay four per cent interest on the monthly balances of current accounts; no charge is made for office rent, and all the facilities of the road are at command, without cost. Operating expenditure is thus reduced to a minimum, and upon transactions during the year 1906-1907, which represented a million dollars distributed in benefits, the expense averaged but a dollar and sixty-eight cents per capita of membership. The aggregate of the benefits paid from the founding of the Relief to the close of the year 1906-1907, was thirteen millions of dollars.

The Baltimore & Ohio plan for pension payments, in vogue for the past twenty-three years, is in conjunction with the Relief Department, but is not, as that is, maintained by the contributions of employees. The pension system is maintained entirely by the company, which contributes for the purpose about $90,000 annually. During the year 1906-1907 the fund paid in pensions was over $95,000, to about 400 pensioners. Since its inauguration in 1884, there has been paid out in pensions, $1,008,000.

Again, the foundation of two other features—Savings and Loan—in the Baltimore & Ohio dates back a full quarter of a century. The Savings is strictly a trust fund, around it being thrown the unequivocal protection of the United States government in the decision handed down by its courts. Of course this is understood by employee-depositors; consequently there is absolute confidence. There are no runs, no anxiety as to savings, and no fear that what has been laid aside for a rainy day will be risked. Meantime, upon it the company is guaranteeing four per cent and earnings; the interest and dividend returns thus amount to never less than five and sometimes five and a half per cent. The total of the savings deposits to June 30, 1907, reached eight and a half million dollars, and interest and dividends paid to employee-depositors to that time came to a million and a half dollars.