| Number of miles run to pint of oil | 15.32 |
| Number of miles run to ton of coal | 46.17 |
| Number of pounds of coal per mile run | 48.62 |
| Number of pints of oil per mile run | 0.06 |
Cost in Cents per Mile Run.
| Cents. | |
| For oil, tallow, and waste | 0.32 |
| For fuel | 7.42 |
| For engineers | 3.60 |
| For firemen | 1.79 |
| For wipers and watchmen | 1.25 |
| For water supply | 0.49 |
| For supplies (miscellaneous) | 0.10 |
| For repairs | 2.40 |
| ——– | |
| Total | 17.37 |
He will find that some engineers and firemen are more extravagant than others, and that some station agents and flagmen do not perform their respective duties with near so much regard for economy as others do under exactly similar circumstances. In such cases a report is made and a reminder from the Superintendent follows, calling attention to such carelessness. The result is apparent at the next monthly comparison.
Prompt payment of all supply bills helps to insure economy, and any company unable to make its payments promptly and regularly, suffers to a greater or less extent always; for a firm not able to know whether its accounts are to be settled in thirty or ninety days cannot afford to allow all the discounts which it otherwise might, and this may mean an extra expense every year of many thousands of dollars.
So far as the employees are concerned, it is for the best interests of the company to have a fixed time for the pay-day. They need their money and should get it regularly. Any road on which the men are paid at uncertain times may be subject to incalculable losses. It is apt to provoke dishonesty and carelessness. The road which is bankrupt and forced to pass its pay-day to some indefinite time is always hampered by some of the most inferior class of servants in the market. Except in some instances where special laws have been passed requiring railroad companies to meet their pay-rolls oftener, once each month is generally recognized as pay-time, and on large roads it would be simply out of the question for the pay-rolls to be made up correctly and the men paid off sooner. The paymaster is the wage-distributing medium, and by virtue of his generosity will command as much respect as the President of the road. No officer's face is more familiar than his, and surely no one connected with the institution is looked for with more eagerness by the hard-working employees. It is no easy task he has to perform, and the responsibility for the millions of dollars paid out in this way annually is very great. This responsibility, however, has been very much reduced on some roads, where wages are paid by checks entirely. Under some circumstances this system will not work satisfactorily, especially on a road running through a sparsely settled country. The employees may have to stand a good round discount to some store-keeper or tradesman in order to secure their money. The best and most satisfactory return for services can be nothing less than solid cash; it encourages better attention to business and relieves the men from possible annoyance and inconvenience. The Paymaster's car, which is virtually a moving bank or cashier's office, and arranged conveniently for the payment of money to the men as they pass through, is generally run "special," upon notice in advance to all foremen or heads of departments, either by telegraph or, as on some roads, by the display of special signal flags, which are carried on the front end of the locomotive of some regular train the day before the car is run over any division. In this way all men employed along the line of the road, whether at or between stations, are notified of the Paymaster's coming, and it does not usually require any other inducement than this to bring them all out. There is nothing that will prompt them to jump higher and run faster than the whistle of the pay-train as it comes around the curve to the station. Men have been known to forget their names, and do other foolish things under the excitement of drawing their month's pay. The fellow who said he could not write all his name when requested by the Paymaster to sign the pay-roll, but offered to write as much of it as he could, after some deliberation made a cross on the sheet with all the care and nicety he could muster. Others who could not write have been very slow to admit it, and have pleaded haste as an excuse for not doing so. So far as Italians are concerned (and what railroad service is now complete without its gang of Italian laborers?), they are usually designated by numbers, and in some cases their foremen have thought it well to name them after prominent statesmen or other public men, or possibly some of the head officials of the company. To run across twenty-five or thirty Daniel Websters on the same road is not surprising, and the President of the company himself is liable to have a half-dozen namesakes throughout the different divisions of his road. A cage of jabbering monkeys is not a more amusing spectacle than some gangs of Italian laborers receiving their month's pay.
The pay-department can be made very systematic, and to promote economy and accuracy it is absolutely necessary that it should be. The Paymaster is not simply a medium through whom wages are distributed. He may be one of the most important officers of his company, and ferret out frauds and dishonesty which otherwise might never be discovered. He knows all the men, and they, of course, know him. In fact, he is the only one connected with the road whose recognition among all the employees is absolutely certain.
Some idea of the enormous amount of money earned annually by the railroad men in this country may be formed from the statement that it requires about $1,000,000 per month to pay twenty thousand men, and there are a good many roads on which the average monthly pay-roll embraces from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand names; in some cases even more.