The American Railway: Its Construction, Development, Management, and Appliances

by Thomas Curtis Clarke

Of these, 2,800, or 20 per cent., are engaged in train movement; 4,200, or 30 per cent, are in the machine-shops and in charge of motive power and rolling-stock; 7,000, or 50 per cent., are employed in various miscellaneous ways, as flag-men, section-hands, station agents, switch-men, etc., etc.

So far as the wage-earner is concerned, it is, therefore, this portion of the force of a railroad company which may be called distinctively "the service." If good relations exist between the men employed in its operating department and the company no serious trouble can ever arise in the operation of the road. The clerks in the financial department, or the engineers in the construction department, might leave the company's employ in a body, and their places could soon be filled. In point of fact, they never do leave it; but should they do so, the public would experience no inconvenience. The inconvenience—and it would be very considerable—would be confined to the office of the company, and their work would fall into arrears. It is not so with the operating department. So far as the community at large is concerned, whatever difficulties arise in the working of railroads develop themselves here. All serious railroad strikes take place among those engaged in the shops, on the track, or in handling trains. That these difficulties should be reduced to a minimum is therefore a necessity. They can be reduced to a minimum only when the railroad service is thoroughly organized.

How then can this service be better organized than it is? It is usually maintained that only the ordinary relation of employer and employed should exist between the railroad company and the men engaged in operating its road. If the farmer is dissatisfied with his hands, he can dismiss them. In like manner, if the laborer is dissatisfied with the farmer, he can leave his employ. It is argued that exactly the same relation should exist between the great railroad corporation and the tens of thousands of men in its operating department. The proposition is not tenable. The circumstances are different. In the first place, it is of no practical consequence to the community whether difficulties which prevent the work of the farm from going on arise or do not arise between an individual farmer and his laborers. The work of innumerable other farms goes on all the same, and it is a matter of indifference what occurs in the management of the particular farm. So it is even with large factories, machine-shops—in fact, with all industrial concerns which do not perform immediate public functions. A railroad company does perform immediate public functions. The community depends upon it for the daily and necessary movements of civilized existence. This fact has to be recognized. For a railroad to pause in its operation implies paralysis to the community which it serves.

Such being the fact, it is futile to argue that the ordinary relations of employer and employed should obtain in the railroad service. Something else is required; and because something else is required but has not yet been devised we have had the numerous difficulties which have taken place during the present year—difficulties which have occasioned the community much inconvenience and loss.

The model railroad service, therefore, is now to be considered. Of what would it consist? At present, there is practically no difference between individuals in the employ of a great railroad corporation. All the wage-earners in its pay stand in like position toward it. There should be a difference among them; and a marked difference, due to circumstances which should receive recognition. Take again the case of the Union Pacific. The Union Pacific, it has already been mentioned, numbers 14,000 employees in its operating department as a maximum, and 12,000 as a minimum. They vary with the season of the year, increasing in summer and diminishing in winter. Consequently there is a large body of men who are permanently in its employ; and there is a smaller body, although a very considerable portion of the whole, who are in its employ only temporarily. Here is a fact, and facts should be recognized. If this particular fact is recognized, the service of the company should be organized accordingly, and each of the several divisions of the operating department would have on its rolls two classes of men: First, those who have been admitted into the permanent service of the company; and, second, those who for any cause are only temporarily in that service. And no man should be admitted into the permanent service until after he has served an apprenticeship in the temporary service. In other words, admission into the permanent service would be in the nature of a promotion from an apprenticeship in the temporary service.

Those in the temporary service need not, therefore, be at present considered. They hold to the companies only the ordinary relation of employee to employer. They may be looked upon as candidates for admission into the permanent service—they are on probation. So long as they are on probation they may be engaged and discharged at pleasure. The permanent service alone is now referred to.

The permanent service of a great railroad company should in many essential respects be very much like a national service, that of the army or navy, for instance, except in one particular, and a very important particular: to wit, those in it must of necessity always be at liberty to resign from it—in other words, to leave it. The railroad company can hold no one in its employ one moment against his will. Meanwhile, to belong to the permanent service of a railroad company of the first class, so far as the employee is concerned, should mean a great deal. It should carry with it certain rights and privileges which would cause that service to be eagerly sought. In the first place, he who had passed through his period of probation and whose name was enrolled in the permanent service would naturally feel that his interests were to a large extent identified with those of the company; and that he on the other hand had rights and privileges which the company was bound to respect. It has been a matter of boast in France that every private soldier in the French army carried the possibility of the field-marshal's baton in his knapsack. It should be the same with every employee in the permanent service of a great American railroad company. The possibility of his rising to any position in that service for which he showed himself qualified should be open before him and constantly present in his mind. Many of the most remarkable and successful men who have handled railroads in the United States began their active lives as brakemen, as telegraph operators, even as laborers on the track. Such examples are of inestimable value. They reveal possibilities open to all.

Beyond this, the man who is permanently enrolled should feel that, though he may not rise to a high position, yet, as a matter of right, he is entitled to hold the position to which he has risen just so long as he demeans himself properly and does his duty well. He should be free from fear of arbitrary dismissal. In order that he may have this security, a tribunal should be devised before which he would have the right to be heard in case charges of misdemeanor are advanced against him.

No such tribunal has yet been provided in the organization of any railroad company; neither, as a rule, has the suggestion of such a tribunal been looked upon with favor either by the official or the employee. The latter is apt to argue that he already has such a tribunal in the executive committee of his own labor organization; and a tribunal, too, upon which he can depend to decide always in his favor. The official, on the other hand, contends that if he is to be responsible for results he must have the power of arbitrarily dismissing the employee. Without it he will not be able to maintain discipline. The two arguments, besides answering each other, divide the railroad service into hostile camps. The executive committees of the labor organizations practically cannot save the members of those organizations from being got rid of, though they do in many cases protect them against summary discharge; and, on the other hand, the official, in the face of the executive committee, enjoys only in theory the power of summary discharge. The situation is accordingly false and bad. It provokes hostility. The one party boasts of a protection which he does not enjoy; the other insists upon a power which he dares not exercise. The remedy is manifest. A system should be devised based on recognized facts; a system which would secure reasonable protection to the employee, and at the same time enable the official to enforce all necessary discipline. This a permanent service, with a properly organized tribunal to appeal to, would bring about. Meanwhile the winnowing process would be provided for in the temporary service. Over that the official would have complete control, and the idle, the worthless, and the insubordinate would be kept off. The wheat would there be separated from the chaff. Until such a system is devised the existing chaos, made up of powerless protection and impotent power, must apparently continue. None the less it is a delusion on the one side and a mockery on the other.

How the members of such a court as has been suggested would be appointed and by whom is matter for consideration. It would, of course, be essential that the appointees should command the confidence of all in the company's service, whether officials or employees. The possible means of reaching this result will presently be discussed.