The 368 railway companies reporting to this Bureau had 1,463,429 persons in their employ June 30, 1909, and their pay roll for the twelve months to that date amounted to $973,172,497. Experience has shown that these roads employ over 96% of the labor and pay 97% of the compensation earned by railway employes. From which it appears that the employes of all the railways in 1909 numbered 1,524,400, whose compensation for that year was approximately $1,003,270,000. This would show an increase of 66,756 men employed and a decrease of $48,362,225 in compensation—a discrepancy accounted for by the fact that the pay roll in June, 1908, was numerically at low tide while the aggregate compensation was swelled by the large pay rolls of the first six months of the fiscal year. The conditions were nearly reversed in 1909, for the pay roll was at the ebb during the first half of the year whereas the number on it did not begin to show the demands of increasing traffic until the very close of the fiscal year.
These statistics would be more enlightening if the number of employes was determined by the average from the monthly pay rolls throughout the year and not as at present "from the pay rolls on June 30." The discrepancies noted are liable to increase if the Commission succeeds in getting the permission of Congress to substitute December 31st for June 30th as the end of its statistical year. Under the present practice, the summary which follows reflects the improvement of business in the increase of employes, while their aggregate compensation continues to show the effect of the depression that prevailed throughout the greater part of the year. When, however, that compensation comes to be divided by the "Aggregate number of days worked by all employes" during the year, the daily average which results is found to be within a fraction of a cent the same as for the preceding year.
The aggregate number of days worked by the employes of the roads reporting to this Bureau was 434,328,026 days in 1909 against 453,002,228 for the preceding year.
The first summary under this title gives the number, compensation and average pay of the several classes of employes of the roads reporting for the year 1909, together with the aggregates as reported to the Interstate Commerce Commission for the preceding years:
| Summary of Railway Employes, Compensation and Rates of Pay by Classes in 1909 and Aggregates from 1889 to 1909. | |||||
| Class 1909 (221,132 Miles Represented) | Number | Per 100 Miles of Line | Compensation | Average Pay per Day | Per Cent of Gross Receipts |
| General officers | 3,312 | 1.6 | $15,484,008 | 14.82 | 0.6 |
| Other officers | 7,415 | 3.3 | 16,847,754 | 6.53 | 0.7 |
| General office clerks | 67,222 | 30 | 51,945,231 | 2.31 | 2.2 |
| Station agents | 34,765 | 15 | 24,944,100 | 2.10 | 1.0 |
| Other station men | 135,056 | 61 | 78,289,039 | 1.81 | 3.3 |
| Enginemen | 55,747 | 25 | 77,762,158 | 4.46 | 3.3 |
| Firemen | 58,927 | 27 | 47,591,953 | 2.67 | 2.0 |
| Conductors | 42,325 | 19 | 50,269,581 | 3.76 | 2.1 |
| Other trainmen | 112,398 | 51 | 88,751,753 | 2.60 | 3.7 |
| Machinists | 47,629 | 22 | 41,381,054 | 2.98 | 1.7 |
| Carpenters | 59,477 | 27 | 42,954,993 | 2.43 | 1.8 |
| Other shopmen | 192,784 | 87 | 118,891,679 | 2.13 | 5.0 |
| Section foremen | 39,953 | 18 | 26,377,380 | 1.96 | 1.2 |
| Other trackmen | 308,369 | 140 | 107,734,419 | 1.38 | 4.5 |
| Switch tenders, crossing tenders and watchmen | 44,155 | 20 | 26,019,105 | 1.78 | 1.1 |
| Telegraph operators and dispatchers | 38,656 | 17 | 29,655,916 | 2.30 | 1.3 |
| Employes, account floating equipment | 8,632 | 4 | 6,537,196 | 2.32 | 0.3 |
| All other employes and laborers | 206,607 | 93 | 121,735,178 | 1.98 | 5.2 |
| Total (94.4% mileage represented) | 1,463,429 | 661 | $973,172,497 | 2.24 | 41.00 |
| 1908 Official figures | 1,458,244 | 632 | $1,051,632,225 | (b)2.25 | 43.38 |
| 1907 | 1,672,074 | 735 | 1,072,386,427 | 2.20 | 41.42 |
| 1906 | 1,521,355 | 684 | (a)930,801,653 | 2.09 | 40.02 |
| 1905 | 1,382,196 | 637 | 839,944,680 | 2.07 | 40.34 |
| 1904 | 1,296,121 | 611 | 817,598,810 | No data | 41.36 |
| 1903 | 1,312,537 | 639 | 775,321,415 | No data | 40.78 |
| 1902 | 1,189,315 | 594 | 676,028,592 | No data | 39.28 |
| 1901 | 1,071,169 | 548 | 610,713,701 | No data | 38.39 |
| 1900 | 1,017,653 | 529 | 577,264,841 | No data | 38.82 |
| 1899 | 928,924 | 495 | 522,967,896 | No data | 39.81 |
| 1898 | 874,558 | 474 | 495,055,618 | No data | 39.70 |
| 1897 | 823,476 | 449 | 465,601,581 | No data | 41.50 |
| 1896 | 826,620 | 454 | 468,824,531 | No data | 40.77 |
| 1895 | 785,034 | 441 | 445,508,261 | No data | 41.44 |
| 1894 | 779,608 | 444 | No data | No data | — |
| 1893 | 873,602 | 515 | No data | No data | — |
| 1892 | 821,415 | 506 | No data | No data | — |
| 1891 | 784,285 | 486 | No data | No data | — |
| 1890 | 749,301 | 479 | No data | No data | — |
| 1889 | 704,743 | 459 | No data | No data | — |
| (a) Includes $30,000,000 estimate pay-roll of Southern Pacific, whose records were destroyed in the San Francisco disaster. | |||||
| (b) Bureau computations. | |||||
This table brings out clearly the effect of the depression of 1908 on railway labor. While there was a decrease in numbers employed in 1908 of 213,830 or nearly 13%, coincident with a proportionate decrease in gross revenues, the reduction in compensation amounted to less than 2%. This anomaly was due to the fact that the increased scale of pay adopted in the winter of 1906-07 was only effective during six months of the fiscal year 1907, whereas it was in full operation throughout 1908, as it still is, with demands, negotiations and arbitrations regarding wages all tending upward.
Unremunerative Expenditures.
Last year attention was called to the unremunerative burdens imposed on the railways by the multiplying demands of legislatures and commissions for reports on every conceivable feature of their multifarious affairs. This year with the compensation of every other class showing the effects of the enforced retrenchments of the period, that of the several classes especially affected by these requirements and the enactments relating to the hours and conditions of employment continue to be the only ones marked by advances over the record figures of 1907, as appears from the following comparison: