John R. Raynes

“ Hanbury had known of eighteen or nineteen hours being worked in bad weather, frost and snow, yet he never found a man slack in his duty on account of overwork, which speaks volumes for the conscientious endurance of engine drivers. ”

“ A member of five or six years standing, for example, has no conception of the long series of struggles and triumphs by those who have preceded him, and no idea of the vast debt he owes to the continuous efforts of the Society through all these years. Give me now a little of your time to examine conditions as they once were, to look at the record of bard endeavour and steady progress, and at the great distance which separates conditions which once prevailed from those conditions which prevail to-day. ”

“ Railway Accidents—Footboards. Subways, and Bridges—No Compensation—Exhaustion by Long Hours—Conditions of Slavery—A South Eastern Programme—Scottish Drivers Victimised—Terrible Records.
To grumble is the natural prerogative of human beings, and we are inclined to grumble sometimes about slow progress, and about old grievances which linger far too long with us. ”

“ The reason why there are not ten accidents where we have one is the praiseworthy pluck and perseverance of thousands of poor fellows, who, with a noble sense of enormous trust imposed upon them, have not permitted either abuse, tyranny, or oppression to impoverish their integrity or honesty. ”

“ A Select Committee was appointed to hear evidence, and painful facts were again revealed, but still Parliament merely sanctioned (in 1893) power for the Board of Trade to regulate hours, and another ten years of slave conditions passed by, not quite so awful in their intensity, but still very grave, and we find that in December, 1900, taking the facts relating to engine drivers and firemen on the twelve principal lines of England and Wales, there were 263,369 instances of men working more than twelve hours. ”

“ I should be very sorry to see any legislative interference, prescribing any particular hours for railway working. It must be left, I think, to the companies to work the men as they find it best and most convenient. ”

“ Hanbury, inspector in the locomotive department of the Midland, was asked about drivers going to sleep on the engines owing to excessive exhaustion:—
"What is the longest time of a man being at work in any case that has come under your knowledge?—I have heard of cases this winter of men being on duty for thirty-five hours. ”

“ In 1907 there were numerous cases of men working 18 to 24 hours continuous duty. Still, the grim story was petering out under resistance and exposure.
Let us look at a twin subject, wages, for a moment, under 1907 conditions. There were then over 16,000 men getting no overtime pay whatever for their excessive hours, and 103,700 were getting ordinary time rates, while 85,000 rejoiced in time and a quarter. There were 14,276 cleaners on an average weekly wage of 14s. 8d.; 25,518 firemen on a weekly average of 24s., and 25,900 drivers, the best-paid men of the general service, averaged 38s. ”

“ The long hours worked by railway servants were truly appalling at that time. Captain Tyler, in his evidence before the Royal Commission on Railway Accidents (1877) , gave the case of a driver of a pilot engine who had been on duty forty hours, and his guard nineteen. A driver spoke of being on his engine "eighteen, twenty, or twenty-four hours," and finding "his faculties impaired and his energy abated towards the close of such a long day's work." Mr. ”