American Railway Union

“ The employees of the Pullman Car Manufacturing Company, as a body, were affiliated with an organization known as the American Railway Union. The constitution of this latter organization was of such an elastic character as to be capable of being stretched so far as to include not only those who worked for the railroad proper, but also all who were employed upon any kind of railroad work whatsoever. ”

“ Then it was that the true principles of this organization were recognized by railroad employes, and applications for charters came pouring in from all parts of the country.
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CHAPTER II. THE BOYCOTT.
The American Railway Union is in every sense an American Institution, whose aims and objects as previously stated are to protect and shield its members from the grinding power of railroad corporations. ”

“ The chief of those terms was that American railway material should be upon an exact equality with that of the other nationals joining in the loan in the placing of orders for this whole railroad system. After months of negotiation the equal participation of Americans seems at last assured. It is gratifying that Americans will thus take their share in this extension of these great highways of trade, and to believe that such activities will give a real impetus to our commerce and will prove a practical corollary to our historic policy in the Far East. ”

“ The objection felt by American statesmen to handing over their railroads to the National government—for I think it may be taken for granted that if they were nationalized it would have to be wholly under Federal management, and that the separate states could take no part in the matter—is in principle the same. There are something like a million and a half men employed on the railroads of the United States, say roughly 7 or 8 per cent. ”

“ The people and the Government of the United States have made a tremendous investment in transcontinental railways, that not only bind the Atlantic and Pacific slopes together, but give to the commerce of Europe new and swift channels of communication with the East. In the midst of the terrible uncertainties and fabulous expenditures of civil war, American enterprise, lavishly aided by the Government, undertook the gigantic task of railway-building across the continent. ”

“ In justice to all parties, we ought probably to add that it is difficult to see how our interstate railways could be operated with due regard to the interest of the shipper and the railway without concerted action of the kind afforded through these associations. ”

“ Whatever may be the final outcome of all these controversies, the position in regard to the troubles both of 1907 and 1911 has obviously been most materially, if not, indeed, mainly, influenced by questions of trade union recognition which do not necessarily cast any reflection on the railway service itself, or detract from it as being one of the most important, most popular and most sought after of our national industries. ”

“ The American railway lines of those days had, generally speaking, been constructed as cheaply as possible by the private enterprise which—though with liberal grants of land and other advantages—alone undertook their provision, the main idea being to supply a railway of some sort to satisfy immediate wants and to improve it later on, when population and traffic increased and more funds were available. ”

“ Within the field of transportation the promoters reorganized the railroads after the panic, reduced their number, and gathered their control into the hands of a few men.
The railway system by 1900, with 198,000 miles of track, was directed by a few powerful groups of roads. In the East the New York Central and Pennsylvania systems were dominant. In the West the continental railways formed the basis of new organizations. The keenest interest gathered round the reconstruction of the Union Pacific by Edward H. Harriman, who reorganized its finances after 1897. ”

“ The resolution runs as follows: “That in view of the success which, in spite of unparalleled difficulties, has attended the working of the railways under State control, this Congress urge the Parliamentary Congress to press the Government to arrange for the complete nationalisation of all the railways, and to place them under a Minister of Railways, who shall be responsible to Parliament, and be assisted by national and local advisory committees, upon which the organised railway workers shall be adequately represented” (Trades Union Congress Annual Report, 1917, p. 345) . ”

“ American railway managers are gradually but surely coming to take a more liberal view of these great possibilities and to consider the economic development of their territories, not narrowly, but in a generous way. ”

“ The companies, waxing rapidly rich and powerful, found that with all the departments of a system in operation, save one, it was not difficult to defeat a striking craft. Hence the need for a still more extended battlefront pressed heavily upon the workers, and in 1889 an effort was made to finally solve the problem by federating the several transportation unions together on a national scale in the United Order of Railway Employes. ”

“ The findings show that the operation of long trains, that is trains of more than fourteen passenger and more than seventy freight cars, is standard practive over the main lines of the railroads of the United States, and that, if the length of trains is to be regulated at all, national uniformity in the regulation adopted, such as only Congress can prescribe, is practically indispensable to the operation of an efficient and economical national railway system. ”

“ When American railroad men embark upon the amalgamation of all their trade unions into one industrial union they will not be pioneers blazinga trail through an unknown wilderness. On the contrary, they will be setting forth on a well-travelled road, long since gone over by the railroad workers of France, Italy, England, Russia, Germany, Belgium, etc., on their way to freedom—for in all these countries all classes of railroad workers, save an occasional craft fragment here and there, are to be found in single organizations. ”

“ A. M. Acworth, the leading authorities on British railways, discuss the alternative to wisely regulated railways—nationalization of railways. With a [4] continuance of unwise and burdensome regulation of railways, which strips responsibility of all discretion, nationalization is inevitable.
The Bureau's statistics of American railways for the year ending June 30, 1909, is included in The Railway Library because it affords the latest data not only as to the railways of the United States but for the world. ”

“ Eventually, however, three of these sections, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, the General Railway Workers' Union, and the United Signalmen and Pointsmen, fused together and formed the National Union of Railwaymen. This organization, dominating the railroad labor field, at once launched into a sphere of great activity and power. Like the miners and the railwaymen, the transport workers have also built their national organization of a lot of craft fragments. ”

“ The railway is a public servant. Its rates should be just to and open to all shippers alike. The Government should see to it that within its jurisdiction this is so and should provide a speedy, inexpensive, and effective remedy to that end. At the same time it must not be forgotten that our railways are the arteries through which the commercial lifeblood of this Nation flows. Nothing could be more foolish than the enactment of legislation which would unnecessarily interfere with the development and operation of these commercial agencies. ”

“ Import duties averaging 41.22 per cent were levied in 1911. The advocates of the system claim this is done to protect American Labor. Our manufactures are protected as a matter of national policy. Transportation costs the public from one-third to one-half as much here as in Europe. This cheapness is not purchased at the cost of the workingman. In 1910 the average daily earnings of railway employes in the United States were more than twice as great as in the United Kingdom, and two and three-quarters times as much as on the Prussian-Hesse system in Germany. ”

“ This was the fate of the old New York and New England railway, finally purchased by the New Haven system; of the West Shore and Nickel Plate lines; and of the Kansas Pacific, unloaded on the Union Pacific by Jay Gould. The nature of railway competition is indeed such that no other result than consolidation or pooling can ensue. Weyl is right in his observation that,—"Strictly speaking, permanent competition can exist, not between railroads struggling for the same traffic; but solely between those railroads which have no territory in common." ”

“ The railroad had penetrated it, and made it accessible to the average private citizen. Not that it could yet be reached by railway, for the first international line is still incomplete, though its termination is near at hand; but a multitude of lines, undertaken by American capital and enterprise, and aided by a Government of liberal ideas, were traced over every part of the land, and some of them in progress. ”

“ The significant relation between railways and politics must not be overlooked. The bounty of a lavish government, for example, made possible the work of railway promoters. By the year 1872 the Federal government had granted in aid of railways 155,000,000 acres of land—an area estimated as almost equal to Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. ”

“ Sprague's own house sells goods in New York city, and Chicago is selling groceries in New England. As I say, even the Hudson river doesn't stop them."
All this record implies progressiveness, energy, and ambition on the part of both business men and traffic officers. Nothing is more remarkable in American commerce than its freedom from restraints. Elasticity and quick adaptation to the exigencies of business are peculiarities of American railroad operation. This is due to the progressiveness of our railway managers in seeking constantly to develop new territory and build up business. ”

“ In 1942 this Court held that when a railroad abandons a portion of its lines, the Interstate Commerce Commission has power to include conditions for the protection of displaced workers in deciding what 'the public convenience and necessity may require.' We so construed the Interstate Commerce Act specifically on the basis that imposition of such conditions 'might strengthen the national system through their effect on the morale and stability of railway workers generally.' Interstate Commerce Comm. ”

“ The financiers who pushed the railroads to the Pacific were always ruthless, we have them today. It has been estimated that the American investor paid for the American railway system more than three times over in the process ”

“ Because our railroads are now private concerns, so far at least as legal title is concerned, it is too often assumed in public discussion that they owe their existence solely to private initiative and enterprise. With all credit to their sturdy builders, to whose vision and courage so much is due, the plain historical fact remains that the people of the United States have had a large share in [Pg 36] the great task of creating our present railway net,—not indirectly alone, through settlement of the virgin territory, but immediately and directly through land grants and subventions. ”

“ Congress renounced all rate concessions in 1945.
Monument commerating the last spike on the joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads into the first transcontinental railway in this country.
Railroads Dominate U.S. Transportation
The northern States had such tremendous productive capacity that they were able to fight the Civil War and at the same time push a railroad across the western plains and mountains. This railroad, liberally aided by grants of public land and Government loans, was completed in 1869. ”

“ The railroads of the United States, now aggregating a hundred and fifty thousand miles and having several hundred different managements, are frequently spoken of comprehensively as the railroad system of the country, as though they constituted a unity in fact, and might be regarded and dealt with as an entirety, by their patrons and by the public authorities, whenever the conveniences they are expected to supply, or the conduct of managers and agents, come in question. ”

“ We all like to be with good company and pull the president's special, and in this case I seem to have with me no less distinguished companions than the American Railway Association. That able body has been detoured too long around this important matter of rules governing trains in yards. ”

“ The governing outlook for construing the Railway Labor Act is hospitable realization of the fact that it is primarily an instrument of industrial government for railroading by the industry itself, through the concentrated agencies of railroad executives and the railroad unions. ”

“ The change in the Court's understanding of industrial problems, certainly as they affect railroads, in their bearing upon the country's commerce and all that thereby hangs, to no small degree reflected the changed attitude of the railroads towards the role of railroad labor unions in the discharge of the functions of railroads. As striking evidence as any of this important shift in opinion is the fact that the Railway Labor Act of 1926 came on the statute books through agreement between the railroads and the railroad unions on the need for such legislation. ”

“ Leroy Beaulieu, a distinguished French economist, who visited this country in 1905 and made a careful examination of American economic conditions, wrote as follows upon his return to his native country: "All in all, the prosperity of the American railway system as well as the excellence of service it renders, is undeniable. If, therefore, one were in search of model railway methods, it would be wise to turn to those practiced under the free American system, not to those illustrated by a system operated under the debilitating control of the state." ”