Railway employee

“ Exceeding good nature, I suppose, is largely accountable for the readiness with which people in the sister isle espouse, often with little consideration, the cause of any railway employee who has or fancies he has a grievance. A rather ridiculous instance of this occurred soon after my installation at the County Down. One of my first duties was to examine the line and the employees p. 96at each station. At one small station I found in charge a station master in poor health and well advanced in years—in fact quite beyond his work. ”

“ He has many warm friends in the service, many in official capacities, and he is fully cognizant of the high ability, integrity, and loyalty of railway employees, and by employees he means to be understood as including all classes, from the highest officials down.
Inasmuch as our railroads form our greatest industry, and inasmuch as the active heads of the large roads have under their control such properties as but few in other fields are called to administer, it follows that there are hundreds—yes, thousands—of men in railway service, competent to fill any office in the land. ”

“ It is not necessary for us to decide whether an engineer may suddenly and without notice quit the service of a railway company at an intermediate station or between stations, though cases may be easily imagined where a sudden abandonment of a train load of passengers in an unfrequented spot might imperil their safety, and even their lives. ”

“ It is a fact beyond all question that, unvaryingly, there are fewer persons belonging to the staff of the Metropolitan Railway, in proportion to their numbers, absent from duty on account of illness, than on other railways. ”

“ Where railways fail in these respects, it will usually be found that it is because the men are personally defective, or because better men are not to be had. It must also be added that the onerous and responsible duties which railway workmen are called upon to perform require a degree of consideration on the part of the public which is not very often extended to them.
Few are aware of the complicated means and agencies that are in constant operation on railways day and night to insure the safety of the passengers to their journeys' end. ”

“ The contention of the railway servants as to the specialisation of their industry and the peculiar difficulty they find in changing their employment has a substantial foundation as regards many classes of railway servants. Men leaving one railway can seldom rely upon obtaining employment on another, except in the lower grades, as the companies usually have their own men waiting promotion. The value of a railway servant often consists largely in a special skill which is of no worth in other employments. ”

“ No public servants, I think, more deserve our sincere sympathy and support than the guards of our railway trains. It is obvious to all of us who have to travel constantly on railways how much our safety depends on their industry, their vigilance, their sobriety, and their discipline ”

“ How many days in each year can a man reasonably expect to be employed? Labor conditions on railways will never be satisfactory until employment can be reasonably constant and continuous. This is a difficult problem, but when enough big men give it attention it will be solved. It probably means more elasticity, more interchangeability between train service and the various kinds of maintenance, between the locomotive and the shop, between the railway and allied contiguous industries. The individual is the indivisible unit of society. We must build from him as a unit. ”

“ I have endeavored to sketch briefly what should be the attitude of the railway man as a railway man toward the public. I am sure I voice the sentiment of all managing railroad officers when I say that our great desire is to please the public and to give it the best possible service for the least possible compensation consistent with reason. Discriminations have long since passed away and nobody is better pleased than the railroad man that it is so. There is no desire to escape either responsibility or regulation. We desire to accord only justice and we ask in return only justice. ”

“ Another factor tending to differentiate the railwayman from the ordinary industrial worker is the sense of discipline—and the consequent subordination of each unit to an official superior—which must needs prevail if a great organisation is to be conducted, not simply with success for the shareholders, but with safety for the public. The maintenance of effective discipline is obviously essential to the safety of railway operation, just as it does, undoubtedly, further help to form the special type of the railway servant. ”

“ I was going to add, for the benefit of our young friend here, that all the qualities I was describing have made you the most consistent, thoroughgoing railroader in the country, that back of the mask were more pensions to deserving disabled employees than the law allowed, and a justice and respect for loyal sub-ordinates that made you an honorary member of our union, and the Great Northern the finest railway system ever perfected. ”

“ There is a very proper concern because of railroad accidents, and no one is more concerned about them than the railway owner and manager: they have the greatest incentives to avoid them,—pride in their profession, the natural desire of all men to prevent sorrow and suffering and the loss of money and reputation. ”

“ It is urged that 'it is as much the duty of the company to give correct orders for the running of its trains so they would not collide as it was to see that their servants had reasonably safe tools and machinery with which to work, and a reasonably safe place in which to work,' and hence, that one who is employed in securing the correct orders for the movement of trains is doing the personal work of the employer, and not to be regarded as a fellow servant of those engaged in operating and running the trains. ”

“ At other [Pg 136] times a man in semi-uniform, with a cap bearing a small metal locomotive as a badge of office, will fall upon you for the same purpose, and then depart. At wayside stations you will see him leaning from the door of a first-class compartment, smoking a cigar or cigarette, and preparing to resume his footboard tricks when the train is again under way. But though the descent is as unexpected as the same performances in American trains, yet there is an entire absence of that aggressive, domineering attitude which in some of the United States railway officials is so offensive. ”

“ Among the servants of a railway company, or rather we should say of the public, there is no one who, in his secluded station, has more important duties to attend to than “the pointsman,” in charge of the switches for diverting a train from one set of rails to another. As it is of course necessary that these switches should be carefully worked and guarded by night as well as by day, there are usually appointed to each station two pointsmen, each of whom remains on duty twelve hours at a time, taking the night and day work week about. ”

“ He infused his own energy and spirit into the management of the line, and gave new proof of his exceptional ability as an organizer and thorough railway manager. The finances could not have been conducted with better judgment and he quickly made the railroad the leading one in the Territory. ”

“ Of course, so long as railways are worked by men, they will be liable to the imperfections belonging to all things human. Though their machinery may be perfect, and their organization as complete as skill and forethought can make it, workmen will at times be forgetful and listless, and a moment's carelessness may lead to the most disastrous results. Yet, taking all circumstances into account, the wonder is that traveling by railway at high speeds should have been rendered comparatively so safe. ”

“ It may be objected, that railroads would throw out of employment a great number of people, who are now actively engaged, as coachmen, guards, horse-keepers, boatmen, waggoners, &c.: but as all improvements which tend to reduce the price of travelling and quick communication have led to a different result, we may infer that the number of cross coaches and short conveyances of all kinds that would be established to bring up passengers and goods to the railway, would at once give employment to these men. ”

“ It is certainly an odd thing that the only two little railway accidents that befell me in England were due to the only porters I gave sixpences to. It would almost seem as if so much prosperity turned their heads.
On this occasion it was to make assurance of the right train on the Underground doubly sure that I tipped my man the first sixpence; and he laid himself out to earn it in such a way that I was ashamed not to have made it a shilling. He bought me my ticket for Praed Street—that was all right; he put my luggage on the train and myself into the special care of the conductor. ”

“ The company’s permanent European staff consists of gentlemen drawn chiefly from the best-managed English lines. It is felt that without some provision being made for them in case of sickness, involving their retirement from the service, or in cases where, after a certain period of time, they may wish to retire, or when it may be considered desirable that they should do so, the railway service in India does not present sufficient attractions. ”

“ As there is no accommodation for any class of traveller, the public sit and stand about the verandahs and covered ways, choking the approaches, thus rendering impossible any attempt at order. The railway staff, represented by baboos and a few lounging slovenly policemen—there are no porters—are swallowed up in the crowd, whilst the two English sergeants content themselves with keeping the carriage-ways clear. All care appears to cease after the traveller has committed himself to the hands of the East India Railway. ”

“ The train despatcher, with his constant burden of care, deserves a chapter. The locomotive fireman, who has not been directly alluded to, is practically an apprentice to the engineer, and, like apprentices in some other callings, has a good deal of hard work to do. He generally has longer hours than the engineer, as he has to clean a portion of the polished brass- and iron-work of the engine. He has to throw into the fire-box several tons of coal a day, and gets so black that his best friends would not know him when washed up. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I say “on the whole,” for if we analyse railway labor into train service and all other kinds of service, especially maintenance, we find different results. Broadly speaking, although the men who function in train service are members of the brotherhoods, which is one of the strongest groups of labor unions, it is found that their compensation lagged behind the general average. ”

“ The conductor, starting at the forward end of his train, finds, perhaps, in the first car one or two "toughs" who refuse payment of fare and are spoiling for a fight. Care must be taken with this sort of character not to punish him or use the least bit of unnecessary severity, for he will, when sobered off, quite likely be induced by a sharp lawyer to sue the railroad company for damages by assault. The conductor, however, if he be one who has (in his freight-train experience) dealt with tramps, is able to cope with his customer and confine him to the baggage-car or put him off the train. ”

“ The Railway Labor Act and the Interstate Commerce Act recognize that stable and fair terms and conditions of railroad employment are essential to a well-functioning national transportation system. The Railway Labor Act safeguards an opportunity for employees to obtain contracts through collective rather than individualistic bargaining. ”

“ Independently of the ever-present dangers of actual operation, to which I shall revert later on, the fact of having to deal with such varied types of humanity as are met with on the platforms of a busy railway station, under conditions ranging between the extremes of amiability and irritability, must also tend to sharpen the wits of the average railway worker, and make a different man of him than he would be if he were to spend his working days in feeding a machine in a factory with bits of tin or leather to be shaped into a particular form. ”

“ The lowest-priced man in the train-service must understand the entire complicated theories of railroad operation to a T. He may be the man on whom responsibility—the responsibility for the safety of not one but many human lives—may suddenly be thrust. A gate-tender at a highway crossing has not ordinarily a place of gravest responsibility; yet in some least expected hour this humblest employee of the operating department may hold the fate of human life in the balancing of his steady hands.
Americans run the American railroads. ”

“ A distinct advantage offered by the railway service is that, subject to the ability and good conduct of the individual, employment once obtained with a railway company offers a tolerable assurance of permanent and regular work. ”

“ The rule which applies to such agents of one railway corporation must apply to all, and many corporations operate every day several trains over hundreds of miles at great distances apart, each being under the control and direction of a conductor specially appointed for its management. We know from the manner in which railways are operated that, subject to the general rules and orders of the directors of the companies, the conductor has entire control and management of the train to which he is assigned. ”