Railway worker

“ The training and the higher education of railway workers have undergone important developments alike in the United Kingdom, in the United States, in Germany, in France, and elsewhere.
In the early days of the railway the most eligible person for the position of general manager was thought to be some retired naval or military officer, accustomed to controlling large bodies of men ”

“ While not being, perhaps, actually an ideal industry—and there are very few workers, of any rank, who would be prepared to admit that their occupation in life was absolutely free from drawbacks—the railway service offers, as we have seen, many advantages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ RAILWAY mail clerks are not railway employees, although they are under the orders of the railway officials when on the road. They are, as a class, a bright lot of men. They bring more brains and acquired skill into their work than any class of government employees in proportion to the amount of money they draw. They ride the fastest trains in the country, and ride ahead. On most roads their car is coupled to the locomotive, and they take whatever is left when the grim reaper has finished with the enginemen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is every drunken vagabond who lies down in the track,—every deaf old man who chooses the railway for his walk,—every fidgetty traveller who steps out while the train is in motion, in the face of extra-large print, on the station walls, which forbids him to do so,—to be regarded as the victims of the railway proprietors? ”

“ Indeed the most dangerous sort of labour—such as working horse-barrow runs, in which accidents are of constant occurrence—has always been most in request amongst them, the danger seeming to be one of its chief recommendations.
Working, eating, drinking, and sleeping together, and daily exposed to the same influences, these railway labourers soon presented a distinct and well-defined character, strongly marking them from the population of the districts in which they laboured. Reckless alike of their lives as of their earnings, the navvies worked hard and lived hard. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They knew that the railway was a railway, but beyond that, none of its dividends being destined for their pockets, it was merely the job—"the" job, the job of the moment, the job not very different from the last job, and very, very like all the other jobs to come, until their living hands should become as stiff as the picks they plied, and the light of their eyes be extinguished as their own lanterns were extinguished at daybreak. ”

“ What too is the railroad going to do about adjusting hours of labor for its workers so that, whenever it is possible, the worker shall sleep at home? We have seen already in the pages of this book how often this is not possible for the employees engaged in the operation of the trains. In a little while we shall come to the vast possibilities of the use of the gasolene-motor unit in local passenger transportation upon our standard railroads, and I shall be urging as a corollary to its introduction a much increased service as well. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whatever the further variety in the particular occupations included under this head, it is certain that the railway service affords employment for a greater range and diversity of talent, skill, ability or effort than probably any other single industry or enterprise on the face of the earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All other classes of railway employes he considers may safely be kept on duty ten hours daily. He suggests that relief men be kept at certain stations, so that in cases where trains have been much delayed, the officials in charge thereof may be relieved as soon as they have completed their full term of duty, instead of, as at present, being compelled to work forward to their journey’s end, regardless of the length of time it may occupy. ”

“ The railroad man's home-life is not specially different from other people's. There have been Chesterfields among conductors, and mechanical geniuses have grown up among the locomotive engineers, but these were products of an era now past. Station-men are a part of the communities where their duties place them. Trainmen and their families occupy a modest though highly respectable place in the society they live in. Trainmen who live in a city generally receive the same pay that is given to their brothers, doing the same work, whose homes are in the country. ”

“ It is true that English experience would show that laboring-men, after a heavy day's work, cannot bear the jar of railway traveling. There must be, however, many varieties of labor—such as work in factories and the like—where a little movement in a railroad-train at the close of a day would be a refreshment. ”

“ Her own quick wits, aided by those of a gallant fellow passenger, give the two officers an unlooked-for and exciting "run for their money." One hardly realizes till now the dramatic possibilities of a railway train, and what an opportunity for excitement may be afforded by a joint railway station for two or more roads. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Behind this coach is an ordinary train, and the men you see here are measuring, with the help of recording instruments, the amount of pull, in pounds, on the drawbar which con-nects the locomotive with the rest of the train. They take other measurements too, and can find out a great deal about the locomotive’s performance under all sorts of conditions of running. So scientists and technicians help to run the railway. But there are men in equally vital jobs in all parts of the railway service, and on all of them depends the smooth running of this great organisation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They look with dull, unseeing gaze on this railway train, the engine, the carriages, which will take their lads away from them. Many have climbed up on the steps of the carriages, hanging on to the handrails, so as to be near the lads as long as possible. Their position is a perilous one, the sergeants as well as the railway officials have to take hold of them by the waist and to drag them forcibly down to the ground before they will give way. ”

“ As this possibility was made use of, it endangered the solvency of the Society, and a remedy was devised as stated in 1889.
We have now passed, therefore, through the period of evolution of railways, and through the evolution of societies, but decidedly not through the evolution of decent hours, wages and conditions for the men piloting this great institution. The typical figure representative of railway life is the driver, and it is his fortune and his organised effort we will follow through the years. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this way, not only does the individual unit count, but the individual unit in railway operation may be the Atlas upon whose shoulders the railway world does, in a sense, rest. A blunder in an ordinary factory or workshop may involve no more than the spoiling of a machine or the waste of so much material. A blunder on the railway may involve a terrible loss of human life. ”

“ The yardmaster has one caller and the roundhouse foreman another. The two callers go up the same street, sometimes together, and call men in adjoining houses, an expensive duplication of work. The trainmaster rides in the caboose and the traveling engineer—road foreman is the modern term—in the engine, but neither dares presume to know the business of the other. Every trainmaster should be a traveling engineer and every traveling engineer should be a trainmaster. That will be the case when we train officials along more definite lines. Honey bees feed their future queen a special food. ”

“ A cripple maimed in the company’s service, or a married servant of a director or secretary, superseded the first batch of stragglers and assumed responsibility by express appointment. The responsibility, in truth, was not very great at starting. Railway travelling, at the time referred to, occupied but a very small portion of a man’s time. The longest line reached only thirty miles, and no traveller required anything more solid than his newspaper for his hour’s steaming. ”