The Railroad Problem Part 4

President Wilson in his recent address to Congress, in his accurate, authoritative way, laid great stress upon this very point of arbitration.

He had laid stress upon it in the crisis of September, 1916--when it looked as if railroad union labor and the executives of the railroads had come to an actual parting of the ways--and the country was to be turned from threats into the terrorizing actuality of a strike. Only Congress, which seems rarely able to realize that it can ever be anything else than Congress and so bound to its traditions of inefficiency, chose to overlook this portion of the President's solution of the situation. It granted the eight-hour day--so called--but it was deaf to arbitration.

Said President Wilson in his address:

To pa.s.s a law which forbade or prevented the individual workman to leave his work before receiving the approval of society in doing so would be to adopt a new principle into our jurisprudence, which I take it for granted we are not prepared to introduce. But the proposal that the operation of the railways of the country shall not be stopped or interrupted by the concerted action of organized bodies of men until a public investigation shall have been inst.i.tuted which shall make the whole question at issue plain for the judgment of the opinion of the nation is not to propose any such principle.

The President is nearly always right--particularly so in domestic affairs.

But never, in my knowledge, has he expressed himself with greater vigor and strength than in this particular instance. Not that the principle is apt to be popular--quite the reverse is probable. There are employers of a certain type, also employees of a certain type, whose bitterness against any fair measure of arbitration is unyielding. The great railroad brotherhoods have never shown any enthusiasm over the idea, despite the fact that the two countries in which arbitration is strongest and most successful--Australia and New Zealand--are controlled by organized labor.

There are railroad executives also who have been opposed to arbitration save where they might manipulate it to serve their own selfish ends. But these are the types of railroad chiefs who are beginning to disappear under the new order of things in America. Theirs was another and somewhat less enlightened generation--particularly in regard to social economics.

And even in the railroad the old order is rapidly giving way to the new.

There is a cla.s.s in America which enthusiastically receives arbitration--compulsory arbitration--and demands that it be extended in full to the railroad, as well as to every other form of industrial enterprise. I am referring to the average citizen--the man who stands to lose, and to lose heavily, while a strike of any magnitude is in progress.

He is an innocent party to the entire matter. And he must be protected--absolutely and finally.

That is why we must have arbitration--compulsory arbitration, for any arbitration which is not compulsory and practically final, is useless. We have had the other sort already and it has brought us nowhere. We had arbitration of the uncompulsory sort before the critical days at the end of last August. In the final course of events both the railroads and their brotherhood employees ignored it. And the average man, the man in the street, was ignorant of the fact that it had even been tried.

After that sort of arbitration comes compromise, and compromise of that sort is a thin veil for failure. And failure means that the whole thing must be gone over once again. The circle has been completed--in a remarkably short s.p.a.ce of time.

It all is a merry-go-round, without merriment; a juggernaut which revolves upon a seemingly unending path. Yet he is a real juggernaut. For while the brotherhood man may seek and obtain relief upon the lines which I have just indicated--how about the salaried man outside the railroad? And how about the man inside the railroad whom no strong brotherhood organization, no gifted, diplomatic leader of men protects? It is this last cla.s.s--the unorganized labor of the railroad, that I want you to consider for a little time. It is obviously unfair, from any broad economic standpoint, that these men, far outnumbering the organized labor of the railroad, should be ignored when it comes to any general readjustment of its wages. Yet, as a matter of fact, this is the very thing that has been coming to pa.s.s. And today it is one of the most p.r.o.nounced symptoms of weakness in the great sick man of American business.

CHAPTER V

UNORGANIZED LABOR--THE MAN WITH THE SHOVEL

In choosing the engineer and the conductor as the two very best types of organized labor upon the railroad I have had in mind the special qualifications that go with each. With the engineer one instantly links responsibility. And I think that in a preceding chapter I showed you with some definiteness that responsibility is never far from the engine cab.

With the conductor one touches the diplomat of the rank and file of railroad service--one of the most frequent of the railroad's touching points with the public which it aims to serve.

How about unorganized labor--the great groups of railroad workers who have no brotherhoods to look out for their rights or to further their interests? Has organized labor a monopoly of responsibility or of diplomacy? I think not. And if you will permit me, I shall try to show you an unorganized worker whose responsibility is quite as constant and as great as that of the men in the engine cab. This man is the one who makes the path for the locomotive safe--he is the track foreman, or section-boss. And the station agent, not of the metropolitan city but rather of the smaller cities or even the villages that multiplied many times make up the America that we all know, may yield nothing to the conductor in diplomacy. Of him, more in the next chapter.

Consider first, if you will, the section-boss--the man who makes the steel highway safe for you and me each time we venture forth upon it. It is obvious that no amount of brains in the engine cab, no skill, no sagacity, no reserve force, is going to compensate for a neglected track. A single broken rail may send the best-driven locomotive in the world into the ditch beside the right of way, a ma.s.s of tangled and useless sc.r.a.p iron.

The section foreman knows this. And knowing it does not diminish his own sense of responsibility.

Sometimes when you sit in the observation end of the limited and look back idly upon the retreating landscape you will see him, shovel in hand, standing beside the track and glancing in a dazed fas.h.i.+on at a fast-flying luxury which he has never enjoyed. He seems, at first sight, to be a fairly inconsequential part in the manifold details of railroad operation.

Yet it would be well if you could come a little closer to this important human factor in the comfort and the safety of your trip; could understand more fully the difficulties of his work. First you would have to understand that from the very hour the railroad is completed it requires constant and exacting care to keep it from quick deterioration. Continual strains of the traffic and the elements, seen and unseen, are wearing it out. Temperature, wind, moisture, friction, and chemical action are doing their best to tear down the nicety of the work of man in building the best of his pathways. The effects of temperature--of the wonderful range of heat and cold which the greater part of America experiences and sometimes within a remarkably short s.p.a.ce of time--are to expand, contract, and ofttimes to break the rails; to sever telegraph lines, the maintenance of which is so vital to the safe conduct of the railroad; to disrupt the equally important signal service.

A single flat-wheeled freight car went b.u.mping up a railroad side line in Minnesota on a zero day a few winters ago and broke so many rails that it was necessary to tie up the entire line for twenty-four hours, until it could be made fit for operation once again.

Track looks tough. In reality it is a wonderfully sensitive thing. Not only is the rail itself a sensitive and uncertain thing, whether it weighs 56 pounds to the yard or 110 pounds to the yard, but the ballast and the ties, and even the spikes, must be in absolute order or something is going to happen, before long, to some train that goes rolling over them. A large percentage of railroad accidents, charged to the account of the failure of mechanism, is due to this very thing. Therefore the maintenance of track alone--to say nothing of bridges, culverts, switches, and signals--becomes from the very beginning a very vital, although little understood, feature of railroad operation.

Here then is the floor-plan of the job of the man who stands there beside the track as you go whizzing by and who salutes you joyously as you toss a morning paper over the bra.s.s rail. His own facilities for getting newspapers are rather limited. He is a type--a man typical, if you please--of 400,000 of his fellows who make the track safe for you. The brigadiers general of this st.u.r.dy corps of railroaders are the engineers of the maintenance of way. A very large road will boast several executives of this t.i.tle, reporting in all probability to a chief engineer of maintenance. Reporting to these from each superintendent's division is a division engineer--probably some chap out of Tech who is getting his first view of railroading at extremely short range. He, in turn, will have his a.s.sistants; but he is probably placing his chief reliance on his track supervisors.

Now we are coming much closer to the man whom you see standing there beside your train. These track supervisors are the field-rangers of maintenance. Each is in charge of from ten to twelve sections, which probably will mean from eighty to one hundred miles of single-track--much less in the case of double-or three-or four-track railroads. The section has its own lieutenant--section foreman he is rated on the railroad's pay-roll; but in its lore he will ever be the section-boss, and boss of the section he must be indeed. If ever there was need of an autocrat in the railroad service, it is right here; and yet, as we shall presently see, even the section-boss must learn to temper his authority with finesse and with tact.

Here, then, is our man with the shovel. Suppose that, for this instant, the limited grinds to a stop, and you climb down to him and see the railroad as he sees it. Underneath him are four or six or eight workers--perhaps an a.s.sistant of some sort or other. Over him are the supervisors and above them those smart young engineers who can figure out track with lines and pothooks, though the section-boss is never sure that his keen eye and unfailing intuition are not better than all those books which the college boys keep tucked under their arms.

The college boys, however, seem to have the sway with the big bosses down at headquarters and the section-boss knows, in his heart as well as in his mind, that he can go only a little distance ahead before he comes against a solid wall, the only doors of which are marked Technical Education. He can be a supervisor at from $90 to $125 a month and ride up and down the division at the rear door of a local train six days a week; the time has gone when he might advance to the proud t.i.tle of roadmaster--a proud t.i.tle whose emolument is not higher than that of the organized brotherhood man who pulls the throttle on the way-freight up the branch. And, as a matter of fact, there are only a few roads which nowadays cling even to the t.i.tle of roadmaster.

Yet this man is not discouraged. It is not his way. He will tell you so himself.

"Go up?" he asks. "Go up where?"

Let the limited go, without you. This man is worthy of your studied attention. Give it to him. You are standing with him beside a curving bit of single-track. The country is soft and restful and quiet, save for the chattering of the crickets and the distant call of your train which has gone a-roaring down the line. The August day is indolent--but the section gang is not. The temperature is close to ninety, but the gang is tamping at the track with the enthusiasm of volunteer firemen at a blaze in a lumberyard. It is only its foreman who has deigned to give you a few minutes of his attention.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SECTION GANG

In the section-boss and his men is vested the responsibility of making the steel highway safe. A single broken rail may send the best driven locomotive into the ditch--a ma.s.s of tangled and useless sc.r.a.p iron.]

"Up where?" he asks once again--then answers his own question: "To some stuffy sort of office? Not by a long shot! I'm built for the road, for track work. This road needs me here. We're only single-track as yet on this division; but next summer we'll be getting eastbound and westbound, and then a bigger routing of the through stuff. Tonight the fastest through train in this state will come through here, at nearer seventy miles an hour than sixty, and my track's got to be in order--every foot of the 37,000 feet of it."

"That's your job," you say to him.

"Part of it," he replies. "My job is seven miles long and has more kinks to it than an eel's tail. See here!"

He points to a splice-bar, almost under your feet. You look at it. You are frank to admit that it looks just like any other splice-bar that you have ever seen; but the section-boss shows you a discoloration on it, hardly larger than a silver dollar.

"Salt water from a leaky refrigerator car did that. We've got to look out for it all the time--especially on the bridges."

You choke a desire to ask him how he knows and merely inquire:

"Are you responsible for the bridges too?"

"To the extent of seeing that they are O.K. for train movement. My job includes tracks, switches, drains, crossings, switch and semaph.o.r.e lamps.

We get out on our old hand-power Mallet here and make every sort of emergency repair you can think of--and then some more--on telegraph wires, culverts, signals, and the interlocking. We've got to know the time card and keep out of the way of the regular trains. Every little while a special comes along and we have to dump our little Pullman in the ditch--without much time for ceremony. We've got to know as much about flagging as the trainmen. And sometimes we have to act as s.e.xtons."

"s.e.xtons?" you venture.

He thumbs a little notebook.

"Last year I performed the last rites over seven cows, two sheep, and a horse. My job has a lot of dimensions."

He puts his book back in his pocket and draws out a circular letter which the general manager at headquarters has been sending out to all the track-bosses. He hands it to you, with a grin. It says:

More than any other cla.s.s of employees you have the opportunity of close contact with the farmers who are producing today that which means tonnage and therefore revenue for the company tomorrow. Have you ever thought of cultivating the farmer as he is cultivating the fields? A friendly chat over the fence, a wave of the hand as you pa.s.s by, may mean a s.h.i.+pment of corn or cattle--just because you are interested in him. For your company's welfare as well as your own, cultivate the farmer.

The railroad can and does do a lot of efficient solicitation through its fixed employees in the field; the opportunities of the station agent in this wise are particularly large. And there is a good deal of real sense in this particular circular. Yet the section-boss seems to regard it as distinctly humorous.

"The big boss sits in his office or in his car," is his comment, "and I think he forgets sometimes that he was once a section man himself and working fourteen hours a day. The farmer doesn't have a lot of time for promiscuous conversation, nor do we. We'll wave the hand all right--but a chat over the fence? Along would come my supervisor and I might have a time of it explaining to him that I was trying to sell two tickets to California for the road. No, sir, we're not hanging very much over fences and chatting to farmers. Under the very best conditions we work about ten hours a day. And there are times when a sixteen-hour law, even if we had one, wouldn't be of much account to us."

"What times?"