The Railroad Problem - Edward Hungerford

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It is this last class—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 pass. And today it is one of the most pronounced symptoms of weakness in the great sick man of American business.

       Table of Contents

      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 mass of tangled and useless scrap 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 fashion 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 space 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 bumping 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 brass 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 sturdy corps of railroaders are the engineers of the maintenance of way. A very large road will boast several executives of this title, 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 assistants; 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 assistant 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 title of roadmaster—a proud title 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 title 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.

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