CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Date. Due

GBT a 5 19481

 

OCT 1 71949 J

cornell University Libra

“Nm
THE
LIFE OF RAILWAY MEN
We He SE RYe
va DE:

   
 

we

 

BY

FRED. L. FEICK

TOGETHER WITH A

Brief Sketch and History of the
Great Railway Organizations

THEIR AIMS AND PURPOSES

ALSO

A TRUE AND SCIENTIFIC SOLUTION OF THE

Great Labor Problem

AS SEEN FROM THE INSIDE, BASED UPON SCIENTIFIC ECO-
NOMICS REACHED BY THE UNTIRING STUDY
AND EFFORTS OF A WAGE-EARNER

 

Press of
The Henry O. Shepard Co.
Chicago
 

Copyricut, 1905
BY Prep. L. Tlerck
THE
LIFE OF RAILWAY MEN

By FRED. L. FEICK

 

ILLUSTRATED
CONTENTS

PAGE

Cuapter I. A Brier History oF THE BROTHERHOOD OF
Raitbway TRAINMEN 13

CuaptTer II. A Brier History or THE OrDER or Raitway
ConDUCTORS 37

CuaptTer III. A Brier History or THE BroTHERHOOD OF
Locomotive FIREMEN 47

CHapTerR IV. A Brier History oF THE BROTHERHOOD OF
Locomotive ENGINEERS 55

CuapTer V. A Brier History oF THE ORDER OF TELE-
GRAPH OPERATORS 65
CuapTer VI. Rar~troap LABor LEGISLATION 71
Cuaprer VII. GoverNMENT BY INJUNCTION 83
Cuarter VIII. Exrravacancr or Rarrway MEN 89
Cuapter IX. To THE Wives or RaItroap MEN 95

CHAPTER X. Lapor ORGANIZATIONS; THEIR Past AND
IuTURE 103
Cuaprer XI. Tor UNEMPLOYED . 125
Cuaptrer NIT. Biackist 137
CuaptTer NIII. Facts 145
Cuapter XIV. Tue Lasor ProBLEM ‘ 151
CHapTER XV. CoMMENTS 171

To rHE Pusiic .- 3 183
 

Yours Truny,

FRED. L. FEICK.
PREFACE.

WAS born in Chicago, Ohio, March 8, 1878,
where I entered the service of the Baltimore
& Ohio Railroad Company, at the age of twelve
years, in the capacity of call boy. Two years later
was transferred to the shop, where I began as.a
machinist apprentice. I served my apprenticeship,
completing the trade four years later, at which
time I entered the service of the company’s Trans-
portation Department in the capacity of freight
brakeman, in which position I served for two vears
and two months, when I was promoted to the posi-
tion of conductor, at which time I was the youngest
conductor in the service of the entire Baltimore &
Ohio System. On June 16, 1901, I received injuries
in a wreck at Gravelton, Indiana, from which I
have never fully recovered sufficiently to resume my
vocation.

Being possessed of a limited education, I deter-
mined to acquaint myself with the more enlight-
ened ways of this world, and, recognizing my
crippled condition at the same time, through the
avenues of books and literature I became familiar
and acquainted with the cause of labor and at the
same time added to my source of education. Hav-
PREFACE.

ing the interest of my fellow worker at heart, I
have lost not one available opportunity to take up
the cause of him that toils.

I became a member of the Brotherhood of Rail-
way Trainmen November 12, 1898, and on Decem-
ber 6, 1902, was elected to fill the office of Secretary
of C. N. Bell Lodge No. 158, of said Brotherhood.
On September 7, 1903, I was elected to fill the
office of Legislative Representative of said lodge
for the State of Indiana, and on January 9, 1905,
I was elected Vice-Chairman of the State Legisla-
tive Board for Indiana, both of which offices, I am
proud to say, I still hold.

My work as a labor representative needs no
comment from my own feeble pen; the fact of my
efforts and loyalty alone is sufficient proof of the
same; and it was myself who caused the expulsion,
from the different organizations, of members who
proved traitors to the labor cause.

In presenting this work to my fellow man, I do
so with a hope that I will in a meager way enlighten
them as to the way, and only way, of bettering
their condition. Such are the wishes of a wage-
earner. THE AUTHOR.
 
 

“lO hh hv

 

 

 

 
CHAPTER I.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF RAILWAY
TRAINMEN.

Its Motto: Benevolence, Sobriety and Industry.

“To live is not to live for one’s self alone;
Let us help one another.”

HIS was the ennobling and commendable
sentiment that prompted nine railroad
brakemen twenty-two years ago to lay the

foundation of the Brotherhood of Railroad Train-
men. Inspired by the humane idea of assisting
themselves and their fellows, they brought about
an organization of the men engaged in the train
service, and, with good, sound logic as the basis
of their performances, placed before the world an
association of workingmen to protect and defend
their rights as employees, to unite the railroad
brakemen, to promote their general welfare, to
advance their moral and intellectual interests, to
protect their families by the exercise of a system-
atic benevolence, and with an earnest desire to at
all times bring about a fair understanding of all
matters pertaining to the relations of the employer
and the employee, and to establish mutual confi-
dence and friendly sentiment between them. With
14 The Lite ef Railway Men,

Tuese praiseworthy objects In view, a small number
of brakemen, emplovees of the Delaware and Hud-
san Canal Company, met at Oneonta, New York,
September 2S. TSS. and arranged for and per-
fected the organization of the brakemen of the
United States and Canada, thus giving to the enter-
prise national scope and apertanee, and, with the
organization of Protection Lodge. No. 2. at Phil-
lpsburg. New Jersey. on Mareh 3. Iss. the aetual
work of the Brotherhood was begun.

At that time there was no organization fer
brakemen or switehmen, and consequently no way
open to them for the protection of themselves and
families in the event of any misfortune eoming te
them. As employees of the great corporations,
engaged in railroad management, there was no
avente open for the redress of their grievances ;
they were given but little consideration in empley-
ment, and were not held in any teo high regard
socially, The men well knew the many disadvan-
tages surrounding them in theiv very hazardous
employment. and pereeived that something must
be brought about to overeome the many adverse
influences that conspired against their betterment
socially and financially. They decided that thor-
ough organization and a concerted effort along
the lines of advancement were the only means open

to their salvation: and the great work of ameltio-
The Life of Railway Men. 15

rating the condition of the men in the train and
yard service was begun with a sincere desire for
the protection of those men, and with the idea
paramount ‘‘Let us help one another,’’ the new
organization, clothed in its swaddling clothes and
christened ‘‘The Brotherhood of Railroad Brake-
men,’’ was presented to the industrial world. The
intervening time has quickly passed; the weak
limbs of the babe have grown to the sturdy ones
of a giant. The tender muscles of the infant have
‘developed into the perfect and hardened ones of
an athlete. The organization has proved that it
was no ordinary child; it has demonstrated that
it was cast in no ordinary mold; and to-day, with
the strength and stature of a Hercules, and the
kindly, beneficent countenance of a Jove, it stands
before the world as one of the greatest organiza-
tions on the face of the globe, known as the
Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, with its mem-
bership composed of the best material in the train
and yard service on the continent, whose moral
worth and physical excellence were found beyond
reproach upon their admission to membership in
the Brotherhood. From its inception the policy
of the organization has been one of fairness and
honesty to all men, and in the direction of a reduc-
tion-in the hours of labor and increased compensa-
tion for work performed. In following out this
16 The Life of Railway Men.

principle the Brotherhood has left untried no hon-
orable means for the betterment of conditions, nor
has it neglected any opportunity to secure all pos-
sible advantage for its members.

Results speak for themselves. At the com-
mencement of the organization there was not one
road in the United States or Canada that had an
agreement with its trainmen regulating the pay-
ment of wages, rules of promotion, or conditions
governing employment. This has all been changed
by the influence of the organization. It has been”
done decently and quietly, and at the present time
the few roads that are not working under such con-
tracts are the exceptions that serve to prove the
rule.

The social improvement of the railway man has
been as marked as his financial advancement. The
change is everywhere apparent. Our railroad boys
no longer wear ‘‘ horns ’’ as they were once sup-
posed to do. Instead of being shunned by all
classes, they are sought for. They are the repre-
sentative men of their communities, known to be
educated, intelligent, industrious men, the best of
citizens, and none are regarded more highly. A
true fraternal and benevolent spirit has pervaded
the organization at all times. The Brotherhood
has always followed the idea of fraternal codpera-
tion as the grand object of the organization; not
The Life of Railway Men. 17

followed by a theory, but guided by a living, active
principle, and looking to the substantial results that
come from an honest codperation of men. The
organization practices its spirit of fraternity,
believing that ‘‘ Fraternalism is the living princi-
ple of all social interchange; it is the living spark
that kindles the social element and lifts men up
from despondency, gloom and fear to a new life of
light and joy. It draws men together in the folds
of a common interest and common destiny. They
touch hands, stand shoulder to shoulder, heart to
heart, and meet as one. The feeling of brotherhood
is aroused, partition walls fall, old prejudices and
old hatreds subside, and all unite in mutual fellow
feeling and good will. Such is the interpretation
of their Brotherhood fraternalism.’’ Their idea
of codperation as a labor organization is that
. branch of it that is engaged exclusively with theo-
ries of labor and methods of distribution of advan-
tages, and which advocates a combination of many
to gain advantages not to be reached by the indi-
vidual, and the reason for such a plan of codpera-
tion is found in the desire of our railroad men to
ameliorate their condition as employees, to protect
them in their rights and to shield themselves
against the oppression of arbitrary capital. The
plan of the Brotherhood very early found favor in
the eyes of the railroad employees of Canada.
18 The Life of Railway Men.

They, like the men of the United States, were with-
out the protection of organization and were keenly
alive to the great need of such protection. The
first lodge in the Dominion was organized in
November, 1885. The work of organization has
enjoyed a good, healthy progression in Canada, and
the members in the Dominion are many in number
and made up of those desirable elements that are
found only in good, honest and worthy men, who
have proved their worth in the school of experience.
There is a popular idea that all a labor organiza-
tion exists for is to create trouble between the
employer and the employee. The notion is a mis-
taken one. The true motive of organization is to
bring about harmonious relations between the two.
The organization does not seek industrial war; it
is averse to the strike; its members are not anarch-
ists; they believe that reason will accomplish more .
than madness, and they are governed by conserva-
tive methods. But, when the organization comes in
contact, as it has, with those little, narrow-minded
individuals who will not accord to men the privi-
leges accorded to humanity in general, who seek
to humiliate and oppress, then the organization
reserves the right to arise in its might, and its
members are men who never say ‘‘Die’’ when
fighting for a principle of justice. They avoid
trouble in every sense, but when occasion demands,
The Life of Railway Men. 19

the organization will meet the issue in a legislative
way. The organization has used its power for the
betterment of its members. Its work in this direc-
tion is attested in the passage of many State laws
and the National Automatic Coupler and Power
Brake Bill, which in itself was one of the greatest
triumphs of mind and conscience over custom and
power this country has ever witnessed. The spirit
of benevolence is understood by its members to
mean ‘‘ To feel much for others and little for our-
selves.’’ To restrain our selfishness and exercise
our benevolent affections constitutes the perfection
of our human nature. We have said we will pro-
tect our brother while he is living, care for his
family and cherish his memory when he is gone,
and, in such an unhappy event, seventy-five thou-
sand true Brotherhood men step forward as one to
keep their vow made to the living and the dead.
The practical exemplification of benevolence by the
Brotherhood is attested by the millions of dollars
which have been paid for the relief of distressed
members and their families, which fact stands as a
more enduring monument to its philanthropy than
any creation of brass or marble.

This is an age of organizations, not only of
labor, but of every other department of business
and society. The centralization of forces is the one
requisite to success in any movement. The money
20 The Life of Railway Men.

power has organized, and in too many instances
has denied its employees the same right. The
right opposition to proper organization is sense-
less in its entirety, for, regardless of corporation
wealth and arrogance, it will be found that it is
more profitable in every instance to be considerate
of the welfare of employees. Organization prop-
erly conducted means fewer hours of labor, better
wages, and the opportunity which these give for
education and a higher degree of civilization, and
in which employer and employee are equally bene-
fited. Proper organizations of men should be
treated in a friendly spirit by the employer, and
when such is the condition the employee will
always be found ready and willing to contribute
his share of fairness. - I believe that honest recog-
nition by the employer of the just demands of the
employee will go far to solve the labor problem
and to prevent in a great measure the experience
of the past, where the attitude assumed has been
exactly the reverse. This is an opinion born of
experience and not a supposition born of theory.
The organizations believe the rights and interests
of all our laboring people should be scrupulously
guarded by the lawmakers of the country, and
apply this theory as far as possible in having them
protect their rights. What has been accomplished
in any direction is not the work of any one man,
The Life of Railway Men. 21

but is the sum of individual effort. The Brother-
hood has accomplished much in the past, and hopes
to accomplish more in the future, through a more
perfect concentration of forces of the men in the
train service. As an organization it has nothing to
say as to what a man’s religion may be, so long as
he declares belief in a Supreme Being; it is none
of its business as to what particular branch of a
Christian religion he has pinned his faith. I
believe that Christianity is larger and broader
and more comprehensive than_denominations or
churches or human organizations. It has been the
endeavor to have the membership educated in a
manner broad and liberal; to willingly grant others
the same freedom of speech, action, and religious
liberty they ask for themselves. As a rule it is
fair to assume labor organizations are broader in
this respect than any other form of organization.
The reason rests in the fact that every member has
the same rights and privileges, is entitled to a
voice in all local matters, as well as the manage-
ment of all general affairs pertaining to his organ-
ization. The members are more liberal in action
because they believe every worker should enjoy
the same advantages gained through organization
as themselves. The disposition of fairness with
each other is certain to broaden the views of men.
Hence in an organization that believes in equality,
22 The Life of Railway Men.

in advantages and benefits, can be found the basis
of the perpetuity of the institutions of a country,
the maintenance of the liberties of a people, the
extension of fraternal help to all classes, and the
recognition of the interest of the wealth-producers
of the world. Of the great industrial armies of
this continent our railroad employees form a very
important part. In an employment hazardous,
exacting in all its requirements, with the millions
of property, the countless lives daily entrusted to
their care, they oceupy a place in the public service
wholly different from other workers. They are the
trusted servants of the great people of which they
are an honored part and justly merit the public
confidence so freely given them. Of our brothers
in the United States and Canada we can truthfully
say their bravery, devotion, moral worth and benev-
olence are unquestioned. And to-day nowhere can
be found men more sensitive to the moral touch
and more quick to respond for God and humanity
than these men who follow the iron horse over the
ribbons of steel, causing the lifeblood to course
through the great arteries of the commerce of the
world. These are the, men of whom it can be
truthfully affirmed that strictest integrity, gener-
ous fairness, and a dignity superior to all littleness,
have characterized their every action; and these
men comprise the membership of the Brotherhood.
The Life of Railway Men. 23

‘* Loving kindness is greater than laws and the
charities of life are more than ceremonies ’’ is
evidenced by experience in these times of distress
and suffering. It is only natural that many of our
railroad men and many of our brethren are placed
by.force of circumstances in a position where some
little attention and perhaps relief is substantially
appreciated. We know we have hundreds of good,
deserving men on the road in search of employ-
ment, forced to thus travel through no fault of
their own, who are in dire straits, if the truth were
confessed, because of their long enforced idleness.
I make this statement, meaning no reflection on
the good qualities of these men; but I do so in the
hope that a little more thought will be given for
their general comfort and care in the future. I
make this statement trusting that some of our more
comfortably situated brothers will pay a little
attention to smoothing out a few of the wrinkles
in the stomachs of the unfortunate. Thoughtless-
ness is the cause of much suffering the world over,
and many a poor fellow has left town hungry and
heartsick because he was too proud to let his wants
be known, and for the other that none of the boys
have thought to ask him if he was eating regularly.
I do not think for a moment that the railroad man
lives who would willingly allow his fellow crafts-
man to suffer; but for the lack of appreciation of
24 The Life of Railway Men.

the condition of a man, he is too often allowed to
suffer in silence. Each one of us owes a duty to
mankind, and what better way to discharge the debt
than to make the path of some unfortunate train-
man easier and his heart lighter by treating him as
aman anda brother? Assistance does not always
mean the expenditure of a large sum, for there are
many other ways of being charitable. Every good
act is charity. Your smiling in your brother’s face
is charity; a kind word is charity; putting a
wanderer on the right road is charity; and feed-
ing the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty is
charity. Not in its hard literal sense that makes
acceptance an embarrassment, but in the light of
brotherly good feeling should our aid be tendered as
far as our ability to give will permit. Times have
been bad and they will be worse before another
year covers our heads. Many a man who has never
known want will be called upon to face that painful
situation. Put yourself in his place and tender
to the unfortunate what you think you would expect
if you were similarly situated.

The author, in presenting this volume to the
public, does so with the knowledge that, as a rule,
little thought or attention is paid the railway men
of the world, who are the caretakers and responsi-
ble for the safe movement of the vast commerce
and the millions of human lives entrusted to them.
The Life of Railway Men. 25

The human mind can hardly grasp the great and
enormous responsibility that rests upon this class
of wage-earners. Too little thought is given them;
as we see these men daily, mingle and associate
with them, we never once think that they are the
men who handle the traffic of the world’s great
railroad systems, and upon whose faithfulness to
duty rests the welfare and safety of untold thou-
sands of human beings. These men to-day are the
most important factor in the world’s great com-
merce, yet countless thousands know not of their
real and true value to society.

Come with me and let us make a trip over the
road as a brakeman. The night is cold, dark and
stormy, the earth is covered with its winter cloak
of snow; back on some remote street lives a brake-
man with his family. He has retired for the night.
Presently a rap at the door awakens him from his
peaceful slumber. Responding to the rap, he finds
another wage-earner, styled and called the
“‘Caller,’’ whose duty it is to call the train crews
when needed. It is now midnight; the brakeman is
called for an extra or some regular train fixed to
leave at 1:30 a.m. The good wife now arises and
prepares the husband a midnight meal along with
the ever-needful lunch basket. Then the farewell
to the loved ones is given and the brakeman goes
forth into the cold, dark and stormy night. He
26 The Life of Railway Men.

leaves his home where all his earthly treasures are,
and walking down the street he enters the railroad
yard. Walking through the yard he enters the
Yardmaster’s office, where he learns that his train
is on track No. 4, or some other number. Leaving
the yard office, he proceeds to track No. 4, where
he finds some twenty-five or one hundred cars. He
goes to the caboose, where he deposits his lunch
basket and dons a suit of overclothes. Lighting
his lantern, he leaves the caboose and begins to
look the train over, seeing that all couplings are
coupled, air hose coupled and that the train is ready
to go. Then the engine is procured and coupled
onto the train. The air hose being coupled, the
brakeman proceeds along the train, looking for any
leak in the air brakes or train line. This being
done, he signals the engineer and the air brakes
are tried to ascertain if they are in working order
and performing their duty. The engineman and
conductor having received their orders, they are
now ready to start. The engineer whistles off and
the sturdy brakeman mounts to his post of duty,
which is on top of the train, and there he continues
to stand regardless of weather until his train has
. left the yard, when he is permitted to seek shelter
in the caboose or engine cab; but when the train
approaches the next railroad crossing, water tank,
station or telegraph office, we again see the brake-
The Life of Railway Men. 27

man crawling out and climbing over tank and all
kinds of cars. Taking his life in his own hands he
performs this hazardous feat, only to satisfy the
demands of some high-collared, petty official,
whose title is that of a ‘‘Trainmaster,’’ ‘‘Dis-
patcher,’’ or ‘‘Superintendent,’’ who demands that
the brakeman decorate at all stops, stations or
crossings. And as the brakemen thus perform
their duties, we know the esteem and value in
which they are held by these ‘‘petty officials’’ by
the floral tributes given by them, when a poor
unfortunate brakeman has met an untimely end at
his post of duty.

Not only this, but did you ever think that when
you enter the ticket office of a railway station and
purchase a ticket which entitles you to travel upon
that railroad between certain points, that your
safety depends upon the ability and faithfulness of
the trainmen? You, too, are forgetful; you enter
a nice, clean, warm coach and seat yourself upon
a velvet-covered and upholstered seat; nothing to
bother you, you are entirely oblivious of the sur-
roundings. You know not of the dangers that beset
you. The train starts, soon it is flying at a terrific
speed through the country, you calmly sit by the
window gazing out upon the flying panorama
before you, vou see the flying objects, you look at
your watch and learn that you are speeding over
28 The Life of Railway Men.

the country at the rate of sixty miles an hour.
Down the road ahead of you is a freight train
steaming and puffing away: Now pause just one
minute with me; what if that rear brakeman
should forget your train, what if he should leave
a switch wrong? Oh, horror of horrors, your train
comes plunging along, too late, there is a terrific
erash and all is over, you are numbered among the
missing. The loved ones left behind now wear
the dismal mourning, another light has gone out,
another voice is hushed by the stillness of death.
Immediately the blame for this terrible calamity is
attached to the trainmen by these ‘‘ petty officials’’
only; no other person of a sane mind holds them
responsible.

Now, let us see. This brakeman has been on duty
continually for thirty to sixty hours; no rest; he
is worn out, his whole physical force is completely
exhausted, both body and mind are utterly worn
out; too long on duty, his mind is scattered and the
very physical forces of the entire body together
with nature have rebelled against this excessive
strain, and as a consequence, the trainman has

’

““forgotten.’’ All because the greed and hoggish-
ness of the companies and their ‘‘ petty officials,’’
in their mad scramble for dollars, have forced the
trainmen on duty for thirty to sixty hours.

The life of a trainman is not a life of joy or
The Life of Railway Men. 29

happiness, but on the other hand it is a life of grief,
misery and want. He is always, when on duty,
facing danger, throwing switches, riding cars,
jumping on and off at times when one slip of the
hand or foot means instant death or crippled for
life. In rain, snow and all kinds of weather he
must go; he must run over the icy and slippery
car-tops in the discharge of duty, and the laurels
attached to the faithful, when death overtakes them,
are none except a lawsuit to deprive the widowed
wife and orphan children from the few dollars of
insurance, which the company collected from the
earnings of the trainman under the disguise of
insurance. Not even do these pampered, high-
collared, ‘‘petty officials’’ realize the true condition
of the ‘‘trainmen,’’ but ever stand ready to repri-
mand, by discharge or time to serve, the trifling
offenses of a worn-out employee. ‘‘They are the
ones, absolutely, who are responsible for the many
horrible life-taking wrecks and accidents, upon our
great railroad systems, brought on, tolerated and
devised in the dilapidated departments of their
intellectual craniums, which like the soap-bubble
when bursted they availeth nothing.’’ Yet these
very officials pose and try to impress upon the
public mind that they are the caretakers of this
vast commerce and millions of traveling public,
when in reality they are merely occupying space in
30 The Life of Railway Men.

some cozily fitted-up office room, while a $40 clerk
does the real business.

So little does the public in general understand
the magnitude of a trainman’s responsibility and
his abilities, his faithfulness to duty, but as a rule
he is held in the public eye and generally classed
as a rough citizen. But let us follow the brakeman
further in his daily occupation. We sit on the cool
and breezy veranda on a warm summer day and
watch the passing of a freight train. We see sit-
ting on top of a fast-moving box car a brakeman,
who we think and imagine has a very nice, cool and
easy job. But, ah, how greatly we are deceived;
you know not the constant and impending danger
that surrounds him, you realize not that his very
life depends on his own individual efforts, judg-
ment, calculations, determination, coolness of
thought and immediate action on his part, when
overtaken by danger.

To the tourist traveling in a luxuriously fur-
nished sleeper or parlor car, the glimpse of a brake-
man on a passing freight train does not often sug-
gest the danger with which his occupation is
fraught, nor the immediate perils to which he is
in close proximity. To one who has given the mat-
ter any thought, however, the constant risks to
which a brakeman is exposed in the pursuit of his
occupation are indeed very apparent. Often one
The Life of Railway Men. bl

has noticed that the top of a long line of box cars
was covered with ice such as would afford a preca-
rious footing even on the sidewalk of a city, and
here, when the train is running thirty miles an hour
against the wind, in a blinding snowstorm, a walk
the length of the train is about as dangerous a pas-
sage as can be imagined, yet the brakeman accom-
plishes this and more. In the summer, ice and
snow are exchanged for heat and dust.

There is again the always imminent danger of
injury from derailment, collisions, breaking into
and running over the cars, giving signals and
jumping on and off the cars, which are the trials
of a brakeman’s life. And again we see the brake-
man running over the train and by a sudden jerk
or by a sudden stop we see his manly form thrown
between the wheels where his young and sturdy
life is crushed out. Another dear and beloved wife
has instantly become a widow, more fatherless
children are added to the already increasing list of
orphans. But what note or demonstration is made
in behalf of his employer, the grasping corpora-
tion? None whatever, not the smallest sprig of
evergreen is even offered as a token of esteem and
value of his services; but on the other hand, the
moment the sad news is told among his fellow
workers and brothers, we see bighearted and sym-
pathetic men assembled in some mourning-draped
32 The Life of Railway Men.

lodgeroom preparing for the final leave-taking of
a departed brother and fellow workman, one who
was dearly beloved but now so deeply lamented.
And while we scan the evening paper, noting what
its columns say, one brief line attracts attention:
‘‘One more brakeman killed today.’’ So common
is the killing of these brave men that their depar-
ture is hardly noticed, but let a ‘‘petty official’’ be
called and it is different then—whole railroads and
their trains are at their service to pay respect and
homage to their departure. The columns of the
newspaper abound with written articles eulogizing
the great abilities of this man, and what an impor-
tant factor he had been in carrying on the world’s
great commerce, where in reality he knew little of
successfully handling a freight train. He gained
his official position probably by the assistance of
some official friend, or by the shameful avenue of
betraying his fellow men.

If only men of ability held the official positions,
business for the undertaking establishment would
not be so flourishing from the railroads of our
land, fewer widows would be wearing crape of
mourning. But, alas, it is a part of our present
fundamental society that we are permitted to fol-
low so many thousands of our fellow workers to
the gloomy cemetery. When the occasion presents
itself for such, whom do you see marching in that
The Life of Railway Men. 33

long funeral cortege? Is it the ‘‘petty officials’’?
No, it is his fellow workmen. It is they who
sprinkle his silent tomb with sprigs of evergreen
and floral tributes. And it is the Brotherhood that
pays to the widowed wife the sum provided for,
that stays the approach of want and misery, and
not the corporation in whose service he vielded up
his life in the faithful discharge of his duty.
‘NAY YIGHL NO LNO LAD OL AGVAY MAYO SIH GNV YOLINGNOD

 

 
The Life of Railway Men. of

CHAPTER IL.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF RAILWAY CON-
DUCTORS.

HIS class of railway employees comes from
the brakemen, in which position they have
served from two to as high as twelve or four-

teen years, it depending a great deal upon what
system they are employed, their ability and agree-
ments. But, nevertheless, they have passed the
most dangerous stage of their employment while
serving as a brakeman. After a specified time
served as a conductor running a train, he is now
eligible to join the organization known as *‘The
Order of Railway Conductors of America,’’ which
order first made its appearance before the public
under the name of the ‘‘ Conductors’ Brotherhood,”’
which was organized at Mendota, Illinois, on the
6th day of July, A. D. 1868. On the 15th day of
the following December, 1868, a reorganization at
Columbus, Ohio, was perfected and the Grand
Division thereof was organized, and a constitution
and by-laws adopted, together with the election of
officers, after which, through change of name, ‘‘The
Order of Railway Conductors of America’’ became
the legitimate successor of said ‘‘Conductors’
Brotherhood.’’
38 The Life of Railiay Men.

From what I am able to learn, the motto of the
Order of Railway Conductors is ‘‘ Perpetual
Friendship.’’ Behind this motto lies a great mean-
ing, too broad for the average man to give it ample
thought, sufficient to glean the great principles
which underlie it. If its meanings and teachings
were actually practiced among the workers in their
daily toil, the radiant rays of brother-love would
continuously shine forth more serenely o’er our
fair land than the beacon rays of a morning sun.
Sweet repose, trust and confidence would become
the important factor in the coming brotherhood of
man. The most noble aspiration of man should be
found concealed in this motto, and to thoroughly
practice the teachings thereof. It should be the
constant aim of every one to assist his fallen
brother, and bind together so securely the bonds of
“‘Brotherhood’’ that only death can sever them,
and march to victory flying the noble banner whose
inscription is: ‘‘Hach for all and all for each.’’

The duties of a conductor are not so fraught with
danger as the brakeman, for he has passed the stage
of employment wherein he is compelled to run over
defective and dilapidated car-tops. The principal
duties of a conductor are these: He is responsible
for the safe and prompt movement of his train,
that each and every person employed on such train
is at his respective post of duty and understands
The Life of Railway Men. 39

the duty required of him. The conductor is a very
important factor in the safe movement of trains,
but alone, without help, he would avail nothing.
Among his duties, the conductor must be thor-
oughly acquainted with the rules of transportation,
train orders, time tables, bulletins and general
instructions issued from time to time. He must be
a person possessed of quick judgment, sound cal-
culation, interpretaticn and cool action; he must
sign, deliver and perfectly understand all tele-
graphic train orders and keep a correct record of
his train, the cars contained therein, or handled by
his crew. He must supervise the loading and
unloading of freight at the different stations along
his route.

The ‘‘passenger conductor’’ is in a much less
precarious position than his brother on freight, as
it is only occasionally that his crew handles any
' switches, and all meeting points, as a rule, are fixed
| by time card. The switches along the line are used
by inferior trains, their crews are responsible for
their proper and correct position, and generally the
right of way is clear for the passenger crews,
thereby relieving them of a great amount of respon-
sibility. But, nevertheless, the passenger man is
an important factor in the handling of our great
railway systems. And the organization of these
men has done much in the betterment of service,
40 The Life of Railway Men.

their habits, and is a great advocate of morality
and temperance. It is only hoped that they all will
remain true and steadfast to its teachings. The
conductors have a hard time of it on a great many
roads. They handle sixty to eighty-five loads—
mostly coal. The cars are heavily loaded, and con-
sequently the journals burn off or the train breaks
in two, and when they stop, which is often, the flag-
man must go back and protect the train. The con-
ductor must carry the necessary articles sixty car
lengths to put in a brass or a 300-pound chain to
chain up a broken car. Then if they are longer
than it is figured out in the office that they should
be, they get a ‘‘why’’ at the next telegraph office,
and a good jacking up by some cheap dispatcher.
If the conductor or engineer overlooks their orders
after being out in all kinds of weather for thirty or
forty hours and a wreck occurs, the company
officials affect surprise at the carelessness of the
persons at fault, as they were the oldest and most
trusted men in the service. The public accepts the
explanations of the company that it was gross care-
lessness on the part of the men, and sympathizes
with the company in its financial loss. They never
stop to think how much the poor men have on their
minds. The engineers with the long hours, poor
engines, no steam, heavy tonnage and behind time.
The conductor is busy making one hundred and
The Life of Railway Men. 41

one different reports, so as to cut down the office
force to a minimum, possibly the meeting points
are only forgotten for a few minutes, and a wreck
is the consequence. Where is the man, no matter
how great, who at some time in his life has not for-
gotten for a few minutes some very important mat-
ter he may have time to rectify within a short time,
and all’s well; but the poor conductor, let him
forget for one minute, and it is all over and he is
before the coroner’s jury and the public is censur-
ing him. If these matters could be brought before
the public, the same as the company’s side of the
story 1s, and in such a way that they would realize
where the danger lies, and we could get legislation
to compel the railroads to take off all extra work
and put three brakemen on every train over forty
cars, it would reduce wrecks and casualties to a
minimum, and greatly lessen our own worry while
on the road. How much more would passengers
and trainmen ride over a road did they know they
were protected by a competent flagman whose only
duty is to protect them. But, brothers, your day
will come, for our organization will bring this
about.

Take for instance the motto of the Order of Rail-
road Conductors: ‘‘Fidelity, Justice and Char-
ity.’’? In perpetual friendship, under the head of
fidelity, be loyal to the interests of yourself, your
42 The Life of Railway Men.

order and your employer. Yourself be good, ‘‘do
unto others as you would wish to be done by.”’
Be charitable to your fellow men and brothers; be
consistent; let not the bump of selfishness, which is
so fully developed in man, cause you to do that
which your conscience dictates you should not do.
Be self-sacrificing, go out of your way: to do your
fellow man a good turn, spend your spare time
with your family, and your home will be a happy
one. Show your brothers that the practice of these
virtues is the easy way through life, and if you
practice these things you will be loyal to yourself.

In this day and age of the world, remember first
that your employer’s interests are your interests,
and on the success of your employer’s business
depends your position. The success of your
employer’s business depends in a very great meas-
ure on the faithfulness with which you discharge
the duties devolving on you. Therefore your inter-
ests and your employer’s interests are mutual. Pay
strict attention to duty. Do not slight your work;
on the contrary, it would be better to do a little
more than to do a little less than is required. You
are not working for wages alone. If you can by
faithful performance of duty gain the good will
and commendation of your employers, you will be
a gainer. Your duty at times is arduous and diffi-
cult to perform. Do it with a good will. If you
The Life of Railway Men. 43

are in a position of trust and have men working
under you, imbue them with this same spirit, and
if you do all these things you will be loyal to the
interests of yourself and your order and employer.
If we ever needed our organizations we need them
now, and we need the entire strength of the organ-
izations both morally and numerically for the next
few years to come, to stand shoulder to shoulder,
to protect that which we have accomplished and
keep what we have attained. When we see the
attitude assumed by corporations in regard to labor
it is a very easy matter to figure out ‘‘where we
are at.”’

Eeonomy is the ery of stockholders, and direc-
tors must see to it that better returns are made on
investments and a higher per cent in dividends,
and they are hunting for the manager who can
bring about these results. Mechanical labor-saving
devices are adopted as fast as proved of value.
Everything is figured to as fine a point as possible.
The cost of labor is almost the only thing left to
figure on, and the man who can bring about a
radical reduction in that, will be hailed with delight
and received with open arms by the men who have
their capital invested and want larger returns.
Brothers, your motto is grand and noble, and if
only practiced as taught, what a happy family of
brothers you would be. When you are out on the
44 The Life of Railway Men.

road and something goes wrong, think of your
motto, and you will find that all will be well. ’Tis
true you have a hard time of it and great responsi-
bility is connected with your work, but few people
know of this; they little realize that you, like other
brothers, turn day into night, and night into day,
and that you give up all your Sabbath’s oppor-
tunities and rest for the sake of the public. They
little realize that the actions of the railroad man
show a grander and deeper courage than those of
any other laboring man on the face of the earth.
Now brothers, if you will follow the teachings of
your noble order you will some day receive your
reward, and you will thank yourself many times
that you not only joined it for your benefits but
for your future welfare, and for the welfare of the
generations yet unborn.

b
“CNG Sp NVINGUIG ILL

 

 

 

 
The Life of Railway Men. 47

CHAPTER Ut.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMG-
TIVE FIREMEN.

HE Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen was
organized at Port Jervis, New York, Decem-
ber 1, 1873. Its aims and purposes are to

unite the Locomotive Firemen and to elevate their
social, moral and intellectual standing, and for the
protection of their interests and the promotion of
their general welfare. The interests of its mem-
bers and their employers being mutual, they
recognized the needs of codperation, and it is
the aim of the Brotherhood to cultivate a har-
monious spirit between them, based upon a basis
of equity and justice. They realized the fact
that their vocation involved ceaseless peril, and
that they owed a duty to themselves, their families,
and those obligated to aid and to make suitable
provision against the disasters which almost daily
overtake them, and the necessity of protecting
their interests and extending to each other the
hand of charity and fellowship, and being
sober, industrious and honorable men. It became
self-evident, and hence the Brotherhood was
founded upon the motto and cardinal principles:
‘Protection, Charity, Sobriety, and Industry.’’
48 The Life of Railway Men.

The members of this organization are a class of
men who are employed as firemen upon the great
railway systems. Their life of toil and hardship
is too often unnoticed by the public in general.
These men are those who make it plausible and
possible for the engineer to take the modern pas-
senger train at a lightning-like and terrific speed
over our country, through valley, over hill and
dale, at the speed of sixty to ninety miles per hour.
Yet all praise of these facts are given to the man at
the throttle, and to do justice to the engineer; the
poor, black and dirty firemen who faithfully stand
before the roaring, blazing and heat-terrifying
furnace and shovels coal constantly into the
thundering iron steed, over their respective divi-
sions, seem to never be given any credit or praise,
when in reality all the praise justly belongs to
him, for without the necessary power the engineer
could avail naught.

We daily see the steaming, puffing and trembling
iron steed dragging a long and heavy train over
some railway, and yet we never once think of the
poor wage-earner, ‘‘the fireman,’’ who stands
before a red-hot furnace, making it possible for
such train to move. The important factor that he
is in the world’s great commerce is little realized
by the public in general. The life of a locomotive
fireman is one of peril, hardship and continuous
The Life of Railway Men. 49

grief. You see a steaming locomotive standing in
on some side-track along some railroad, and at the
same time you notice a fireman proceed to crawl
beneath the iron steed with an ash hoe in hand for
the purpose of cleaning the ashpan. There he lies
like a snake, the dripping hot water and escaping
steam, together with oil and grease, making it a
most disagreeable position to work in, and should
the engine start it would mean death to him. Yet
he accomplishes this and more. I have seen these
poor workers work like Turks continuously from
eight to sixty hours without relief.from duty what-
ever; and then because nature rebelled and he
was absolutely worn out, and gave way to the
demands of an over-worked condition, be upbraided
and reprimanded by an empty-headed, cruel, hard-
hearted foreman, whose sense of humanity was a
trifle above the instinct of the lower animals. The
eraze of the railroad magnates of to-day for divi-
dends with which they can revel in luxury, con-
sisting of yachts, automobiles, gilded palaces with
tinseled tapestry, and trotting horses, together with
a $10,000 imported poodle dog, and $20,000,000
duke for their daughter, is responsible for the leaky,
forlorn, rickety and shamble-made locomotives of
to-dav. Machines that are no more fit to be in
service than strychnine has to be in the human
stomach; but yet human beings must fire these
50 The Life of Railway Men.

man-killing ‘‘battleships’’ in order that they may
be able to eke out a miserable existence. If the
world at large really knew the actual condition of
this class of men, they would rise up in one mighty
avalanche of wrath and demand that just condi-
tions be given them, and that humane and sensible
treatment be accorded them. For I do think that
they are far more deserving of praise and a just
compensation for services rendered than is given
them at present. We have passed, or at least we
are taught, that the stage of slavery and barbarity
has passed and that we are now living midst the
glowing shades of civilization. But, judging from
the present conditions, we are just entering the
lower level of a sham, deluded and dishonest type
of civilization, due to the fact that the slumbering
public give no attention to these death-dealing fac-
tions, which form a part of our commercial world.
The locomotive fireman of the present age is in no
better condition than he was ten years back. Day
after day, year after year, he performs his duty in
such capacity, as faithfully as do the serfs under
the iron rule of a foreign ‘‘Czar.’’ And after all
these years of untold hardship, toiling before the
fiery furnace of a locomotive, one of the most prom-
inent factors of our society, he meets an untimely
end. We see that no tributes, either floral or verbal,
are given or even offered as a token of respect at the
The Life of Railway Men. ol

hands of the greedy, grasping corporation of which
he was an employee. He was merely a human tool
by which the aristocrat realized the mighty dollar,
and it is only his fellow workmen whom we see
paying respect and homage to the departed toiler.
It is the Brotherhood to which he belonged that
pays to his wife, mother or beneficiary the needful
amount provided by his membership. The corpora-
tion for which he toiled these long, miserable and
tedious years, has not the slightest feeling of
sympathy for those left to mourn; not even for
the departed one is their dollar-craving hearts
sufficiently touched as to provide even a tiny spray
of evergreen. The esteem he was held in by
these people was measured by the number of dol-
lars they could realize from his yearly toil. The
whole scene on their part is worse than that of the
African cannibal, and God speed the day when
such useful men as the locomotive firemen will be
measured by the part they perform in a work so
needful to society and the world’s great commerce.
“UNOH Ud SATIN ALANIN JO ALVY THI LY THAVUL OL ACVAY

NVN@YId GNV YANIONT

 

 

 
or

The Life of Railway Men. 5

CHAPTER IV.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMO-
TIVE ENGINEERS.

I* referring to the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers I can only say, so far as I can ascer-
tain it is generally conceded among the rail-
road men that William Robinson was the first man
who made an effort to start the Brotherhood of
Locomotive Engineers, and it was generally known
at that time that there was a meeting of engineers
at a hotel in the City of Rochester, New York, in
— May, 1863; but there had been a meeting prior to
that, east of Rochester, on what is now called the
New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, but
it was kept very quiet out of fear that the company
would find out what they were doing and they
would get discharged. To prevent the company
from ascertaining who the ringleaders were they
got a large sheet of paper and struck a circle and
signed their names who they were and what they
did. After that I have been unable to learn, but I
have been informed that such a meeting was held
at Rochester, New York, and one of the oldest
engineers of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engi-
neers who lives at Rochester, New York, says there
were nine or ten men at that meeting, and that a
56 The Lifé of Railway Men.

man by the name of Cyrus Kinney had more to do
in getting the oldest engineers there than any one
else. He did most of the talking, and it was in his
home where the charter members of Division 18
were initiated, and they all did their share of smok-
ing, drinking and telling how fast their engines
could run, for in those days they thought they
owned the engines themselves. No one called the
meeting to order and every one stood in fear of
being discharged if he took an active part. At
this time the New York Central to Albany was
divided into six divisions, and the engineers were
discharged for the least provocation, without giv-
ing them the satisfaction to know what they were
discharged for. An engineer by the name of Blood
was discharged, and he went to the Superintendent,
W.C. Young, and said: ‘‘ Will you be kind enough
to tell me what I am discharged for?’’ Young
replied, ‘‘ You are discharged, are you? Well, that
is conclusive evidence that the company doesn’t
, want you.’’ Mr. Blood was a nice man and a good
engineer and no one could say aught against him.
From 1852 until the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers started, the engineers had a hard strug-
gle, everything to contend with, small pay, long
hours, and no one to appeal to for redress; but it
was the hardships the engineers endured for ten
years which brought the Brotherhood of Locomo-
The Life of Railway Men. 57

tive Engineers into existence. At that time the
superintendent and the master mechanic had try-
ing times as well as the engineers. They saw that
the time was coming when the company would dis-
pense with some of them, and each one was trying
to outdo the other in order to hold his job, and the
one who could get the most work out of the men for
the least pay was the best man, but the railroad
organizations of to-day have wiped out all those
old contentions and it required men with energy,
perseverance and determimation to accomplish what
they undertook to do, and to-day the railroad organ-
izations stand hand in hand and harmoniously with
all other labor organizations in this country. The
motto of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers
is ‘‘Sobriety, Truth, Justice and Morality.’’ Four
words of which the meaning of each covers a vast
scope of knowledge. Were the very and absolute
principles of all men founded upon the four words
or upon one of them, and then strictly adhered to
by the individual, we would reach a higher plane
of civilization and I. believe the whole family of
human beings would reap a far greater reward.
The noblest aspirations and ambitions of mankind
can not be found in so great a space as that cov-
ered by these grand and sublime principles.
Sobriety is one of the great principles that under-
lie the very foundations of society. It is a princi-
58 The Life of Railway Men.

ple which, if strictly adhered to, would add many
radiant rays of hope, comfort and joy to men who
are daily waddling along midst infamy, want and
misery. Truth is one of the most ill-used words
of to-day. If we all could realize the great fabric
of society that underlies that one word and confine
ourselves entirely to its use in our daily struggles,
how much better would our worldly society be
to-day, and confidence in mankind would reign
supreme. Justice is the giving of every man his
due according to his deeds and work, but how often
do we see it played with and always to the detri-
ment of mankind as a whole and in the interest of
a few. Morality is a system or practice of moral
duties. Underneath this lie important features and
cardinal principles which go and are interwoven
into the fabric of a pure and wholesome society.
If I were to write on these great principles in gen-
eral, I could write for hours and then not bring out
all of their beautiful meanings. Man is at all times
dependent on his fellow men, even the most pow-
erful have to seek aid from the most humble, and
weakness in return demands protection from
power. One would think that when this natural
dependence which exists among all classes was
well considered, there would hardly be need to
warn people that they should love, cherish and
help one another. Yet the world is full of the
The Life of Railway Men. 59

oppression of power, wealth and class. Burns
has truthfully said: ‘‘Man’s inhumanity to man
makes countless thousands mourn.’’ The Broth-
erhood life must be a life of charity because its
founders have banded men into one brotherhood,
whose members must be united in sentiment and
practice. It is a free, benevolent action performed
toward those who are in more destitute circum-
stances than we are. It is good forever to him that
receives it; but however benevolent the motive may
be, if the action be not beneficent, there is no
charity. The best of all is to help others help them-
selves. When we are in possession of plenty, we
are apt and quite often do forget that others are
not quite so fortunate. If we have not these means,
we can still give kind words, thoughts and actions;
and those good things scattered here and there
mean much happiness to many a poor toiler. It
banishes anger, resentment and disobliging words.
It banishes from the very soul the pain which they
endure when beholding the happiness of others.
Its power is like the sway of the moon on the deep,
and consequently rules men’s lives. It expels the
poison of self-interest and self-deceit. Situated as
we are in a world as varied in class, thought, action
and disposition as the colors of the rainbow, we
must deal gently with our neighbor. Charity is a
60 The Lige of Railway Menu.

debt that is never paid. It is a daily task. and
blessed is the person who fulfils it.

But, referring back to the locomotive enginee?.
it is quite common for daily newspapers. in writing
up railway collisions. to chronicle the fact that the
engineer ** bravely stuck to his post. applied his air
brakes and reversed his engine." A recent account
severely censures the engineer for leaving his
engine as it plunged into a wreck. stigmatizes him
as cowardly for so doing. and draws a parallel
between the ignoble case and that of a brave naval
commander going down with his sinking ship. In
a sentimental way, the spectacle of a commander
going down with his stately ship is beautiful to
contemplate. This seatiment. however. is for men
whose profession is to kill and whose lot is to die:
but it has no connection with the locomotive engi-
neer, a man of peace and custodian of passengers”
lives. While not undervaluing the commander’s
bravery and noble impulses in retaining compan-
ionship with his ill-fated ship. still it is a matter
of record that he does so only when rescue of his
crew and self is impossible. A slowly sinking
ship's crew is usually succored. A rapidly sink-
ing vessel. however. seldom permits of full rescue.
and the brave officer and men who go down deserve
all honor and praise possible to bestow upon them.
But when rescue is possible. it is seldom refused by
The Life of Railway Men. 61

a sane commander, and he should not be stigma-
tized for accepting it, after he is powerless to fur-
ther save his ship. Likewise a locomotive engineer,
who has done all in his power to save his train and
avert disaster, should be permitted to retire if he
can do so, and not be made to suffer the stigmatic
sting of romantic and inexperienced young newspa-
per reporters for refusing to offer himself up in a
useless sacrifice. There was once a fashion of fight-
ing wherein a soldier stood boldly exposed in a
bright-colored uniform, an inviting target, to be
shot down by the enemy; but fashion has changed.
Neutral-colored, inconspicuous uniforms are now
worn and available shelter is taken advantage of to
protect the soldier. The change is better for the
soldier and the cause he fights for. This regard
for the lives of fighting men should be applicable
in the case of the peaceful engineer who seems
popularly and senselessly supposed to be sacrificed
when nothing whatever is to be gained by it. To
leave the engine requires time and opportunity and
often more nerve than to stay. At a lightning-like
speed it is dangerous to leap, especially in the dark,
and when footing is rough and uncertain. This
fact alone has probably kept more men on engines
than the desire to become heroes. To leap in fear
of collision is often times to sustain fatal injuries
or perchance to chase the train after it has stopned
62 The Life of Railway Men.

and feel foolish at finding it stopped and disaster
averted; but after quickly and faithfully doing all
that can be done to stop, the engineer and fireman
are surely justified in jumping as late as their per-
sonal safety will permit. A live, discriminating
engineer, with the self-consciousness of having
done faithfully all in his power to save his train
before finally leaving his engine, is vastly more
useful to his family and to his railroad than a dead
hero, who is forgotten almost with the passing of
the edition of the newspapers which glorify him.
The commander may love his ship and he may have
no nobler or greater desire than to share her for-
tunes and fate; but sentimental ties are not suffi-
ciently strong with the duty-performing locomotive
engineer to draw him resignedly into a sacrificial
and useless death on a ‘‘pooled hog”’ or iron steed.
This flimsy and nonsensical argument frequently
seen in the average newspaper, is like the soap bub-
ble—‘‘when bursted’’ it availeth nothing. So let
us at all times give these employees a due and just
consideration that rightfully belongs to them, no
matter where they are. They are an important
factor in the commercial and social fabric that
involves the entire world.
 

 

ATOR.

DISPATCHER AND OPER.
The Life of Railway Men. 65

CHAPTER V.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF RAILWAY TELE-
GRAPH OPERATORS.

HE operator is another class of railway
employees upon whom rest a great responsi-
bility, and who are one of the most impor-

tant factors in successfully operating our great
railway systems, and yet public sentiment or
appreciation is exceeding slow to accord them the
the honor they so richly deserve. We admit that
the duties of a railway telegraph operator are not
of a hard physical nature, but on the other hand,
their duties are one continuous strain upon their
mental faculties, a hundred things to think of, the
clicking of numerous telegraph machines, the writ-
ing of train orders, the receiving and repeating of
the same, and at the same time a half dozen train
employees together with a few intending travelers
asking numerous questions in regard to this or that
train, etc. It requires persons possessed of a clear,
cool and conceivable mind to faithfully discharge
their duties in such position. They must be accu-
rate and perfect in their work in order to avoid the
death-dealing and property-destroying calamities
that would follow, should they misconstrue a train
order. The traveling public little think, while fly-
66 The Life of Railway Men.

ing over the great land, upon our mammoth rail-
way systems, inside a luxuriously equipped pas-
senger coach, that the person whom he often sees
sitting at the desk of some telegraph station is one
of the men upon whom his life may depend. This
man at the desk must, by needs of the cruel cor-
porations, remain on duty twelve hours a day.
Imagine the strain upon that single mind during
all these long and weary hours, and in the mean-
time get jacked up by some official whose mental
faculties are about as well developed as those of a
new-born babe. And, he does all this, together
with the cleaning, filling and putting up the lamps
on an entire interlocking plant, at a salary of about
$50 per month. It took years for the operator of
to-day to learn this profession, beginning usually
as a messenger boy; but it seems that after all
this hard study and work, the profession is void of
a just compensation, considering the responsibility,
long hours, and tiresome toil, that is justly due
this class of employees. The time is fast arriving
when these faithful operators will receive a just
compensation for their services, but it will come
under a different style and head than the present
system of doing business. The system upon which
their salary at present is generally fixed is aecord-
ing to the number of hours they work for a fixed
price, and not according to the service rendered,
The Life of Railway Men. 67

and as a rule the grinding corporations generally
fix that. Upon a great trunk line I will venture to
say that there is not another class of employees
whose minds are so constantly employed in the dis-
charge of their duties as the operators. The old
telegraph office of a few years ago was devoid of
interlocking apparatus, but the office of to-day is
generally fixed and equipped with a set of levers
which the operator must handle and manipulate,
from which are operated sidings, derails, wyes,
semaphores and other signals, which the operator
finds added to his duties, making it far more
stringent upon his mind, and yet little attention or
thought is given this class of profession and their
services as rendered to the social and commercial
world. One would think that the human mind is
void of giving honor to those who deserve it, as
we never hear any comment by ‘the public or
through the supposedly public press.

These telegraph operators are another very
important factor to the world at large by their
knowledge. We are able to learn almost instantly
all the great happenings of the entire world. They
furnish us with the means of transmitting mes-
sages that would take days, weeks and months to
send without them. This and many other reasons
put the telegraph operator in a place among the
foremost benefactors of public life.
‘OOV SUVANR AINAIML GASN SANIDNA FO ATALS

 

 

 
The Life of Railway Men. 71

CHAPTER VI.
RAILROAD LABOR LEGISLATION.

N the matter of labor legislation, I am compelled
to say that while various labor representatives
have been somewhat successful in procuring

some little. legislation in their behalf, it has so far
proved utterly worthless from a standpoint of jus-
tice and enforcement, on which point you will
later readily agree with me. We have to use for an
illustration a ‘‘safety appliance’’ law which I think
is really a farce in the different States. It reads
that any car locomotive used ‘‘wholly’’ within the
certain State. Now, before you could successfully
prove that the company violated the law by not
having their rolling stock equipped with safety
appliances, it is necessary for you to prove that
it is used wholly within the State. A loophole
purposely left open for the benefit of whom, the
legislative halls of to-day have absolutely become
the property of corporations, and the aristocracy
of our land. And the paid servants of the people,
to whom we attach the word ‘‘Honorable”’ to their
names as a rule (that is, the majority of them), are
also owned by the cringing corporations. If you
are ever unfortunate enough to visit a legislature
while in session you will be reminded of a crowded
72 The Life of Railway Men.

asvlun for the insane. Everything is up for sale—
public honor, truth, justice, morality, liberty—and
human beings are simply a commodity upon the
legislative auction block, to be sold for cash; while
thousands of poor, hungry and miserable wage-
slaves applaud the actions of these nefarious and
crooked schemers, and when election day comes on,
vear after year, they patriotically march up to the
ballot box and there cast their approval to this
work, and all they want is to be patted on the back
by some corporation candidate and be called poli-
ticians. A sample of the work accomplished by the
different organizations along the legislative lines
is gleaned from their method of doing business.
They will elect some banker’s attorney or some
corporation representative to serve them in the
different legislatures, and then in their respective
organizations elect from their number a competent
member to go before the legislature to ask for and
procure the passage of a law or certain laws which
they deem is a benefit to them, and I rise to ask if
they have in their organizations a member who is
qualified to represent them, work for them, and to
know their needs; to know what law and what
kind of law needs to be enacted for the benefit of
labor; and if he is not competent to go to that legis-
lature as a duly-elected member of the same and
personally enact the required law? But to elect a
The Life of Railway Men. 73

laboring man to the legislature is not in accord
with the capitalist régime of business, and would
tend to give labor real and pure unadulterated
law, and as a consequence labor usually gets what
the boy shot at, and from a business standpoint
they are not to be pitied to any great extent, for
labor has time and again given its absolute and
entire consent to the flimsy, scheming, underhanded
methods used and tolerated by the hirelings of the
grinding, grasping and dollar-grabbing corpora-
tions of stolen wealth. When a law or proposition,
in favor of the paltry rich, comes before a legisla-
ture, there are marshaled behind that measure the
combined wealth of the capitalist and their nefari-
ous hirelings, and many times labor itself is used
to the success of that measure. No matter what
hardships, untold sufferings, misery, want and
hunger may follow its enactment, ‘‘Labor Calmly
Sleeps.’’ I will'venture to assert that the actual law
enacted beneficent to labor, if compiled in a vol-
‘ume, by itself, would not equal a common almanac
in size, and, no doubt, the contents would be far
below as a benefactor of labor. Such sham, hypo-
critical and kneeling legislatures as we have to-day
are sufficient and should start the thunder from
beneath Jehovah’s throne. There is no scheme,
method, device, plan or manner that the capital-
istic classes will not resort to, to accomplish their
74 The Life of Railway Men.

ends, and they buy these legislative halls and their
members with wealth they plundered from the
toilers, through a system of legalized American
robbery, upon the European plan, and ‘‘ Labor
Calmly Sleeps,’’ while the race for wealth is being
run, at their own expense. Another exceedingly
weak practice, and provided for by the laws of
many organizations, is that their respective legis-
lative representatives should be engaged in the par-
ticular branch of labor. which their respective
organizations covers, as follows:

A representative of some railroad order must be
in actual train service. Now let us truthfully con-
sider that particular law of the organization to be
in actual service, he must have a position in the
train service, to have the position he must be an
employee of some company. When his position is
good so long as he is retained by the company for
good services rendered, as a representative of the
organization his position in that capacity is only
good for a few days every two years or at the dif-
ferent sessions of the different legislatures. Now
he goes to the legislature, his heart is filled with
hope, the welfare of his fellow workers is rooted
deep and firmly within his very soul, his only ambi-
tion is to do something for his fellow men; but ah!
how suddenly his hope is vanished. He is there
working earnestly, unceasingly, truthfully and
The Life of Railway Men. 75

tirelessly for the passage of some measure that
provides for the betterment of labor, when lo!
there appears the corporation lobbyist emploved
by the same company that he is, and who says,
‘“Aren’t you satisfied with your position on the
road?"* Now, honor bright, what is the result.
Easily told. The labor worker and representative
is now confronted with a serious proposition, which
is in fact a matter of bread and butter for himself
and those dependent upon him. Again, he may be
an old emplovee of the company and well up in
line for promotion, and the question is, will he
remain true and steadfast, give up his position at
the first opportunity presented, give up all these
vears of toil and struggle for promotion, and a
position that is good the year around, which means
his living, for a position that is only good for a
few days, when he is again dependent upon his
former employer. No, you will say it would not be
a good policy and from the standpoint of a lving
“utterly foolish.’’ Then, my brother, can he
remain true, loval and steadfast to the cause he
represents’? It is out of the question, and many of
the more enlightened will: bear me out in this
statement. This is one of the greatest and weakest
points so prominent among the different organiza-
tions, and the sooner it is stricken from their laws
the better it will be for the organizations and their
76 The Life of Railway Men.

members. What the members want is men to rep-
resent them, before the different legislatures, who
are in no way connected or employed in the par-
ticular branch of labor, such as train service, ete.,
by any company upon whom they depend for a
livelihood upon their return from the session of the
legislature—men who are true, loyal, steadfast and
fearless in their work; and when that time comes,
methinks better, more just and liberty-giving law
will find space upon our statute books, and the
‘*Corporations’ Ship of Corruption,’’ bribery and
swindling will not find the ‘‘Labor Sea’’ such
smooth sailing as heretofore, and some of the
liberty-taking, treacherous, thieving laws that now
disgrace our statutes will find rest in the slums of
corporate greed. Brothers and all toilers, we have
arrived at a stage when our entire efforts and
forces must be marshaled together in one grand
and fearless body and demand that which is just
and right, for example:

I am going to relate herein one particular piece
of work that was exacted in the legislative halls of
the State of Indiana during the session of 1905.
IT am at present vice-chairman of the legislative
board of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen,
and know that of which I write. Representative
H. W. Mounts, of De Kalb county, introduced a bill
known as House Bill No. 84, as follows:
The Life of Railway Men. 77

‘‘A bill for an act to regulate the operation of
trains upon railroads, and to promote the safety
of employees and travelers upon railroads by limit-
ing the number of cars in trains.

‘‘Section 1.—Be it enacted by the General
Assembly of the State of Indiana, that it shall be
unlawful for any corporation owning or operating
any railroad in or through the State of Indiana, or
for any officer or agent of such corporation, to run,
or operate or cause or permit to be run or oper-
ated, within the State of Indiana, any train com-
posed of more than fifty cars. ;

‘“‘Sec. 2.—That any person, whether in the
employ of such corporation or otherwise who shall
be injured by reason of the operation of any train
contrary to the provisions of this act shall in no
case be held to have assumed the risk thereby occa-
sioned.

‘«Sec. 3.—That any person or corporation violat-
ing any of the provisions of this act, or who shall
order or direct the operation of any train in viola-
tion of the provisions of this act, shall upon con-
viction thereof, be fined in any sum not less than
twenty-five dollars nor more than five hundred dol-
lars.’’

The passage of this bill meant a great deal to
the railroad men in the State and in other States
as well. It meant in the summer season more work,
more money, more pleasure and more of every-
thing that pertains to a railroad man, and it meant
greater safety and quicker movement of freight
and a real benefactor of society in general. Bv the
untiring efforts of a few labor representatives of
the various organizations that were represented in
78 The Life of Railway Men.

the legislature, together with the efforts and force
ot several Representatives and Senators, sufficient
votes were pledged to attain the passage of the bill,
and on the very morning it was to come up before
the Assembly for consideration, lo! and behold,
there was scattered throughout the legislative
chambers, and upon each of the members’ desks, the
work of a traitor, a man who had sunk so far
beneath the morals of a loyal Unionist that a
thrilling eall from Gabriel’s trumpet would hardly
awaken him from his corrupt and crooked work.
The nefarious and detestable scheme by which he
accomplished his desired end, and thwarted the
work and will of the different labor representatives
is well told. He circulated a letter to the honorable
Committee on railroads and members of the House
of Representatives and Senators, asking them to
defeat Bill No. 84, known as the Mountz Bill. He
claimed by the passage of this bill it would work
great hardship on the employers and all men
employed in train service.

Now, my toiling brothers, what do we learn from
this treacherous piece of business? We were pay-
ing a legislative board $5 per day each from the
hard-earned dollars we created only to have the
work of the board thwarted and killed by a treach-
erous traitor within our folds. Nearly sixteen hun-
dred dollars that came from the pockets of labor
The Life of Railway Men. 79

were spent in supporting that board, and such
nefarious and corrupt Unionists who parade
around in an assumed cloak of ‘‘Unionism’’ and
turn traitors to the cause are most contemptible
frauds, and should be banished to some foreign
island and made dig roots with the animals thereof ;
and the benefit to be derived in favor of labor by
and through its legislatures will be obtained when
labor proceeds to oust and brand such traitors, and
use the most stringent methods within its power in
doing the same. And yet ‘‘ Labor Calmly Sleeps,’’
while the avenue of their ultimate destruction and
downfall is paved by members of their own flock.
It seems that it has become a permanent procedure
to tolerate and uphold these black sheep by our
organizations, instead of inflicting the punishment
they so richly deserve, and while we are thus strug-
gling along the thorny and narrow path, ‘‘Capi-
tal’’ is ever seeking the opportunity to enlist in our
ranks traitors who will aid them (for a price paid)
to stay any onward march we might contemplate
to make for our welfare and betterment. How
well they succeed in this is learned by the bitter
experience of the past. How it makes me shudder
and tremble for our safety when I see the clouds
and storms of defeat that are ever gathering upon
the capitalist horizon for the final storming of our
forts, and ah! those traitors who are battling
80 The Life of Railway Men.

secretly and openly within our ranks in the fur-
therance of the ‘‘Corporation Cause’’ will surely
meet their just judgment on final wind-up, before
that most high and great throne. Their blood
must flow like cold tallow if they ever think of their
cowardly, treacherous, cruel, sham, hypocritical
and cringing and nefarious methods. But I shall
battle onward; I shall endeavor to sound the
warning; I shall endeavor to point out these organ-
izations’ defects, and my constant endeavor shall
ever be to enlighten ‘‘Sleeping Labor’’ to such an
extent that it will arise in battle array and strike
down with one terrific blow with the sword of jus-
tice, all its traitors, enemies, and debauchers, and
thereafter establish in their wake a higher plan of
civilization which will be blessed with the great
principles of truth, justice, benevolence and moral-
ity. Such and only such are the wishes of a loyal
‘¢Unionist.”’

A sample of past legislation may be added here
and serve to enlighten the labor element of the
legislation enacted for their benefit. It may also
lead many to think when the time approaches, if
it is right and just for them to give their absolute
approval at the ballot box. The matter I refer to
and will write upon immediately is the topic of
‘“*Government by Injunction,’’ one of the most
treacherous foes of labor.
"NAW GOOIYaHLOUG AO dNoUD Vv

 

 

 

 

 
The Life of Raileay Men. 83

CHAPTER VII.
GOVERNMENT BY INJUNCTION.

HE prostitution of the use of the writ of
injunction in 1894 destroyed the great rail-
road organization which Debs was leading,

sent hin to jail in a foreign State, established a pre-
cedent for the destruction of labor organizations,
substituted contempt of court for trial by jury,
made a precedent for the use of the judiciary by
the President in the performance of his executive
functions, and a precedent for the violation of the
sovereignty of the State by the national executive.
It also furnished a precedent by which the United
States judiciary could itself usurp the function
of the city, county and State executive officers, and,
lastly, but by no means least, it furnished a prece-
dent by which employers could use this extraordi-
nary writ of injunction as a club to beat out the
brains of labor organizations. It meant the death-
hlow to labor arbitration. The cry has been ever
sinee: ‘‘There is nothing to arbitrate.’”? It has
become the defiant and arrogant sneer of capital,
in all labor controversies since 1894. Twenty-five
years ago the laborer was suspicious of courts, of
all arbitration boards, all efforts at arbitration;

his only weapon was to strike and starve. When
St The Life of Railway Men,

he used this weapon it became a question as to
which would suffer most, employer or employee,
which could hold out the longest. He had himself
learned by sad experience that though the contest
was unequal, that although it was suffering human-
ity pitted against dollars, yet he might win. He
had learned to starve himself, to hear his children
crying for bread, to see his old and feeble ones die
for want of proper nourishment; in other words,
he had learned to endure all the horrors of a strike
for the sake of the principle, that by all the laws
of morality, God and nature, he had a right to a
living wage, and also a right to have a voice in
the making of the contract for the only thing he
had to sell, his own labor. Every economic student,
every disinterested, good citizen witnessed with
much satisfaction the growing feeling in favor of
arbitration as a means of settling strikes, and
avoiding its losses and its horrors, but it ceased
with the strike of 1894. Pullman’s reply to the
great Railway Union, ‘‘There is nothing to arbi-
trate,’? and the new use made of the right of
‘““Tnjunction’’? sounded the death-knell of arbitra-
tion. It was the beginning of the end of arbitration
as a means of settling labor troubles except as
mere charitable and benevolent organizations. It
was a momentous epoch in our history as a nation,

with that example as an object lesson. How to put
The Life of Railway Men. 85

down strikes, concentrated and particularly cor-
porate, capital, knowing that there are United
States courts always convenient, knowing the use
that could be made of the writ of injunction backed
by the United States troops. It has ever since been
its defiant ultimatum to the laboring man in all
great labor strikes, ‘‘There is nothing to arbitrate,
take my terms or starve.’’ Take for example the
steel trust strike of 1901: Morgan and Schwab
controlling the one billion dollar steel trust and in
addition to that millions upon millions of dollars
subject to their use, trust money under their con-
trol, when it looked as if a panie would result from
the strike which would sweep away the income and
earnings of millions of people, when great danger
threatened the financial interests of the entire civil-
ized world; when thousands and tens of thousands
of homes were suffering want and privation and the
whole United States was astir over the situation.
They received the same inhuman reply of Pullman
in 1894: ‘‘There is nothing to arbitrate.’? They
treated with contempt the national, the State board
of arbitration, and every effort of the labor leaders
to bring about a betterment met with one reply:
‘‘There is nothing to arbitrate.’’? They knew and
every honest man knows that in every controversy
there is an underlying truth or right which, when

discovered, should settle the controversy; but the
S6 The Life of Railway Men.

precedent of 1894 was before them, and the writ
of injunction in its most modern form and use at
their call. The steel trust was victorious, and
labor—like in the coal strike of Pennsylvania, and
the late strikes of Chicago, and many others, after
sole starving—surrendered at discretion. The steel
trust victory I regard as one of the greatest calam-
ities which has befallen our country, if not the
greatest, within the last quarter of a century. See
how labor is at the merey of these gigantic combi-
nations, which mass their wealth into large corpo-
rations, whereby they obtain a complete monopoly
of the particular industry, and labor has the ban-
ner held before it: ‘‘There is nothing to arbitrate ;

take my terms or starve.”’

They are completely at
the merey of their employers, the great combina-
tions dominating, as they have the executive power,
for the last ten years; dictating by means of their
great and numerous combinations of capital. The
poliey and the legislation of the country defying its
anti-trust laws, hypnotizing the attorney-generals,
defying the courts, they soon have the labor of the
country at their merev where they can say, ‘‘ There
is nothing to arbitrate; take my terms or starve.’’
Labor hes prostrate at the feet of combined eapital.
Yet, my toiling brothers, you calmly, gladly and
willingly give your absolute and entire approval

to this sort of legislation every time you cast a
The Life of Railway Men. 87

ballot for a corporation candidate, a banker, or a
bullion-bought attorney. How long you will con-
tinue to fasten the shackles of oppression and
despotism upon your individual limbs is a matter
and question for yourself to solve.

 
The Life of Railway Men.

To
oO

(Eee bey AGU:
EXTRAVAGANCE OF RAILWAY MEN,

T has become customary for many writers to
reter to the extravagance of railroad men as
without precedent, comparison or reason, and

so frequently has the subject been handled that the
impression naturally arising among a certain class
of readers is to the effect that railroad men earn the
largest salaries of any class of workmen and they
are the most extravagant in their expenditures.
When the real facts become known, the so-called
extravagance of railroad employees is found to be
no greater than that of any other class, because
they have no more to spend. The general appear-
ance, however, is misleading, and perhaps a word
of explanation relating to railroad men and their
habits will do something toward dispelling the
popular delusion. In the first place. the pay of
railroad men has been generally exaggerated and
they themselves are responsible for the exaggera-
tion. It is natural for men to place the best side
forward when talking about their prospects and
naturally when speaking of their earnings they
give the best figures possible to be made during a
month. The high wages quoted are taken as a

general average, when, if the truth were told the
90 The Life of Ratleay Men.

earnings would not average one-half the amount
to the person not acquainted with the methods of
doing railroad work. It would appear that. rail-
road men had rather an easy time of it when they
are not on duty, they are noticed around town and
when they are out on the road they are not missed.
When business is normal they are seen at their
various favorite ‘‘resting’’ places apparently tak-
ing life easy and getting well paid for doing it.
When business is poor and they are home the
greater part of the time this is more noticeable
than during busy times, when if they are asked
after, and the reply comes that the boys are pretty
hard run this month, they are supposed to be coin-
ing money and the natural belief is that they
should save some of it. When railroad men do not
work they are not paid for the lost time and when
the lost time is averaged with the time actually
made, the wages carned are really less than those
of others working for the same corporations. Busy
times are, of course, exeeptional, for much work
Ineans greater remuneration. With these salaries
hardly equal to those of mechanics, and working
under different conditions which necessitate greater
expenditure, the wonder is that any railroad men
have a begmning for the sure to come rainy day.
Their expenses are greater, they must be properly

clothed; lunches are costlier in the ordinary than
The Life of Railway Men. 9]

the meals at home, and often the traimmen must
board at the lunch rooms along the road, which
means double expense to him if he is a man of
family. Again, the times are against the saving
of money by railroad men. If all men were back
to the blue jeans and all women were content with
less extravagant apparel the possibility of saving
might be greater. These are the times of dress and
exhibition; railroad people are human and will
look as well as the rest of the folks and they have
a right to look as the best if they wish to and can
find the means. This one feature of our civiliza-
tion makes great inroads upon a small salary.
Another cause for increased expenditure is in the
fact that these men have to live near the offices of
the company for which they work so that they may
be called when needed. Higher rents must be
paid in many eases, in order to do this. Meals
at all hours are not to be had without extra
expense. Medical attention is often needed and
with the dozen of other reasonable causes, railroad
men are doing exceedingly well when they make
both ends meet. It is true there are men among
them who spend their money in drink, but they are
exceptions to the rule, hecause the inost of them
haven’t the money to spend, and stories of the earn-
ings of a month lost in one day’s riotous living are

exaggerated when applied to the railroad men. IT
ee The Life of Railway Men,

venture to state that the average will be ‘found
exceedingly small when compared with the men of
other trades. Instead of this advertised extrava-
gance, Investigation will show the most of the rail-
road men with their noses held pretty close to the
grindstone and living a life of rigid economy
instead of one of luxury and vase, which should
prevail among all laboring nen. Money is a neces-
sity of continued extravagance and that is a scarce
article among men who do not make more than
two-thirds time the greater part of the year. The
writer of railroad men’s foolish financiering can
learn many lessons in economy from the heads of
the families that are accused of wanton extrava-

gance.
 

THE FUTURE RAILROAD MAN.
The Life of Railway Men. 95

CHAPTER IX.
TO THE WIVES OF RAILROAD MEN,

N the morning of life when the finer sensibilities
are awakened, and when we are able to dis-
criminate one sensation from another, perhaps

there is no other feeling that predominates over
the human heart so much as that of affection.
From infancy we have an intuition of this most
potent influence and power. As time passes on and
we develop into thinking, reasoning creatures, the
growth of affection is chief over all other condi-
tions of the heart, and we can classify this insepar-
able attribute or quality. Love for parents and the
natural brother or sister is a holy affection. Our
nature is inherent and we freely indulge our
nature by loving words and deeds. This is recip-
roeal, and an admirable fondness exists between
parents and children; but when life is young and
hope is strong, love, that most blessed gift of God,
presents itself to the heart in another appearance
and results in attachment for one who excites our
heart to deep and honest admiration. As we walk
in the first flush of morn, love is rosy-hued and we
never intend the clouds shall take on a deeper hue;
impossible that they could change to gray and then

to deepest black. Life seems one summer song. It
96 The Life of Railway Men.

speeds away, alas too quickly; we are lovers now.
Our heads are wrapped in clouds, we forgetting
that our feet are of the earth, earthy. The path
seems smooth, no briais or thorns to arrest our
progress, roses everywhere, and love lends us
wings which take us far away from clouds and
storm. The avenue of life seems broad and short,
and as lovers we sing. I wonder if all love is true.
Affection strengthens, and the holy law of matri-
mony makes us one and we are bound together by
conjugal love. Still life is fond of dearest hopes,
and affection, still untried by outburst of temper
or peculiarities well concealed or carefully hidden,
dreams not that aught could change her course or
cause one moment’s painful contemplation. Time
makes wonderful revelations and often both are
looking for the crown and wings which each
declared the other wore. For love was blind, and
flesh and blood were taken for angelic beings.
Such rude awakenings must be painful. It must
mean years of meditation to all when they awaken
to find ‘* Their idol fallen from its pedestal and its
very feet turned to clay.’? When they realize they
are bound by a law which nothing but death can
honorably sever, when they cease to have attraction
one for the other, and the shadow korn of love flies
away, still they are husband and wife. I some-

times think they live to fill out a measure of misery
The Life of Railway Men. oF

for themselves as well as for each other. Why
should a wife after a few months of wedded life
begin to criticize her husband’s habits or his gvam-
mar? When he was her lover all he said sounded
like musical cadences in her ear. No harsh criti-
cism rose within her heart. Every attitude he
sustained toward her, every gesture was graceful,
she saw only the strong right arm and manly form.
If she was willing to sacrifice the advantages of a
liberal education or of various accomplishments to
become the wife of a man who had more brawn
than brain, should she make a miserable failure of
marriage by making a constant parade and coh-
trast between these attainments, which embellish
her socially, and the great kind heart and tender
svinpathies which have no polished way of intro-
ducing themselves to a polite society? If your hus-
band should happen to be a brakeman, conductor,
fireman or engineer, have you a right to weigh him
in the balance with the judge or the banker? Have
you a right to compare the clothes your hushand
wears suitable to his calling with the man who has
successfully exploited and robbed him hy a legal-
ized system of that which he produced and thus
enabled the professional to inhabit a mansion of
luxury and tinseled tapestry? Have you a right
to array your husband’s educational advantages

against those of the scholar? If your husband is
QS The Life of Ratheay Men,

a railroad man, do you never stop to think his
mind can calculate things which no geometrical or
aritiinetical rules can compass? It is a fine cal-
ewlation of tine and distance which permits a rail-
road ian to make the simultaneous motions of
releasing the links, making couplings, running the
engine and thousands of other things that they have
to do and getting through without being injured.
It is too fine a calculation for many scholars who
have rules only to aid them in their caleulations.
It seems to me a railroad man’s love for his family
outweighs any other.

Listen! Greater love hath no man than this.
That a man Jay down his life for lis friends, all
our pleasures come at their expense and sacrifice.
Our homes represent this love that comes con-
stantly in contact with death, and how often the
relentless wheels claim dear ones who gave all they
had to give—their very hves—in order that we
might be tenderly eared for. What manner of
woman is she who would turn her eves toward
other things, which would turn to ashes on her very
lips. Then, too, life is all too short, it ix only a
span at most, and it is only a little way we travel
together. Then we diverge, one goes out and
hevond, the other walks in sorrow and separation.
How dreadful to have reproach overtake us and

condemnation a veritable Nemesis. To have the
The Life of Raileray Men. 99

past come before you, to have a conscience accuse
you of abusing the most holy law God ever gave
us. I have in my travels attended several enter-
tainments among the railroad orders and I have
seen men come in off of their runs after working
hard all day, and while on their way lome they
would see the hall of the order to which they
belonged, ablaze with amusement, and they would
say to each other, ‘‘Let’s go up and see what is
doing.’? And no sooner had they entered when
one of the wives of the men went over and extended
her hand in a cordial manner just as she would to
an honored and expected friend. Silently the other
man stood by, his wife was in conversation with
other gentlemen; when her eup of pleasure was
full she went abruptly to him and said: ‘‘Let’s go
home, Jack.’’ She led the way; silently he fol-
lowed her out and the door was shut. But this
woman had given too many the index of her heart,
and that rules the home. Now, vou who have hus-
bands who sacrifice their very lives to constant
peril, I believe by the law of God that it is your
duty to appreciate them while you have them with
you on this earth. Manifest your approval of all
their undertakings, for the railroad man of to-day
deserves all the kindness that can be bestowed upon

them, especially by those whom they may call wife.
“MAIO COOHNANLOM TIAA HITAL ANION HOLDLMAS

 

 

 

 

 

 
The Life of Railway Men. 103

CHAPTER NX.

LABOR ORGANIZATIONS. THEIR PAST AND FUTURE.

FTER a careful study of the labor problem and
its different phases. it seems to me that the
average wage-earner of to-day has calmly

concluded that he must forever remain a wage-
earner. This proposition is due to the fact that
the wage-earner of to-day is giving but little
thought to the question involved, and a correct
solution of the same. He has given up all hope of
a kingdom to come. where he himself will be a capi-
talist. Singly. he has been too weak to enforce this
just demand and he has sought relief in union and
has associated himself into labor organizations.
The labor unions stand for the principle of united
action and for the policy of a living wage earned
under fair living conditions. In union there is
strength, justice and moderation; in disunion,
nothing but an alternating humility and insolence,
a state of industrial despotism tempered by futile
and passing revolutions. Unions stand for the
right of association. self-government and free
speech. for self-respect of the workman as well as
his employer. and for a wide. far-seeing. demo-
eratic conduct of industry. Great labor leaders
have fallen. but the principles of the unions still
104 The Life of Railway Men.

stand. Labor unions have defended the weak
against the strong, the exploited against the
exploiter. It has stood for efficiency rather than
cheapness; in other words, it has stood for the man
rather than the dollar, and protected the toil of
women and children and fought the battle of the
poor throughout the world. It has conferred bene-
fits, made sacrifices and unfortunately committed
a few errors. Capital and labor should work in
harmony with one another; whatever is fair and
honorable and just for the one, and does not
infringe on the rights of the other, is justice. It
is not right for the man that does the work and
bears the burden and heat of the day to receive
only his proportionate part of the income. He
should also receive some courtesy from the
employer. He should not be considered as only a
part and piece of the great machinery of industry
that produces the wealth of the nation, but it
should be remembered that the commonest laborer
is a human being, and that he is endowed with cer-
tain rights and instincts as well as the wealthiest
man. A common laborer should occupy a more
dignified place in the scale of beings than the mil-
lionaire, valuing himself and family, too proud to
work, in this country of ours. Each man is equal
before the law and is held responsible for his acts
equally, and he should be dealt with accordingly.
The Life of Railway Men. 105

Therefore, any law that is made restricting the
rights of one and not the other is not just. These
are some of the first things that must be considered
in dealing with capital and labor. It is not just
for labor to be too exorbitant in its demands. It
should be considerate and reasonable in all its pro-
ceedings, but first it is to be considered that the
capital invested should have a just and reasonable
revenue, and that the money invested should bring
a fair and reasonable income to the investor. It is
reasoned by many that capital is the most important
part. It perhaps is in one sense of the phrase, but
not in the other. It is the controlling factor, but
if it were not for labor, the very thing itself would
not be accomplished. Therefore it must be con-
ceded that one is as essential as the other, and
there can not possibly be any distinction made as
to their right before the law, as their rights are
identically the same, and must be measured by
the same rule. In the pursuit of these ideals trades
unions have amply justified their existence by the
good deeds and works accomplished. They have
increased efficiency, diminished accidents, averted
disease, kept children at school, raised the moral
tone of our factories, and improved the existing
relations between employer and emploved. In so
doing they have stood upon the broad ground of
justice and humanity. TI do not conceal from
106 The Life of Ratheay Men,

mivsell the facet that unions liaive made some miis-
fakes. No institution tas ever vel atlamed its
Inghest ideals, and great men stumble and fall in
their upward striving. liver sinee the ttroduc-
tion Of unionism there has heen a steady uplifting
and clevating conditions of the laborer in a moral,
social and intellectual way, and at the same time
enjoying a higher plan of civilization; but as it
progressed ino its. ideal prinetples, the plutoeraey
of the country beeame suddenly aware that time.
diate action upon thei part was necessary inorder
fo retard (this rapid growth, and they at once set
about a plan by which they hoped to choke to death
{his giant of labor, The unions thus far had
hecome so bold as to send their committees fo meet
{heir employers, asking that better labor conditions
together with a living wage be @ranted them. The
committees thus sent were treated with cold and
Wnresponsive ears and as nothing was thus accom
plished the unions resorted toa strike, to thus foree
their employers to recognize them. The state of
affairs having thus reached this stage of confliet, the
capitalists knowing that publie syvinpathy was een
fered with the totler, set about to ereate the tnpres
sion that unionists were a rioting and lawless set
of men. They hired men known as) Pinkerton
thugs and other disreputable persons to cause riot,

mob wolence, incendiarisin, stealing and all other
The Life of Railway Men. 107

crimes against individuals and society, and thus,
together with the bullion-bought publie¢ press, they
were enabled to reach the desired end, and after
accomplishing this, they were enabled to ask the
Government for the use of federal troops in their
behalf, and as a result the soldier went forth to
calmly shoot and murder his toiling brother at the
dictation of a plutocratic official, for the simple
reason that his toiling brother had dared to ask for
a fair share of the wealth he was producing. The
success of these nefarious schemes is readily ascer-
tained by the bloody, cruel and barbarous murder
of honest toilers at Homestead, Pennsylvania. Not
even were the fair innocent children spared in this
profit-seeking war, created by a few cruel dollar-
worshiping capitalists. Human life was nothing
and was not to be considered in this dollar-getting
age. The life-blood that tinted God’s earth was
nothing to the greedy throng of money mongers
who brought about this wholesale murder of God’s
children. Not only do we have weeping Homestead,
as a monument dedicated to legalized murder, but
there is poor bleeding Chicago during the year of
1894 in which it passed through the same murder-
ous ordeal. Then again we have the murderous
fields of Colorado, which under the leadership of
Peabody and Sherman Bell, stained another portion
of God’s creation with the crimson blood of human
108 The Life of Railway Men,

beings that the dollar-seeking and ravenous appe-
tite of the corporations for gold may continue in
their mad seramble for wealth. These erimson
monuments, built of human blood and human life at
the dictation of aristocracy, will ever stand a rebut
to humanity of these dollar-secking lords. Yes,
there is the great coal strike, and no comment is
necessary to educate the people to the suffering and
misery that followed in its wake. All because one
eruel, cringing, inhumane, gold-craving monger
who declared that we have nothing to arbitrate and
that God himself had so ordained and placed
within his individual control these vast coal mines.
Yet, many of my poor, deluded, debt-ridden readers
still labor under the impression that the Almighty
did so arrange, and those are the very ones who
through their ignorance, prejudice and stupidity
make it an exceedingly easy matter for these finan-
cial prelates to overcome them and their unions.
In the vears past, we have witnessed the greatest
labor strikes the world has ever known, and we
have witnessed their defeat and victory for the
‘‘Shylock,’? and why? Jt is easily answered,
because the whole country, its courts, judges, legis-
latuyes, officials and the very men themselves have
become tools of the dollar man, and many of them
while professing unionism and in a sham and

deceitful way try impressing the underlying prin-
The Life of Railway Men. 109

ciples of their various organizations upon their
fellow man, only to enhance their individual value
in a financial way or to get a merit mark upon the
big book of some heartless, cruel, cringing, mur-
derous, ungodly, psalm-singing corporation. Man
himself is consciously preparing a way for his
utter defeat by the privileged few, unless he fore-
sees and returns to the more noble inspiration of
‘*Brotherhood’’ as laid down in our various organ-
izations. The great corporations are always ready,
always alert and watchful for any new recruit that
many chanee to come their wav. They are cease-
lessly devising and concocting some plan whereby
they can weaken the ranks of labor and at the same
time add a few dollars to their vast hoards of
exploited plunder. This brings us down to ‘our
organizations’? and some of their leaders. We,
that is many, censure the weakness of our paid
servants who are laboring or are supposed to be at
a salary from four to twenty thousand per year
together with their expenses. What can you expect
of a leader whose daily companions are million-
aires and whose intimate friends and callers are
the plunderers of the common people, whose wife
is an aristocrat and whose own aspirations are for
power and wealth. And many are they of this
stripe, that serve us people, who give banquets,

dance and make merry, while you and your loved
110 The Life of Ratway Men,

ones hunger for the bare necessities of ite and
probably while you are vontiseating perhaps a bas-
ketful of Mr. Baer’s God-given coal te keep from
freezing. Yet vou pay them tribute and think you
have done a wonderful thing toward saving your-
self and brother workman. Now, honest, what do
you expect trom a leader whose whole and entire
surroundings are gilded with the glitter of wealth.
He sees none but the aristocrats and bond buyers.
Only such men as Mr. Parry (founder of a pious
industrial), and bankers and ratlroad) presidents
and millonaire manufacturers dare meet the leader
with a **How do you do, old boy," slap on the
back. The poor wage slave, and vet vou loudly
whoop it up for these would-be benefactors of man-
kind, and vou sit away back, Tike the small boy
when lis big sister is receiving the attention of
some high-collared young man frem an adjoining
town. He cranes lis neck and looks longingly and
lovingly toward the center of attraction, but he
doesn't feel safe in going any nearer while his big
sister's admirer is holding the fort. And, is it net
perfectly natural for a man to be influenced by his
environments? Tf vou were to live among the
Tndians tor eight, ten er twelve vears, and heard
theiy stories over and over again, would vou not
soon be in sympathy with them?) And if you were

horn in Turkey, vou would naturally belong to the
The Life of Railway Men. 111

Mohammedan faith, and your prejudice against
the Christians would be as bitter as it is now
against the Musselman. I want to tell vou, my toil-
ing brothers, it is the environments that influence
our judgment. The ear that willingly listens to a
tale for a few vears is sure to be influenced more
or less by the substance of the tale. And because
he is the leader of some labor organizations is no
exception to tle rule at all. It only gives him a
better opportunity. And the idea that now seems
to prevail among the various unions and organiza-
tions, that only one man ean serve as its leader and
to continually elect one particular man to the lead-
ership, and land him, together with a great salary.
It is the true and absolute road to ruin, and the
sooner we banish this kingscraft idea from our
craniums the better for us all. No leader should
serve in any capacity longer than four vears, no
matter who he is, and his past record should never
have the least influence with us. Even this great
country, with its eighty millions of people and its
vast wealth, does not permit its President to serve
more than two terms or eight vears. And why
should a labor organization with its few thousand
members, with only their toil to resort, permit their
leader or officer to serve a longer time. It is the con-
tinuance in office that brings on the ever-catching

disease, known so well among our countrymen as
Le? The Life of Railway Men,

‘office fever,’’ that leads to corruption and brib-
ery, and at times when we are reposing in them our
utmost confidence, they, no doubt, are dickering
and selling our power for a financial gain, whereby
they may extend their already swelling bank
account. We have had too many such ordeals in
the past, and many of the once prominent labor
leaders who rode to the head of their respective
organizations, robed in lovalty, truth and justice,
returned from them robed in wealth, aristocracy
and idolatry; when in fact they returned in a most
ignominious way. In the eyes of the grinding cor-
porations they are illustrious because they sold
their fellow man on the capitalist auction block to
the highest bidder for cash, and the illusive editor-
ials that appear in the bullion-bought press all over
our land would lead an unthinking man to believe
that another labor Moses had come forth to deliver
the toiling millions from wage slavery, and the
hypocrisy thus practiced and resorted to leads
many thousands of poor and deluded wage slaves
into the mud of their own mixing, yearly. While
at the same time there have been many men
who have stood up among their fellow workers in
the meeting places of the various unions and organ-
izations and pointed out these very things to their
toiling brothers. and for the interest they have
taken are called Anarchists among their own fel-
Tie Life of Railway Mew. 113

low workmen. But yet tarough all teis ther go
bravely on, and at last when the catastrophe
arrives. and the real downfall of their organiza-
tion is realized by all. then ther sav -*I never
thought."’ and all that is left for them ‘+ to begin
anew. Labor to-lay is weak. It produces every-
thing used and consumed by mortal men. Labor
feeds, clothes. supports and educates the world. It
builds costly mansions. magnificent palace cars.
parks, theaters. provides the labor leaders or the
** would-be 's °° with luxury and fine raiment: makes
it possible to travel in these gilded palace cars at
labor's expense. It provides the millionaire with
wealth, property and every conceivable laxury
known, while labor goes hungry. shabbily dressed,
and lives in some poor. dilapidated. rickety. worn-
out and tumble-down hovel for which a tribute in
the way of style and rent must be paid to some
praying. psalm-singing landlord. Yes. labor cre-
ates everything we can see. used by mortal men—
makes this whole world reek with wealth. and are
God's own children. Yet they must pay a tax for
the privilege of staying on the earth that God
made and gave to them. just for the simple reason
that they tolerate a svstem that tnakes it possible
for a few to own this earth, and the leaders of
many are loudest in their applause of sanction to
such a system. It has become a firm fact within
114 The Life of Railway Men.

the past few years that the seeking of office in a
labor organization is as popular as that of political
office-seeking. Salary and chances of wealth make
this very plausible. The office should seek the man,
and not the man seek the office. When things have
reached this state it is only a matter of time when
the ideals of labor organizations and their accom-
plishments hecome ‘‘dead,’’ and remorse while the
respective leaders reek with filthy plunder derived
from the sale of their constituents, and unless the
mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted
with the leadership of their various organizations
these will be perverted to their own oppression and
to the perpetuation of wealth and self-aggrandize-
ment, so it behooves labor to yoke their undivided
leaders in such a way, style and manner that they
are absolutely under the full control of their con-
stituents. You have seen the practice by which
the servants of labor have been able to cover their
nefarious conduct, or, where that could not be done,
delusions by which they have varnished it for the
eye of their constituents. And, yet my toiling
brother calmly and thoughtlessly sits by and fails
to realize that he is gently and quietly drifting
toward the black chasm, prepared by the cunning
hand and scheming mind of the capital class. Yet
he is not to be pitied to any great extent. Imagine
aman traveling in a woods wherein lurked treacher-
The Life of Railway Meu. 115

ous and deadly animals and beasts, of which he
had been previously warned, and then calmly lie
down and court death, midst the thicket and jungles
of these woods. You would say, ‘‘Well, he was
warned before he entered therein and he has none
to blame but himself.’* So with the average wage-
worker: He has been previously warned and has
none save himself to blame for his sad plight. And
as we drift down along the line let us not forget the
fret that it is a duty we owe ourselves and all
mankind that we meet these different propositions
of hypocrisy with the weapons of truth, justice
and charity, tempering it with a mote of morality,
and during the past dark and murderous years of
toil the labor ‘‘nigger’’ of our organizations has
showed the white of his eve down along the dark
lane of prejudice. Many of our leaders can no
longer deny the fact that they have been dabbling
side by side with the plutocrat, and shoulder to
shoulder with the millionaire, and arm in arm with
the bond-clipper and the whole damnable set of
Wall street stockbrokers and gamblers. They have
delivered liberty-giving sophistry with the con-
seience of an Amazon cannibal, and the capitalist-
owned journals and newspapers have and are con-
tinuing to dish up their les and labor falsehoods
with the ease of professional liars. And don't tell
me that we have arrived at our present condition
116 The Life of Railway Men.

of Christian savagery and labor hunger through
some accident. Man is a scheming animal, and all
our forced poverty and want is but the effect of
the unholy and merciless schemes of men who wear
the garb of millionaires and labor leaders together
with the face of a ten-cent saint. Some leaders are
always on the strong side of wealth, on the side of
the cold, heartless and cruel schemers whose only
ambition and ignoble aspiration is to rob and
plunder the dependent poor. A few readers may
not like my plain and fearless expressions of truth,
but I think there are millions who will agree with
me. I love the truth, because it is the only fissure
vein of pay dirt in the whole bed-rock of this sham,
shoddy and miserable deceit. If I dare not write
the truth about these things, I would prefer not to
write at all. Our organizations are gradually
crumbling and going to decay before this merci-
less scheme of wealth, and upon the ruins will be
built the costly mansions with their luxuries and
tinseled tapestries by leaders who came from the
ranks of labor but sold their manhood together with
their duped followers, and their guilty hands reek
with the plunder they were able to wrest from the
wage-slaves through a so-called duty, pious and
legal process, and they are patrons of the eminent
rich, and they dare not fight them without making
them enemies, and they dare not point out the short-
The Life of Railway Men. 117

comings of many organizations without offending
the eminent rich who furnish them a market for the
sale of their constituents for a cash consideration
while we blindly, meekly and gladly pay them a
big fat salary that enables them to make a market-
able commodity of union men. They silently admit
that a terrible revolution is on the march, urged on
by their treacherous schemes, but it is not policy
from a financial standpoint to talk about it; but it
is sure to come at any rate, and why should they
injure the chance of: making money while it is yet
harvest time. And for this reason the truth is
smothered, right is crucified, and wrong is fostered
on the throne, while plunder and gain are the
only rewards held up for the people to work for
laying up their ill-gotten wealth for their children,
when they know this can not go on much longer,
but must end in a sudden reform, or a slowly grow-
ing, but bloody revolution, and what will their
stolen wealth amount to when once a revolution has
developed and burst forth upon the blinded people?
Yet they go on grasping and hoarding up wealth,
heeding not the dark clouds of revolution that are
coming over the mountains of endless toil, illu-
mined with the white teeth of hunger, in the open
mouths of a starving people, and dripping red
drops of blood at every fresh peal of thunder from
the angry and lurid heavens. Truth will not
118 The Life of Railway Men.

always remain smothered, right will not always die
on the scaffold, and wrong can not always reign on
the throne of plutocracy, and justice will either
take root in the hearts of the people or spring up
spontaneously out of the ashes of the great and ter-
rible revolution. I see grinning out of the dark hell
of hunger, hidden behind these cold, heartless, cruel
dollar-worshiping plutocrats who pose as regular
oracles of society and civilization, and again there
is a feeling among the toiling wage-earner of supe-
riority, that is, one believes that he is superior to
or better than a fellow workman. I have even
heard a great (?) labor leader, who at the same time
was serving his respective organization as master,
stand up squarely and flatfootedly before a public
audience and say that he and his organization were
the ‘‘ Aristocrats of Labor.’’ A remark that is only
capable of emanating from the fertile intellect
of a corporation tool. And, if that same man should

‘“self-made man’’ it will take a

happen to be a
great responsibility off our ‘‘True and Just God.’’
And, again, I have heard individual members of an
organization stand up and say that their organiza-
tion was superior to some other organization.
These poor, deluded, intellectual bankrupts are
surely to be pitied, for truly, such thoughts would
not emanate from a sane thinking man. The idea

that one wage-earner is more elevated than another,
The Life of Railway Men. 119

or that. one has a greater right than the other,
when they all are wage-slaves and dependents; and
should either lose his job, one is no better than the
other, each wage-earner is dependent upon some
other wage-earner; hence it should ever be ‘‘ Each
for all and all for each.’’

In the early history of labor organizations the
theory always was, to always have the head officer
of such organization fully within the power and

_control of its members, but not so at the present
age. The cunning minds of late years have
devised, schemed and pvt into effect, plans whereby
they were enabled to take a step at a time, and
quietly steal this once wholesome power, and as a
result to-day, sufficient kingscraft has crept into
the laws of different organizations until the
‘‘majority rule’’ is a thing of the past, and the
leader acts according to his own judgment, be it
right or wrong. Yet the unionist calmly ‘‘sleeps’’;
but he will awaken some day, like the black slave
of chattel times, only to find that an ‘‘auction,”’
unawares to himself, had taken place, and as a
result a different greedy, grinding and cruel cor-
poration now holds the title to his dollar-making
abilities. Again we find many, aye, thousands of
them, who are ever ready to take up the ‘‘cry’’ of
their deceitful leaders, and all they desire in return
is to be slapped upon the back, and called a true
120 The Life of Railway Men,

and loyal ‘‘unionist.’’ This so-called unionist of
to-day seems utterly hopeless and helpless when in
conflict with the capitalistic class and rulers, and
for which there are many reasons, one of the most
prominent of which is that unionism is too much °
divided, there are too many organizations, each
endeavoring to become superior to the other, which
finally will result in the total downfall of all. What
would you think if ‘‘Uncle Sam,”’’ in times of war,
had only ordered one company or one regiment to
do the fighting, while the others remained at home?
You would laugh at such a preposterous idea, but
he does not do that; he marshals his many com-
panies and regiments into one compact, solid army,
and when this is accomplished he is ready to meet
the enemy with a force that is capable of doing
battle and ultimately retire victorious from the
field. So should labor do likewise, and marshal
its entire forces into one great army of toilers, so
that when it becomes necessary to march onward to
the battle-field of justice, they will be able to accom-
plish their purpose. Opposed to the single organi-
zation is the wealth, army, and in fact the whole
job lot of millionaires to do them battle, and it
affords the capitalistic class the very opportunity
it seeks and desires, for it is a great deal easier to
erush and defeat a single regiment of labor than
if all were consolidated, and each time they defeat
The Life of Railway Men. 121

a single organization it weakens the army of organ-
ized labor to that extent, and by defeating them
singly it is far more easily done than to defeat them
all in one body. This is so plain that a child can
see it, and yet ‘‘Labor calmly sleeps,’’ while the
grim and deadly serpent of destruction quietly
enters his ‘‘union domicile’’ and subdues them with
ease. If in the future we wish to become a power
and command respect, we will have to pursue the
military tactics of ‘‘Uncle Sam’’ in this way: We
must mobilize and concentrate the different organ-
izations into one grand labor army, so that when
we are called to do battle against the cringing,
cruel and greedy corporations we can meet them
upon the field of justice, and return therefrom a
victorious and labor-crowned army of wage-earners
from whose bountiful supply of toil emanates the
world’s whole wealth, and when we have at last
concentrated our entire forces into one vast feder-
ation, then and not until then can we look upon the
horizon of labor and behold the beautiful golden
and patriotic word ‘‘Success’’ shining forth like
the radiant rays of a noonday sun proclaiming to
all the world, ‘‘Labor is prior to all things,’’ and
from henceforth it shall ever be held to be worthy
of its hire. Labor is and always was prior to cap-
ital and without labor there would be no capital.
So let us change this system of pious, psalm-
122 The Life of Railway Men.

singing, cruel and greedy hell-like earth into one
wherein reigns supreme justice, faith, hope and
charity. Then and not until then will the laborer
ever become a participant of the actual position in
society to which he so richly, justly and deservedly

belongs.

 
‘S411 S,NVIN GVOWIIVE ¥ dO SUMPNVG ANVIC YELL ao axa

 

 
The Life of Railway Men. 125

CHAPTER XI.
THE UNEMPLOYED.

F the number of the unemployed continues to
increase in the future as it has done in the past
ten years, there is danger that the prediction

of Lord Macaulay will come true. He predicted
that the American public would be overthrown by
vandals raised within her own border, and if we
consider that Carroll D. Wright’s last report gave
the number of unemployed as two million, which
would make a larger army than any the world ever
saw, it is not hard to discern that a time may come
when hunger and involuntary idleness will result
in the forming of military organizations by the
unemployed. To-day the number of the unem-
ployed can not be less than three million, and this
number is increasing daily on account of the finan-
cial conspiracy that has been formed against the
people. With the invention of labor-saving
machinery added to the other causes of involuntary
idleness, it can be mathematically demonstrated
that in less than ten years there will be at least
thirty-three per cent of the laborers of the country
unemployed. If it is expected that this great mass
of workers will voluntarily submit to starvation
and privation without raising their hands, the
126 The Life of Railway Meu.

plutoeracy expects what never has been and never
will be. Place a starving man in a well-provis-
ioned pantry and say to him, ‘*Thou shalt not
steal.’? It would he folly to expeet that he would
starve when surrounded by plenty, and vet that is
just what the vietims of our industrial system will
submit to. Men are thrown out of employment
through no fault of their own. They roam the
country in search of work. They don’t ask for
charity. They are willing to toil for a living, but
with cruel irony society says: You are not allowed
to work; you are not permitted to steal; the best
thing you can do, therefore, is to quietly make an
end of yoursel!, but don’t make a fuss about it.
The result is that the unemployed become tramps,
and are outlawed by society, conscious that at the
hottom they are simply vietims of a social system
that places every man’s hand on his neighbor’s
throat. The law tells them that every person not
having visible ineans of support is a vagrant and
liable to imprisonment, but it does not gunrantee
that every man who wishes to make an honest liv-
ing shall have the opportunity to do so. Men must
not steal but they are denied the right of being
honest. The wants of the people remain wnisatis-
fied, while we are told there is an overproduction
of all commodities the few enjoy most, while pro-

ducing nothing. Wealth and poverty increase rap-
The Life of Railway Men. 127

idly. Does any sane man believe that this state
of affairs can go on indefinitely without disrupting
society? If he does he has not read aright the
signs of the times. Some day greed will be able
to defend what it steals. One man will not be
suffered to enjoy without working, says Herbert
Spencer, that which another produces without
enjoying, and if it ever becomes necessary for the
people to resort to violence in order to throw down
the barriers that greed has surrounded, the mate-
rials and forces of nature, the tramps and out-
casts, who have been held down by the terrors of
the law, will inaugurate scenes of plunder and
rapine that will rival the acts committed at the
sacking of Rome. Every voter should give this
‘matter serious consideration, for it is better to
avert such a calamity by using the weapon pro-
vided by law than to delay action until human pas-
sions get beyond control and overthrow everything
in a common ruin. The aspirations of the people
have been dammed so long, while the rich are erect-
ing more dams to keep the people out of their her-
itage, that if the dams ever break there will not he
a vestige left to remind the people of the present
inequitable social system. The privileged classes
are making a great mistake in piling on the flames;
some day they will not be able to control the fire
of their own making. The proper solution lies in
123 The Life of Railway Men.

the absorption by the Government of some of the
means of production and exchange. For men will
always take advantage of their fellows and absorb
their substance, while it remains in their power to

do so. Greed must not be allowed to play dog-in- |
the-manger when by legislation every man can have
free access to the means of production, and secure
the fruits of his toil. When the people vote for
this change they can have it. Practical evidence
of the sufficiency of the food supply of the world
is Seen in that the few cases of starvation reported
are so quickly responded to by charitable people.
Presumptive evidence that all might live in com-
fort is furnished by the long list of millionaires.
Then why should it be difficult for any human
being to get sufficient work to insure a comfortable
living? It has been repeatedly stated that the con-
stant tendency is for the few to absorb more and
more of the world’s riches. The great question is
as to the possibility of changing the current and
making it flow toward the many instead of the few.
The products of labor, of both mind and body, are
the creators of capital. Their use, transportation
and exchange need capital as a convenience, but
like the true Shylock it has taken advantage of its
position to exact unions’ interest and has com-
bined to crush out the weaker members of its class
so that it could have more complete control over
The Life of Railway Men. 129

labor, for labor is consumer as well as producer.
This is why the ranks of the rich are growing
smaller and those of the poor larger. This is the
reason that thousands upon thousands who are able
and willing to work must rely for existence upon
the labor of others, and thousands upon thousands
more are living in half-starved condition, for the
mind needs nourishment as well as the body and
there is neither time nor money for both. The
desirability of adjusting matters so that all could
work who wished, and yet have plenty of time for
mental study and physical recreation. Is not this
possible? Whenever genius invents machinery to
reduce the amount of labor, we are given to under-
stand that the increased demand certain to follow
will result in more workmen being required than
before. Setting aside the question of the truth or
falsity of this assertion, except so far as remarking
that in many cases it appears to have resulted in
the greatest employment of child labor. Is it not
in order to ask if every such patent granted should
not have coupled with it a provision reducing the
hours of labor? Should we not be in a better con-
dition to-day if the patent laws had been so
amended fifty years ago. Labor organizations are
unceasingly working for less hours of labor, and
will continue to do so until all are employed.

In this blithe age it would be unpardonable to
130 The Life of Railway Men.

raise any undue alarm. We have a glorious Con-
stitution, a glorious republic, and we all enjoy the
blessings of liberty; we are subjected to no foreign
yoke. If any one is inclined to doubt these propo-
sitions let him attend a Fourth of July celebration
and listen to the sweating orators, and he will
then find out that these things are so. Let him
not forget these facts during the times intervening
between our national celebrations. Still, something
does seem to be wrong now, and something may
have been wrong for a long time. This something
wrong is not in the lack of necessaries of life, the
materials of comfort and even of luxury. The
country is full to overflowing of all these things;
even when crops are short an overabundance of
breadstuffs is produced. We have churches,
schools, colleges, hospitals, asylums, railroads,
bridges scattered in profusion all over the land.
Everything for the physical, mental and spiritual
welfare and convenience of the people. We have
a sparse population in the most fertile country in
the world and one with the most diversified produc-
tions, and then, as was said, we have our glorious
Constitution and liberty. We have also many
cities, both large and small; convenient markets,
railroad stations and large grain elevators near
every farmer’s dooryard; labor-saving and
product-augmenting machinery in vast quantities
The Life of Railway Meu. 131

adequate for all needs and all industries so classi-
fied and systematized that the greatest amount of
production is accomplished with, in the present
conditions, the smallest amount of labor. We are
so excessively wealthy that when we do anything
in a public way we must do it in an unrivaled way.
Our courthouses must cost millions. We Christians
are so effusive with our wealth that when we build
churehes we must do it at enormous cost and
cushion the pews with velvet so that we may wor-
ship God with the greatest ease, the pulpit plat-
forms must look like elegantly furnished parlors,
where, no doubt, can touch the broadcloth of our
high-salaried ministers, who dispense from them
an unctuous and money-making gospel. Our palace
ears and railroad trains are the finest in the world.
No cost is spared on our public parks, streets,
buildings. Hundreds of thousands of our private
residences rival in splendor and magnificence the
palaces of the old world, and, the greatest boon of
all, we have thousands and thousands of million-
aires, and yet something is wrong. What is this
something that is wrong? We can see it in the
lamp, but before this financial cyclone is over it
will be much more visible. Before this wrong is
righted, we will see hundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of men and their families in the midst of
plenty, with starvation staring them in the face,
132 The Life of Railway Men,

and who will these men be? The men who produced
this wealth with which the country is filled. And
why will they starve? Because they have been
dispossessed and robbed. And what has dispos-
sessed and robbed them? A system. Why need
they starve? They have their hands and are only
too willing to work; why can they not produce for
themselves? Because they have no means to pro-
duce with. The system has left them powerless,
impotent. What are the characteristics of their
system? Monopoly, privilege, greed, with every
legal opportunity for its growth and the gratifica-
tion and exploitation of the toiler. Many great
writers propose to destroy the trusts’ codperation
of capital, destroy one of the greatest labor-saving
devices of our age, destroy system and organiza-
tion in business, destroy that which nullifies as far
as anything can under the capitalistic system, the
servies of danger to investors and to labor.
Another, D. B. Hill, for instance, suggests that the
dividends on stock should be limited by law. That
is, that instead of the great concerns acquiring, say
five per cent, average of the nation annually, so
that it would take them twenty years to get it all,
they should be restricted to two and one-half per
cent, so that acquisition may require forty years.
He appears to think it all right for a few to ulti-
mately own all, but not in his day. T think T have
The Life of Railway Men. 133

shown that the organization of labor is here to stay.
’ That organizations came because they had to come,
that the talk of destroying them and reéstablishing
old methods is on a par with the Chinese solution of
the whole machinery question, and as far as Hill’s
method goes, it solves nothing. To decrease prof-
its, to reduce the degree of exploitation is not
practically impossible in view of corruption funds.
Capital owned legislatures and Congress and
courts and a thousand means for concealment of
facts and evasions of punishments, but at best it
could but postpone the inevitable. It is but a modi-
fication of the cause and consequently can but
modify the present effect, leaving the final result
unchanged. Our great metropolitan papers and
some of their adherents propose compulsory public-
ity as a remedy in speaking of the dividends of the
greedy corporations. I have already given some
statements that are specimens of voluntary public-
ity. Are not the annual and even the quarterly
gains of many great combines, such as railways,
steel trust, standard oil, etce., constantly paraded
before the public? And what remedy does that
work? Suppose every book of these concerns were
open to the public and published monthly, what of
‘it? Do the greedy corporations think that if the
public gazed upon these things it would move for
a change? Would such publicity lead to a demand
134 The Life of Railway Men.

for public collective ownership of the means of
production? Truly I think it would; but this is
a solution that the greedy corporations would not
count, or would it lead to the application of Mr.
Hill’s remedy—a demand for longer time for peo-
ple to live on the to-be capitalists’ earth? As I
have said, there has already been much voluntary
publicity regarding dividends, watering stocks, ete.
Now, if my reader harbors the thought that he is
going to get rich from the labor of his own hands,
that is, by producing commodities himself or by
working for a wage, it is an evidence of his youth
and alone makes possible such a labor product;
but this is the way the railroads and other big cor-
porations accumulate their vast fortunes, while
thousands are starving every year because they are
too weak to see where they are at. If the laboring
men could only realize that this method could be
stopped, by going to the polls on election day and
casting their ballot to oust this graft, they would
soon be placed where they could enjoy some of the
fruit of their toil.
“UVAA V SANTL GATTMG AddVH NSN AVAVTIVIE SL SHNVIN IVE uv SN “Ayia Wal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
The Life of Railway Men. Lor

CHAPTER XII.
BLACKLIST.

HIS is one thing that deserves the attention of
every American citizen. I do not believe
that all the directors and stockholders of the

railroads countenance this crime of their General
Managers. It is too atrocious to be approved by
any conscientious man. If all the suffering of
innocent women and children caused by this con-
spiracy could be laid bare, if the cases of homes
sold under foreclosure, of husbands separated from
wives, and of strong and willing men forced to
assume false names, or driven insane by this
criminal deprivation of employment, could be pub-
lished, such a protest would be heard from every
lover of fair play in the land that these criminal
officials would be driven from power by honest
stockholders and directors, and officials with some
instincts of humanity put in their places. If the
blacklist be necessary, as some of the railroad
officials claim, to prevent strikes and to enforce
discipline; if private corporations can not admin-
ister our railways without depriving American
citizens of the liberty guaranteed by the Constitu-
tion, without starving innocent women and chil-
dren, because their husbands and fathers sympa-
138 The Life of Railway Men.

thized with the men who were in a railroad strike,
and generously tried to help them, then it is high
time the Government became the owner of the rail-
roads, put the employees under Civil Service
rules, and secured them in their positions during
good behavior. Strikes, to be sure, inconvenience
the public, and they may be mistaken sometines ;
but what other remedy have laboring men when
aggrieved and refused all redress? It is important
that the business interests of the country should
not be interrupted, but it is more important that
our citizens should be free. The victims do not
complain that the roads they were working for at
the time they struck did not reémploy them. They
adinit that the roads had a right thus to refuse them.
They complain that their old employers not only
refused to employ them again, but continually
pursued them, and prevented them from getting
employment anywhere else. Once a railroad man,
always a vailroad man. The most skilful railroad
man in the country is usually unfitted for any other
work. The public are interested in having men of
this class, careful, sober and skilled, to operate our
railroads. The evil criticized ean not be justified
under any of the specious excuses offered. No one
questions the right of a railroad to report to another
road the names of employees who are drunken or

eareless. This is not only their right but their duty,
The Life of Railway Men. 139

as the public is interested in having sober and care-
ful men operate trains; but when a railroad official
sends the names of such employees to other roads
than his own, it must be done in good faith and for
good cause. If railways combine to keep from
work men who have simply struck to better their
conditions, violating no law, their acts become
unlawful and dangerous to public welfare. A com-
bination of employees to vindictively injure
employers in any similar fashion would be equally
wrong and unlawful. Both should be condemned
as un-American, without discrimination in favor
of any one class as against the other. If public
conscience can be aroused, the people will put a
stop to this iniquity and corporations will be
taught to obey the law. Corporations have their
place in the industrial development of the times,
being at present necessary elements in our eco-
nomic system; but they should be the servants and
not the masters of the people. Capital can not in
justice insist on its right to. form combinations and
deny the same right to labor. A corporation can
not reasonably insist on treating with its employees
only as individuals while itself joining other cor-
porations in disciplining laborers. Hither organ-
ized capital must recognize organized labor, deal-
ing with labor organizations as entitled to recogni-
tion equally with organization of capital, or the’
140 The Life of Railway Men.

conflict between labor and capital will produce
results more serious than have yet occurred. Con-
fronted by a great organization of capital, the indi-
vidual employee is helpless; but if his demands
are backed up by the power of an organization of
his fellows, he has some chance of securing just
concessions and correcting the abuses of which he
complains. When the rights of both labor and
capital to organize and to act in their organized
capacity are recognized, mutual concessions will be
made and many of the antagonisms which now
oceasion strikes and lockouts will be unknown. If
our workingmen are to be independent, manly citi-
zens, and not obsequious vassals, blacklisting must
be done away with, involving conspiracy to thwart
most sacred rights. It is dangerous to public wel-
fare and contrary to the common law. Liberty
means not merely the right to freedom from physi-
eal restraint, but also the right to pursue any
livelihood or calling. If, then, a man is denied the
right of contracting for his labor, he is denied the
liberty guaranteed him by the Constitution of the
United States. If the man who quits the employ of
another can not get work in his chosen occupation
without first obtaining the consent of the man
whose employ he has left, he becomes a slave.
He will not dare resist any oppression his employer
may see fit to impose upon him. His wages may be.
The Life of Railway Men. ‘141

lowered to the starvation point; he may be called
up to work extra hours, vet he dare not complain,
as he knows he can not leave and get employment
elsewhere. If he protests, his employer will say,
“Very well, if you don’t like it, vou can quit.’’
The man having a wife and children to support
will bow in submission, knowing that his master
has him in his power and that he can not support
his family if he is defiant, as he can not get work
elsewhere without the consent of his employer. This
is slavery pure and simple, vet it is, without exag-
geration, the condition of most railroad employees
in this country to-day. The railroads use the
blacklist not only to punish those who have been
discharged, but to coerce and intimidate those still
in their employ. How long will it be, if blacklist-
ing is allowed to continue and spread, before the
laboring masses of the country, having become the
helpless tools of these might-masters, will do their
bidding in the exercise of the elective franchise?
We shall then have a government of corporations
by corporations and for corporations. The wage-
earner who feels his little children tugging at his
coat-tails for bread will fear, in voting, to assert
his manhood and resist oppression. Can a republic
made up of such citizens long endure? Are such
mere tools fit to be electors in a government of the
people? These are serious questions, which must
i The Life of Railway Alen.

he wisely answered by Ainerican voters at (he hal
lof bos, or the answers will be blood and revolution.
Blacklisting is this seen Co hea elie! ageney in
Poston ing anarely. Te destroys mantiood in ertivens
mocomakes therm shives, Chere mist bere elaine,
The love of liberty is loo deeply rooted tn Che henrets
of Nimerieans long fo tolerate this daimgerous hue,
His peeutiorly against publie charges i not erin
nals. TP blacklisting is to be held by the courts of
our dand to he dawlul, it wilh be but short (ime
when the Hiherly, independence and patriolisne of
the American citizen will be bata mere traditions
What our children will talk about, bat not under
stand; and labor, whieh heawed Chis nation of free
men oulof the wilderness, will bow ts head fo the
dielation of corporation bosses, he mission off
{he United States is: to enlighten and eivilive the
world; if is the knight errant of Tiberty and jus
fieo, and af it fails ta its mission, fle world will
relapse info barbarisnn This question is one of the
greatest that confronts the railroad men of this
country today, and on it depends a great deal, the

future welfare of labor.
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The Life of Railway Men. 145

CHAPTER NIII.
FACTS.

N the days when the employer had but few
employees, personal acquaintance and direct
contact of the employer and the employee

resulted in mutual knowledge of the surroundings,
conditions and the desires of each. The develop-
ment of the employers into large corporations has
rendered such personal contact and acquaintance
between the responsible employees and the indi-
vidual employer no longer possible in the old sense.
The tendency toward peace and good fellowship
which grows out of personal acquaintance or direct
contact should not, however, be lost through this
evolution to greater combinations. There seems to
be no medium through which to preserve it so
natural and efficient as that of an organization of
employees governed by rules which represent the
will of a properly constituted majority of its mem-
bers, and officered by members selected for that
purpose, and in whom authority to administer the
rules and affairs of the union and its members is
vested. The men employed in a certain line of
work or branch of industry have similar feelings,
aspirations and convictions, the natural outgrowth
of their common work and common trend or appli-
146 The Life of Railway Men.

cation of mind, the union representing their com-
munity and intelligent consideration of matters of
common interest. In the absence of a union the
extremist gets a ready hearing for incendiary
appeals to prejudice or passion when a grievance,
real or fancied, of a general nature, presents itself
for consideration. The claim of the worker that he
has the same right to join with his fellows in form-
ing an organization through which to be repre-
sented that the stockholders of the corporation have
to join others in forming the corporation and to
be represented by its directors and other officials,
seems to be thoroughly well founded, not only in
ethics but under economic considerations. Some
employers say to their employees, we do not object
to your joining the union, but we will not recognize
your union nor deal with it as representing you. If
the union is to be rendered impotent, and its use-
fulness to be nullified by refusing to permit it
to perform the functions for which it is created and
for which alone it exists, permission to join it may
well be considered as a privilege of doubtful value.
Unionism is rapidly becoming a matter of business,
and that employer who fails to give the same care-
ful attention to the question of his relation to his
labor or his employees which he gives to other
factors which enter into the conduct of his busi-
ness, makes a mistake which sooner or later he will
The Life of Railway Men. 147

be obliged to correct in this as in other things. It
is much better to start right than to make mistakes
in starting, which necessitates returning to correct
them. A labor organization in itself teaches
respect for law and order. The conscious obedi-
ence to the rules and regulations of the organiza-
tion inculeates a spirit of obedience to all law.
Orderly collective action can be attained through
organization only. In its absence we have the
ungoverned and ungovernable mob. A labor organ-
ization improves the mental, moral, material and
physical condition of its members. It teaches them
how best to perform their duties, and to become
expert in their several callings. The great im-
provement made in the last half century in the
condition of the wage-earners is due almost exclu-
sively to the power of these organizations. Sir
John Lubbock ventures to predict that the readers
of the next generation will be not our lawvers, doc-
tors, shopkeepers and manufacturers, but the labor-
ers and mechanics, and if this prediction is verified,
it will be mainly due to the beneficent influence of
these organizations. To strike them down at a
time when their adversaries are more powerful
than they ever were in the history of the world, is
to take a long step backward into the dark ages.
It is indeed the revival of despotism for laborers
and means their practical enslavement to great
148 The Life of Railway Men.

aggregations. Capital, whose gréed takes no note
of human destitution and suffering whatever,
makes railway employees a more efficient class of
workmen and inspires them with a greater pride
in their work, and whatever enables them to pro-
vide more surely for the material well-being of
themselves and those dependent upon them, is of
general public benefit. The railway employees of
the United States and Canada are striving by
means of their Associations and Brotherhoods, and
by means of the relief and insurance departments
connected with these organizations, to improve
themselves as men and as laborers, and their
endeavors have met with a large measure of suc-
cess. The associations of railway employees rank
among the most successful labor organizations, and
the influence which they have exerted upon their
members has made our railway staff better men
and more capable servants.
“NOM LADTIN TVOOT NO MAND WATINOD Nid GNV MNIT ATALS ato

 

 

 

 

 
The Life of Railway Men. 151

CHAPTER NIV.
THE LABOR PROBLEM.

N closing this book I wish to say the labor move-
ment is no new thing. It is as old as human
history itself since man first fashioned the

resources of nature into tools with which to supply
his necessities. The labor question has been ever
present. It has changed in character only as the
system of production in each era has changed—
through barbarism, chattel slavery and feudalism
down to the present day. The struggle of the
worker for his product has embodied the progress
of the race it has maimed for existing system. The
capitalist system to give that struggle a class char-
acter organization and a definite aim. The capital
system is one of ownership by a small class of the
means of production and distribution. It is the
most highlv-developed system of exploitation the
world has ever known. The power exercised by
the modern ¢apitalist class for the purpose of rob-
bery is greater than was ever dreamed of in the
wildest imagination of the slave-owners and feudal
barons of the past. Caesar and Croesus alongside
of Morgan and Rockefeller are as peanut venders to
department stores. Rockefeller can drop $80,000,-
000 on the stock exchange in a few days and not
152 The Life of Railway Men.

lose another hair from his nearly bald head. He
knows that by raising the price of coal oil millions
of wage-slaves will quickly reimburse him. We,
the working class, are wage-slaves. We are com-
pelled to sell our labor power for wages. We have
nothing but our power to sell them. The capitalist
ean sell the product of labor for a profit, but the
laborer is forced to sell his power to produce that
product for only enough wages to sustain life.
There is only one purchaser of labor power in the
modern industrial market, that purchaser being
the owner of the tools which labor must operate in
order to produce wealth and secure the where-
withal with which to live, and because the capi-
talist owns and controls industry it also owns the
workers who operate industry in order to gain a
livelihood. The workers are therefore wage-slaves
to the capitalist class. That power conferred by
ownership makes the capitalist class supreme unless
the working class organize against it. Under ordi-
nary circumstances labor is a commodity to be
bought and sold as any other commodity is bought
and sold. This is the actual view of labor taken by
the capitalist class. Some time ago General Otis,
who assisted in civilizing the benighted Filipinos
(who wanted to govern their own country), and
who has like a true partisan conducted a bitter
warfare against organized labor on the Pacific
The Life of Railway Men. 153

coast for many years, declared in a public address
that the capitalist had to fight the trades unions
because the labor agitators were attempting to form
an insufferable monopoly in a universal commod-
ity. Those words expressed the situation of labor
under the present system bluntly enough to startle
the Baers in Pennsylvania, and General Otis, like
all the other good citizens who traffic in the com-
modity of labor, knows that with the working class
organized, the owning class can not buy and sell
labor at whatever price it sees fit to set upon it. So
human labor, representing the blood and sweat and
tears of men and women and children, is only a
commodity after all. Here is a class of human
beings— whose minds and muscle, hearts and souls,
the class whose genius of hand and brain has
builded civilization and heaped up wealth in
abundance sufficient to supply the world—reduced
to the level of the insensate beast, the bale of hay,
or the pig iron, yes, reduced even lower than that,
for the hog, the hay, or the pig iron has more
value in capitalist eyes. The hog may die or
become diseased, the hay may spoil and the pig
iron become worthless, but labor can rot in factory
hells and filthy tenements, or be crushed and
maimed or blown to atoms upon railroads and in
mills and mines, but the supply never runs short.
There is always enough surplus labor represented
154 The Life of Railway Men.

by unemployed laborers ready to meet any demand.
The capitalist system is so constructed that with
every additional improvement in machinery a cer-
tain amount of idle labor is always upon the labor
market, to be used by the owners of machinery to
break strikes or to meet any other emergency.
There is only one resource for immediate or ulti-
mate betterment for the working classes while
this condition exists, namely: They must organize,
they must keep pace with the concentration of own-
ership of industry into the hands of a small class
and concentrate their forces also; otherwise they
are helpless and subject to every condition sought
to be imposed upon them by the owning class;
individually the workers are powerless, individu-
ally the capitalist class can take them each and
severally and pommel them into subjection and
the workers who object to such treatment will be
jumped upon until they ery ‘‘enough.’’ But organ-
ization must mean more than a mere contest over
a reduction of hours, advance in wages or a reme-
dying of workshop conditions, all of which require
constant struggling to retain when once gained.
Organization must extend beyond this limited
economic sphere and embrace the broader domain
which includes politics and every other phase of
human activity. The working classes have com-
pelled the capitalists, their lackeys, and the press
The Life of Railway Men. 155

which represents capitalism, to acknowledge almost
generally that the workers have the right to organ-
ize economically. Only the Otises and Parrys are
brave and foolhardy enough to fight the organiza-
tion of labor openly. If the right to organize into
trade unions is at last conceded to labor, it is not
through any sense of justice or philanthropy on
the part of the capitalist class. That right has
been conceded reluctantly and only because the
working class itself, through the power of organi-
zation and the toil and sacrifices of its exponents,
has forced the concessions. The working class
itself has never gained anything, however small,
from the capitalist class by compromise or concil-
iation. Whatever labor has gained has been
wrenched from the unwilling hands of the capital-
ist class, and the price paid for that gain has been
a heavy one. All the broken hearts and shattered
lives and homes represented in the gloomy black-
listing and bloodshed of every labor revolt, strike
and lockout in history is the sum total of the
cost of every step in advance made by the working
class. The real question then before the workers
of the present day is no longer the right to organ-
ize. They have won by hard fighting what should
have been theirs already. Now that they are organ- :
ized and are ever organizing, and their power and
influence are increasing, the question they must
156 The Life of Railway Men,

wuswer very soon ts, Who are going to ruin the
unions their members or Che capitalists) Phat is
the question whieh every member of a trade union
mist consider today above all others, becuse
upon the wary he aaswors Chat question depends the
Motiire ane all Chiat anionisim means fo Ghe working
Class, The mightiest foree of progress ta the
world today is the organized working: elas. Tf
i, etsy in timony with the industrial foreos
ak work in soerety; TP it directs TX enerpios
ong the Hines of Che elise alrippile; if ik envies
HN intelligence, Tis solidarity and elas COnseious
Hess Into fhe politient field, and this without giving
up iis identily ax oan aelive economie faelor if
He does these things, (hen the day of tts redemption
from eapitalisnn is not farolfs but if in ite desire
for peace if chooses fo be ded aside by ae fade eon
servallisnn from the straight path that leads to free
dom, then all the saerifieas of the past will have
vone for naught and the hopes of the present and
eating dreams for the future will vanish fike the
baseless fabrie of a vision and Jeave not a wrack
hehind. Tn every eapitaligh paper, journal and
magazine in this country the same siren Kong ie
heing sung: the unions must be conservative, they
must consider the public interests, they mast meet
capital ina faire spirit, and so on, as if eapital had

ever met labor in anything butan aneivil, hateful
The Life of Railway Men. 157

and despotic spirit until forced by labor itself to
do otherwise; as if the capitalist class ever con-
siders anything but its own profits; as if the work-
ers must not consider themselves, their homes and
their families dependent upon them; as if conser-
vatism is not the will o’ the wisp that has led labor
into its present quagmire of doubt and uncertainty
and made it the prey of every device put forward
by the capitalist class; and I may well say that if
organized labor has not gained more, if it can still
be defeated in its grandest and most tremendous
efforts, if the judges can still bludgeon it into insen-
sibility and politicians throttle its highest aspira-
tions and wreck its noblest ideals, it is because
those entrusted with leadership and official power
have not risen to the heights of ambition for eman-
cipation that have inspired the working class. The
problem yet to be solved by the organized forces
of labor is becoming more and more pregnant with
good or evil for our class every day that goes by.
Let us not be deceived by the fancied superiority
of numbers. Numbers are as nothing against the
united action of an enemy, disciplined, alert,
unscrupulous and unfeeling, intrenched behind a
barricade of money, prejudice and ignorance. All
our efforts to rise to win back even a little more of
the product of our toil to ameliorate the evils
heavily oppressing us will be futile and worthless
158 The Life of Railay Meu.

if we do not appreciate the mettle of the opposi-
tion, its countless ramifications, the scope of its
influence and the height and depth of its passion
for power and perpetuation. No ruling class ever
gloried so brazenly in its self-exaltation as does
our modern capitalist class. No despotic class ever
reveled in spectacular exhibition of its dominance
as do the industrial and financial magnates of
to-day. They will not yield their rule and reign
without a struggle which will shake society to its
foundations. It remains for the working class to
say how that struggle will end; whether in the
extension of exploitation and wage-slavery or in
the triumph of progress in the victory of the work-
ing class itself. We have hardly begun to prepare
for that struggle, while on the other hand, the
capitalist class openly and covertly organizes and
fortifies itself behind the barrier provided by every
institution of government, education, information
and religion dependent upon the continued exploit-
ation of the working class for existence. livery
device at the command of the class whose resources
are almost limitless will be resorted to in order to
defeat the triumph of the proletariat. If the work-
ing class itself will but awaken to its possibilities,
if it will stop long enough in its feverish haste
to pile up wealth for its masters to realize what
the future holds for it, if it will but reach out its
The Life of Railway Men. 159

mighty grasp and seize its own, then the gigantic
power represented by capital will crumble into
nothingness before it, for it is labor alone that has
created this great ower, and without labor’s con-
sent that power loses both its terrors and its basis
for existence. The whole superstructure of soci-
ety rests upon the working class. When that class
moves, the foundations of the whole social scheme
tremble and the vaunted rulers and giant intellects
of the hour become weak and puny remnants of
past glories. But so long as labor kneels at the
feet of false gods, whether they be clothed in the
garb of a philanthropist. a peacemaker or an igno-
rant or selfish leader, then labor will be treated with
the scorn and contempt that cringing serfs deserve.
then it will continue to be a fit target for injunc-
tions and make ready food for the grave. But
there are signs that the working class is not going
to submit calmly to the ignoble treatment being
thrust upon it in one form and another by the rul-
ing class. From every hand comes the tidings of
a great awakening and uprising. Labor is study-
ing, and more than that, labor is acting; the tide
of revolt against the blighting, soul-crushing, heart-
breaking system of wage-slavery is rising every-
where, it finds expression in every land where the
capitalist system has gained a foothold. It can
not be stared any more than the ocean tides can
160 The Life of Railway Men.

be stayed. It rises despite the indifference of some
workingmen, the ignorance of others, and the cow-
ardice and treachery of many more. The emanci-
pation of the working class looms large on the
industrial and political horizon, and all the oppo-
sition of capitalism coupled with the apathy of
labor itself can not prevail against it. Let the
ruling classes and representatives take warning,
then let them understand that they can enact all
the military laws they please. They can enforce
their new military law, which makes every able-
bodied citizen of the United States a recruit ready
to be drafted to do the dirty work of capitalism.
They can organize their civic federations, their
manufacturers’ associations and nourish other fool
spasins of a fool system. They can continue to
poison the people’s minds through the debauchery
of intellects and the profanation of souls. They can
marshal all their forces as strong and formidable
as they may, but there is a stronger army marshal-
ing its forees also—the Army of Labor, whose
members are countless, whose capacity for sacri-
fices has been rendered unlimited through the suf-
fering of ages, and whose ranks are closing up for
the greatest social struggle that mankind has ever
seen. Lincoln, that grand old man, struck the
shackles from five millions of negro slaves, and if
the labor organizations of to-day will get together
The Life of Railway Men. 161

and form into one grand body, it will only be a
matter of time when the shackles will be struck
from five times that number of industrial slaves.
So, this, the labor question, is the foremost ques-
tion before the world to-day that requires a correct
solution. Many great men, writers, orators, edi-
tors, etc., have for one thousand nine hundred and
five years vainly tried to solve it, and the question
only seems to become more complicated and vexed.
Organizations of all kinds and sorts have come and
gone in their faint efforts to successfully solve this
great question. Hundreds of schemes, laws and
devices have been devised, planned and inaugu-
rated only to meet with utter defeat, and have only
left in their trail misery, want and poverty, and
to-day the toiling worker remains a wage-slave as he
did in the days of ‘‘Pagan Rome,’’ and shall ever
continue to remain such so long as the present
industrial system is in vogue or tolerated. Labor is
prior to all things, even the dumbest beast in the
forest and field must perform a certain amount of
self-labor. History tells us that from the time of
creation, and even before we were created, labor
was preéminent. Even the Most High labored, for
does not the Holy Word teach us that God created
the earth in six days and rested on the seventh?
So if he created or made this earth and all there is
contained in it, did He not labor? And, do we not
162 The Life of Railway Men.

learn from this piece of history that labor existed
long years before capital? And that labor is prior
to capital? And capital is only a creation of labor?
And that there would be no capital, or need of
capital if labor did not exist? Yet many of the
blind and ignorant tell us in the face of these
indisputable facts that capital is prior to labor. I
challenge the statement and defy any man to show
me wherein I am wrong. Now let us go further,
and form ourselves into an army of truthseekers.
Let us learn wherein these statements are right or
wrong. Any half-witted creature will admit that
man alone creates wealth, and that the dollar is
created by law, and that there were no dollars until
they were created by law, and that law is the sov-
ereign power of the people, and that man existed
prior to both law and dollars; hence we prove that
labor existed long before the dollar or law, and
even before man himself was created. To-day we’
see that all the great industries of the land in which
labor toils, and the tools with which they toil, are
owned by private persons or corporations, thus
making them complete masters of the labor world;
and owning the great shops and tools, they also own
the jobs. As a commercial result they are oper-
ated for profit, and labor must, of necessity, beg
of the proprietors the opportunity to earn a living
and be allowed the privilege of staying upon this
The Life of Railway Men. 163

earth, and so long as dollars in the way of profit
can be squeezed from the products of the laborer’s
toil, he is used; but when labor ceases to yield a
certain profit they have no further use for him, and
he is cast to one side to make room for one who
can create a larger profit. In the private owner-
ship of the things upon which the people in com-
mon depend, we find in its hundreds of years of
existence a trail of vice, crime, debauchery, want,
misery and poverty. Labor builds great prisons
and asylums only to become inmates of them;
labor builds great mansions and fine houses, but
only lives in hovels; labor makes fine raiment and
dresses shabbily; labor builds great shops, rail-
roads, and all other institutions of a civilized
world, and yet owns not any of them; labor pro-
duces abundant food, yet it hungers; labor pro-
duces a bountiful supply of fuel, yet it freezes;
labor creates everything, and yet it owns nothing.
There has never been a free people, a civilized
nation, a true and real republic on this earth.
Human society always consisted of masters and
slaves, and the slaves have always been and are
to-day the foundation stones of the social fabric.
Wage-labor is but a name; wage-slavery is a fact.
The twenty-five millions of wage-workers in the
United States are twenty-five millions of twentieth-
century slaves. This is the plain meaning of what
164 The Life of Railway Men.

is known as the labor market. It is one of the most
barbarous facts in all Christendom. The mere
term expresses the animalism of commercial civil-
ization. And they who buy and they who sell in
the labor market are alike dehumanized by the
inhuman traffic in the brains, blood and bones of
human beings. The labor market is the foundation
of so-called civilized society. Without these sham-
bles, without this commerce in human life, this
sacrifice of manhood and womanhood, this barter
of babes, this sale of souls, the capitalist civiliza-
tions of all lands and all climes would crumble to
ruin and perish from the earth. Twenty-five
millions of wage-slaves are bought and sold daily
at prevailing prices in the American labor market.
This is the great and foremost issue before the
world, which calls for a just solution, and the very
moment the workingmen begin to do their own
thinking they will understand the great issue, and
can then secure their absolute emancipation from
this profit-seeking, competitive industrial system,
and the inauguration of capitalistic ideas and
schemes. In the early days of our nation there
were robbers and they found victims, but the vic-
tims did not rest meekly under their wrongs.
Between these myrmidons of English,royalty and
the new lords of dollardom the sole difference is in
the conditions of oppression. The system of to-day
The Life of Railway Men. 165

is bolder, fiercer and more grasping than that our
ancestors drove across the ocean in 1776. It has
possessed itself of the resources of our rich country
and levies tribute on our coal and meat, bread and
clothes, on our comings and goings, on our earn-
ings and savings. It has a tax on every motion and
function of our lives. My poor toiler, no race since
Father Time took down his scythe and went forth,
will bow lower to God’s and man’s laws than the
American people. Once get it firmly into their
heads that in their midst is a power working for
the annihilation of their comforts, their happiness
and their freedom, once let them really make sure,
and they will rise and go forth, and before they
return there will have been placed between the cov-
ers of history pages that will need no bookmark
for coming generations to open to, there will have
been added to the world’s history pages so black
and so red that those telling of the doings of Mount
Pelee will appear as though printed with chalk
and water. Before the eyes of the American peo-
ple to-day stands forth a little handful of men,
risen from their own ranks, who within the last
thirty years have grown richer and more powerful
than the kings, earls and dukes of: those lands
where the people are not free and equal in the
pride.of their powers and possessions. These same
men grow daily more insolent in flaunting their
166 The Life of Railway Men.

riches and their superiority before the law of the
nation in the face of the people, for they know
that, by the operation of the financial mechanism
they have created,.the time will come when the own-
ership of all wealth of this great country must
fall into their hands and the people be reduced to
actual servitude. You see them, and lo! they are
but as other men, only meaner, more cruel, more
cowardly. These men are no different from the
rest of us, save that they are Machiavellis in their
treachery, Apaches in their cruelty. The political
solidarity of the working class means the death of
despotism, the birth of freedom, the sunrise of
civilization. The only differences that ever arise
between the capitalist class only relate to profit
and the exploited spoils of labor, and under the
administration of commerce by the capitalist class,
markets are glutted and industry paralyzed, work-
ingmen become tramps and criminals, while injunc-
tions, soldiers and riot guns are brought into action
to preserve ‘‘law’’ and order in the chaotic carni-
val of capitalistic anarchy. Deny it as may the
cunning capitalists who are clear-sighted enough
to perceive it, or ignore it as may the torpid
workers who are too blind and unthinking to see
it, the struggle in which we are engaged to-day is
a class struggle, and as the toiling millions come to
see and understand it and rally to a political stand-
The Life of Railway Men. 167

ard of their class, they will drive all these capi-
talistic exploiters into one body, and the class
struggle will then be so clearly revealed that the
hosts of labor will find their true place in the con-
flict and strike a united and decisive blow that will
destroy this wage-slavery and achieve their full,
complete and final emancipation. These are ques-
tions the vast importance of which are not suffi-
ciently recognized by the workingmen or they
would not be the prey of capitalistic parasites and
the servile tools of scheming politicians who use
their master’s lease of power and perpetuate their
own ignorance, poverty and shame. In answering
these questions I propose to be as frank and candid
as plain-meaning words will allow, for I have but
one object in view, and that is truth, and I shall
write it as I see it if I have to stand alone. But,
to begin with, I will say: That ignorance alone
stands in the way of the workers’ success. The
profit-grabbing capitalists understand this and use
their resources to prevent the workers from seeing
the light. Intellectual darkness is essential to
industrial slavery. Our present competitive sys-
tem stands for naught. But now to our questions.

First: Every working man and woman owe it
to themselves, their class and their country, to take
an active and intelligent interest in political affairs.
The ballot of united labor expresses the people’s
168 The Life of Railway Men.

will and the people’s will should be the supreme
law of a free nation. The ballot means that labor
is no longer dumb, that at last it has a voice, that
it may be heard, and if united must be heard.
Seventeen hundred and seventy-six years of strug-
gle and sacrifice were required to wrest this symbol
of freedom from the mailed clutch of tyranny and
place it in the hand of labor as the shield and
lance of attack and defense, and the abuse and not
the use of it is responsible for its evil. The divi-
sion of labor is the abuse of the ballot, and the
penalty attached thereto is slavery and death. The
united labor ballot of those who toil and have not
will vanquish those who have and toil not, and
solve forever the problem of pure, absolute democ-
racy. Ever since the creation of the human race
there have been class struggles. In every state of
society, ancient and modern, labor has been
exploited, degraded and in subjection. Civilization
has done but very little for labor except only to
modify the forms of its exploitation. Labor has
always been the mudsill of the social fabric—is so
now, and will be until the class struggle ends in
class extinction and free society. Society has always
been and is now built upon exploitation—the
exploitation of a class. The working class, whether
slaves, serfs or wage-laborers, and the exploited
class have always been instinctively or consciously
The Life of Railway Men. 169

in revolt against their oppressors. Through all the
centuries the enslaved toilers have moved slowly
but surely toward their final freedom. My call is
to the exploited class, the workers in all useful
trades and professions, all honest occupations, from
the most menial service to the highest skill, to rally
beneath their own standard and put an end to the
last of the barbarous class struggles by federating
into one grand body. Let us take possession of
all railroads, making them the common property of
all, and thereby abolish wage-slavery and operate
them for the benefit of all the people and not for
the benefit of the few; thus will the exploitation
of this class come to an end, and it will be the begin-
ning of settling the greatest problem that has ever
confronted the American people—namely, ‘‘The
Labor Problem.’’
The Life of Railway Men. 171

CHAPTER XV.
COMMENTS.

NE man and two boys do the work which it
formerly required eleven hundred spinners
to do.

Cotton printing machines have replaced fifteen
hundred per cent of hand labor.

One machine with one man as attendant manu-
factures as many horseshoes in one day as it would
take five hundred men to-make in the same time.

One nail machine has taken the place of one
thousand men.

In the manufacture of paper ninety-five per cent
of hand labor has been replaced,

One man now makes as much pottery ware in the
same time as one thousand men could do before
machinery was applied.

By the use of machinery in unloading ships one
man can perform the labor of two thousand men
working without its aid.

An expert watchmaker can turn out from two
hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty
watches each year by the aid of machinery; eighty-
five per cent of hand labor being thus replaced.

One fireman fires an engine that hauls three
times as many cars as an engine did ten years ago,
172 The Life of Railway Men,

and two brakemen handle a train that used to
require six, considering the number of cars in a
train.

At Red Star, West Virginia, a wildcat and a
bulldog were put in a cage and the people who
stood around to see the animals tear each other had
great amusement. Reserved seats were provided
for the ladies; this is the elevating amusement
provided for the profit there is in it. Profit is of
that character; it is debasing to those who pay it
and to those who receive it. What do you poor
wage-slaves think of the so-called system?

When the miners of Colorado refused to work
for their masters at the wages and brutal treatment
the masters offered, they sent men and had the
miners shot down, in cold blood in their beds. The
coroner’s jury returned a verdict to this effect.
For the miner to vote for other than the master’s
candidate and hirelings would be anarchy, but to
shoot down the miners like hogs in a pen, that is
capitalistic law and order. I wonder how much of
such ill-treatment it will take to make the American
workingman see where his own individual interests
are drifting.

A church conference in Maine raised $70,000 for
foreign missions, but it failed to raise 70 cents for
the striking miners. Money to convert heathens is
The Life of Railway Men. 173

plentiful, but money to aid those who are not
heathens can not be found.

The annual statement of the Missouri & Pacific
Railroad shows that its net earnings last year were
$13,190,294.30. It operates 5,249 miles of trackage.
This shows that the net profits of the railroad were
over $2,500 per mile. This is twenty-five per cent
net profit on the cost of an investment to duplicate
its property, as it has been shown that the cost of
railroads, outside of mountainous countries, is less
than $10,000 a mile, which includes the enormous
profits that are made by the great plants that fur-
nish the material and in which the railroad builders
stand in and swindle the stockholders who furnish
the real money to build. The Missouri Pacific is
eapitalized at $40,000 per mile—more than three
times what it would cost to build it new; and the
people who are skinned to pay these millions believe
it would ruin them to own the roads and operate
them for the benefit of the whole people. Do you
believe that any man has a right to live idly by
levying a tax or profit upon the labor of his fellow
men? Do you believe that the resources of nature,
which no man made, should be monopolized by a
few to the great injury of the many? Do you
believe that inventions and discoveries which
greatly facilitate production, and which are a
social growth, should be owned and used to enrich
174 The Life of Radway Men.

one class and degrade another? And do you believe
in a ‘‘system’’ that considers machinery before
man, exalts the dollar above humanity and
enthrones capital above labor, which is its creator?
Do you? and can you answer these few questions?

A reform writer should never use the word

‘‘revolution.’’

It is suggestive of fight, and into
the narrow and loosely packed intellect of multi-
tudes of people who think themselves thinkers the
idea never entered that there could be a revolution
without fight. They do not see that a revolution
is actually here, that we are right in it. Reformers
should, however, for their own peace and safety,
remember that all the ‘‘holy’’ wars belong to the
past. Nothing is ‘‘sacred’’ unless it has passed
into history. Whatever is dead, is sacred; what-
ever is living is impious, if it conforms not to con-
ventionalism and resists justice. It is the proper
thing to prate about dead heroes and dead issues,
but quite improper to speak of present tendencies
and future dangers. Monuments and cathedrals
are built to dead men, and the living who build
them are housed poorly, clothed miserably and fed
reluctantly. Yet there is one thing that is ‘‘sacred”’
ever in these degenerate days, and that is law.
Cram all the concentrated deviltry possible into a
law—it is ‘‘sacred.’? Rob the people of their
national heritages by law—it is ‘‘sacred.’’? Give
The Life of Railway Men. 175

to the few the wealth created by many and do it by
law—it is ‘‘sacred.’’? Protect the interest of the
aristocrats by law—it is ‘‘sacred.’’ Take the
wealth of the people from them through false sys-
tems of taxation by law—it is ‘‘sacred.’’ It was
a ‘‘sacred’’ thing nearly forty years ago to set free
the slaves, and what would the orators do without
that theme? but it is impious to talk about freeing
the North and South, too, from the capitalistic con-
quest that threatens both.

A few days ago, a hungry man, stripped and
robbed of his natural and social rights by our
aristocratic civilization, broke into a bakery and
stole sufficient grub to satisfy a hungry stomach;
he was arrested and sent to the house of correction.
A day or so later, a respectable multimillionaire
bursted a bank and stole a cool million of dollars.
He will, at the proper time, be elected to Congress.

The working class of Alabama has just woke up
to the fact that the capitalists have disfranchised
three-fourths of them because they are poor. The
capitalists are not asleep, but the toilers are.

There are 16,000,000 families in the United
States, 4,700,000—a little more than one-fourth—
own homes, free of indebtedness; 2,196,000 live in
mortgaged houses; 8,365,000—more than one-half
—live in rented houses; 800,000 live in caves, dug-
outs and tents. These figures are taken from the
176 The Life of Railway Men.

‘‘ Abstract of the Twelfth Census’’ issued by your
Government. Did you ever think?

The capitalists tell you that there is plenty of
work for every man who wants it, and then when
men ask more wages and strike, they say there are
plenty of men who would like to take their places!
What do these men want with the places of the
strikers if they have work? When a job is adver-
tised, sometimes hundreds of men apply for each
place. If there are places for all who want work,
why do the workers apply in such vast numbers for
vacancies? But then the capitalists exist by reason
of the professional lies they make the toilers
believe. Of course you are not a freak to believe
their fairy tales! More than one million emigrants
from all the nations of the earth arrived in Amer-
ica and made this their place of residence during
the fiscal year just ended, June 30. All records
have been broken, the alien influx continues to-day
in most astounding numbers. The forthcoming
year, from present indications, will sweep on our
shores a tide of humanity equivalent to the popula-
tion of any one of the great cities of America with
the exception of Chicago and New York. Agents
of the ocean steamship lines, despite the revelations
following official investigation, are still sowing the
seeds of deception throughout Europe and luring
the ignorant peasant to their ticket offices with their
The Life of Railway Men. 177

glowing stories of streets flowing with milk and
honey.

Capital does not remember that when the coun-
try’s flag is in danger, when it becomes necessary
to step forward to defend its honor, it is the labor-
ing element that is the first to answer the call and
to go to the front to prevent probable invasion, and
to protect the vast commercial interests of our coun-
try from harm.

Our peasant system amasses enormous astonish-
ing wealth in the hands of a few, the result of
hundreds of thousands being robbed of the fruits
of their toil. It causes immense fortunes, the pos-
session of which enables a small number of indi-
viduals to not only increase the power by which
they appropriate the labor of others to their own
use, but also to arrogate to themselves all political
and social power that they may fix legislatures,
judges, newspapers, etc., to serve the interests of
their own class exclusively. It will not be neces-
sary to prove this to you, as every one who reads
the daily papers know it to be true. Our glorious
starry flag represents democracy and freedom, but
the so-called common people do not know what
democracy and freedom miean. The masses of the
people may be able to tell who dresses the best,
they may be able to tell all about a prize fight or a
horse race, or who attends church the most regu-
178 The Life of Railheay Men.

larly, or what this man or that man has done; but
anything that concerns their own welfare they
know nothing about, and will not try to learn. You
must recollect no man is perfect, we are all liable
to make mistakes, but we are all created with
mental faculties and it is our duty to use them if
we ever expect to retake our starry flag out of the
hands of thieves and robbers so that it shall wave
over the land of the free and the home of the brave,
and not as it does now, over the land of the free
and the home of the slave, or over the land where
the poor are despoiled by the knave. Oh! how
humiliating. A man dies possessed of one or more
millions, he wills most of it'to the churches. The
churches clutch it greedily, no questions are asked
whether he got it honestly or dishonestly; they say
God bless the man and his money, just as if the
Lord didn’t know or needed stolen wealth. This
worldly side of our form of Christianity renders
its influence for good as water. It is an adulter-
ated, or we may say a diluted form of Christianity ;
one part genuine, the rest water. Yes, it is watered
stock, and badly watered at that. From the pulpits
of the churches the people are taught that the Son
of God’s requirements are supreme love to God and
universal love to man. Yet Christian nations
increase their armies and continue to invent and
manufacture guns and horrid implements of war
The Life of Railway Men. 179

by which to shed each other’s blood. Yes, our
boasted civilization does not measure up much
above a glittering barbarism; it is because our
so-called Christianity is spurious, and we may build
colleges on every hill and school houses and
churches in every valley; but as long as we prac-
tice in business our present system of robbery and
spoliation which has divided Christendom into
classes of a few rich and the many poor, that long
will society sink deeper in ignorance and crime.
No nation can long stand that ignores the father-
hood of God and the brotherhood of man. God
intended to elevate mankind and he will do it, these
depressing evils will be removed, and if the church
fails to do it then his judgment will fall in vials of
wrath and wash them out in blood. There are but
two forces used in the government of mankind,
namely, moral and physical. The Government
represents the physical—the church should repre-
sent the moral; but as a matter of fact there is an
immense moral element at work outside the church,
in spite of and far in advance of the church. There
is probably not a labor organization in the land
that does not occupy higher ground morally in
the social realm than the church. Yes, there are
vastly more outside of the church who are working
to destroy usury, monopoly and other systems of
robbery than there are in the church.
180 The Life of Railway Men.

Freight trains carry all the tonnage it is possible
for a locomotive to pull. How sweet is the joy of
the fireman as he sweats and tugs and wears his
life away trying to make a leaky boiler steam with
slack coal, and how that joy is heightened when
from a siding he watches a party of railroad mag-
nates sweep by in their magnificent palace trains.
He and his fellow workers run the railroad and
make the business a success, while some liveried
plutocrat, who perhaps inherited the road from an
ancestor, appropriates the profits and lives one con-
tinuous round of luxury therefrom. In its fight
against eight-hour legislation organized capital has
the conscious support of the courts, the military
and all branches of government, and the conscious
and unconscious support of some labor leaders.

oar
"NOISTUIO) NALIV ANIONG dQ ONIMOId MANO DNTMOAUM

 

 

 

 
The Life of Railway Men. 183

TO THE PUBLIC.

N closing, I appeal to you in behalf of the rail-
way men of the United States, who are law-
abiding citizens, heads of families, guardians

of the vast and enormous commerce, the greatest
industry of all industries; in whose hands rest the
safety of the traveling public of untold property
and wealth; in whose hands rest the very safety of
yourselves in going to and from office and work;
in whose hands rest the welfare and safety of aged
fathers, mothers, loving sisters and brothers; in
whose hands rests the welfare of hundreds of loving
wives, untold numbers of innocent, helpless chil-
dren, now born and unborn; in the name of all these
and in the name of God and humanity; in the name
of justice ; in the name of thousands of moss-covered
mounds that dot our cemeteries, which only remind
me of the many brothers who have fallen in the
faithful discharge of their duty; in the name of
the crippled and maimed brothers I see on every
hand; in the name of all that’s great and good;
and as God is your guide I hope and trust that you
who read the few lines in this book will look at the
railway men of our country in a different light than
i84 The Life of Railway Men.

the railroad magnates of this country would have
you look at them, and-.remember that they are doing
a great work, and that they deserve to be classed
among the foremost citizens of our land, and God’s
people. Respectfully yours,

Tue AUTHOR.
OR

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