ENGLAND AND WALES. SCOTLAND. IRELAND.
Average Average Average
weekly weekly weekly
Number earnings Number earnings Number earnings
Year. Employed. per Head. Employed. per Head. Employed. per Head.
s. d. s. d. s. d.
1901 378,121 25 6¼ 43,710 23 1½ 18,726 19 5
1902 383,883 25 5¼ 45,240 23 1¼ 19,306 19 3¼
1903 384,465 25 4½ 44,922 22 11½ 18,934 19 5
1904 380,610 25 7 45,216 23 1¼ 19,751 19 1½
1905 384,321 25 10¼ 45,399 23 3¾ 19,531 19 2¾
1906 391,661 25 11½ 46,407 23 4¼ 19,874 19 9½
1907 412,804 26 4¾ 46,416 23 5½ 19,470 19 8¼
1908 395,271 25 6¼ 44,809 22 8½ 19,040 19 8¼
1909 394,928 25 10½ 45,147 23 3¾ 19,369 19 11
1910 397,715 26 3½ 46,105 23 3 19,199 20 7
Whatever the precise amount of the remuneration received, allowance must be
made for various subsidiary advantages of the railway service.
Free uniforms or clothes are given to various grades, the recipients
thereof on one of the leading lines including station-masters, district
police and traffic inspectors, platform inspectors, yard inspectors,
passenger guards, ticket collectors, foremen porters and foremen parcel
porters, foremen shunters, brakesmen, shunters, signalmen, parcel porters,
vanmen and {436}boys, porters, sergeants and policemen, telegraph
messengers, sleeping-car attendants and corridor attendants. Passenger
guards, for example, get a summer coat and vest every two years, winter
coat and vest every two years, summer trousers every year, winter trousers
every year, topcoat every three years, mackintosh every four years (main
line) or every three years (local line), belt (main line) when required,
cap every year, and two neckties every year. The amount which a man saves
by the supply of this free clothing naturally adds proportionately to the
actual value of his position.
On many of the lines the companies have provided for their workers a
considerable amount of cottage accommodation, with gardens and allotments,
charging rentals which yield little more than a nominal return on the
capital expenditure.
The Glasgow and South-Western Railway Company have organised, at
Cockerhill, a model village for the accommodation of the principal section
of the locomotive staff employed in the engine-sheds there. Purchase of
land and construction of buildings involved the company in an expenditure
of £70,000. To-day the village has a total population of 700 persons. Each
tenant gets three large rooms and a kitchen for a rental of £13 a year,
_plus_ local rates, which amount to about 17s. a year. Attached to every
house is a plot of ground where the tenant can grow his own vegetables, or
cultivate his favourite flowers. The centre of social life in the village
is the Railway Institute, a commodious building erected by the company, and
still maintained to a certain extent at their cost. Administration of the
affairs of this Institute is entrusted to a General Committee of thirty-two
of the tenants, elected annually, and having different subcommittees, each
of which takes charge of a particular phase of the work. The Institute has
a hall (reserved on Sundays for religious meetings of a strictly
non-sectarian character), reading and recreation-rooms, library and baths.
The village also has a fire brigade, a children's savings bank, and a
committee for the organisation of ambulance work.
A rent club, the subscription to which is one penny a week, ensures for its
members the continued payment of their rent in the event of their being
absent from work on account of sickness. Still another advantage offered to
the tenants is {437}that of a season ticket between Cockerhill and Glasgow
for themselves or for members of their household at the nominal charge of
five shillings a year.
One of the latest developments in connection with the housing of railway
companies' workers has been on the Great Eastern Railway, the chairman of
the company, Lord Claud Hamilton, saying at the half-yearly meeting on July
28, 1911:--
"We have been asked by a portion of our staff to do something for them in
respect of cottages, for although in some districts they can obtain
adequate lodging, in other districts it is exceedingly difficult to obtain,
at a reasonable rent, the decent accommodation which they require. Now that
our prospects are improving, we have settled as from the 1st of July to
spend £10,000 a year on cottages for our workmen. It is not a large sum,
but it is as much as we can afford, and I must tell you we can only expect
to get, at the most, 2½ per cent interest on that money. But although that
is a low rate of interest, and not remunerative, the extra comfort,
satisfaction and happiness which these men and their families will derive
from healthy and adequate accommodation repays us, I am sure, indirectly,
over and over again in their more willing service to their employers."
Railwaymen have, again, exceptional opportunities for getting cheap
holidays. In addition to the regular holidays given to members of the
salaried staff, most of the grades of the wages staff who have a certain
period of service to their credit get from three to six days' holiday a
year, with pay. In some cases the railway company provide special trains
enabling their employees in some railway colony--Swindon, for example--to
take a holiday _en masse_, the said colony becoming, temporarily, a
deserted village. The free passes given to members of the staff are
sometimes available for travel over the lines of other companies as well.
The concession, also, to railway servants of what are known as "privilege
tickets" enables them and their families to travel at exceptionally low
rates. These tickets are granted so freely that the number issued by one
company alone during the course of a single year has been nearly 800,000.
Provision for the railwayman's old age is assured by {438}superannuation
funds in the case of the salaried staff and by pension funds in the case of
the wages staff.
The whole question in regard to the standing of these funds was
investigated by a Departmental Committee which was appointed by the Board
of Trade in 1908, and presented its report [Cd. 5349] in 1910. It was the
position, more especially, of the superannuation funds that gave rise to
the uneasiness leading up to the appointment of this Committee. The
earliest of the said funds was started by the London and North-Western
Railway Company in 1853, and other companies followed the example thus set,
the Committee reporting on, altogether, fifteen superannuation funds
brought to their notice. At first no doubt was felt as to the stability of
the funds; but when the railway companies, with a view to maintaining the
efficiency of the service, enforced the retirement of officers at the age
of sixty-five, or in some cases at the otherwise optional age of sixty,
heavier demands were made on the funds at the same time that the benefits
were being increased. Actuarial investigations disclosed substantial
deficiencies, and some of the companies sought to cover these by abandoning
actuarial valuations altogether and guaranteeing payment of claims out of
their revenue, this being in addition to the ordinary contributions which,
in one form or another, all the companies were making to the funds. A
certain want of uniformity followed, and the Committee now made various
recommendations in regard to the future working both of the fifteen
superannuation funds and of seventeen pension funds applying to the wages
staff.
There is no need here to enter into the details of the actual or proposed
arrangements. Suffice it, therefore, to point to the existence of these
funds, with their accumulated reserves of close on £11,000,000, as designed
to assure the future of nearly 300,000 railwaymen, over and above whatever
salary or wage they may receive while in active employment.
The Railway Guards' Universal Friendly Society was established in 1849 to
encourage thrift and to provide, among other benefits, permanent pay for
life to disabled members and annuities for the widows and orphans of
deceased members. The total amount expended in relief down to the end of
1910 {439}was over £358,000, and there were then 250 members and widows in
receipt of life allowances amounting to £4758 per annum.
Further provision either for railwaymen themselves in times of distress or
for their widows and orphans is made through various organisations which
are supported by the contributions alike of railway servants, of the
railway companies and of the general public.
At the head of these excellent bodies stands the Railway Benevolent
Institution, which attained its jubilee in 1908. The objects in view, as
summarised by Lord Claud Hamilton at the fifty-third annual dinner on May
4, 1911, are: (1) To grant permanent annuities to railway officers and
servants in distressed circumstances; (2) to grant permanent pensions to
widows in similar circumstances; (3) to educate and maintain orphan
children between six and fifteen years of age, and then give them a start
in life; (4) to give by gratuities and by contingent annuities temporary
assistance until permanent relief can be secured from the funds of the
Institution; (5) to grant gratuities from the casualty fund to injured
servants and to widows of deceased servants; (6) to enable officers and
servants to insure their lives in the best approved companies on special
terms; and (7) to relieve distress whether arising among subscribers or
non-subscribers.
No fewer than 157,000 railwaymen of all classes are subscribers in one form
or another to the funds of the Institution, which, apart from amounts given
as gratuities, conferred its benefits in 1910 on 2,672 annuitants and
children, the total outgoings for the year under all heads being £55,396.
To particularise only one phase of this varied activity, the number of
children--mainly orphans of railwaymen killed in the service--who have been
educated in the great Railway Orphanage at Derby (a branch of the
Institution) has been over 2000.
Another leading railway charity, the United Kingdom Railway Officers and
Servants' Association, founded in 1861 to grant assistance in time of
distress and necessity to railway officers and servants, their widows and
orphans, held its jubilee festival on April 28, 1911, when Viscount
Castlereagh, M.P., who presided, announced that since the establishment of
the Association the relief afforded had been as follows:--
£ s. d. {440}
Annuitants 51,233 13 0
Sickness 100,411 7 6
Widows and members, at death 58,956 0 0
Orphans 4,595 3 0
Special grants 9,390 11 0