KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH THE MEN
THE FIRST ORGANIZED BRANCH OF THE RAILROAD Y. M. C. A.--CORNELIUS
VANDERBILT'S GIFT OF A CLUB-HOUSE--GROWTH OF THE RAILROAD Y. M. C.
A.--PLANS BY THE RAILWAYS TO CARE FOR THE SICK AND THE CRIPPLED--THE
PENSION SYSTEM--ENTERTAINMENTS--MODEL RESTAURANTS--FREE LEGAL
ADVICE--EMPLOYEES' MAGAZINES--THE ORDER OF THE RED SPOT.
The historic gray Union Station, which still stands at Cleveland, housed
what was destined to be the very first systematic effort of the railroad
to get in touch and keep in touch with its men. In that building, once new
and splendid, but now old and grimy, George Meyers, the depot master,
gathered a group of railroaders on a Sunday away back in 1870. The man
came again on a second Sunday, still again on a third; after a little
while those Sunday afternoon gatherings became habitual, and a new kink in
all the intricacy of railroading was established. The meetings were partly
religious and partly social, and eventually they led to a distinct
innovation in that depot.
This little conference of Meyers was, in 1872, developed into the first
organized branch of the railroad Young Men's Christian Association.
General John H. Devereux, the general manager of the Lake Shore & Michigan
Southern Railway; Reuben F. Smith, of the Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad,
and Oscar Townsend of the Big Four Railroad were chosen directors of the
branch. Henry W. Stage, a train-despatcher on the Lake Shore, was
earnestly and intensely enthusiastic in this work; and because of his zeal
and enthusiasm, together with that of George Meyers, this branch was
successful from the outset.
The Lake Shore Railroad, whose headquarters were in that same Union Depot
at Cleveland then was and still is a pet property of the Vanderbilt
family, also owners of the great New York Central system. The heads of
that family began watching the Cleveland experiment with unusual interest.
The reports that came from them were unusual. That scheme of the depot
master's seemed to be making a better grade of railroader in and around
Cleveland, and any institution that bettered the type of railroaders
interested the Vanderbilts. So the thing that Meyers had founded soon had
wealthy patrons and strong friends.
The Vanderbilts kept their shoulders to the wheels of the railroad Y. M.
C. A., kept it out of the ruts and from falling. They saw it introduced
here and introduced there on their group of railroads; saw it spread to
other lines; and finally, Cornelius Vanderbilt himself built a splendid
club-house for railroad men at the great terminal of his road in New York
City and turned it over to the management of the railroad Y. M. C. A. That
house, standing almost in the shade of the Grand Central Station, after a
quarter of a century, still ranks as one of the distinctly fine club-homes
of a city that is opulent in club-houses. It is still dedicated to
simplicity, to democracy, to decency, and to good fellowship.
There is not a railroader coming into the big passenger terminal--from
either the New York Central or the New Haven system--who is not welcome to
it, day or night. Engineers, firemen, conductors, trainmen all come into
its hospitable door after a long hard run to find the clean comfort of
good meals, bath, comfortable beds, good fellowship awaiting them. There
is the peculiar and the successful field of the railroad Y. M. C. A.;
perhaps as much as any, the real reason for its pronounced success.
Few railroaders in train service can leave their homes in the morning,
"double their runs," and be home at night. The hard part of the business
is that in most cases a man will have to spend one night, occasionally
two nights, out on the run. The difficulties of this are not readily
understood without a slight examination. In a large city the railroader
finds that it is a shabby sort of a hotel or lodging-house that can come
regularly within his scheme of economy. When he strikes the little town,
or frequently the big terminal or division freight-yard around which is no
town at all, the problem only multiplies. J. M. Burwick, a veteran
conductor of the Duluth & Iron Range Railroad, told that problem in his
own sincere way last year at a big dinner of railroad men in St. Louis.
"I left home a beautiful morning in '72," said Mr. Burwick. "I went down
to Lafayette and to my first boarding-house; and up to that time I don't
think any railroad man ever found a boarding-house except it was tied up
to a saloon. I was in a place like that. Another place I was running into
was where they made a division point in a corn-field. The company built a
large building for the benefit of the men, and then they rented it to be
run as a hotel. But the man in charge ran it to make money, and the steak
he cut with his razor. I know he did, because it was so thin. At other
places we had to sleep in a hot yard, in a hot caboose not fit for a man
to try and sleep in; and then we had to stay awake on the road that
night."
That was Burwick's testimony as to the conditions just before the coming
of the railroad Y. M. C. A. An engineer from the New York Central, a man
who had slept many nights in that comfortable club-house at the Grand
Central, went up into Canada a few years ago and took an engine on a
division running out of Kenora. The only place that a railroad man could
find board and lodging in that town at that time was a boarding-house with
the saloon attachment, and he was welcome there for but a limited time,
unless he was a reasonably liberal patron of the saloon. The engineer--his
name is McCrea--changed that order of things and established a branch
of the railroad Y. M. C. A., which in four years gained 300 members and
threatened to close the saloons of the place.
[Illustration: THIS IS WHAT NEW YORK CENTRAL MCCREA DID FOR THE MEN OF THE
CANADIAN PACIFIC UP AT KENORA]
[Illustration: A CLUBHOUSE BUILT BY THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC FOR ITS MEN AT
ROSEVILLE, CALIFORNIA]
[Illustration: THE B. & O. BOYS ENJOYING THE RAILROAD Y. M. C. A., CHICAGO
JUNCTION]
[Illustration: "THE BROOKLYN RAPID TRANSIT COMPANY HAS ORGANIZED A BRASS
BAND FOR ITS EMPLOYEES"]
Now you get the reason for the welcome that the railroad-owners gave this
work of the Y. M. C. A. It was not the religious idea alone--men differ in
their views of that sort of thing--but one of the most stringent of all
railroad rules is that prohibiting the use of liquor by the men, or their
frequenting bar-rooms. The necessity of that rule appears upon the face of
it. But the Canadian railroad could do little toward enforcing it in a
place like Kenora, before McCrea, of the New York Central, arrived there.
The railroad Y. M. C. A., with its comfortable housing facilities, its
vigorous stand for better morals and better men, has made that rule one of
the easiest in the book to be strictly observed. That is why the
railroad-owners and the railroad heads, whose religious views have
sometimes been at variance with those of the Y. M. C. A., have given
hearty endorsement to its work along their lines. They like the sort of
man it finishes.
So the railroad Y. M. C. A. has grown. It now has some 240 branches
reaching from Hawaii, in the West, to some important division points in
Eastern Maine. None of these have houses that can be compared, of course,
with the comfortable home at the Grand Central Station in New York. In
fact, some of them are still housed in crude fashion, in an abandoned shed
or depot that some railroad has fitted up as a start in the work, over
some store or freight-house perhaps; but each year sees these replaced by
neat homes, such as those at Harrisburgh, on the Pennsylvania; at
Collinwood, O., on the Lake Shore; at Baltimore, on the B. & O.; at the
St. Louis Union Station, and the Williamson, W. Va., on the Norfolk and
Western Railway. On a single system--the New York Central--there are 38
associations, with 27 buildings built for the purpose and valued at
$700,000, and a very active membership of 12,799 railroaders. In the
national organization membership there are more than 85,000 men,
representing every department of the railroad service. An average of
15,500 meals--and mighty good reasonably priced meals they are, too--is
served daily, while more than 50,000 railroaders come to the club-houses
each twenty-four hours.
* * * * *
Beyond the necessity for maintaining the moral fibre of the railroader
(and it is astonishing how little maintenance such a corps needs) is the
decent necessity of taking care of him in case of illness. Railroading,
with all the safety devices that have multiplied in its service within the
past quarter of a century, is still a hazardous occupation to the men who
are out upon the line. The list of cripples, and the death-list of a
twelvemonth, are still appalling things--appalling in the aggregate,
fearful in any single concrete case, a case where there may be a helpless
wife and little children to be brought into the reckoning.
The railroads have begun to shoulder their responsibility in this matter.
Legislation has helped in the matter but to-day big carriers are preparing
to do even more--to pay premiums and carry some form of casualty insurance
on each of their employees, who may be engaged in a hazardous part of the
work. That thing is going to do more than any other one thing possibly
could do. When a big railroad realizes that its bill for premiums is going
to be reduced by the addition of many simple protective devices, those
devices are going to be instantly adopted. That is the way of railroads,
and of business, although it is not to be charged for a single moment that
the American railroads have not done much within the past 25 years toward
raising the margin of safety for their employees.
Of course, the railroaders have long since had their insurance, although
the regular life companies look upon them with distrust as risks. They
have been forced either to pay high premiums in the regular companies or
else to organize insurance of their own. Their brotherhoods have carried
forth this work with interest and with skill. These brotherhoods, or
unions, of the locomotive engineers, the firemen, the conductors, the
trainmen, and several other branches of the service, have been mighty
agents, too, in the development of the moral fibre of the American
railroader. Lack of space prevents a consideration of each in detail. To
do them but simple justice, to sing the epic of the mighty Brotherhood of
Locomotive Engineers, for instance (which has only recently finished a
great building of its own in Cleveland), would require a volume for
itself.
* * * * *
But the railroads have not been negligent in this matter. For instance, a
man on the Baltimore & Ohio can pay $1.00 a month out of his pay envelope
and have $1,000.00 life insurance. He can likewise pay $3.00 a month, and
$3,000.00 will be paid his heirs upon his death. The railroad company
stands back of this fund and guarantees the insurance. It makes good from
its own treasury any deficit or shortage that might be incurred in its
operation.
For twenty years the Pennsylvania has conducted a similar work, under the
title of the Voluntary Relief Department. Membership in this is, as the
name indicates, purely voluntary, the road's employees being admitted,
after favorable physical examination, up to the age of 45 years and 6
months. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company in this instance also stands as
guarantor of the insurance fund.
A close examination of it in some detail may interest. The following table
shows the detail--the five classes into which employees may enter:
1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
Class Class Class Class Class
Monthly pay Any $35 or $55 or $75 or $95 or
rate more more more more
Contributions per month:
Class $0.75 $1.50 $2.25 $3.00 $3.75
Additional Death Benefit,
equal death benefits of
class:
Taken at not over 45 years
of age .30 .60 .90 1.20 1.50
Taken at over 45 years
and not over 60 years
of age .45 .90 1.35 1.80 2.25
Taken at over 60 years of
age .60 1.20 1.80 2.40 3.00
Disablement benefits per
day, including Sundays
and holidays:
Accident:
First 52 weeks .50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50
After 52 weeks .25 .50 .75 1.00 1.25
Sickness:
After first three days and
not longer than 52
weeks .40 .80 1.20 1.60 2.00
After 52 weeks .20 .40 .60 .80 1.00
Death Benefits:
For Class 250.00 500.00 750.00 1000.00 1250.00
Additional that may be
taken 250.00 500.00 750.00 1000.00 1250.00
An employee, however, who is under forty-five years of age, who has been
five years in the service and a member of the relief fund for one year,
may enter any higher class than that determined by his pay, upon passing
satisfactory physical examination.
Payments from the fund vary from forty cents per day for sickness and
fifty cents for accident in the service, for members in the first class,
to $2.00 per day for sickness and $2.50 for accident with a death benefit
of from $250.00 to $2,500.00, according to class of membership and death
benefit held.
Since the fund has been in operation, the following payments have been
made, to December 31, 1909, inclusive:--
For Accident death benefits $2,185,343.40
Sickness death benefits 5,914,811.18
Accident disablement benefits 4,076,636.89
Sickness disablement benefits 7,855,069.73
Superannuation allowances 415,367.55
Operating expenses 3,207,131.06
---------------
Total $23,654,359.81
During the same period, the Pennsylvania has contributed to the fund in
operating expenses, gratuities, etc., exclusive of interest, the
following:
For Operating expenses $3,207,131.06
Special payment, etc. 424,571.91
For deficiencies 733,913.89
--------------
Total $4,365,616.86
In addition to what the Pennsylvania is doing in the payment of the
pensions and contributions for the maintenance of the relief fund, the
relief and pension departments have the use of the telegraph and the train
service free of charge; and in case of accident in the service to
employees, free surgical and hospital attendance is furnished, and, where
necessary, artificial limbs or other appliances, without cost to the
employee. No figures are available as to the cost of surgical attendance,
or the furnishing of artificial limbs, but it is conservatively estimated
by the Pennsylvania officers as equalling the amount paid for the
operation of the relief department.
The modern railroad does not wait, however, for a man to become injured or
to die before assuming any responsibility for his care. There may come a
day when the burden of years makes him a little less fit for the strenuous
service of railroading. It is Nature's way of telling man that he has
labored well and that he is entitled to a rest. In other days, the
railroad recognized this in a rather informal way. It took its veteran
employees, retired them into a comfortable ease, and had the paymaster
send them checks each month for a part of their old wages. Out of that
custom the railroad pension system was born, only with this sharp
distinction: In the old way the man was taught to believe his monthly
check a favor or gratuity on the part of the railroad; under the pension
system he comes to know it, not as an act of charity but as his right, a
right earned by long hard years of faithful service.
This idea has begun to be recognized as fundamental by railroad managers.
Directors and officers now realize that the pension fund and some of these
other features that we have just considered, are causes directly
contributing to the efficiency of the railroad. The policy is merely one
of good management. Again, let us see the way the Pennsylvania handles
this matter, not because the Pennsylvania is alone in this thing, but
rather because it is one of the largest and most distinctive of American
railroads, and almost a pioneer in this work. Before it began paying
pensions to retired employees, the Pennsylvania had already long conducted
a relief fund and a savings fund, and had contributed to libraries and
railroad branches of the Y. M. C. A.
The pensions are paid entirely by the company. In the year 1909, for
instance, $594,000 was paid out to the men who had retired between the
ages of 65 and 70. From the time the fund was established until the end of
1909, appropriations for it amounted to more than $4,000,000, now paid to
some 2,300 men annually.
Employees may retire for age at 70, or for physical incapacitation between
65 and 69. If they have been in the service as long as 30 years, they are
granted an allowance based on one per cent of the monthly wages for each
year of service. The percentage is based on the wages received for the ten
years preceding retirement.
Thus, if an engineer, or a brakeman, or a fireman, has served the
Pennsylvania 30 years, he may retire between 65 and 70 and receive not
less than 30 per cent of his monthly wages during the last 10 years of
work.
The other railroads using the pension scheme have followed these general
outlines for their work. It has become an established feature of railroad
operation, and recently a second vice-president was created on the
Baltimore & Ohio for the express purpose of handling the company's relief
work. Sometimes the railroad organizes savings-funds for employees, paying
from three and one-half to as high as five per cent on their deposits,
limiting these to something like a hundred dollars a month, and making
every agent on the system a depositary of the fund.
* * * * *
The street railroad systems in the large cities, together with a few of
the larger interurban systems, have recently begun to adopt systematic
methods of keeping in touch with their employees. The Brooklyn Rapid
Transit Company, operating a great system in a part of metropolitan New
York, and employing more than 15,000 men, was a pioneer in this work. It
found that while the railroad Y. M. C. A. was efficient for the club-house
work on steam railroads, there were local conditions in Brooklyn that made
it best for the company to build and operate its own club-houses.
The first of these was remodelled from an old car-barn. It became a very
interesting club, with reading-rooms, baths, a barber-shop, a gymnasium,
class-rooms for evening study, and a theatre, seating some 1,200 folk. For
the theatre the railroad hires vaudeville actors, and gives its great
semi-official family free entertainments--followed by dancing and
refreshments. On very especial nights the talent is furnished entirely by
the trolley-men and very effective talent it is, too. On all nights the
music is furnished by the Brooklyn Rapid Transit band, made up entirely of
street-car men and men from the elevated roads of the system. The railroad
company has furnished the music, the uniforms, the instruments, and the
directors--all that the men have had to furnish is their time and
interest, and these they have furnished in such good measure that there is
a waiting-list now large enough to equip a second full brass band.
The Brooklyn system has also begun to establish model restaurants in its
outlying barns, where clean and good food is furnished to the men at cost.
The street railroad is, in some such cases as these, confronted with a
steam railroad problem. Many of the big car-barns are in sparsely settled
suburbs of the city where the only eating-places have been saloons or
their adjuncts. The street railroad can no more afford to have its men in
saloons, than its bigger brother. To take from them the one decent excuse
for being in such places it is establishing its restaurants, where the men
can have cleaner and better food than in the saloons, and without the risk
to the railroad.
The Brooklyn road and the other large systems have adopted the relief and
pension funds; the idea seems to spread as rapidly among the electric as
it did among the steam railroads. Some of them have added odd and
efficient "kinks" of their own. For instance, the Boston Elevated Railway
makes presents of gold at New Year's Day, ranging from $20 to $35 each, to
each of its men who has a clean record for courtesy to patrons, and Boston
gains a reputation through that for the uniform courtesy of her
trolley-men. The Boston Elevated has also inaugurated a policy of giving
free legal advice to each of its employees who may need it. It has always
been a perquisite of high railroad officers to avail themselves of the
road's legal department for their personal needs. Under the Boston plan
this perquisite is extended to every man on the road--the young motorman
who had foolishly gone to a loan shark, and who is now being harried by
him; the old conductor who wishes to convey a house or draw a will. The
road's legal department will advise him sincerely, in his own best
interest. It will draw up his legal papers, do anything for him except
take his case into court, and even then it will advise an honest and
capable attorney for him. As for that motorman who went to the loan shark
when he found an immediate need of fifty dollars, the road stands ready to
advance him the money upon good cause, and will charge him only a nominal
rate of interest until it has gradually repaid itself from his wages. His
division superintendent is empowered to hear his story with sympathetic
ear, and to arrange for the loan.
Employees' magazines have been decided factors in both bringing and
keeping the railroad in touch with its army of men. The Erie was a pioneer
in this work five years ago; the plan has since been adopted with signal
success by the Northwestern, the Illinois Central, the Santa Fe, the Pere
Marquette, and some other lines. These little magazines, made interesting
enough in a general way to catch and hold the attention of their readers,
are sent out each month to every man on the system with his pay-check.
They spread railroad interest and railroad enthusiasm among their readers.
On one page they tell of styles for the engineer's wife, and on the next
they show an economical use of coal for the engineer; and so they may help
to pay their way. They tell of errors and mistakes among the railroad's
employees, without mentioning names, so that men may profit by them and
act differently. But they print the names of the railroaders who do the
good things, the novel things, the practical things, the economical
things, the heroic things, out along the line. And this roll of honor is a
long one.
But it is not always in the big things that a railroad keeps in touch with
its men, sometimes it is in very small things. Some time ago, a division
superintendent on the Erie Railroad decided that for each of his engineers
who kept his engine in particularly good order for a given length of
time, he would have the number plate on the front of the boiler painted in
red. "We will have the Order of the Red Spot," laughed Superintendent
Parsons, of the Susquehanna Division, as he signed a bulletin announcing
the thing. Now that was a little thing. The cost of painting that red spot
on the breast of some proud locomotive was but nominal; but listen to the
result!
A big Erie officer was up the line a few months later, and was loafing in
a junction-town on the Susquehanna Division, waiting for a through train.
He walked down to the end of the station platform and there stood a
passenger locomotive waiting to take a train in the other direction. It
belonged to the proud Order of the Red Spot, an order of which this
particular officer had not heard; and the engineer was already about it
with his long-handled oil-can. The officer did not reveal his identity,
but said:
"Waiting to take out a special?"
The engineer did not look up, but said:
"We carry forty-six over the division."
"I didn't think that forty-six was due for two hours yet," said the
railroad officer.
"She is not," answered the engineer, "but I've been down here an hour and
a half already fussing with this baby to have her in shape. You may notice
that she belongs to the Order of the Red Spot."
Then that particular man came to know about the Red Spots. All the way
back to Jersey City he kept looking for Red Spots, and every time he saw
one, he saw an engine slick and clean, as if she had just come from the
shops. That set him to thinking; and after he was done thinking, Parsons
was promoted in service, and the Order of the Red Spot was established for
the system. There has been an exalted division made of that order
recently. When a man can be assigned to one engine and he brings her into
the Red-Spot class and keeps her there, the railroad dedicates that engine
to him for the rest of his lifetime upon the system. His name, in gilt
letters, goes upon the cab-panel of the engine, whereas in other days you
used to see those of statesmen and of railroad-owners; and there it stays
until the engine goes to the scrap-heap. The other day the first of these
engines, drawing a Waldwick local, pulled into the Jersey City passenger
terminal; on its cab was "Harvey Springstead" so large and clear that you
could read it across the yard; in the cab-window was Harvey Springstead,
prouder for that moment than any earthly prince or potentate.
Sometimes the competitive idea is the best to foster to accomplish results
from the men, and to bind them and the road a bit closer together. We have
seen how a fortnight of "T. B. M. F." repairs to a locomotive has been
quickened down under contest to 13 hours and 34 minutes. Many of the more
successful railroads began some years ago to institute annual contests
between their section-bosses. The section-boss who kept his stretch of the
right-of-way in cleanest, trimmest shape for a twelvemonth got a black and
gold sign at his hand-car house, so big that folk who rode in the fast
expresses could read the honor that it conferred upon him. Sometimes he
gets more--a trip pass for his wife and himself to some distant point, or
even a cash prize. Annually the superintendent of maintenance may run a
special train, with a specially devised observation grandstand at its rear
or pushed ahead of the engine. On that grandstand sit all the section
bosses and other track maintenance experts. They see the other fellow's
sections--and their own; and some time on that trip there is a little
dinner and the awarding of the prizes.
Do not even dare to think that these things count for little upon the
railroad. They are mighty factors in the maintenance of one of its very
greatest factors, the human one.