“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:

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:—

During the same period, the Pennsylvania has contributed to the fund in operating expenses, gratuities, etc., exclusive of interest, the following:

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.