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country appear to have more sympathy troduction of this dangerous and new-fangled innovation. So we have precedents for hoping that in this case, too, the companies' fears may prove to be groundless.

for the "share-holder" than for the "shunter."

John Burns, Member of Parliament and leader in the labor movement, has said:

Go to the drivers, firemen, brakemen, plate layers, and shunters. We find, in some of these grades, both absolutely and relatively, there is little improvement, and in the case of shunters and brakemen matters are rather worse than better. In 1897 more shunters were killed than in 1887. In that year it was 1 in 231 killed, 1 in 21 injured; in 1897, 1 in 203 killed, 1 in 12 injured.

Almost similar figures can be given with regard to goods guards, who, although not killed as fast as they were, are injured more frequently. In 1887, 1 in 22 were injured; in 1897, 1 in 15 were injured. It may be urged officially, in extenuation of this fact, that the standard of injury has varied and is now lower; but, checked by the London and Northwestern Railway standard of 1897, injury incapacity in time-period over all its 7,482 accidents still keeps at about the same figure, namely, three and a half weeks, the same as it was six years previously, in 1892. The Locomotive Engineers' and Firemen's Journal, the official organ of the association of enginemen, thus presents the case:

It is true that this is not the first time they (the railway capitalists) have been needlessly alarmed. A whole troop of phantom lions blocked for years the introduction of continuous footboards on passenger carriages, now universally admitted to be a necessary and comparatively inexpensive safety appliance. The same was the case with the block signaling system. "We never could work our traffic with it," was the attitude of railway officials a generation back. "We never could work our traffic without it," they would one and all acknowledge today. The same thing happened in the case of automatic brakes. It is on record that when, under the powers of the Railway Regulation Act of 1889, the Board of Trade made an order for the in

troduction of continuous automatic brakes on all passenger trains, the chairman of one company officially warned the Board that they must take the responsibility for the in

When the Safety Appliance Act was first introduced, the Railway Review, another employes' publication, said on March 10th:

The Government has now brought in its bill, the full text of which appears in another column, and which will probably have passed its second reading ere these lines have seen the light. There are not wanting signs that in its later stages, especially in committee, it will meet with strenuous opposition from the companies, and from those private owners of trucks who are affected thereby. In order to prevent the bill being wrecked or withdrawn, it is necessary that the burden should be shouldered, and that railway men should show they are in deadly earnest. Under no circumstances should the bill be allowed to be defeated. Both the companies and private truck owners are strong, but railway men, aided by the public conscience and the force of public opinion. have it in their power to compel action should such compulsion be needed. No opportunity should be lost, either by Councils, buttonholing of local members, resolutions at branch meetings and Trades or by petitions of the grades more nearly affected, to complete the good work begun. Twenty years of arduous and continuous agitation are nearing fruition, and it must not be said that we faltered or wavered just at the time when victory was within our grasp.

Already a meeting of Midland colliery proprietors, coal merchants and ironmasters has been held in Birmingham to protest against the bill. The grounds upon which they do this are twofold, namely, they claim it is unnecessary, and would unduly harass them in their business. The railway papers are taking the same grounds, with an additional objection that no suitable coupling

exists.

On March 24th the Railway Review said of the progress made and the methods used by the owners of railway cars:

Since our last issue the opposition against the Government bill for compulsory powers

in respect to automatic couplings has gathered force, and the result has been a series of dramatic incidents which bode no good to the bill. Last Thursday's Times contains a letter from the Railway Association and signed by the chairman of seven of the principal railway companies of the country. This letter was a severe condemnation of the action of the Government backed up by the weakest set of arguments we have seen for many a long day. In the afternoon of Thursday a large deputation of mine owners and ironmasters waited upon Mr. Ritchie, and with threats and entreaties endeavored to get him to withdraw that portion of the bill relating to automatic couplings. The deputation was a strong one, and did not scruple to use threats. Mr. Ritchie made a strong speech in the first instance, but at the close showed signs of giving way. Whether this was weakness or diplomacy remaine to be seen. The whole point of the opposition is undoubtedly the question of expense. Summed up in a word, the question is one of money vs. human life and limb. * *

*

*

In the ten years ending 1897, out of 16,034 men estimated to be employed as goods guards, brakemen, and shunters, 767 were killed and 9,384 were injured. Before another five years have passed, taking the same ratio, 383 more lives will have been sacrificed and 4,692 more victims will have gone to fill the greedy mouth of accident more than were killed and injured in the late Spanish-American war. Could the mangled bodies of these men be gathered in a heap before high Heaven; could the bitter tears and heart-rendings of the stricken and wounded be gathered into one wail, surely they would appal the hardest heart of the flintiest financier, and cause even Parliament to move with sure and cer

tain steps. Let us not forget that we have all a duty in this matter, and he who fails to perform it has a hand in prolonging the suffering and agony of the railway world.

A week later (March 31st) the Review thought it saw defeat for the Safety Appliance Act. The pressure brought on the Members of the House of Commons was too great to bear. The situation is presented thus:

The wagon owners' fraternity, and behind them the whole railway directors' interest,

having tasted blood by the driving of Mr. Ritchie back in the abandonment of automatic couplings, have determined, come what may, to crush the entire bill. Their terms are no select committee even for automatic couplings, and neither labeling wagons nor double-handled brakes under any conditions, so that if they prevail, neither goods guards, shunters, nor brakemen, nor those concerned in the labeling of wagons shall, for at least ten years to come, have any relief or the blessings of increased safety in working. This at the bidding of the railway authorities who are working behind the wagon owners' clique.

The House of Commons' member is riddled with threats to withdraw subscriptions to his election funds. he is warned that his electoral support is gone if he considers life and limb before cash, and this mighty Government (which, even if it lose fifty supporters by this merciful legislation, is certain of nearly one hundred helpers on the opposition benches), being wrecked by its cabinet directors and swayed from side to side in its political wabbling, will leave the shunter to his fate, with his wife and children to their certain bereavement or struggling poverty, for lack of backbone.

It is the railway men of the United Kingdom who alone can change this. They have friends, earnest friends, on both sides of the House, who will not let the matter of their salvation drop if they only will unitedly speak out with no uncertain sound.

A week later the Railway Review said. of the shelving of the bill, and the apparent weakness of the party in power:

Never has a Government shown more weakness, vacillation, and irresolution than the present Cabinet in respect to the Railway It halts in a shilly-shally Regulation Bill. manner between its clear duty to human safety and society, and a craven fear of the anger of the wealthy investors, who batten upon the profits of railways and their freights. We say the Government halts. It is that attitude which gives us some hope for the future of the bill, which is not yet abandoned, as generally reported. The bill is down for second reading on April 10th, the day the House of Commons assembles. There is the possibility that Mr. Ritchie's strong conviction and his Scotch pertinacity, backed up by the demand of the railwaymen

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the highest human interest — life.
ever, their bolt has now sped. They have
now succeeded in awakening the national
conscience to the necessity of Mr. Ritchie's
measure, and on every hand public opinion
is ready to cry "Cowards!" should the Min-
istry ultimately leave the guard and shunter
to their present fate.

What the outcome will be is not

known at this writing, but it is safe to say that every railroad employe in North America wishes success in this matter to their fellow craftsmen on the other side of the Atlantic.

DISCIPLINE OF RAILWAY EMPLOYES.

Old Style
Methods.

The one thing that, more least manifestation of manhood called than anything else, seems for immediate discharge for "insuborto harass the tempestuous dination." The fact that more than career of a railway official is how to one tyrannical petty boss did not find make railway employes be good. The his way to the morgue is due to the old style of firing" enginemen and marked desire of persecuted railway trainmen indiscriminately, just to exer- employes to do the best they could to cise authority, has proven a ruinous get along peaceably. policy for the companies. It has, in many instances, resulted in the utter demoralization of the personnel, not excepting the higher officials, and has created a feeling of resentment and distrust on the part of employes.

It was the custom not so many years ago, on some roads, for idiotic roundhouse foremen to saunter around, "jacking up" wipers, boiler washers, etc., just to see them "get a move on themselves." If his official eye chanced to fall on an engine that had not been polished to suit him, away went the caller with instructions to call the fireman of that engine and notify him to "report to the office immediately." No excuses were accepted. If the culprit did not "get ten days," he perhaps was told to "get out there and clean that engine up, or there will be another man put on her " The

The engineer escaped many persecutions from petty bosses, only to suffer from higher authority. An old scrap of an engine might be ready to fall down, her flues might have the beads pounded off of them, those flues might be stopped and the boiler full of mud, injectors might be corroded so that a flutter in the bottom gage" was like heavenly music to the engine crew

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yet no excuses were taken for "delaying the traffic." If an engineer took chances and scorched crown sheet while trying to get his train into clear for a passenger train, he was discharged. If he had killed his engine on the main line to avoid burning her, and thereby delayed the passenger train, he was suspended for thirty days. No matter what he did, he could not escape punishment.

Times have changed. The Broth

erhoods have clipped the wings of petty tyrants- such men are now seldom placed in official position and most of the higher officials have long since learned that it is profitable to any railway company to have the friendship instead of the enmity of its employes. Of course, there are some roads that still do business in the old style, but even those will see the error of their ways some day.

System.

44

In casting about for some The Brown new method of punishing railway employes for errors and infractions of company rules, railway officials are making a "fad" of the Brown System." It is hailed as a solution to the problem of discipline, and forthwith each official that institutes the new system so disfigures it that Superintendent G. R. Brown would not recognize his offspring. The method of application depends largely on the personal disposition of the official enforcing it. If he really believes in extending justice to employes, the form adopted is usually acceptable to the men and profitable to the company. On the other hand if he is of the old school- still out gunning for the "labor agitator," and glorying in showing his authority the Brown System is so modified that it is worse than the old process of suspensions and discharges.

Hitching a hog to a buggy does not make a horse of it, neither does the Brown System bring peace and profit to a railway dominated by a pig-headed tyrant. The Brown System depends more for its successful results on the character of the General Manager enforcing it than it does upon the plan of discipline. It may be a complete success, resulting in a "solution of the problem," or it may be a disastrous

failure, resulting in a strike. Some officials will be as unsuccessful in securing happy results from the adoption of the Brown System as the Devil would in conducting a Methodist camp meeting.

The Northwest Railway Club.

At the October meeting of the Northwest Railway

Club, in St. Paul, this topic came in for extended discussion. (The official proceedings of the October meeting of the Northwest Railway Club fail to give the names of the railways of which the speakers mentioned are officials.)

Mr. Williams introduced the subject with an interesting description of the method adopted on that system. The credit and debit plan had been substituted for suspension and discharge for minor offenses.

According to Mr. Williams, credits are given by his railway for “non-affiliation with labor organizations under whose laws strikes can occur." And yet this is called the Brown System! This railway has adopted the Brown System to break up the Brotherhoods, just as some other roads have established "relief" associations to accomplish like results.

Other speakers advocated the Brown System, not for the purpose of infringing on the rights of employes, but for the good that would come from its adoption. Mr J. H Goodyear, in deploring existing methods, said: "I find that while we have had in our employ 243 men (presumably Mr. Goodyear referred to engineers), the average length of service is only two years This shows that during the three years we have, for various causes, lost one-third of our men. be some reason for this with which I am not familiar, but on the face it would appear that our system of disci

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