Omaha daily bee., 1906-12-30
SOME HISTORY RECALLED.

SOME HISTORY RECALLED.
The general advance in wages paid
to railway employees, together with the
unprecedented imitation of railway div
idends, makes it interesting to recall
little history which is not yet year
old. Only January last The Bee had
occasion to enter into discussion of
the systematic effort of the railroad
political bosses to work up sentiment
among the railroad employees against
any rate regulation legislation at
Washington on the ground that the
enactment of such laws as were recon-
mended by President Roosevelt would
surely and irresistibly result in reduc-
ing the wages of railway employees.
The effort to mold public sentiment
by inundating our senator's and rep
resentatives with letters of protest
signed by conductors, brakemenr
switchmen, ETC., came to head through
the publication of a letter over the
name of a Union Pacific travelling
freight solicitor, who wired a friend
of his in Omaha to Call at Clancy's
Office and sign my name to letter there
to be published as requested" A few
extracts from this letter furnish re-
freshing reading in the light of sub
sequent events:
You are asking a great deal of us when
you suggest that we sit idly by and permit
the experiment to be made, under the very
prosperous conditions we, well as all
others with whom we come in contact, are
now enjoying. You know as well as we
that government control and rate-making
power has Frustrated railroads, degener-
ated employees and ruined stockholders
where the experiment has been tried in
other countries. This, then, is our desire
Let we'll enough alone" Scrutinize any
law that would change these conditions
carefully and with grave suspicion.
AS locomotive engineers we risk our lives
daily to assist in maintaining commercial
supremacy of the United States. Conse-
quenty, we feel we are as much the sup
port of the government as other citizens
in any walk Of life. We do not propose to
sacrifice or jeopardize the wage we receive
to insure political preferment to anyone.
A subsequent letter in explanation
of the foregoing, signed by a Union
Pacific railway telegraph operator,
pursued the same strain, as follows:
We contend, Mr.. Editor, that all things
considered, we even as employees are better
informed perhaps as to this subject in all Of
its detail than a majority of those who as
sumo to talk and write about 1t. We fur
Their contend that inasmuch as It involves
the wages paid the employees that we, as
employees. as men OF family, are infinitely
more concerned than those who are remote
from those effects, and that 1t is not only
our privilege. but our duty, to exert our
best efforts to fully enlIghten both congress
and the general public Of the consequences
of such legislation. It does certainly APP
pear that II the government Is TO be en-
powered to fix rates 1t should also be EN-
powered to Ak wages. II this is not done
what assurance have railway employees that
reduction in wages will not follow a re-
duction in rates but the mere theorizlng
and philosophizing OF those who are in no
position to either Judge intelligently or pre-
vent it's contamination.
The Bee at the time exposed the
ear-marks of fabrication in these let
tiers, proving conclusively that they
were written not by locomotive engi-
neers, but by political engineers. 1t
would not call attention to them
again even now except for a warning
that the railroads are again laying the
foundations to manufacture public SEN
timent through employees under direc-
ton of their legislative oil-can WELD
ers, with a view to influencing the leg
islatures about to convene. BY making
the railway trainmen believe, as they
did when the rate regulation bills were
before congress last year, that they
are TO be the sufferers, the railway po-
litical bosses hope to persuade the law
makers to repTdiate the pledges they
made to the people to put an end to
railroad Determinations and extortions
and to force the railroads to pay theiI
taxes like other people.