The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1910-07-08
CREDIT The union
What Organized Labor Does Fol
Its Members.
THE RAILWAY MEMS HOME.

Palmetto incident mat Lea TO the
Founding of a Noble institution.
Disabled Provided For From Sense
of Duty, Not Charity.
While movements to prevent indus.
trial accidents and increase the as
sured compensation to working people
and their families for industrial in.
juries and loss of life have recently
been inaugurated by state legislatures
and some of our greatest manufacture
ing and railway corporations, we
should not fail to credit the trade un-
ions with having initiated long ago
their own efforts to provide for theil
disabled members and the families of
their dead. The most recent evidence
of their self sacrificing and successful
struggle to do so is furnished in the
dedication of the Home For Aged and
Disabled Railroad Employees at High.
land Park, Ill., near Chicago. The
story of its inception, growth and COM
pletion is full Of courage, pathos and
significance.
ii
member of the Brotherhood of Rail
way Trainmen in the course of his
duties as a physician found one of his
old railway comrades in the Cook
county poorhouse. Resenting the stig
ma cast upon the brotherhood by hay
ing one of its members an inmate of
public poorhouse, he conceived the
idea Of establishing home where
brotherhood men might find care and
comfort in old age or might be nursed
back to some sort of working capacity
when disabled. At first he offered
such care to as many as he could take
into his own home, appealing mean
while to the several brotherhoods TO
support financially larger and more
effective effort This was in 1890
One after another of the public spirit
ed railway union men joined him I'M
til in 1908 John O'Keefe devoted his
patient energy and good executive
ability to building up the institution
and securing for it an adequate build
ing plant. He enlisted the four rail
way brotherhoods' sanction and coop
Grafton. Through the annual volun-
tary contribution of the divisions and
local lodges of the Brotherhood of Lo-
connective Engineers, of Locomotive
Firemen and Enginemen, of the Order
of Railway Conductors and of the
Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, to-
gether with the ladies' auxiliary of
each, the home has grown up from
two or three little frame cottages to
a massive building.
Surrounded by five acres of fine
land, it stands three stories high above
the basement, one wing being 80 feet
long by AZ feet wide and the other
60 feet long by 40 feet wide. In de-
sign and color scheme it is very at
tractive. In its provisions for safety,
comfort and convenience it is very
complete. The construction is fire
proof throughout. Electrical elevators
convey the crippled men in their
wheeled chairs from their rooms to
any floor in the building and to the
recreation rooms and grounds. The
building will accommodate los men,
only thirty-twO inmates having previ-
ously been cared for. A well equip
ped hospital with twelve beds and
trained nurses is maintained in the
building.
1t was with justfiable pride that
the former grand master of the Broth
erhood of Railroad Trainmen in open
ing the dedicatory exercises said Il
oil to a H.
ence here today 10 see us doff the rags
of poverty ard put on the clothes of
affluence and responsibility. We have
not provided this home for aged and
disabled railroad employees as mat
ter of charity. 1t has been and will
be matter of duty with us. The rail
road men of the country owe to their
less fortunate brothers a duty that is
greater than the duty of being charita-
ble."
And yet, beautiful and comfortable
as the new home is. it will hardly dis
sipate the shadows which shut in n
man suddenly thrown from the work
ing world and the activities of life at
the very bloom of his power and earn
ing capacity.
One has only to look around to see
that they are "broken rails" as with
grim, laughterless humor they call
themselves. They look as if they had
been through all the battles of a great
war. They are men with one or both
legs gone, some without fingers. 9th
ers without hands and still others with
injured spines and dark lines of pain
furrowed through their faces. Others
still are bearing the additional burden
of old age. Upon most of them the
shadows of broken life, of days cut
short or lingering too long, of separa-
ton from family, the awful quiet after
the rush and roar of their workaday
life and of disappointed hopes deeply
overcast the blue in their eyes and
the sunshine of their smile. For this
injury to the spirit and this loss of
life while living this world has no
compensation. Graham Taylor in
Survey.