The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-07-26
RAILROADS SHOW MANY STATISTICS TO DISPROVE
 ENGINEERS ARGUMENTS
Managers Say Risk and Responsibility Have Not Increased President Willard Of B. & Q, Gives Reasons For Dit-
 terences in Engineers Pay in West and East

8. A. Worth1ngtOn, >Lne aoNOcdee oA the railroads, to-day presented ex- hibits in the case of the arbitration rroceedirigs now being held at the Oriental Hotel, Manhattan Beach, by which the railroads endeavored to prove their contentfon+that the engin- eers' wages are full, fair and liberal and that there has been no marked increased responsibility and risk in their work in the past flew years.
 Some sixty odd exhibits were sub- lnitted to-day by MT Worth1ngton.- The most important of these concern alleged increase in size of engines, the age of engineers and the length or their service as engineers engineers fatality statistics, and the, average speed of freight and passenger trains from OctobeF.- 1905. to October, l9l1.
 One of the railroads exhibits shows that only about two per cent. of the locomotives in service are those which nave been termed by the engineers heavy They weigh some 17S,0OO to 461,000 pounds. This statement of the railroads led to some discus sion an to the train load, in which MT. Morrissey one of the Commits sion, said that the railroads get greater return for the service of the engineer on the large engine. Mir willard. President of the Baltimore -Hd u. Ccnmissioas said in this connection:
 @Should not you, if you take into account the tendency of the engines to fncrease,-should not you keep in mind the fact that there is higher rate established for the heavier en- xines? As MT. Worthfngton has stat ed. the engineer does not run the larger engine at the same rate at which he runs the smaller one. It might be thought, for instance, while Iv. e.eer %1aa engineers have received steady, sta- tienaxy rate. rr Taat of course, is not true. because the heavier. engines car ry higher rate On the majority of the roads.
 MT. Worthington endeavored to ex- plain f1osv the railroads had attempted to make their economics to meet the fncreasessin operating expenses. This followed a. question from CummiS- siener Jrdson, who said:
 T suppose this tendency to get lar ger engines fs greater on roads that have the larger srades7" to which Mir. Worthiugton replied:
 "T7re tendency of the rate structure has mot been upward by any means. The expenses incident to full crew lh4kls has added largely as we show by one of our exhibits to the expen- see of the railroads. The safety. ap- pliance laws-to which the railroads take 10 exceptfon-We agree that they are good and sound, for the benefit Of the public. and are very wise: but they have added very largely to our expen@es. The increasesAin wages of ,au, classes of employees which we have had Do meet ' have increased very largely and the railroads on., ,theiotn- CT hand have had but one flexible fac- tor with which to meet this situation. The wage question was absolutely in fexsb7e; there was no chance for any economies there, in. the reduction of wages. The prices of material and supplies have been of a somewhat up- ward tendency The full crew bills must be met. and the safety appliance laws must be taken care of, and the only flexible factor that the railroads could find was to promote higher eff hciency in the operation of the plant, and about the only way and about the most successful way that that could be done was to move the tonnage in larger train units; therefore the rail- roads, regardless of their wishes in the matter, have been forced to adopt the larger locom olives. It has oehle with modern practice and it has re- suited in good to all sides.'
 Tn concluding his remarks on the railroads exhibit on the number of locomotives in service and the weight Of the same, Mr. Worthington point ed to the fact that the exhibit showed that only twelve per cent. of the total number of locOn otives in service on the fifty-two Eastern railroads are of the heavier type, that is. those weigh ing oyer 100000 pounds.
 As reason why an increase in compensation should not be granted to the engineers-who had given as one reason for raising pay the alleged increase fh speed of trains--4the rail- roads introduced an exhibit showing the average speed of passenger and freight trains in the month of Octo- Der for the years 1905 and 1911. This showed that the average speed had been very slightly increased, only a fraction of a mile on most of the roads and in some cases a small de- crease. The average speed of passen ger trains on the Baltimore Ohio Railroad was 32.5 miles an hour in 1ee5 and 35.S miles in 1911; on the New York Central the average speed in 1905 was 39.46 and in 1911, 4O.02; on the Erie Railroad the average speed in 1905 was 2S.3 miles while in 1911 the Erie passenger train sched- ule called for an average speed of 2S miles an hour. Similar speed was called for by the. time tables of the various other roads.
 Exhibit No. 27 introduced by the Tailroa ds.was an extract from month " reports of the Locomotive Engin- eerS Mutual Life and Accident In- surance Association, published in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engin- eers' Journal. It was accompanied by a graphic chart which showed there had been a general decrease in the number of engineers killed per 1000 employed. In 1900 the average membership of the Brotherhood .o1 Locomotive Engineers was 25, ,552 and S.s members per 1000 were killed ir service. In 1901, 4.9 members pei 1000 were killed, in 1902, "A mem bers and inA19O7 it was 5.3. From that time there has been a decrease more or less regular, according to the exhibit. and in 1911 tte Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers had aan1en1 hership of 63,02s. 1Ii 1911, two hun. dred and nineteen members were killed. or 3.4 members per thousand Tn summing up this table MT. Worth ington said: "It would not indicate take, for instance the last five or sis years the chart would not indicate that there was any greater risk ol hazard of employment"
 That the average age of the 31,. e73 locomotive engineers employed or the hfty-two eastern railroads is 4 years was indicated by exhibit 28 introduced by the railroads. Tn call. ing attention to it MT. Worthingtor said:
 .'It will be noted that those under 40 years of age represent nearly one half; slightly more than .one-half 39.6 plus 10.S, that is 50.4 per cent.