The Winslow mail., 1916-07-21
Railroads and Their Employees.

It is hardly within the province
of a local newspaper to enter up
on discussion of the threaten
ing trouble now brewing between
the trainmen and the railroads of
the country, principally for the
reason that the ordinary layman
knows nothing of the general
situation, nor the conditions un-
der which the trainmen have to
labor; and on the other hand the
public have no way definitely to
determine whether railroads will
be injured by acceding to the de-
mands of the men. But if the
newspapers of the country feel
they must be commenting on the
matter they should make the sit
uation plain so far as it concerns
employees, and not befog the is
sue with a lot of percentage fig
ures that mean nothing, and yet
give out the impression that rail-
road employees are making de-
mands beyond reason.
Apropos of these remarks we
take the following selection from
an editorial in recent issue of a
metropolitan daily:
The 309. 900 members of the organizations max
ing the outcry constitute only 18 per cent of the
vast army of railway employees of the country,
and they already receiving 1872 per cent. of
the total wages paid to all railway employees the
highest paid labor. not only in the United States
but in the world. The real demands of the
ganizations, properly construed, are for reduc-
ton in the working hours of from twenty to thirty
three per cent, and an increase in the hourly rate
of pay from rs to so per cent, and an increase in
the overtime pay of from 81 1-2 per cent to 1875
per cent
What can any ordinary reader
gather as to the real facts from
such a tumble of percentages and
figures. In the first place not
all the members of the train
mems organization are affected
by the proposed new schedule, as
men in the passenger service are
not included in the demand, and
it applies only to the freight SER
vice and yard men. In the Sec
ond place railroad men are not
the highest paid class of labor in
the United States by any man.
ner of means, and when sifted
down to actual hours of service
they rank but little higher than
ordinary day labor, and are con-
siderably less than the skilled la
Dor in any of the trades. 1t is
true railroad men draw good
sized checks each month when
business on the road is good and
they are fully employed, but it
must not be forgotten the men
put in long hours, many times to
the full sixteen hour limit. A
mans pay check must then be
judged not by it's size, but by the
number of hours it has taken to
earn it. A washer-woman, get
ting 25c an hour, and working
sixteen hours day for twenty
eight days, would earn SIP a
month, and it would hardly be
fair to claim she was being over
paid, or that she was in the class
of high salaried employees.
Take the concrete example of
an engineman at the present
time. His average pay is about
SIS. Is per 100 miles, or ten hours,
which makes rate of 81 l-2c an
hour, or $4.60 day for eight
hours, the usual time employed
in other trades and callings. For
twenty-six working days in a
month his pay check would be
S12O. Out of this he must nav
his personal living expenses while
away from home, which would
be half of the twenty-six days
he was employed, amounting at
least to SIS. This would leave
him a trife over $100 for his la
Dor figured on the basis of other
trades. Even figuring on this
basis the engineman is not on an