The Washington herald., 1920-02-28
Strife Threat Result Of Lou
Wages, Railroad Laborers Say

no skilled help to look after road
beds, bridges. ,culverts, terminals
and such. Other classes of en-
ployes' pound over the rails. made
safe by our men,. and they get two
and three. times the wages we get.
I'VE don't demand the highest
scale. We ask for q miIimum of IS
cents an .hour which we figure is
absolutely necessary to sustain life.
For the more skilled labor we think
that the regular union scale should
apply. but discrimination against
our men has been shown on every
hand. That Ia what makes our men
so bitter and when they go out.
should a strike be necessary. II will
be 100 per cent move. As a mat
ter of fact they have absolutely
nothing to Nose should they strike.
They can walk right or the rail-
road track to the farm or to other
labor and get double what they are
getting In many cases. Still we are
trying to keep them together on
the plea OF loyalty.
Unable to buy Food.
What foreman, for instance,
gets as low as $l05 a month? Well,
that is what q section foreman Is
getting. We ask s20S for him and
then there will be some incentive
to stick. How our men are getting
along Is a mystery. How they keep
body and soul together has not been
answered. One Of our delegates to
a meeting here went home to a
small town in Ohio last fall. He
had occasion to visit three of his
men on a Sunday while they were
At dinner. Mind you, this was a
sunday dinner. In each Of the three
MONIES the meals consisted of
bread and butter, tomatoes and, in
one case. also potatoes and coffee.
IL was all they could afford. Is that
living?
The claim is made that the wages
of the men have been doubled by
the railway administration. They
have, from q former pay of 16 ana
IL cents an hour. We have had
promise after promise and that has
been all.
1T Is wrong to assume that rail-
road employees are always after a
raise In wages. We recognize the
fact that constantly seeking raises
Is like cat chasing his tail. All
we ask Is a general readjustment
both OF wages and collateral ques-
tlons. We are not asking anything
exorbitant.
Lowest Paid I'm Service,
"As to our cooperative enterprise
that was really forced upon us as
we had to do something. We were
in receipt of bundles of letters
showing how much it costs to live
IN all parts of the country. The
nxNa
started out to buy for our members,
few articles at first. Now II has
grown into a national business and
we take considerable pride in the
success of the Undertaking. We
have the lowest paid members on
the railroads il not in most other
industries. We are now conducting
business which threatens to put
the profiteer where he belongs.
People have come to regard the op-
Grafton as something mysterious
and other unions are asking how we
do 1t. Perfectly simple
we had a large amount of money
In the treasury. We set that TO
work and before we get through we
viii be Independent of manufac-
turers, wholesalers and retailers
and. IL needs be, the producer. The
latter. however. has become our
ally to his own profit and that is the
solution to the high cost of
living. Let the consumer and the
producer get together and nothing
can stand against the combination.
The producer will get more for his
commodities and the consumer wilt
pay much less and there you are"
Union Grows Rapidly.
President Barker said that the
union was rapidly growing. Before
the year is out IL expects to have
100000 members enrolled which
viii make a clean sweep of the un--
skilled labor on the country's rail-
roads. At the present time there
are $4,000 names on the books but
there is tremendous shifting month
by monthsas in certain localities the
labor turnover is 800 per cent a
year.
Without making any threat Pres
ident Barker asserted that readjust-
ment would have to come very soon
or there would be trouble. The
members of the union were in no
mood to parley, regardless of
whether the railroads were con-
trolled by the government or by
private owners. He thought, how
ever. that the question at issue
could be peaceably adjusted.
G. w. AXELSON.