The Connecticut labor news., 1921-11-04
REMEMBER WHAT MELLEN SAID ABOUT BANKERS WHO ACCOMPLISHED DOWNFALL
 OF AMERICAN RAILROADS STILL STANDS
Why Condemn Workers Because of Their Mem bership in Unions When Doctors, Lawyers and Business Men Are Organized for Mutual Benefit?- Workers Be Eternal Slaves to Satisfy MammOn?

crowded 1rclgm EdTQ, nor ul1Nt dll cA- press train at high speed through the weary night. nor stand the wear and grind of the most hazardous vocation III our land. Therefore, ordinary justice dictates that there ought to be wage recOmpensc commensurate with the r1Sk involved, and the service rendered.
 The doctors union insists that he shall get his declared rate of pay; the legal shall receive his fee in accordance. not with the value of the service, but in accordance with a certain rate established not by the public who pays the bill, but by the lawyers own union or association, whichever is polite~tO call 1t.
 Of course the doctor and the lawyer would scoff at any newswriter calling the rOnclad organization to which they adhere, a union, but with all proper re- spect to those two able and capable cash harvesting organizations, unions they are in spite of all denials.
 You put in your application, you pay your dues, and you are given rate card It's nearly the same in all we'll conducted unions. Only with this diff ference: Whereas, the nicely dressed doctor and the suave and Well-groOmed lawyer go through life without much public reference to their sturdy unions, the plumber, the carpenter. the molder, the machinist, the railroadman and all the other manual workers on whose cash payments the professions exist, are re- gularly brought out into the limelight for regular banning that the Big Bugs hand out every so often.
 It IS, or seems to De, part of our mod ern life to take whack at the trade union man every now and then, while politely ignoring the professional union
 men. Is 1t because the doctor and the lawyer, and the banker and the whole sale grocer, and the lumber dealer are
 more strongly entrenched? Here IS a nut for the economists to crack.
 Thus 1t happens that at this time, with the railroads of the country heavily up- holstered with $5000000O0 of the people, s
 money and most woefully rnisnanaged by Wall Street stock gamblers and their tools, in Washington. it is the railroad worker who IS let in for the regular banning process. The silk-hatted fellows who operate railroads with stock tickers and who groan with acute pain when ordinary receipts from freight and pas senger service cannot pay dividends on millions of extra-StOCk issues, are the ones who just now are trying to nibble off few dollars here and there from the railroadmen's wages.
 Which leads the writer to call atten- tion to the fearful roasting that a cap italistiC paper published in Los Angeles has handed out to the railroadrncn of the Pacific Coast for their excessive wages. y Lets see tor a moment: The brakemen who handle the heavy trains over the Rocky Mountain and Cascade divisions of the Northern Pacific, Great Northern. Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound, Outhern Pacific and other western lines, take their lives i'll their hands every time they ride the roofs" down the steep l mountain slopes. For this service they are paid the enormous sum of $1l0 per | lnOnth truly most exorbitant lot of money.
 No wonder the silk hat stock ticker railroad experts grOan dismally when they consider that dreadful waste of cash. The heavy freight cars are fast cned together with steel cables extend
 ing from engine to caboose. Up front two powerful mountain "hOgs' at full
 steam, with wheels locked send up
 flurries of sparks as the giant wheels churn backward to keep the trains from crashing down the declines At the rear
 
 | and puff in their efforts to hold back the train
 And while the engine crews are talk ing grieVous chances front and rear to hold back the rocking, plunging string | of rattlers, how about that $11O a month brakeman and his working boss, the freight conductor? Are they comfor- tably pdrched in the buggy counting over all that money that is causing such mental anguish away back at New and Broad Streets? They are not. They are on duty on top of the flying box cars Cllnglng, each one of them, to a brake wheel, with caps drawn down over their weather beaten faces literally in more
 danger than that other soldier in the trenches, with nerves at high tension
 waiting for the expected whistle for
 down brakes"
 The heavy freight crashes and rolls down the track, through snowsheds, across high trestlcs of dizzy height
 and frail look, around "S'' curves through
 tunnels filled with gases and smoke, l faster and faster the engines ahead and behind sending out clouds of black while flremen shovel desperately to keep up the | precious steam that holds the train on the rails, and so on down to the flat Coun- l try WIleTe the Strd1n IS eaSeQ up and
 where the pushers and pulers are side | tracked. These are the men who run trains over the mountain divisions Dc
 they earn that $l1O per month? Let the reader answer
 Take the men who operate the trains | both passenger and freight from New l Orleans westward to Los Angeles on
 the s. P., the giant oil burners that are | twin brothers of the flames of hell, es- l pecially when the trains are crossing | the Staked Plain and the big dessert l don't those men earn their wages? Take | the fellows who pilot the trains on the l Boston X Maine into Worcester in our winter climate, the crews shivering ir | Arctic cold with gales blowing on them l through the leather curtain the shacks l on the roofs with WatChful eyes and
 ready signal lanterns, and all the time 1 in imminent danger of wreck and death l Don't those chaps earn their wages l How many of them ever manage to save l up enough out of their vast incomes tC own country estates, yes, or even a | humble cottage? Take any of the devoted army of American railroadmen, enduring danger and frost and exposure at all ! times, day and night, taking all kinds of
 chances in order that you and I may 1 have our flour and our potatoes and our
 meat and other foodstuffs and fuel, dc