Page:Engines and men- the history of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. A survey of organisation of railways and railway locomotive men (IA enginesmenhistor00rayniala).pdf/111

 stop a few days, and then go away as if they had had enough of it."

For saying that, Harcombe was dismissed from the service.

Following the design of this history, there now comes an interval of several years covered by other chapters, which trace the sounding of the first bugle call to arms by the men of Monmouth, Sheffield, and other centres, the formation of the Society, its early struggles and victories, its flattening out of two hypocritical verdicts upon railway accidents, first, that of manslaughter, a monstrous crime in itself by those who dared to attach it to drivers so terribly overworked, and secondly. "The Acts of God," which was a convenient cover for the neglect of companies. These are stories for other chapters, but in this I want to resume the subject of hours and conditions.

On January 23rd of 1891, Mr. Francis Channing moved in the House of Commons:—

"'That in the opinion of this House the excessive hours of labour imposed on railwaymen by the existing arrangements of railway companies of the United Kingdom constitute a grave social injustice, and a constant source of danger to the men themselves and to the travelling public, and the Board of Trade should obtain powers by legislation to issue orders, where necessary, directing railway companies to limit the hours of work of a special class of their servants.'"

More than a decade had passed since the forgotten disclosures I have quoted, and still this awful scandal continued. A Select Committee was appointed to hear evidence, and painful facts were again revealed, but still Parliament merely sanctioned (in 1893) power for the Board of Trade to regulate hours, and another ten years of slave conditions passed by, not quite so awful in their intensity, but still very grave, and we find that in December, 1900, taking the facts relating to engine drivers and firemen on the twelve principal lines of England and Wales, there were 263,369 instances of men working more than twelve hours. A ten hours day was