Page:Fagan (1908) Confessions of a railroad signalman.djvu/118

98 During the palmy days of what may be called autocratic management, when a railroad man started out in the morning, the paymaster, or the office-boy, for that matter, could have told you the exact amount the man would have been entitled to on his return. The employee was willing, and in fact had agreed, to travel or to work from a point A to a point B for a certain fixed sum. So far as his pay was concerned, it made no difference whether he covered the distance in eight hours or eighteen. If a yardmaster delayed him for two or three hours before starting, and if he lost half a day on the road by reason of wrecks, disablement of locomotive, or a washout, so much the worse for him. His duty was to go from A to B and to do what he was told to on the way, without question, even if it took him from sunrise to sunrise to cover the distance. There was no help or rescue in sight, no appeal from the discipline in those days; and if the work was not to his liking, the world was wide, and a dozen men were ready to step into his place.

Nevertheless, the one-sidedness and injustice of the whole proceeding were manifest to everybody, and from year to year it remained to be talked about, objected to, and brooded over. But with ever-increasing business and complication of conditions, a much better educated class of men found their way into the railroad service. In moving a train from