Page:Fagan (1908) Confessions of a railroad signalman.djvu/121

Rh mined men, with the crops and manufactures of half a continent waiting to be moved to the seaboard, what was a management or a combination of managements going to do about it?

Thus, by evolution and revolution, a mighty change has come over the scene. To-day, when a railroad man makes a trip from point A to point B, it is altogether different from the performance to which I called attention at the beginning of this essay. At the end of his trip, the man now takes out his pencil and does some figuring. Neither the superintendent nor the paymaster has the slightest idea what the engineman’s, the conductor’s, or the brakeman’s bill for a day’s work is going to be. If a man is delayed on a road by the negligence of a fellow employee, the company will have to pay for the extra time. If he makes a straight trip, with one or two stops, he has a certain rate; if in the performance of his duties he is called upon to make an extra stop or to pick up a car of perishable goods, he will call for a special rate and much more money. His day’s trip frequently bristles with possibilities in the way of special rates and overtime. In the matter of overtime, he may have the opportunity to be just or unjust, as it pleases him; anyway, the company is at his mercy. Again, if at the end of a hundred-mile run, or thereabouts, for which an engineman would receive from four to five dollars,