Page:Fagan (1908) Confessions of a railroad signalman.djvu/168

144 cordingly. It matters not how you do this, whether by simple discharge or by omitting to fill vacancies as they occur in a natural way, the fact remains that at the end of the year you have decreased your force twenty-five per cent, and besides, without adding to your equipment, you have made a substantial reduction in your operating expenses.

Meanwhile the men who have lost their jobs have lodged a complaint with their union, and you are soon confronted with a grievance committee. These gentlemen inform you that the bonus system is all wrong, from beginning to end. From the union standpoint they will explain to you that the idea is, not to offer a reward for quickest arid best work, nor to encourage the best men to get rich quick, or to vaunt their superiority over their duller and less fortunate comrades, but to make the job, whatever it may be, last as long as possible, and thus to afford employment to the greatest number of workers, at a fair and fixed rate of wages to every individual, regardless of ability or ambition, or of the profits and interests of the establishment. You are further informed that the grievance committee cannot enter into the discussion of ethical and sociological questions. The race is doing pretty well as a whole, and posterity will accord to labor its due share of credit. Meanwhile the men will be called out of your shop, and the issue between the bonus system of reward