Additional Death Benefit, equal death benefits of class: Taken at not over 45 years of age .30 .60 .90 1.20 1.50 Taken at over 45 years and not over 60 years of age .45 .90 1.35 1.80 2.25 Taken at over 60 years of age .60 1.20 1.80 2.40 3.00
Disablement benefits per day, including Sundays and holidays: Accident: First 52 weeks .50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 After 52 weeks .25 .50 .75 1.00 1.25
Sickness: After first three days and not longer than 52 weeks .40 .80 1.20 1.60 2.00 After 52 weeks .20 .40 .60 .80 1.00
Death Benefits: For Class 250.00 500.00 750.00 1000.00 1250.00 Additional that may be taken 250.00 500.00 750.00 1000.00 1250.00
An employee, however, who is under forty-five years of age, who has been five years in the service and a member of the relief fund for one year, may enter any higher class than that determined by his pay, upon passing satisfactory physical examination.
Payments from the fund vary from forty cents per day for sickness and fifty cents for accident in the service, for members in the first class, to $2.00 per day for sickness and $2.50 for accident with a death benefit of from $250.00 to $2,500.00, according to class of membership and death benefit held.
Since the fund has been in operation, the following payments have been made, to December 31, 1909, inclusive:--
For Accident death benefits $2,185,343.40 Sickness death benefits 5,914,811.18 Accident disablement benefits 4,076,636.89 Sickness disablement benefits 7,855,069.73 Superannuation allowances 415,367.55 Operating expenses 3,207,131.06 --------------- Total $23,654,359.81
During the same period, the Pennsylvania has contributed to the fund in operating expenses, gratuities, etc., exclusive of interest, the following:
For Operating expenses $3,207,131.06 Special payment, etc. 424,571.91 For deficiencies 733,913.89 -------------- Total $4,365,616.86
In addition to what the Pennsylvania is doing in the payment of the pensions and contributions for the maintenance of the relief fund, the relief and pension departments have the use of the telegraph and the train service free of charge; and in case of accident in the service to employees, free surgical and hospital attendance is furnished, and, where necessary, artificial limbs or other appliances, without cost to the employee. No figures are available as to the cost of surgical attendance, or the furnishing of artificial limbs, but it is conservatively estimated by the Pennsylvania officers as equalling the amount paid for the operation of the relief department.
The modern railroad does not wait, however, for a man to become injured or to die before assuming any responsibility for his care. There may come a day when the burden of years makes him a little less fit for the strenuous service of railroading. It is Nature's way of telling man that he has labored well and that he is entitled to a rest. In other days, the railroad recognized this in a rather informal way. It took its veteran employees, retired them into a comfortable ease, and had the paymaster send them checks each month for a part of their old wages. Out of that custom the railroad pension system was born, only with this sharp distinction: In the old way the man was taught to believe his monthly check a favor or gratuity on the part of the railroad; under the pension system he comes to know it, not as an act of charity but as his right, a right earned by long hard years of faithful service.
This idea has begun to be recognized as fundamental by railroad managers.
Directors and officers now realize that the pension fund and some of these other features that we have just considered, are causes directly contributing to the efficiency of the railroad. The policy is merely one of good management. Again, let us see the way the Pennsylvania handles this matter, not because the Pennsylvania is alone in this thing, but rather because it is one of the largest and most distinctive of American railroads, and almost a pioneer in this work. Before it began paying pensions to retired employees, the Pennsylvania had already long conducted a relief fund and a savings fund, and had contributed to libraries and railroad branches of the Y. M. C. A.
The pensions are paid entirely by the company. In the year 1909, for instance, $594,000 was paid out to the men who had retired between the ages of 65 and 70. From the time the fund was established until the end of 1909, appropriations for it amounted to more than $4,000,000, now paid to some 2,300 men annually.
Employees may retire for age at 70, or for physical incapacitation between 65 and 69. If they have been in the service as long as 30 years, they are granted an allowance based on one per cent of the monthly wages for each year of service. The percentage is based on the wages received for the ten years preceding retirement.
Thus, if an engineer, or a brakeman, or a fireman, has served the Pennsylvania 30 years, he may retire between 65 and 70 and receive not less than 30 per cent of his monthly wages during the last 10 years of work.
The other railroads using the pension scheme have followed these general outlines for their work. It has become an established feature of railroad operation, and recently a second vice-president was created on the Baltimore & Ohio for the express purpose of handling the company's relief work. Sometimes the railroad organizes savings-funds for employees, paying from three and one-half to as high as five per cent on their deposits, limiting these to something like a hundred dollars a month, and making every agent on the system a depositary of the fund.
The street railroad systems in the large cities, together with a few of the larger interurban systems, have recently begun to adopt systematic methods of keeping in touch with their employees. The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, operating a great system in a part of metropolitan New York, and employing more than 15,000 men, was a pioneer in this work. It found that while the railroad Y. M. C. A. was efficient for the club-house work on steam railroads, there were local conditions in Brooklyn that made it best for the company to build and operate its own club-houses.
The first of these was remodelled from an old car-barn. It became a very interesting club, with reading-rooms, baths, a barber-shop, a gymnasium, class-rooms for evening study, and a theatre, seating some 1,200 folk. For the theatre the railroad hires vaudeville actors, and gives its great semi-official family free entertainments--followed by dancing and refreshments. On very especial nights the talent is furnished entirely by the trolley-men and very effective talent it is, too. On all nights the music is furnished by the Brooklyn Rapid Transit band, made up entirely of street-car men and men from the elevated roads of the system. The railroad company has furnished the music, the uniforms, the instruments, and the directors--all that the men have had to furnish is their time and interest, and these they have furnished in such good measure that there is a waiting-list now large enough to equip a second full brass band.
The Brooklyn system has also begun to establish model restaurants in its outlying barns, where clean and good food is furnished to the men at cost.
The street railroad is, in some such cases as these, confronted with a steam railroad problem. Many of the big car-barns are in sparsely settled suburbs of the city where the only eating-places have been saloons or their adjuncts. The street railroad can no more afford to have its men in saloons, than its bigger brother. To take from them the one decent excuse for being in such places it is establishing its restaurants, where the men can have cleaner and better food than in the saloons, and without the risk to the railroad.
The Brooklyn road and the other large systems have adopted the relief and pension funds; the idea seems to spread as rapidly among the electric as it did among the steam railroads. Some of them have added odd and efficient "kinks" of their own. For instance, the Boston Elevated Railway makes presents of gold at New Year's Day, ranging from $20 to $35 each, to each of its men who has a clean record for courtesy to patrons, and Boston gains a reputation through that for the uniform courtesy of her trolley-men. The Boston Elevated has also inaugurated a policy of giving free legal advice to each of its employees who may need it. It has always been a perquisite of high railroad officers to avail themselves of the road's legal department for their personal needs. Under the Boston plan this perquisite is extended to every man on the road--the young motorman who had foolishly gone to a loan shark, and who is now being harried by him; the old conductor who wishes to convey a house or draw a will. The road's legal department will advise him sincerely, in his own best interest. It will draw up his legal papers, do anything for him except take his case into court, and even then it will advise an honest and capable attorney for him. As for that motorman who went to the loan shark when he found an immediate need of fifty dollars, the road stands ready to advance him the money upon good cause, and will charge him only a nominal rate of interest until it has gradually repaid itself from his wages. His division superintendent is empowered to hear his story with sympathetic ear, and to arrange for the loan.
Employees' magazines have been decided factors in both bringing and keeping the railroad in touch with its army of men. The Erie was a pioneer in this work five years ago; the plan has since been adopted with signal success by the Northwestern, the Illinois Central, the Santa Fe, the Pere Marquette, and some other lines. These little magazines, made interesting enough in a general way to catch and hold the attention of their readers, are sent out each month to every man on the system with his pay-check.
They spread railroad interest and railroad enthusiasm among their readers.
On one page they tell of styles for the engineer's wife, and on the next they show an economical use of coal for the engineer; and so they may help to pay their way. They tell of errors and mistakes among the railroad's employees, without mentioning names, so that men may profit by them and act differently. But they print the names of the railroaders who do the good things, the novel things, the practical things, the economical things, the heroic things, out along the line. And this roll of honor is a long one.
But it is not always in the big things that a railroad keeps in touch with its men, sometimes it is in very small things. Some time ago, a division superintendent on the Erie Railroad decided that for each of his engineers who kept his engine in particularly good order for a given length of time, he would have the number plate on the front of the boiler painted in red. "We will have the Order of the Red Spot," laughed Superintendent Parsons, of the Susquehanna Division, as he signed a bulletin announcing the thing. Now that was a little thing. The cost of painting that red spot on the breast of some proud locomotive was but nominal; but listen to the result!
A big Erie officer was up the line a few months later, and was loafing in a junction-town on the Susquehanna Division, waiting for a through train.
He walked down to the end of the station platform and there stood a passenger locomotive waiting to take a train in the other direction. It belonged to the proud Order of the Red Spot, an order of which this particular officer had not heard; and the engineer was already about it with his long-handled oil-can. The officer did not reveal his identity, but said:
"Waiting to take out a special?"
The engineer did not look up, but said:
"We carry forty-six over the division."
"I didn't think that forty-six was due for two hours yet," said the railroad officer.
"She is not," answered the engineer, "but I've been down here an hour and a half already fussing with this baby to have her in shape. You may notice that she belongs to the Order of the Red Spot."
Then that particular man came to know about the Red Spots. All the way back to Jersey City he kept looking for Red Spots, and every time he saw one, he saw an engine slick and clean, as if she had just come from the shops. That set him to thinking; and after he was done thinking, Parsons was promoted in service, and the Order of the Red Spot was established for the system. There has been an exalted division made of that order recently. When a man can be assigned to one engine and he brings her into the Red-Spot class and keeps her there, the railroad dedicates that engine to him for the rest of his lifetime upon the system. His name, in gilt letters, goes upon the cab-panel of the engine, whereas in other days you used to see those of statesmen and of railroad-owners; and there it stays until the engine goes to the scrap-heap. The other day the first of these engines, drawing a Waldwick local, pulled into the Jersey City passenger terminal; on its cab was "Harvey Springstead" so large and clear that you could read it across the yard; in the cab-window was Harvey Springstead, prouder for that moment than any earthly prince or potentate.
Sometimes the competitive idea is the best to foster to accomplish results from the men, and to bind them and the road a bit closer together. We have seen how a fortnight of "T. B. M. F." repairs to a locomotive has been quickened down under contest to 13 hours and 34 minutes. Many of the more successful railroads began some years ago to institute annual contests between their section-bosses. The section-boss who kept his stretch of the right-of-way in cleanest, trimmest shape for a twelvemonth got a black and gold sign at his hand-car house, so big that folk who rode in the fast expresses could read the honor that it conferred upon him. Sometimes he gets more--a trip pass for his wife and himself to some distant point, or even a cash prize. Annually the superintendent of maintenance may run a special train, with a specially devised observation grandstand at its rear or pushed ahead of the engine. On that grandstand sit all the section bosses and other track maintenance experts. They see the other fellow's sections--and their own; and some time on that trip there is a little dinner and the awarding of the prizes.
Do not even dare to think that these things count for little upon the railroad. They are mighty factors in the maintenance of one of its very greatest factors, the human one.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE COMING OF ELECTRICITY
ELECTRIC STREET CARS--SUBURBAN CARS--ELECTRIC THIRD-RAIL FROM UTICA TO SYRACUSE--SOME RAILROADS PARTIALLY ADOPT ELECTRIC POWER--THE BENEFIT OF ELECTRIC POWER IN TUNNELS--ALSO AT TERMINAL STATIONS--CONDITIONS WHICH MAKE ELECTRIC TRACTION PRACTICAL AND ECONOMICAL--HOPEFUL OUTLOOK FOR ELECTRIC TRACTION--THE MONORAIL AND THE GYROSCOPE CAR, INVENTED BY LOUIS BRENNAN--A SIMILAR INVENTION BY AUGUST SCHERL.
It is barely more than a quarter of a century since electricity first became practical for use as a motive power upon railroads. The early experiments of Thomas A. Edison at Menlo Park, N. J., and upon the now abandoned railroad up Mount McGregor, N. Y., soon gave way to real electric street railroads in Montgomery, Ala., in Richmond, Va., and from Brooklyn to Jamaica, N. Y. These, in turn, gave way to still better forms of electric traction, until the trolley has not only all but entirely driven the horse-car and the cable-car from city streets, but has performed a notable new transportation function in giving quick communication from one town to another in the well-settled portions of the country. These enterprises are quite outside of the province of this book; the cases where the electric locomotive and electric motor-car have usurped the steam locomotive upon its own rails are pertinent.
As soon as the electric railroad had begun to reach out into the country from the sharp confines of the towns, the steam railroad men began to take interest. It would have been even better for them if some of them had taken sharper interest at the beginning. But the few men who were long-sighted enough a dozen years ago to see the development possibilities of a form of traction that was comparatively inexpensive to install and to operate have been repaid for their sagacity. These men began a dozen years ago to wonder if electricity could not be brought to the service of the long-established steam railroad.
In most cases the short suburban steam roads outside of large cities, which were as apt to be operated by "dummy engines" as by standard locomotives, were the first to be electrified, and in these cases they usually became extensions of the then novel trolley lines. Folk no longer had to come in upon a poky little "dummy train" of uncertain schedule and decidedly uncertain habits, and then transfer at the edge of the crowded portion of the city to horse-cars. They could go flying from outer country to the heart of the town in half an hour, and upon frequent schedule, and the business of building and booming suburbs was born. After these roads had been developed, other steam lines began to study the situation. A little steam road that had wandered off into the hills of Columbia County from Hudson, N. Y., and had led a precarious existence, extended its rails a few more miles and became the third-rail electric line from Albany to Hudson, and a powerful competitor for passenger traffic of a large trunk-line railroad. The New York, New Haven, & Hartford found the electric third-rail of good service between two adjacent Connecticut cities, Hartford and New Britain; the overhead trolley a good substitute for the locomotive on a small branch that ran a few miles north from Stamford, Conn.
But the problems of electric traction for regular railroads were somewhat complicated, and the big steam roads rather avoided them until they were forced upon their attention. The interurban roads had spread too rapidly in many, many cases, where they were made the opportunities for such precarious financing as once distinguished the history of steam roads--and they had in most of these cases made havoc with thickly settled stretches of branch lines and main lines. In a great many cases the steam roads have had to dig deep into their pockets and buy at good stiff prices the very roads the building of which they might have anticipated with just a little forethought.
The New York Central & Hudson River took such forethought after some of its profitable branches in western New York had been paralleled by high-speed trolleys, and a very few years ago installed the electric third-rail on its West Shore property from Utica to Syracuse, 44 miles.
The West Shore is one of the great tragedies in American railroading.
Built in the early eighties from Weehawken (opposite New York City) to Buffalo, it had apparently no greater object than to parallel closely the New York Central and to attempt to take away from the older road some of the fine business it had held for many years. After bitter rate-war, the New York Central, with all the resources and the ability of the Vanderbilts behind it, won decisively, and bought its new rival for a song. But a property so closely paralleling its own tracks has been practically useless to it all the way from Albany to Buffalo, save as a relief line for the overflow of through freight.
So the West Shore tracks for high-class high-speed through electric service from Utica to Syracuse was a happy thought. Under steam conditions only two passenger trains were run over that somewhat moribund property in each direction daily, while the two trains of sleeping-cars passing over the tracks at night were of practically no use to the residents of those two cities. Under electric conditions, there is a fast limited service of third-rail cars or trains, leaving each terminal hourly; making but two stops and the run of over 44 miles in an hour and twenty minutes. There is also high-speed local service, and the line has become immensely popular.
By laying stretches of third and fourth tracks at various points, the movement of the New York Central's overflow through freight has not been seriously incommoded. The electric passenger service is not operated by the New York Central, but by the Oneida Railways Company, in which the controlling interests of the steam road have large blocks of stock.
[Illustration: A HIGH-SPEED ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE ON THE PENNSYLVANIA BRINGING A THROUGH TRAIN OUT OF THE TUNNEL UNDERNEATH THE HUDSON RIVER AND INTO THE NEW YORK CITY TERMINAL]
[Illustration: HIGH-SPEED DIRECT-CURRENT LOCOMOTIVE BUILT BY THE WESTINGHOUSE COMPANY FOR THE TERMINAL SERVICE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD, IN NEW YORK]