RAILWAYS A NATIONAL INDUSTRY
Having seen the part that railways have played in helping to develop the industrial interests of the country in general, we may now consider (1) to what extent the railways themselves constitute a national industry, and (2) various conditions relating thereto.
The latest available statistics as to the number of all classes of railway servants connected with the working of railways, and including, as I understand, both salaried and wages staffs with the exception of heads of departments, are to be found in "Returns of Accidents and Casualties" as reported to the Board of Trade by the railway companies of the United Kingdom for the year ending December 31, 1910 [Cd. 5628]. These figures give a total of 608,750 persons, classified as follows:—
15. Guards (Passenger)
The foregoing table serves to show the great extent of the railway industry from the point of view of the number of persons directly employed therein, and it also suggests a great variety in the occupations or grades of those employed. In the latter respect, however, the information given fails to offer a complete idea of the actual situation, since over 36,000 men and boys (that is, persons under eighteen years of age) are, as will be seen, classed as "miscellaneous."
Whatever the further variety in the particular occupations included under this head, it is certain that the railway service affords employment for a greater range and diversity of talent, skill, ability or effort than probably any other single industry or enterprise on the face of the earth. From the general manager to the railway navvy, and from the chief engineer, working out intricate problems calling for a high degree of skill and scientific knowledge, to the boy who helps in the unpretending but necessary work of cleaning the engines, there is opportunity for almost every possible class or type of labour, whether skilled or unskilled.
Over and above the employees, of all grades, concerned in"the working of railways," as here shown, there is a very considerable body of men employed by the railway companies in the building of rolling stock, the making of rails, in the provision of many other requirements, or in the doing of much other work, necessary in the construction, equipment and operation of their lines. The smaller companies are content to buy their rolling stock, and they mostly have repairing shops only; but the larger companies have their own locomotive, carriage and waggon works in which a very considerable volume of employment is afforded to mechanics and labourers who would hardly come under the ordinary designation of "railwaymen" proper; while in this respect the companies concerned may be regarded as not only providers of transport but as, also, in effect, engineers and manufacturers.
In order to give the reader some idea of the extent of the employment afforded by these subsidiary branches of what is still actual railway work, I give on the next page a table—for the data of which I am indebted to the companies mentioned—showing the actual or the approximate number of men employed in the leading railway works of the type in question; though it should be added that the figures relate only to the particular works mentioned, and do not include men who may be engaged in engineering or productive work elsewhere on the same company's system.
Information as to the extent to which the railway companies of the United Kingdom in general afford employment in the directions here in question will be found in the "Census of Production (1907)" [Cd. 5254], issued in 1910, included in these returns being three tables which are given under the heading "Railways (Construction, Repair and Maintenance of Permanent Way, Plant, Rolling Stock, etc.)," and relate to (1) output; (2) cost of materials used; and (3) number of personsemployed.
It is shown that the total value of all goods manufactured or of the work done by railway companies' employees in construction, maintenance and repair of permanent way, works, buildings, plant, rolling stock, etc. (such values being sums representing only the actual cost of manufacture or work done, and made up of wages, materials and a portion of the establishment charges), amounted for the year 1907 to £34,703,000. The details are grouped under seven different heads, as follows:—
Buildings (not returned under other Heads): New Works, Repairs, and Maintenance
The cost of the materials used was £17,600,000. Deducting this amount from the total of the foregoing table, there is left a net sum of £17,103,000 to represent wages and establishment charges; though it may fairly be assumed that a good deal even of the £17,600,000 which stands for cost of materials was on account of wages previously paid for the procuring or the preparation of those materials by other than non-railway servants.
The total number of persons employed by the railway companies in the manufacture of the goods or in the execution of the work comprised in the statement was 241,526, in the proportion of 232,736 wage-earners and 8790 salaried persons. This figure of 241,526, however, is not necessarily to be added to the 608,750 previously given as the number of railway servants connected with the working of railways. There is nothing to show to what extent the two tables overlap, though overlapping there obviously is, since the first table includes 66,305 permanent-way men, while the second table evidently includes the persons employed on permanent-way work, since the value of that work is put down at £9,346,000. On the other hand, some classes of servants included in the Census of Production returns are excluded from the Railway Accidents return, so that although the exact number of persons directly employed by the railway companies of the United Kingdom cannot be stated, it must be somewhere between 608,750, the total of the one return, and 850,276, the sum of the totals for both returns.
All the figures thus far given relate to work done by persons directly employed by the railway companies themselves; but there is, in addition, a vast amount of work done for therailways by independent companies or manufacturers. Taking, for instance, railway-carriage and waggon-building factories in the United Kingdom, providing for the wants of the smaller companies at home or for railway companies in the colonies or abroad, I find from the Census of Production that this particular phase of "the railway industry" (for it must needs be regarded as included therein, notwithstanding the fact that a few of the items relate to tramcars, horse vehicles, etc.), led in 1907 to an output of goods made or of work done valued at £9,609,000. The items are:—
The number of persons engaged in these railway-carriage and waggon-building factories when the census in question was taken was 28,193, namely, 26,492 wage-earners, and 1701 salaried staff.
When one tries to form some idea of the further volume of employment that results from the supply of the thousand and one necessaries which even the most enterprising and independent of railway companies must still procure from outside manufacturers, makers, growers or providers, it is obvious that the railways, both as an industry in themselves and in their dependence, in endless ramifications, on other industries concerned wholly or in part in supplying railway wants, must provide more or less employment for an army of workers vastly in excess even of the aforesaid 600,000 or 800,000.
In many respects the railway service proper—that is to say, the particular branches thereof which deal with actualtransport, as distinct from construction and manufacture—offers features that are unique in their way, even if they do not, also, bring about types of workers of a class distinct from those to be found in the majority of other industries.
In the latter dependence is being placed more and more on the efficiency of the machinery employed, and the person of greatest importance to them is the machinery-inventor or the machinery-improver. The one who works the machine may require to have a certain degree of skill or dexterity in carrying on the necessary process, but the more nearly he can approach the perfection of his machine and become, as it were, part and parcel of it, the greater will often be his degree of success as a worker. In his case the personal equation hardly counts. He is merely the penny put into the slot in order that the figures may work, and any other man, or any other penny, that fulfilled the requisite conditions might be expected to produce the same results.
In railway operation great importance must certainly be attached to the efficiency of the machinery, or of the system; but final success may depend to a very material extent on the efficiency of the unit. Everything that human foresight and railway experience can suggest may be done—both in the provision of complex machinery and in the drawing-up of the most perfect rules and regulations—to ensure safe working; yet the ultimate factor in grave issues on which safety or disaster will depend may be a worker who has either risen to, or has failed to meet, a sudden emergency. In this way, not only does the individual unit count, but the individual unit in railway operation may be the Atlas upon whose shoulders the railway world does, in a sense, rest. A blunder in an ordinary factory or workshop may involve no more than the spoiling of a machine or the waste of so much material. A blunder on the railway may involve a terrible loss of human life.
Railway operation is thus calculated to give to the workers engaged in transport a keener sense of responsibility, and to develop therewith a greater individuality, than any other of our national industries. The railway man concerned in operation requires to be capable both of foresight and of initiative. It is said of a certain railway in India that a telegraphic message was one day received at head-quarters froma station down the line to the following effect: "Tiger on platform. Send instructions." In England there is no probability of railway-station platforms being taken possession of by wandering tigers; but if anything equivalent thereto, in the form of a sudden and dangerous emergency not provided for by rules and regulations did arise, the officials on duty would be expected to show alike resource and energy in meeting the circumstances promptly and efficiently, so far as they could, instead of waiting to ask the district superintendent or the superintendent of the line for instructions.
Independently of the ever-present dangers of actual operation, to which I shall revert later on, the fact of having to deal with such varied types of humanity as are met with on the platforms of a busy railway station, under conditions ranging between the extremes of amiability and irritability, must also tend to sharpen the wits of the average railway worker, and make a different man of him than he would be if he were to spend his working days in feeding a machine in a factory with bits of tin or leather to be shaped into a particular form. Nor, whether the railway man be concerned in passenger traffic, in goods transport, or in checking claims and accounts in the general offices, must he fail to be ever on the look-out for those who, though they may be the most honest of men in the ordinary affairs of life, never scruple to defraud a railway company when they can.
Another factor tending to differentiate the railwayman from the ordinary industrial worker is the sense of discipline—and the consequent subordination of each unit to an official superior—which must needs prevail if a great organisation is to be conducted, not simply with success for the shareholders, but with safety for the public. The maintenance of effective discipline is obviously essential to the safety of railway operation, just as it does, undoubtedly, further help to form the special type of the railway servant.
The development of the same type is being fostered to an ever-increasing degree by the special training which junior workers undergo with a view to making them, not only better fitted for the particular post they already occupy, but qualified to succeed to higher positions as opportunities for their advancement may arise.
A railway manager is not alone concerned in the workingof his line, and in the doings of his staff, day by day. He looks forward to the requirements of the line and to the constitution of the staff at least five or ten years hence, and he wants to make sure that, as the experienced men around him are lost to the service, others will be at hand equally, or even still better, qualified to take their place. He further realises that in an undertaking in which, notwithstanding its magnitude, so much depends on the unit, that unit should be encouraged, and enabled, to attain to the highest practicable stage of efficiency.
This tendency is leading to results that are likely to be both far-reaching and wide-spreading. It is a matter not only of giving to railway workers, and especially to those in the clerical and operative departments, a higher degree of technical knowledge, but, also, of rendering them equal to responsibility, of fostering their efficiency still further through their social, physical and material well-being, and of retaining them for the railway service notwithstanding (in the case of the clerical staff) the allurements of traders who look upon well-trained goods clerks, especially, as desirable assistants in the counting-house, and seek to attract them with the offer of a somewhat better wage.
The training and the higher education of railway workers have undergone important developments alike in the United Kingdom, in the United States, in Germany, in France, and elsewhere.
In the early days of the railway the most eligible person for the position of general manager was thought to be some retired naval or military officer, accustomed to controlling large bodies of men; and the first appointments were based on this principle. But experience soon showed that in undertakings where technical, commercial and economic considerations were all-important, the real recommendations for leading positions were to be found, rather, in proved capacity and in thorough knowledge of railway operation and management.
Under the company system, as it prevails in the United Kingdom and the United States, railwaymen, of whatever class, are now generally taken on as boys, are trained for the position to which they are found to be adapted, and rise to higher posts according to capacityandopportunity—for these must needs go together. In this way it is not unusual for the generalmanager on an English railway to have started as an office boy. Many a head of department to-day entered the service as junior clerk, and worked his way up to his present position; there are station-masters who began as ticket clerks; there are guards who gained their first knowledge of railway work as station porters, while engine-drivers are recruited from firemen, and firemen from engine-cleaners.
For details as to what the American railway companies are doing in the matter of "Education for Efficiency in Railroad Service" I must refer the reader to a bulletin written by J. Shirley Eaton and published, under this title, by the United States Bureau of Education. Here I can do no more than reproduce the following extract, giving in brief Mr Eaton's view on the general situation as he finds it on the other side of the Atlantic:—
"Railroads, as a whole, through a representative body such as the American Railway Association, should in a comprehensive way take up the matter of the education of railway employees. As they now have committees devoted to standards of construction, maintenance, and operating practice, they should also have a standing committee, of a character to command confidence, who should sedulously foster a closer relation between the railroad and educational agencies. This could be done by roughly grouping railroad service into classes according to the requirements of service, indicating the efficiency required in a broad way, and studying the curricula and course of experience leading up to such efficiency. Such a body should officially gather all railroad literature and accumulate the nucleus of a railroad museum. In various ways the teaching force of educational agencies, training toward railroad employ, could be drawn into study and discussion of the practical everyday problems of railroad work. The large public policies involved in railroad operation are to-day left to the doctrinaire or accidental publicist, when they should be a subject of study and effective presentation by the highest grade of trained experts which the associate railroads could draw into their service. On the other hand, such a standing committee could stimulate and guide the practice of railroads in their methods of handling and instructing apprentices. Between the instruction and practice in the service on the one side, and the instruction outsidethe service on the other side, they could foster a closer relation, making them mutually supplementary. In developing approved plans for recruiting the service they would necessarily indicate the lines of a more direct access than now exists from the various schools to apprenticeships in the service, and suggest the best methods by which such apprenticeships would be gradually merged into the full status of regular employ at the point of special fitness."
On this side of the Atlantic the railway servants' education movement has assumed two phases—(1) secondary or technical education of junior members of railway staffs in mechanics' institutions or kindred organisations, created or materially supported by the railway companies, and already carried on during a period of, in some instances, over sixty years; and (2) a "higher education" movement, of a much more advanced type, developed since about 1903, and conducted either in special classes held at the railway offices or in connection with a University, a mechanics' institution, a local educational body, or otherwise.
It is impossible in the space at my command to give a detailed account of what every railway company in the United Kingdom is doing in these directions. Some typical examples must suffice.
To begin with mechanics' institutions and other kindred bodies, these are by no means purely educational in their scheme of operations. They include many social and recreative features which, in effect, should play a no less important part than educational efforts in promoting the general efficiency of the railway worker by helping to give him a sound body, a contented mind, and a cheerful disposition as well as more skilful fingers or a better-cultivated brain. In the United States, judging from what Mr Eaton says on the subject, all such "welfare" work as this, though carefully fostered, is regarded by the railroad companies as a purely business proposition; and he does not attempt to credit them with any higher motive than regard for the almighty dollar. Here, however, while there has been full recognition of the financial value of increased efficiency, the companies have, also, not failed to realise their moral obligations towards their staffs. Hence in seeking to promote the welfare of their employees they have been inspired by motives of humanity,goodwill and honourable feeling in addition to, or even as distinct from, any pecuniary advantage the shareholders themselves might eventually gain therefrom.
Crewe Mechanics' Institution dates back to 1844, when the Grand Junction Railway Company provided a library and reading-room, and, also, gave a donation for the purchase of books for the men employed in the railway works then being set up in what was, at that time, a purely agricultural district. In the following year this library and reading-room developed into a Mechanics' Institution, the primary object of the railway company being to afford to the younger members of their staff at Crewe greater facilities for acquiring theory in classes at the Institution to supplement the practical knowledge they were acquiring in the works, though the benefits of the Institution were also to be open to residents of Crewe who were not in the company's employ. The management was vested in a council elected annually by the directors and the members conjointly; and this arrangement has continued ever since.
Larger premises were provided in 1846, in which year the Grand Junction combined with the London and Birmingham and Manchester and Birmingham Companies to form the London and North-Western Railway Company. The classes were added to from time to time until they covered the whole range of subjects likely to be of service to the students. Beginning, however, with the 1910-11 session, the art, literary and commercial classes which had been held at the Institute for sixty-four years were transferred to the local education authority, the Institute retaining the scientific and technological subjects. In addition to the ordinary work of the classes, the more recent developments of the "higher education" movement have led to systematic courses of instruction—extending over four-year periods—in (1) pure science, (2) mechanical engineering, (3) electrical engineering and (4) building construction. An Institution diploma is given to each student who completes a course satisfactorily. Visits are, also, paid to engineering works, electrical generating stations, etc. Most of the teachers are engaged at the Crewe works, and the instruction given is thus of the most practical kind.
One feature of the Institution is the electrical engineering laboratory, provided by the directors of the London andNorth-Western Railway, who have further arranged for a number of apprentices to attend at the laboratory one afternoon every week to receive instruction, their wages being paid to them as though they were still on duty in the works. There is, also, a mechanics' shop, with lathes, drilling machines, etc., electrically driven.
Since 1855 the directors of the London and North-Western have given an annual donation of £20 for books to be awarded as prizes to successful students employed in their locomotive department and various other prizes and scholarships, including Whitworth scholarships, are also awarded. The Institution is affiliated with the Union of Lancashire and Cheshire Institutes, the City and Guilds of London Institute and the Board of Education, each of which bodies holds examinations and awards prizes and certificates. The library has now over 12,000 volumes.
In addition to the reading-room the Institution has coffee, smoking and recreation-rooms. Special attention is being paid to the social side of the Institution's work through the appointment of a "Teachers' Committee for Social and Recreative Development," the particular purpose of this committee being to organise sports and entertainments and to secure the formation of a literary society.
At Wolverton there is a Science and Art Institute at which many classes are held, and, although none of these are directly under the management of the London and North-Western Company, as at Crewe, the very successful and numerous courses in engineering subjects and railway-carriage building conducted by the committee of management, working in connection with the Bucks County Council, receive the active support and encouragement of the company's directors.
Science, commercial, art and domestic economy classes are also held at the L. & N.-W. Institute at Earlstown, where definite courses of instruction, in groups of subjects, and extending over at least two years, are given.
The Great Eastern Railway Mechanics' Institution, established in 1851 at Stratford New Town, has made generous provision for the education, recreation and social life of employees of that company resident in London, East. The Institution comprises a library of 9000 volumes; reading-room; baths (patronised by 10,000 bathers in the course ofthe year); a large hall for lectures, entertainments, balls or concerts; and a billiard-room, three quoit pitches and a rifle range, the last-mentioned being the gift of the Great Eastern directors. Science, art, technological, commercial and other evening classes to the number of over forty were held in the Institution during the Session of 1910-11. Among the subjects taught were: machine construction, applied mechanics, mathematics, electrical engineering, heat-engines, motor-car engineering, rail-carriage building, drawing, book-keeping, shorthand, physical culture, the mandoline and the violin; while still other classes included an orchestral class and ladies' classes in "first aid" and "home nursing."
A series of practical classes, in connection with the same Institution, is also held during working hours in the Great Eastern Railway Company's works at Stratford. Arrangements are further made to extend the usefulness of these classes by visits to engineering works and electrical generating stations. Examinations are conducted in connection with the Board of Education, the City and Guilds of London Institute and the Society of Arts, and prizes, certificates and scholarships are awarded to successful students. The total number of students attending the various classes in 1910-11 was 958. The Institution at the end of 1910 had 1471 members, of whom all but 79 were in the employ of the railway company.
In 1903 the directors of the Great Eastern Railway Company gave a further proof of their appreciation of the educational work thus being carried on by granting to employee-students in the locomotive, carriage and waggon department who could fulfil certain conditions leave of absence with full pay for one or more winter sessions of about six months each, in order to afford them increased facilities for taking up the higher branches of technical study. Opportunities are also given to such students for visits to manufactories, works in progress, etc. Of the twenty-one students who had taken advantage of the arrangements in question down to the end of 1910, four had obtained the University degree of B.Sc. (Faculty of Engineering); four had passed the intermediate examination for the same degree; two had obtained Whitworth scholarships, and five had been awarded Whitworth exhibitions.