Monday, Nov. 24, 1941
Inconceivable Strike
The sober, grey-haired men who run the nation's railroad unions made methodical plans last week for a strike which--if it ever came off--would be the most daring, gigantic, inconceivable strike in all U.S. history.
The resounding strike call read like a timetable. At 6 a.m. on Dec. 7 the five railway brotherhoods (engineers, firemen, conductors, trainmen, switchmen) would walk out on the Santa Fe, Rock Island, New York Central, Denver & Rio Grande, Katy, Pennsylvania, Southern Pacific, 44 other lines. Next day they would quit on the Chesapeake & Ohio, Chicago & North Western, the Gulf Coast lines, 40 others. By the third day, on 156 roads that carry passengers, food, coal, machinery and mail from New England to California, from Florida to Washington, not a wheel would turn.
For conduct during the strike the brotherhoods issued a precise, workmanlike set of rules, the sort of rules that come natural to men who are used to starting their run. at 1:17 a.m.. passing a water tower at 2:13 a.m., pulling on to a siding so that a fast passenger train can pass at 3:04 p.m. Men on their runs at 6 a.m. would deliver their trains to terminals before going on strike; members would stay away from railroad property, avoid all violence; roll would be called twice a day in local strike headquarters; no striker could stay away from roll call without an excuse.
But this timetable, these rules were a phantom strike; it could never be allowed to happen. The very names on the list of railroads told why. In those names, like native U.S. poetry, was the story of how the U.S. was built.
If the big locomotives ever stopped whistling through the night, over the spiderweb tracks of city yards, past lonely water towers deep in the country, the whole nation would slow to a standstill.
The history of railway labor relations was built on the knowledge, shared alike by management, labor and the public, that the wheels must never stop. Ever since 1898 there has been Federal mediation machinery set up so that the wheels would not stop.
When the brotherhoods called their strike, dissatisfied with the way the mediation machinery had worked this time (TIME, Nov. 17), it was hard to say who recoiled most fearfully from the threat --management, fearing that the Government would take over the roads; the public, fearing that it could not get milk for its babies; or the union members themselves.
Members of the independent railroad brotherhoods--which were well established unions when A.F. of L. was a pup and C.I.O. unborn--are no young radicals. Under the brotherhoods' own seniority rules, railroading is no longer a young man's game; the ranks of the nation's engineers, firemen and conductors are full of wise old grey heads, and the shrinking number of railroad jobs has kept youngsters from joining their ranks.
Under the wage scales set up by national mediation, brotherhood men were long the aristocrats of U.S. labor. Even since the decline of the railroads began two decades ago and wage scales began rising in other industries, they are still substantial, well-paid citizens with economic views well to the right of center. On Class I roads full-time engineers average $288 a month, conductors $267, firemen $220. They own their own homes, pay taxes, send their children to college. Many a railroad man votes the straight Republican ticket.
Between their bargaining demand for 30% more pay and the 7 1/2% offered by the President's fact-finding board (last cog of the mediation machinery provided by law), there was a gap as wide as a roundhouse door. But nobody, not even the men who planned to strike, wanted the strike to happen. They were certain, with the sureness of hope, that it would not happen.
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