Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 154, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1911 — BOSSES ON SMALL PAY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BOSSES ON SMALL PAY

GIVE ORDERS TO MEN WHO GET MUCH LARGER SALARIES. * Jt . “ ' Trainmaster* and Many Other Official* Receive Considerably Less Than Bom* Engineers and Others Whom They Employ. “Giving orders to men who are earning twice as much as you, might seem

a bit strange to any one but a railroad man,” a trainmaster on Otta of the many western railways remarked.. -«. “But that’s just what one has to do,” he continued. "Take almost any

railway in the country and you will find that the men who are giving orders are getting pay checks that look mighty small beside the checks of those who are ‘bossed.* “Take the trainmaster, for instance. He gets a title and $l5O a month or so. He plunks down in his office and tells the conductors how to run their trains and the engineers how to take the sidings and ‘calls - them down’ when they make mistakes. And the chances are that the .engineer who is getting the orders makes S2OO a month. He is being bossed by a man who gets SSO Ipsrf for‘every 30 days that he works. The conductor’s check may be as large or even larger than the engine driver's. "Think of leaning back in an easy chair and telling a man that you’ll give him SSO more than you get if he works' for you. Then, If he doesn’t suit you after he’s been on the road for a time, you call him In, take his job away from him, and give some one else the S2OO a month, while you struggle along on the measly $150." According to the trainmaster, half the railroad "officials” whose names appear In big print on the time cards are receiving less wages than those whom they employ. The average chief dispatcher, who does the major part of the real work in operating a railroad, earns SSOO and gets $175 a month. The division passenger agent, who gives orders to the passenger conductors. arranges for special trains, acts as a buffer between the traveling public and the complaint department, and who has other troubles, varied and numerous, finds his pay check amounting to $125, $l5O or $175. There are exceptions, of course, to the general rule of low-paid officials.

The superintendent, who has charge of a few hundred* miles, may receive anything from |2,000 to $5,000 annually, for running the division. But under’him are half a score men who aid in managing the road and who receive much less than those they employ.