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Show I TRAINMEN ASKING I FOR MORE MONEY HI' Ten Thousand Employes In Utah of the Rail-B' Rail-B' roads Now Casting Their Votes KH Managers Resisting. Bin ' KH Votes arc liciriK taken by the brotherhood or Locomotive En ISHL glnecrs and the Hrotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Engine h' men, while the Order of Railway Conductors and the Hrotherhood, Pflr of Itaitway Trainmen in Utah will vote within a few days upon the HH proposition now under consideration, to demand that railroads all HH over the United States grant Im eight-hour work day, with time HB and a half for overtime. Wm Several meetings have been held jointly by these organizations Hfl in Salt Lake City, at which this subject has been discussed. Nn H lional leaders arc scheduled to arrive in Zlon within a short time H to discuss the matter further with them. The organizations have H in the past worked independently each of the other. For the first m time in their history they nrc united with n common objective. B The Hrotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the Hrother- HH hood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemcn have been getting KB closer together for some time, white the Order of Railway Conduc K tors and the Hrotherhood of Railway Trainmen also have grndu H ally formed a closer working agreement, according to the views of H men prominent in these organizations. H, In the United Stntcs four hundred thousand men are casting Hj their ballots on this vital Issue. In Utah ten thousand will be til Bv rectly affected by the vote. At Helper, Green River, Scoficld, East ' Hiawatha and other points in Eastern Utah a vote was taken by H? the locomotive engineers during the past ten days. Sentiment is B' for the increase demanded so far as The Sun is able to ascertain. Hj The other orders, it is stated locally, will send in their votes M during the next few days. H H Ten thousand or more railroad men in Utah will be affected by Hr the result of a referendum vote that is being taken by four great H organizations of railroad employes in the United States and Can B ada, on proposed deminds for reduction of their work day from H ten hours to eight hours without corresponding reduction in pay; H for the payment of one and one-half timo for all time in service in HE excess of eight hours a day, and for certain changes in the exist- Hi ing agreements on working conditions, that are in effect between H the railroads and thu union organizations. That the railroads of Hl i the country will not accede to the demands without a fight is cer- Hj i tain. Plans for the labor war are being perfected by railroad man- BMp ngers nil over the United States, They will use peaceable mens Br; tires, they say, and will seek to educate the people ofjjthe United Bw States as to their side of thu case. H May lie the Most Hitter War. BTj If the battle in precipitated, as it will be thu moment the de- Bv'l mands are made and refused and it is believed the railroads will BB,fj refuse them one of thu bitterest wars between lulxr and capital HB'M that has ever shaken industrial America will be begun. The rnll- Hw!f road organizations that are conducting the referendum vote are B thu Hrotherhood of locomotive Engineers, the Hrotherhood of BBf Iocomotivo Firemen and Euginemun, the Order of Railway Con- '' ductors and the Hrotherhood of Railway Trainmen. K The voting will bo concluded during February and the vote of Hwjj each organization in each state will be forwarded to the national Hi headquarters of the various organizations, where thu votes will bo HBu tabulated. Announcement of the result will be made from thu HB1 national headquarters, or from thu offices of the chairman of the HKf, joint executive conference committee, March I, 11)10. Hfjjj There are approximately ten thousand or more railroad men In Hfw Utah who will bu affected directly or indirectly by the action of PHI the four great labor organizations. Not all of these are employed BBt ' Mm operating departments of the five railroads involved the Bp5 Denver and Rio Grande, the Western Pacific, thu Sidt Lake Route, Bl the Oregon Short Lino and the Union: Pacific lines but if the Hh operating departments are tied up, all other departments will EmmWI suffer and their forces will necessarily be reduced, ns there will not be employment for them. Hut Utah Is by no means the limit of thu scope of this gigantic cloud that is rising on the industrial horizon of the country. That cloud covers not only thu United Stntcs, but a part of Canada as well. HVfi It is estimated that a quarter of a million miles of railroad linos HJ arc to be affected, that nearly if not quite four hundred thousand Hf ' men are to bo involved, and that industrial paralysis will almost Hi inevitably follow if thu extreme step of calling a general strike is Bn taken. Btjl Figures Are Quite Enormous. BrL The total wages paid by thu railroads of the country to thu men Hll hi thu branches involved in the demands is $1180,000,000 for 19 M, HlE while for thu same year tho total operating revenues of all the BBIf railroads weru $.1,047,010,i)0(). Thu total operating expenses were Bfrft S2,200..'U:i,000 and the total capital securities were $20,'JJ7.:i00,- HJtu 000. Thu proportion of railroad revenue paid to labor in 10M was HbW 15.M per cent as compared with 41.42 per cent seven years earlier. HJ II Railroad men in Utah in these organizations are paid an aver- HJ gi age of from ninety five to a hundred dollars a month. In some I" branches of the sorvico the pav is considerably highur, some pas senger engineers drawing as high as two hundred dollars a month or more Hut they aro few in number and must work many, many ycnr.4 to get this. While the greatest secrecy is being maintained liv thu railroad employes ns to the result of the vote, it is understood under-stood that sentiment is geiiernlly favorable to making the demands, de-mands, and it is believed that an overwhelming vote will carry that faction to success. The four labor organizations have in the past worked separately separ-ately and have remained distinct each from the other. A movement move-ment is well under way among the members of the four organizations organiza-tions in Utah, and in unison witli the national movement, to "get together," and to this end several joint meetings have been held at which were representatives of tho four organizations. Those , , meetings have been called ostensibly for social and fraternal pur- Hlil pesos, but the,, announcement was mado when tho call was issued Hw for thu first of these meetings here that the purpose was to ostab- HcR lish closer relationship in all matters that pertain to the welfnru of BrM the employes. HMj Receivership Is Feared By Officials. Br While railroad officinls in various parts of tho country express Hjt the fear that if the unions vote to make the demands for increased HJ" pay as outlined it would tend to force virtually every railroad in HL , America into tho hands of receivers, the matter of tho increasos HurMB ' P11-' tnut nmv uc demanded is not the only one that troubles HHjflHI (hum. Tho railroads have nl toady organized a publicity bureau, HHhIHR by which they purpose to carry their side of tho case to every HJHhbb leader in tho United States. It is said by the railroad malingers BBEH that all they want Is a square deal, and Unit the whole people DHJBn should be in possession of every fact in relation to the case. They fnJnHH1! 'ftjf ffHJH MiMimrT mnM-inMiifiir.Mii 'IwmmmBmmmmmmmmmmmmhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmb . fMHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THIS RESIDENCE FOR SALE HHTm jMMMMMMMMMHtMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMKfflPH fcJHHHHHwlMBHHttMMMMMMMMEr HHHHHHHHHHpI l'tHu HHHHHriHIIHHHHfeBfe? "-tyI TT mjjjk pHBBPWBB-Tw-OBBSjWGbK1!- jJPHMBM8B!wrv?"y"""" fcwM; I'hr liiiiiilrnl (S.VHMIO) tlollnrw will Imnillf HiU nliv rtlilcmv inn'rtr, j lluiile on one-ni'iv lot llim block from ilrt nl I'rUv I'nr fnrllier Infor million, iilinne UnX, W, II. 1'iutiV rr.i1oiK-iv ill. sny it Is to give their side of the casu n full airing, for public con-, sumption, that tho publicity bureau has been orgnnized. "If the roads are compelled to grant the reduction in the hours of labor constituting a day, it will force an unusunl burden of i overtime on the roads," snyR nn official of the Oregon Short Line. I "The proposed demands include not only the reduction of the day i to eight hours' work, but they include n demnnd for payment of j one nml onc-hnlf times regular schedule for nil overtime. "The rnllronds have laid out their divisions and districts on tho bnsis of ten hours to the day, and virtually all divisions and district dis-trict terminals arc ten hours apart in operating time. If the dc-mnnds dc-mnnds are made and If complied with, It will result in payment of three hours' extra pay, on tho new basis, for these runs, over the existing basis. It would be virtually impossible to estimate whnt the increase would nggrcgnto, as overtime is a variable quantity at all times and there is no basis on which it could be estimated accurately." Railroad officials say that in the aggregate the increnses in pay would amount to many millions of dollars in thu United States. Utah's proportion of this Increased pay would be enormous. Officials Of-ficials say that wage increases granted by the railroads between 1910 and 1914 aggregate $250,000,000, and that as a result of these Increases to the four branches of the employes their earnings earn-ings have jumped $70,000,000 in four years. They make the statement that the proposed Increase would be in effect an increase in-crease of 25 per cent in the freight speed basis for computing wages, that It would Involve an Increase of 87.5 per cent in the overtime rate and thnt more than 1,500,000 other railroad employes em-ployes would get no benefit. Four Ways Are Open to Them. The railroads contend that they cannot afford to meet thu pro-K)sed pro-K)sed wage increase demands, as more than six hundred thousand stockholders are receiving less than 2 per cent return on their Investments In-vestments in railroad securities. The railroad barons contend thnt lliu employes, on me oiner nnnti, get -jo per ceni oi wie gross earnings, earn-ings, and -say further that though the men who are considering these demands number now only 19 per cent of all employes, they I are paid 28 per cent of the gigantic railroad payrolls of the country, coun-try, which aggregate $1, 500,000,000 a year. i These wage Increases can be met in only four ways, the railroad rail-road heads say. Wages of other employes might bu reduced to make up the purse; dividends, which now average only 2 per cent, might be reduced to thu vanishing point; betterment expenditures demanded by the government and by the public might be eliminated elimin-ated or an appeal might be made to the government through the intei-state commerce commission for permission to Incroase all freight rates to such an extent that the difference might be made up in that manner. Although all the railroads in the United Status aru affected by thu demands under consideration, they will handle tho situation through a conference of general managers for each of the three great districts into which the railroads nre ilk-Irlrwl Kuril (llntrlct will handle its own cnmimiini of nublirlU "public education," they term it. Not all the men in railroad service will be benefited if the demands de-mands as now outlined are made, according to the railroads' sido of the case. While tho demands will be made by tho four hundred thousand members of the four organizations, the higher rates would be received only bs the men In the freight and yard service. More than 1,500,000 other employes would not be benefited. The passenger men would bu out of tho benefit class, because they now operate under virtually an eight-hour dny, declare the railroad owners. In tho through servico tho passenger men are paid on a basis of a hundred miles or at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, with flat rate for overtime. Some conductors aro able to make two hundred miles in a five or six hours' run and earn as high as ( fifty dollars a week, with engineers in proportion. They aro rare exceptions. Quite Impossible, the Railroads Say. i Tho freight men predominate not only lit Utah, but with one or two oxceptlons on every railroad In America. The onginemen's organizations aro voting now In Utah. An eight-hour day In the freight service Is a physical an economical econ-omical impossibility, according to contentions made by the railroad officials. Tho principal reason is thu difference of speed between thu freight and pnshenger trains, and the fact that freight docs not run on schedule ns does passenger business. As a result tho railroad chiefs say freight trains cannot be arranged to bring men within a time limit. The freight runs are made between division terminals and these are the determining factors. An approximate of the eight-hour day could be arranged, operators op-erators sa, if distances between divisional points were shortened. If this were to h? done it would eliminate an enormous amount of overtime pay that will accrue to the employes if the demands are forced and complied with. To relocate these divisional points would work a great hardship on the railroads of the country at large, say thu bosses. Changes of important points aru not neces-sary, neces-sary, reply roprosentntlvos of the men. To make the elght-hour day effective nnd practical, in order to reduce the overtime charge, time now being on the basis of the ten-hour day, new subdivision points would of necessity be established. estab-lished. The employes contend thnt their demands are not based on a desire to earn more money ho much as on a desire to be able to spend more time with their families. The jump in overtime is designed to penalize the railroads for making the men work long hours and to make that penalty so heavy that the rouds will be forced, for their own protection, to arrange the runs so that the men can get in in shorter hours. The railroads discount this contention, however, by saying that the men seek the long time runs that their pay checks may be more ample. New Voting Method Is Adopted. Although there nrc mnny thousands of unions that hnvo the subjects under consideration, and the voting is being done almost simultaneously, the national organization is confident that the votes can be tabulated by March 1st, next, and that if In favor of the proposals, the demands can bu made upon the railroads upon that date. A new method has been adopted in taking this ote. Thu ballot is a slip attached to a statement of the proposals, and each man Is required to sign thu slip. The slip states that the signer has read and understands fully the proposals, and thnt he authorizes thu chief executives and authorized committees of the four great brotherhoods to "speak and act for me ns my agent or attorney upon all questions that may arise in connection with negotiations between the officerp of the railway companies and organizations necessary to u favorable settlement of thu article." submitted (with tho vote) and I hereby vote (for or against) the submission of the proposition to the officers of the compan with which I am employed." These ballots are being forwarded to Chicago, where Peter Kill-I Kill-I duff of the engineers' union heads the committee of tellers. According Ac-cording to men who aru familiar with tho situation, it has been in i the formative stage since last fall, and several factors have developed de-veloped since that time to bring about the demands at ns early n date as possible. Among these factors are the advance in freight and passenger rates that have been granted by thu interstate commerce commission; tho sudden burst of business which has i been evidenced by congestion on thu railroads which thu employ believe has enriched thu roads; the prosperity that now is general In industrials; resulting in increases of pay; the fact that this i. a presidential election year, and finally thu success in the Delaware Dela-ware and Hudson strike and the settlement made on tho Pacific system of thu Southern Pacific when the first time the four great unions acted together and tied up the railroad so tiglitly that it capitulated in two days. |