Word: firemen
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...founded. An Erie Railroad fireman was killed in a train wreck, and a railroading friend named Joshua Leach set about taking up a collection for the widow and the children. Leach was so distressed about the plight of the widow, left without funds, that he decided to form a firemen's life insurance association. The eleven original members called themselves Deer Park Lodge No. 1, took oaths and made up secret passwords. From that small beginning grew the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen (engineman is an old-fashioned word for fireman...
...first nationwide strike, which erupted when depression-hit railroads imposed wage cuts. Railroad workers struck in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Reading, Louisville, Chicago. Strikers destroyed locomotives, fought with antistrike citizens, finally gave up after battling state and federal troops. Chastened by bloodshed and defeat, the Firemen two years later adopted a resolution declaring that the union would "ignore strikes and hereafter settle our grievances with our employers by arbitration...
Chuca Choo, Chuca Choo. Several other railroad unions had the same kind of origin as the Firemen. Working on the railroad was a hazardous way of making a living in the 19th century. Many a fireman was scarred by a boiler explosion, many a yardman was mashed between cars. So often did brakemen fall from atop moving cars that one in three would be injured or killed in the course of a year. Understandably, insurance companies were reluctant to insure railroaders. In the railroad workers' need for insurance the first rail unions had their beginnings, as fraternal insurance societies...
Creeping Obsolescence. Both the Brotherhood and the railroads reached their peak in the decade before 1920. Since then the companies have been afflicted with competition from trucking, and the rail unions with creeping obsolescence. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen had 126,000 members in 1920, has only 78,000 today, and if it were not for "work rules" that the railroads want to get rid of, the union's membership would be much smaller...
...Firemen & Featherbeds. The railroads want to revoke their 1937 concession to the Firemen's Brotherhood and get rid of the firemen on diesels in freight and yard service. These firemen do no necessary work, the railroads say. Firemen would continue to ride in the cabs of passenger trains to serve as safety lookouts. Some diesel engineers frankly agree that firemen are dispensable. "I don't really need him," says an Ohio engineer, "but he's handy to have around. He gets four hours' sleep and I get four hours' sleep." Another diesel engineer tells...