Word: railroads
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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They looked exactly like what they are: oldtime railroad hands who had prospered after their retirement from hard labor. Alexander Fell Whitney is an affable man who asks almost everybody on second meeting to "Call me Al." He is square-shouldered and peppery, a handsome, wavy-haired oldster (73) with a keen eye for his well-tailored clothes and his role as an "Important Man." Alvanley Johnston stepped down from the cab of a locomotive and into a rumpled blue suit about 40 years ago. At 71, his blue eyes still have the engineer's squint, his round face...
...boarded an Illinois Central train at Cherokee, and told the conductor that he was the new candy butcher. At 17 he was a brakeman, at 26 a freight conductor and a union member who applied evangelistic fervor to his fellow workers' grievances. He got on the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen's national payroll 43 years ago. He has never been off it (present salary: $17,500). He has bitterly fought his brotherhood's conservatives as well as the railroads' bosses. In 1928, after 21 years as a vice president, he got what he had always wanted...
Whitney loves acclaim: his official biographer refers to him as "the miracle man of railroad wage movements." He considers himself a political leader on the liberal side, likes to quote Single-Taxer Henry George. He has lent his name to several left-wing organizations, some of them Communist-hued. He was an early and ardent supporter of Franklin Roosevelt and thought several times that he would become his Secretary of Labor...
Switch Foreman William Gunter, who has spent 36 of his 62 years with the Wabash Railroad, broke...
...those hours he gets paid at his regular rate-that is, unless he gets a fast, light freight back to K.C. and makes it in five hours instead of eight. Then the railroad doesn't pay him for the two hours penalty time. Why, I don't know. We're asking that the engineer gets paid for those two hours, no matter how fast he gets back to K.C. And we also want the penalty time to begin after twelve hours instead of after...