Sting in the Tail: Superstition in India (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Superstition in India

Superstition still flourishes in India as elsewhere. Guru Busters (BBC2, 10 September) showed how hordes of self-styled “Gods”, Fakirs, fortune tellers, quacks, etc., hoodwink millions by using simple conjuring tricks, elementary chemistry and seemingly impossible physical feats.

It was amazing to hear wealthy, educated men justifying their allegiance to one God-man, Sai Baba, on the ground that he had given them gold trinkets which he had created “out of nothing”. Strangely, this God’s poorer followers received no gold, only “holy ash”.

Opposing these frauds are the Rationalists who tour the countryside showing audiences how anyone can perform the various “miracles. What they do is worthwhile, but it will be the continuing development of capitalism in India which will most effectively attack the ignorance and backwardness on which superstition feeds.

Meanwhile, our comrades in India get on with the really worthwhile work of spreading the ideas of scientific socialism there.

Must do better, Desmond

So disappointed is Archbishop Desmond Tutu with South Africa’s ANC-led government that he can only award it an alpha minus for its performance so far. (The Herald, 4 September).

The well-publicised scramble by some ANC leaders to climb aboard “the gravy train” was bad enough, but now the government has been caught selling arms to Rwanda through Armcorp, the state arms corporation.

The Archbishop notes that: "Almost everywhere, and certainly in Africa, armies are not for the defence of the citizenry, they are instruments of repression. ”

For this he deserves an alpha plus, but he continues:

“What we want ultimately is to see Africa demilitarised. If you have countries that claim to he democratic, and are friendly with one another, what do you need huge armies for? We should start by dismantling Armcorp. ”

Archbishop Tutu is a humane and well-meaning man, but for being so naive as to imagine that demilitarisation can occur within the conflict-ridden, money-grubbing capitalist system, well, we can only award him a beta minus for that.

Greens in dreamland

Many “Greens” pin their hopes for a greener world on persuading governments to become eco-friendly within the profit- motive economy.

An article in the Observer (17 September) shows what forlorn hopes they are. The British government’s pollution watchdog. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Pollution (HMIP), reports that a severe shortage of inspectors meant that it carried out only 60 percent of scheduled checks on factories during 1994-5, and as a result pollution spills into the air and rivers doubled.

And the government’s response to this? It is to merge HMIP with the National Rivers Authority next year, a cost-cutting measure which is expected to reduce the number of inspectors still further.

The outlook of these Greens surely amounts to the triumph of hope over experience.

Who are they kidding?

Some Labour MPs have been complaining about Tony Blair’s undemocratic style of leadership, but when was the Labour Party ever democratic?

At the top, Labour’s leaders have a long history’ of simply ignoring conference decisions they didn't like, while trade union bosses cynically cast millions of votes at Labour conferences on behalf of their members, many if not most of whom didn't even support Labour.

At local level there are claims that an influx of new Asian members into Govan Labour Party is connected with the ambition of an Asian councillor to replace the present MP as candidate at the next election. A party official explained on TV that nothing unusual was happening as vote-rigging is the norm prior to candidates being selected.

And West Renfrew MP Tommy Graham has been trying to secure his re-selection by

“recruiting pensioners in pubs and at Linwood DayCare Centre. Many did not even know they were joining the Labour Party" (Observer, 3 September).

Those dissident Labour MPs will be well aware that their party is undemocratic from top to bottom.

Tunnel vision

As commuters and lorry drivers race through the tunnels under the Tyne and the Clyde few of them will think about the crippling condition of osteonecrosis. The victims of this condition, who constructed these tunnels in the sixties, can think of little else.

Osteonecrosis is the direct result of working in compressed air pumped into the tunnels when they were built to stop the walls collapsing. The workers were not warned of the dangers and they were not properly decompressed before returning to the open air.

"Hugh Davey, A Tyne tunneler said: There's about 50 of us from the Tyne. We look like a bunch of old men. I'm 56: I look like a man of 70. I've already had one hip done and I’m on constant pain killers. I had to stop work in 1981. We didn't know what would happen. We thought, we can't come to no harm—they must know what they were doing. We thought they’d look after us. It's destroyed my life ’ ” (Observer, 17 September).

The firms did know “what they were doing”. They were producing a commodity as cheaply as possible. Cutting corners on the health and safety of the working class is just “good business practice”. It is not the function of capitalism to “look after” the welfare of the workers—it’s the profits and the shareholders that have to be looked after.

The Passing Show: Faster In The Air . . . (1963)

The Passing Show Column from the November 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Faster In The Air . . .

Have you ever been to London Airport? Quite possibly you have. It’s nothing unusual for workers to travel abroad by air nowadays. Perhaps also you have stood on the spectator’s platform and watched the hectic scene around you. The piercing whine of the jets and the frequent chatter from the loudspeakers. The all-pervasive sickly smell of fuel oil. The grubby-fisted schoolboy plane spotters, scurrying from one vantage point to another, clutching binoculars, notebooks and the inevitable sweets. Hardly the place for a rest cure.

Even so, it is difficult not to feel awed at the technical achievement of the soaring monsters, or at the size and complexity of the organisation behind them. It is, indeed, an impressive demonstration of man’s social capabilities and his power to control and change his environment. Just think! In less than fifty years, he has shown that the world can be spanned in a matter of a few hours.

Of itself, this is not a bad thing. No one can sensibly oppose the prospect of greater contact between people. But taken in the context of a very commercial world, it is not an unmixed blessing. The first consideration of the airlines is to operate profitably, and such is the fierce pace of competition between them that planes with years of service left in them are being scrapped for new ones which will lop chunks off any given journey time. The new jets due shortly for service on short hauls will notch up over 600 miles per hour, and the Anglo-French Concorde will fly at 1½ times the speed of sound. But its lead will be short-lived, because the planned U.S. air liner will fly twice as fast as sound.

Hard pressed as the airlines are in this frantic scramble, it is not surprising that the vital factors affecting human welfare and safety do not always get the attention they deserve. This is admitted in a Guardian article of September 24th by D. Royston Booth. Discussing the questions of airworthiness standards, he says:

“Aviation is such a fast growing industry nowadays that there is hardly time to test every component exhaustively before the aircraft is committed to everyday use, and there are many unanswered questions, particularly arising from aircraft behaviour and basic design. Not that B.O.A.C takes bigger risks than before …. but it does mean that when aircraft are developed so quickly assumptions have to be made.”

So they are prepared to take a chance with your safety—for it can mean nothing else—because if every conceivable check were made, it would slow them down in the mad race with their competitors, and maybe put them right out of the running altogether. Admittedly, there is a risk in the very act of flying itself and it is difficult to see how it can ever be eliminated entirely. But in any sane set-up no effort would be spared to bring that risk to the minimum before any aircraft left the ground. It is the profit motive which increases the risk of life and limb in this and every other sphere. Remember that when next you board a plane for a hard earned holiday. Happy landings!

Slower On The Ground . . .

Remember last winter with its weeks of icy winds, and cold that froze you to the marrow? Remember the endless dreary frustrations of frozen pipes, power cuts and transport chaos? Of poor old pensioners dying quietly in their unheated pathetic little lodging house rooms?

Perhaps you will recall, too, the outcry at the inability of the fuel and power industries to cope with the extra demand— a reasonable enough human reaction you will say. The government had an answer —also reasonable enough but from a capitalist point of view. It was pointless, they said, to spend good money on plant which would be needed only about once every ten years, and that was that! You were just to carry on shivering until the weather eased.

Since then, though, the weather men have been suggesting that we might get a repetition of all that again this winter, perhaps worse. One or two town councils have taken the hint and laid in extra snow clearing equipment, but strictly within their financial limits of course. And such is the criterion which is applied in any field we may care to look. The guiding principle is not “do human beings need it? ” but “Can we afford it?” … “Is it profitable?”

British Railways, for instance, have been making preparations. Some big snow ploughs are being built and some extra points heaters will be installed, but only at key junctions. Actually there are some 100,000 switch points on the railways but only about 2,500 will be heated. Why? Because it would cost about 10½ millions to do it. A B.R. spokesman added:

Insurance against all weather risks could be achieved only by spending enormous sums of money. Spending on such a scale in the railways’ present financial straits could never be justified merely to prevent what may be only an occasional hazard (Guardian 3.10.63).

Out of the horse’s mouth indeed ! But this will probably not stop their prattle about ”Service to the public,” etc., at some future date, as if their existence was purely for altruistic reasons.

Housing Problem! What Housing Problem ?

Are you suffering from a housing problem? Well stop worrying. Just take a ride to Bournemouth, “that elderly army officer among seaside resorts,” as the Guardian describes it. For there you will probably find plenty of empty flats, between 2,000 and 3,000 according to architects and estate agents in the town, and more are nearing completion. Apparently, property developers have burnt their fingers badly and are fishing around for buyers.

Meantime, the flats stay unoccupied but not because of lack of need. We will take a level bet that there are plenty of people in the Bournemouth area alone, who could do with some better accommodation, but like their brothers and sisters elsewhere they will not get it for one very good reason. They haven’t enough money. They, of course, will be working people and their dependants, who have to wait perhaps for the allocations of a cheap council house or flat, and we all know how long that will be.

The property developers are not very interested in them because there is not much prospect of profit in building low cost houses for workers—in fact, some building firms refuse to tender for Local Council housing contracts because of this. And this is the point which we have stressed for years, that housing is dominated by the profit motive and human needs come a second best. Some reformists may even recognise this, but seem always to miss the obvious answer, Socialism.

For the record

When Lord Beveridge (Sir William as he was then) first made his national insurance proposals over twenty years ago, they were hailed with a fanfare of the usual ballyhoo. These proposals, we were told, would abolish poverty once and for all, as if the difference between poverty and riches was just a paltry few shillings a week.

Well, its an old story now, but whoever did believe it. Lord Beveridge certainly did not. When he died, he left over £20,000. Peanuts by capitalist standards, maybe, but certainly enough to have kept him and his family well above the bread line.

Eddie Critchfield

Blogger's Note:

The March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard carried three articles on the aforementioned 'Big Freeze of 1963':

• Editorial: The big freeze-up
• News in Review: The expense of cold weather
• Freeze Up: Waste, inefficiency and chaos

Voice From The Back: A young worker speaks (2004)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

A young worker speaks

“To Prime Minister Tony Blair, My name is Maxine Gentle and I am 14 years old. I am the sister of Fusilier Gordon Gentle who died in the war in Iraq on the 28th June 2004. I want my thoughts and feelings to be heard and known. My feelings are that I think you are rubbish at your job. You don’t care about the British public, armed forces or anybody in fact. My big brother died at the age of 19 and what for? A war over oil and money, that’s what I think the war is all about . . . It is okay for you sitting there with all your money and power, ruining people’s lives by the decisions YOU make . . . All you and your new best friend care about is Iraq’s oil . . .” (Independent, 20 August). Maxine is a young worker who has seen through a lot of capitalism’s propaganda, but she is wrong about Tony Blair. He is not rubbish at his job, he is very good at it. His job is to support capitalism and to convince wage slaves that it is in their interests to support it too. Gordon and his family are victims of this deception.

The dignity of labour (1)

The recent British Airways industrial dispute about sick leave highlighted how some firms interviewed staff who had been on sick leave to discover if they were genuine or not. The worst example of this degrading practice we have come across was reported in the City Diary column in the Times (25 August). “A reader tells me that Sainsbury’s has put his 60 year old mother-in-law through a return-to-work interview three times in the past year, after her absence for a hip replacement, cancer tests and the removal of part of a breast. The lady in question is understandably perturbed, especially as she has worked at the checkout for 20 years with an unblemished record.”  This could be your mother, are you happy with this set up?

The dignity of labour (2)

The journalist Sarah Ryle reports on another charming practice that our master’s have dreamed up for us. “Lidl, the German discount retailer with UK stores, ordered its Czech female workers to wear arm bands during menstruation (there’s no nice way of putting that). According to an August edition of German trade retail magazine Lebensmittelzeitung, local managers decided it was the only way to be sure that women were not taking unnecessary loo breaks. Women with arm bands could go as often as they liked, instead of waiting for the official breaks . . .” (Observer, 5 September).  The capitalist class, who rule our lives, now want to regulate our bladders. Wake up, fellow workers. 

Back in the USA

There is no doubt that the USA is the most developed capitalist country in the world today, but that doesn’t stop many of its citizens living miserable, poverty stricken lives, as the following figures from official US government sources show. “The Census Bureau announced that the number of people living in poverty – individuals earning $9,573 or families of four living on $18,660 or less – had risen to 35.8 million, or 12.5 percent, up from 34.5 million or 12.1 percent in 2002” (Times, 27 August).

Water scandal

It says much for the insanity of capitalism that at the same time as a bottle of water in a St. Tropez club can sell for £16 a bottle (see August Socialist Standard) a charity called WaterAID can launch a TV ad appealing for £2 a month to deal with the problem of children dying from lack of clean water According to them: “Every 15 seconds a child dies from lack of clean water . . . by the time this ad is over another 6 children will have died” (ITV Advertisement, 3 September). Inside world socialism such obscenities will be impossible.

Proper Gander: Keeping grounded about Boeing (2026)

The Proper Gander column from the October 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Considering its corporate colossus status, Netflix has been a platform for several documentaries which almost subversively highlight the failings of the capitalist system. For instance, in 2022, prolific film-maker Rory Kennedy (of the famous Kennedy family) released Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, which examined the circumstances around two fatal crashes of Boeing aircraft. The lasting consequences of these and other problems with the company’s practices are explored in Kennedy’s sequel Freefall: A Reckoning For Boeing. Neither documentary has a presenter or narrator, with the story being told through interviews and footage of news reports.

A date given for a shift in Boeing’s culture is 2005, when Jim McNerney was appointed as CEO. He and his successors are described as proteges of Jack Welch, who as head of General Electric maximised its profits through a strict regime of minimising production costs. This approach would guide the development of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner model of aeroplane, which was launched in 2011. Its initial price for production was $10 billion, but the aim was for this to be halved. Cost-cutting measures included using scrapped components and outsourcing the construction of many parts to cheaper companies overseas, with the result that they didn’t fit together well enough. Boeing staff are filmed undercover saying that they wouldn’t risk flying on the planes they’re assembling. Much of the programme comprises testimony from current and previous quality inspectors, who had less influence after manufacturing was outsourced. When John Barnett found that fasteners on Dreamliners were poorly fitted, which could cause them to fail, he was told by his manager that this would cost too much to rectify. He faced further obstructions when raising concerns: docked pay, threats of being fired, reputational damage, being relocated. After retiring, he went to the media with his experiences and filed a whistleblower complaint against Boeing with the authorities. During the subsequent enquiry, he was found dead in his car, having ended his own life due to the stress. ‘Boeing may not have pulled the trigger, but Boeing was responsible for John’s death’ says his attorney, Rob Turkewitz.

Freefall also covers Boeing’s 737 MAX series, which we’re told was rushed out to compete with upcoming models by rival Airbus, a decision made by McNerney when Boeing was in financial trouble. Within a few months of each other, there were two disasters involving 737 MAX 8 aircraft: in October 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 and then Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019 crashed soon after taking off, with all those on board being killed. The pilots lost control due to faulty inputs to the planes’ MCAS automatic flight stabilising feature. The documentary includes footage from the ensuing court hearings, but doesn’t dwell on the legal intricacies. Boeing was accused of misleading the regulatory body, the Federal Aviation Administration, about features of the MAX before the agency certified the model to be used. A deal was arranged between the Department of Justice and Boeing which shifted the emphasis of any accountability to a financial resolution. Most crassly, Boeing’s lawyers argued that the relatives of those who died don’t deserve reparations for their loved ones’ suffering because the crashes happened too quickly for this to be prolonged. Boeing agreed to pay fines and compensation, and there was also a ‘deferred prosecution arrangement’, meaning a probation period of three years. These outcomes excluded any consideration of criminal acts, absolving the CEO and other executives of personal responsibility. This lack of accountability has galvanised a campaign group of victims’ families, represented in the documentary by Naoise Connolly Ryan, whose husband Mick was on the Ethiopian Airlines flight. She believes the Department of Justice has been protecting Boeing, with ‘complete political entanglement’ between the two.

The authorities which are shown to confront Boeing are the senators during the court hearing, watched by the relatives of those who died. Senator Josh Hawley challenges squirming CEO David Calhoun on cutting costs related to safety while he has a pay packet of almost $33 million, and Senator Richard Blumenthal adds ‘Boeing blames everyone except itself’. The programme doesn’t cover the role of others in Congress, though. Lawyer and activist Ralph Nader claims that Boeing has funded campaigns for 330 members of Congress, including most of those on an earlier enquiry committee. He also states that Congress reduced funding and powers to the Federal Aviation Administration, enabling ‘Boeing to regulate the FAA instead of the reverse’. Because of this, he doubts that any legislation will improve the situation.

The documentary gives a clear example of how the profit motive overrules safety considerations, with some of those who personify this – the CEOs – depicted as the villains. The last four Boeing CEOs have banked almost $500 million for themselves, even though the company’s commercial aeroplane division hasn’t been profitable since 2018. Their commonplace strategy of minimising production costs to maximise income for those at the top isn’t the source of the issue, which is the market system that must place more importance on finances than precautions. The legal framework which is supposed to enforce justice is also part of this system, so financial considerations shape what ‘justice’ means. This is illustrated by how the court hearings have led to monetary settlements rather than criminal proceedings. Furthermore, the financial clout of Boeing’s owners has ensured its influence within the Department of Justice, Congress and the Federal Aviation Administration. The focus of the documentary is less on these wider forces than with the people they have affected. As author David Gelles says, ‘In most companies, the stakes aren’t people’s lives, but at Boeing, they are’.

Mike Foster

The Position in Lancashire. (1909)

From the October 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

When dealing with the condition of any section of the working class the primary question always is, what are their wages? What is their cost of living ? A Government enquiry was commenced in October 1906 into various matters dealing with the wages of, and the prices paid by, the working class in Burnley, and the result was .published in the Burnley Gazette of February 12 1908. Compared with London prices, which are taken as 100, the prices index number for Burnley for all commodities was 95. The index number of rent and prices combined in Burnley was 87 compared with 100 in London. Taking the London rate of wages as 100, the Burnley index number for the building trades was 85, in the engineering the same, in the printing it was 81, in the furnishing trades 81. In the cotton trades the earnings of the male and female weavers are the same—for a four loom weaver it is given as from 22s. to 28s. per week. This, it must be remembered, is when working full time and when work is of good quality. It is absurd to claim these figures as a fair indication of the average wage of the weavers. In the Manchester Guardian of July 29th, 1908 it was stated in a special article that “If we go back for 34 or 35 years it will be seen that rates of wages are no higher to-day in the textile trades (including operative cotton spinners and weavers and jute and linen operatives) than they were in 1874.” Another fact worthy of note was thus stated by Mr. Philip Snowden in a speech in the House of Commons on January 30th, 1908, “In the most important of our industries, particularly in the textile trades, the actual number of persons employed was less than it was at some former decade.” The recent blue book “Public Health and Social Conditions,” gives the number employed in the textile trades in 1851 and 1901 as 1,671,681 and 1,301,685 respectively. Every fundamental industry wherein machinery is well established shows the same feature; this in spite of the much larger amount of raw material handled.

The wages received by the male workers are thus really inadequate to rear a family upon a “civilised” standard. Often a whole family are to be found working in the mills—man and wife, and children full and half time. Pretty fairy tales are in circulation in “middle-class” circles anent the earnings of these families when all are merrily working. One would imagine that the Income Tax assessors are missing a fertile source of revenue. But, alas, this state of financial felicity is temporary: the children marry and set up wigwams of their own, and pass through the old struggle and suffering.

Our readers know well the wage conditions in those trades where the wives of the workers work side by side with men. And for years the proportion of women to men workers has been steadily increasing. Many of the older mills are terrible from a hygenie point of view; the clouds of artificially formed vapour floating in the air do not add to their salubrity. And women toiling in such holes to within a few weeks of child-birth does not tend to produce a race of Spartans, even with the help of municipal milk depots, lady inspectors, and, let us say also, state feeding of children. We cannot wonder that such districts are notorious for their enormous infantile death-rate. Baden Powell’s boy scouts, in this part of the country at any rate, would not make ideal advertisements for a beef extract. Imagine the long ten hours of toil, every day producing miles of shoddy, adulterated cottons, every yard of which is a replica of every other yard ; stuff which would be disdainfully refused, often, by our slum proletariat, and intended ultimately for a far distant market. And our women folk up North have been so perverted by spending half their living hours under such noxious and tense conditions that it is said many of them actually prefer it to the alternative of domestic drudgery. Perhaps under capitalism there is little to choose twixt the two desolations.

There is, I understand, a legend in existence, well believed, holding that in the Lancashire textile towns a large number of the workers own the houses wherein they live. Now it is certain that to only a very small proportion does this apply. A certain number of houses are purchased by the workers with the aid of money borrowed from building and co-operative societies. It is well known that in very many cases married women, where possible, go to work in the mills to help eke out the earnings of the husband. In some instances the attempt is made to lay aside the money earned by the women folk to purchase a house through the co-operative or other societies. This money earned by the women—at an inculcalable injury to health it is sure—is the creator of some miniature working-class fortunes. The hoards are made at this cost; many of the married women actually take out their children at five o’clock in the morning to a pseudo-mother to be nursed until the cessation of work. And when man and wife return “home” after the day’s toil they find a dreary, cold home, and are face to face with that amount of household work which all know to be in itself sufficient to tax the powers of any normal woman. Anti-Socialists and others propagate tales of working-class wealth as expressed in building societies, co-operative societies, penny banks, house property, and so on. But fancy a tradesman calculating his financial position by overlooking his assets alone ! What about working-class liabilities ? I imagine it would be a fairly safe assumption to regard the assets in house property of the Lancashire textile workers as heavily balanced by their liabilities in the form of doctors’ bills, credit drapers’ accounts, money lenders debts, mortgages and other accounts owing to—the capitalist class.

This, then, is the position. The majority of Lancashire workers do not, and never expect to, own their houses. A minority attempt to, and after a few years’ struggle (wife working at mill, etc.) give up the fight in disgust. Another minority, with the help of luck and the gift of the “money sense,” sometimes even manage to get hold of a few houses, rise out of their class, and become object lessons in thrift and parsimony to the rest of the proletariat. But “one swallow does not make a summer,” and the fact that a few lucky, financially acute working men rise out of their class is no more a proof that the whole working class as a class could so be saved than the fact that a few Roman slaves were manumitted was a proof that Roman chattel slavery would be abolished in that manner.

The co-operative society is natural to Lancashire. It is its stronghold and if anywhere it has benefited the workers, Lancashire should be that place. When these societies originated they had only the small grocer possessed of little capital to fight, and a certain progress was made. But now the company shops are in the field, and it remains to be seen whether the co-operatives can survive in competion with these monster concerns. It would be of interest if some of the co-operative leaders would give us their ideas as to the origin of the precious “divi.” It is extracted, of course, from the unpaid labour of the shopmen, but co-operators seem vague as to its source. Many experiments in co-partnership have been made in Lancashire, and the village of Haggate, near Burnley, is the stock example of successful thrift, providence and foresight. Though a few working men have risen out of their class, the majority are really unable to rise above the economic, mental and moral limits which capitalism has created. The Wholesale Co-operative Society had a turnover of ten millions in 1895 ; at the end of the next decade, 1905, it was twenty millions. So that even if the movement were economically sound it is not keeping pace at all with the development of capitalism.

Lancashire is looked upon as a stronghold of trade unionism, and most of the large towns boast a trades council. These councils have not the least influence upon working-class conditions, and do not make the difference of a pipeful of tobacco to the worker. They will send a resolution on the housing question to the local M.P., pass a vigorous one condemning the Russian atrocities, then the painters will propose resolutions condemning the park-keepers for painting railings to occupy their time during the winter months. It is all petty and ephemeral. “Practical” politics and so-called bread-and-buttter questions tax the energies of the Lancashire trades councils.

Certainly the cotton operatives possess leaders ! Some of them are credited with the possession of “Socialistic” ideas, but

“Lo, there are many ways and many traps

And many guides, and which of them is lord ?

For verily Mahomet has the sword,

And he may have the truth—perhaps ! Perhaps !”

So speaks the Oriental poet. Substitute for “Mahomet” “the capitalist” and the truth is out. Justly do we honour pioneers ! We see so many obsequious camp-followers, so many fakirs negotiating and arbitrating and conciliating, so many “leaders” merely reflecting the opinions of orthodoxy and only too ready to become “revolutionaries” when it pays them, that it is not surprising what an amount of inert opposition the S.P.G.B. has to face. Our Shackletons and Gills are typical of the minor “leaders” in the textile world ; as Meredith put it, “unimpressionable English, who won’t believe in the existence of aims that don’t drop on the ground before your eyes, and squat and stare at you.” Such men are really illiterate. Their education has been a continued accretion of ill-digested, ephemeral facts collided with in everyday life. They are mediocre and pious, that is, they hold certain theological views by virtue of hereditary and environmental influences ; they are temperance agitators because Bill Jones was a drunkard and ill-treated his family ; they are Liberals because Chapel folks are Liberals and Churchmen are Conservatives. Their religion, politics and ethics have a common source in capitalist literature and capitalist journalism. The textile union leaders, then, are hopeless. As Mr. Pickwick said : “It is always best on those occasions to do what the mob do.” “But suppose there are two mobs ?” suggested Mr. Snodgrass. “Shout with the largest,” replied Mr. Pickwick. Our textile leaders are Mr. Pickwick glorified. As we say, they know on which side their bread is buttered.

The only Socialism the bulk of the Lancashire people know of is that of the I.L.P. and S.D.P. —pseudo-Socialism. I.L.P. is, of course, a synonym for Labourism in Lancashire as in other parts of Great Britain. It is safe to assert that every Labour M.P. sent from a Lancashire constituency was elected by Liberal votes. At this moment the S.D.P. in Shackleton’s constituency are threatening opposition because he is shaky in regard to some of their reforms. Not because he is not a Socialist, forsooth ! No. If he would but shout at capitalists as whited sepulchres and advocate state maintenance he would be as acceptable as Irving, and blessed by them. There is no question but the S.D.P. in Lancashire is swamped by the Labour Party ; a reform party outflanked by another reform party, but one asking for fewer reforms. Simply that and nothing more. Politically the Lancashire artizan must be converted from Labourism; industrially he must be converted from the sick-aud-burial-society, thrifty, provident kind of industrial organisation dubbed Trade Unionism.

John A. Dawson

How the Workers are Butchered on the Rand. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Putumayo is not such ancient history that one person here and there, with an exceptional memory for grisly tales of barbarity and suffering, can with an effort recall something of the facts of that interesting case. The present writer endeavoured to show that the wave of indignation which swept over the land, from the Cabinet Ministers in our immaculate Parliament to the poet (!) (now deceased) who once stirred the nation’s soul with a deathless poem calling upon the British bulldogs to “Hurry Up for Pity Sake !” (the merit of which poem was handsomely acknowledged by it being printed on red cotton handkerchieves and sold at a price within the means of all who had a nose to wipe thereon) might well have been let loose over equally deserving happenings very much nearer home.

That statement did not meet with universal approval. It seemed incredible to some that those smart, jovial, silk-hatted gentlemen who rush to and fro between Park Lane and Throgmorton Street, and who carry so gracefully the knighthoods and honours heaped upon them by the Liberal Government, could ever be guilty, could even fall under suspicion of being guilty, of any such atrocities as those with which those strange-named servants of a British company turned the peaceful Putumayo into a river of blood and tears in a “Devil’s Paradise.”

Recent happenings in South Africa, however, in which British miners, and British soldiers, and British (!) capitalists, and British knights, and the highest of high officers of the British Crown, are concerned, show clearly enough that in all essentials, the “cultured” ones of our Western civilisation are quite aa capable, given the materials, as any Portuguese half-breed in the pay of British capital, of creating a “Devil’s Paradise” of their own, with British blood and brawn, on the soil of the British Empire.

All the humbug of that sly old servant of Satan, W. E. Gladstone, who covered his machinations in the interests of the ruling class with a slime of “moral” cant, in which the “wrongs” of the Balkan people quivering under the spiked and envenomed heel of “Abdul the Damned” were in particular made to be a mat, jealously guarded and preserved, for him to clean his begrimed boots on, has been, it seems, bequeathed in trust and with compound interest, to the Liberal party. While they are busy fulminating against the “White Slave Trader” at home, they are, with brutal cynicism, crowning the blood-reeking fortunes of South African millionaires with titles. So that the political funds of the “Great Liberal Party” may benefit, they make murder respectable by covering it with the cloak of knighthood. 

Those who do not know how, and at what cost of working class suffering and misery, these South African fortunes have been amassed, are invited to think over the scanty particulars reproduced from a Press which, under a system, fails to suppress much that they would for the simple reason that sensation (and advertisements) is their life’s blood.

“‘However healthy a Transvaal rock-drill man may appear to be on his return to this country,’ Dr. Haldane told the Departmental Committee on Industrial Diseases in 1907, ‘he will probably be dead within a year or two.'” (“Pall Mall Gazette,” 7.7.13.)

“The death rate of one section of the men who mine the gold—the machine men or rock drillers—is over 230 per thousand from one disease—miner’s phthisis—alone. Such a death rate from a single occupational disease must be unparalleled in the whole industrial world. It can only be compared with King Leopold’s Congo Free State.

“Speaking before a representative meeting of mining engineers in Johannesburgh in September last Mr. Koetze, the Government mining engineer, said : ‘Sooner or later every worker underground in these mines will contract miner’s phthisis.’

“The practical result of commissions of inquiry have been recommendations that water be used to keep down the dust which causes the disease. These recommendations have been urged upon the mineowners, in each case with the same result—utter callousness and neglect.”

These extracts were written by Dr. G. L. Ugmara, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., and were reproduced in the “Morning Leader” for December 2, 1911.

“No less than 10,000 people die in these mines every.” (Mr. Merriman.)

“Miners’ phthisis is said to be due to the inhalation of fine dust which arises not merely from rock-drilling without the accompaniment of water, but also from the blasting operations with explosives. Last year more than 1,000 of 3,000 men examined by the Medical Commission were found to have phthisis. No rock-driller could work in the mines for sixteen years and escape it. Death took place as a rule before the age of forty. Here is a table which showed at that time how inevitable is the doom of any man who undertakes this work :—

Years of service Percentage of men affected

    2½ 25

    4½ 55

    6½ 70

   10½ 80

   13½ 90

   16½ 100 ” 

“Daily News.”

“Then all the miners and the population know that the mine owners are responsible in the same way for the death among the Kaffirs, which Mr. Sauer, the Minister for Native Affairs, has characterised, as regards the natives from tropical countries, as little short of murder. There was no need for any limitation in the phrase. The probability is that over 100,000 natives have been killed in the mines since the war.” (Mr. R. L. Outhwaite, M.P., in “Reynolds’s,” 6.7.13.)

There can be no escape from such a mass of evidence supplied by the capitalists’ own tools and fellows. Ten thousand victims in a year ! It would take a continent of Putumayos to equal this stupendous crime. When the war was raging we were told that they were “painting the map red,” but never in those days of open and avowed slaughter were such libations of blood poured out to the “Imperial idea” as have been run out, as from a vast broken cask, every year since, to satisfy the blood-thirsty vampires of Park Lane, in the ultra-respectable West End of London.

It is the story of Whitehaven retold in more callous letters. There miners were hurled to death because it would cost their safe and comfortable masters something to ventilate the mine in accordance with the first clause of their own Mines Act. On the Rand thousands of working-class lives are thrown away annually because it would absorb some of the knighted owners’ profits to spray with water in the process of rock-drilling, and to allow time for the dust to settle after a “blast” before the men returned to the “face.” It is the story of rubber retold, on a scale more in keeping with the dignity of the yellow commodity.

It cannot be pleaded that this wholesale murder of black and white is the work of a few of the capitalists alone. It is aided and connived at by the whole master class as such. How the British Government imposed a “hut tax” upon the natives whose land they had stolen, and sent a military force to enforce the payment of the paltry sums that could never pay the expense of collecting them, in order to drive the blacks into the mines to earn the money in which alone the taxes were payable, may not be entirely forgotten by some who do not especially treasure the memory of these curious incidents. It reads and looks and smells remarkably like some of the means resorted to by the “brigands” who cost virtuous England the price of a special commission and a House of Commons inquiry. Ten thousand victims a year ! Oh, the stinking hypocrisy of the howl that greeted the revelation of the Peruvian atrocities !

The war which was engineered in order that the mine owners might squeeze another four million pounds profit per annum out of the writhing and quivering carcasses of their white and black slaves was the work of a Tory administration, but it was reserved for a Liberal Government to make the Transvaal a “self-governing” colony, in order that they might be able to say when miners were to be butchered on the Rand : “We cannot interfere.” Strange, is it not, that when the Outlanders were supposed to be writhing in agony under the indignity of being without the franchise, the fact that they were under a foreign Government did not prevent the full armed might of the British Empire being used to “see them righted,” but now that these miners are being massacred in cold blood by troops provided and paid by the British Government, under the direction of a high officer of the British Crown, on soil painted red” with the blood of ten thousand British soldiers, nothing can be done because the Transvaal is a self-governing British colony !

I say nothing about the lives lost in the so-called rioting. Where life is held so cheap it seems little enough to make a bother about. But whose estimate of working-class life is it that counts ten thousand workers lives as of less importance than the cost of providing safe conditions for the mining of 40 million pounds worth of gold ? Think of that great army of workers—men of your own class—who must march to death to produce one year’s output of gold from South African mines. Ten thousand of them, black and white. For every million pounds 250 lives. We have been nurtured on grim and haunting pictures of the unspeakable Arab slave-caravans, but was ever anything more appalling enacted in all Africa than is enacted by these silk-hatted brigands of Park Lane, West ?

Fellow workers, very guarded must be the language of the revolutionary who would criticise those who engineered a great war in order to grab the mines, who have butchered you on a hundred shambles from Peterloo and Featherstone to Llanelly and the Rand, who waste your lives by raising the loadline of ships, and by refusing to adopt automatic couplings on the railways, who murder you by thousands for the mere cost of ventilating coal mines at home and spraying the dust in the mines of South Africa. To speak too plainly of these things is to ask to be sent to prison, for those who set so little store on your lives have taken every cunning care to so hedge about their victims with laws and armed force that they must die almost unheard. Hence much must be left to the reader’s imagination. But attention is directed to that clause in our Declaration of Principles which declares that the “armed forces of the nation exist only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers”. Its contradiction, in the face of every military action since the war, from Sir George White’s (the “hero” of Ladysmith) smashing of the coal porters’ strike at Gibraltar to the latest gun-boat demonstration at Leith and cold-blooded butchery in the streets of Johannesburgh, is here challenged. It cannot be seriously and truthfully contradicted.

If this is true, then it is true also that the hope of the workers lies in obtaining control of those armed forces by capturing political power.

That is the way out—the Socialist way. First to deprive the murder class of political control by ceasing to elect them and their Labour allies to Parliament—electing Socialists instead—then by expropriating them and establishing the Socialist Commonwealth. There is no other way.

A. E. Jacomb

Public Safety V. Railway Profits. I. The Cleaner. (1913)

From the June 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

That Fateful Letter.

The workers in general, and railwaymen in particular, have heard a great deal respecting the “safety of the public” and the “welfare of the country” from the masters and their hangers-on just lately. We also saw the letter of Mr. A K. Butterworth (General Manager N.E.R.) to driver Knox; and, unfortunately, since then one or two “accidents” have taken place which might well make the man in the street wonder whether a train is altogether safe to ride in.

We have in front of us a very big and important question, and it would be impossible in a short article to treat it in all its branches. I propose to deal with a section of the railway workers and their conditions of service, about whom the people know very little ; and, as is always the case in like circumstances, a section that is lied about by the prostitute Press and orators of the master class, in the hope of turning public opinion against them. I refer to the men employed in what is known as the “Running Section” of the Locomotive Department of the lines. Let me explain.

The Loco. Dept. consists of all men connected with the Loco, shed work, and also the “running” section, but these latter are classed separately from the rest of the employees because they are employed to “run” the road. The men are doubtless better known as drivers, firemen, and cleaners.

A glance at the title of this article would seem to open up a question of safety in the mind of the thoughtful reader, and I have no hesitation in saying that, as at present run, safety is not the first consideration of the railway magnates. It is profit they think of first, and the services are not safe for many reasons, all of which have a direct bearing on the making of profit.

If safety was the first consideration of the companies, obviously the men who actually work the trains, viz., drivers and firemen, would be assured of a decent living so as to keep them fit for their perilous duties ; also the machines they work would be kept thoroughly roadworthy and in the pink of condition. This, however, I know from experience with two of the leading companies in this country, is not the case.

The men are sadly overworked ; their machines, many of them, are not properly road-worthy, and their wages, especially considering their responsibility, are low.

What We Shall See.

Before going any further it would, perhaps, be as well to look into the conditions of service of the men, as these conditions have a direct bearing on the safety of the services. In doing this we shall have to start with the lad who, after passing a medical examination at the hands of the railway doctor, and an eyesight test at the hands of the Loco. Superintendent or his deputy, starts in the service as an engine cleaner. This is the lad who will be a fireman at some future time, and then driver.

The safety question will not be greatly dealt with in looking at the conditions of the cleaner, for he is not yet “on the road.” Nevertheless it is necessary, I think, to examine the conditions under which he works, if only to see what qualifications he has for taking up the duties of fireman when his turn comes. We shall see that no provision is made to properly teach him the various parts of his engine, and that his daily work becomes a bore to him through the speeding up to which he is subjected.

On most of the trunk lines the lads start at 18 or older, so as to take their turn on night work. They begin by cleaning shunting engires. and are usually on for 10¼ working hours and start at 17s. a week as a rule. These engines are nearly always in a very bad condition, and the lads have to work hard—many such engines running a fortnight without having a “wiper” put on them.

An Irishman's Rise.

About twelve months of this, and then comes the first promotion—to local passenger engines, which are kept almost as dirty. The lads as a rule get 2d. a day rise then, and work in gangs, the work amounting to 1½ engines per man per night (very little or no day work is the rule when on these engines), so that the cleaners are no better off for their extra 1s. a week.

The lads then get another “promotion,” and go on tender engines. Further speeding-up is now resorted to by reducing the working hours to 9, in which time the lads have to clean the mammoth locomotives of to-day. A number of companies have the “contract” clearer, who has always the same engine to clean. It is, however, impossible to clean the biggest modern engines in 9 hours—indeed, they would in some cases take nearer 20. So a great deal of the engine is “left.”

The “contract” cleaner has no appointed time on duty. He has to vary with the “turn” of his engine, which means turning out at all hours of the day or night. A holiday is an unlooked for privilege, and even a day off in the summer is more than many dare ask for.

The man, having his regular engine, takes a pride in it, and would kick up a noise if he were barred going on his machine because it has only a “light” trip “on” it, which often is the case. It is a rule that if an engine looks anything like “respectable” it can “run round,” thus overworking the cleaner by making him “tear off” two or three trips instead of one.

I may say here that the wages of these men are the highest paid for cleaning (the G.N.R. in London district formerly paid 3s. 10d. per day) but they are rapidly disappearing, and are now almost a thing of the past.

Dirt and Dividends.

The directors and shareholders demanding a greater return on their investments, expenses have to be cut down, regardless of safety or anything else. So a number of companies clean their engines by piecework, at miserable rates, and the wages of the man then depends upon how be “stands” with the foreman. (This system has recently been introduced on the G.N.) Another system extensively employed is to have the work done by day work by gangs, the men getting different engines daily. Under this method no pride can be taken by the cleaners in the machines.

Under both the last-mentioned systems the “contract” man is done away with because he is not cheap enough. Engines go out two, three, or four days without a clean, so it is impossible for a driver to make a minute inspection of the parts to see they are not broken. This, which is a very important matter affecting the “welfare of the public,” and the fact that an engine may “run hot” and delay several trains, besides causing a great inconvenience on and off the shed, and a host of other things, are thrown to the winds in the interest of increased dividends. If a machine fails and the driver cannot give a "satisfactory” explanation to the Loco. Superintendent, he can be fined and thus help to swell the coffers of the human vampires that live upon him.

To sum up, the highest standing wage a cleaner can depend upon is in the neighbour­hood of 19s. a week on the trunk lines, for which he puts in at least 54 hours. In the country the wages paid are much lower.

The state of the engines proves conclusively that there are not nearly enough men, and what men there are are immensely overworked, with plenty of dirt, night-work, inconvenience to self and family, bad smells on shed, and the lads often working feet deep in hot water. In addition there is a good deal of bullying from the foreman, who is generally a man who has failed on the footplate.

A Premium on Ignorance.

The average period a man does cleaning is about four years, and from the way he is overworked there is no chance for him to learn much about his engine. Nor is he given a rules-book order to enable him to make himself acquainted with the rules of the road (the Midland does give rules-books after six months). There are, however, “educational classes” on some companies (e.g., the G.N.), but they are not successful, and the attendance is small. The men have to attend in their own time, and with their state of overwork, and that great curse, overtime, it is not to be wondered at that very few attend the classes, the lecturers at which as a rule are drivers.

In working hours the lads are sent home or fined for trifling offences, and kept in abject slavery, so their mind is turned against their work. As a result of these conditions they can not take it up with the interest necessary to become good enginemen and to befit them to be in charge of trains. It is, therefore, little wonder that, at the end of four years or so, when the lad goes up to “pass” for a spare fireman, he often fails in the exam.—which means more shed slavery, or, what is the rule on a number of lines, the sack.

Those who get through, however, owing to the unscientific way they are trained and the low wages paid, are not fit, from the point of view of public safety, to be in charge of an engine—which, by the way, is quite in accordance with the standing orders of capitalism and the production of profit.

And the unscientific training of enginemen through their period as cleaners, is pretty well certain to last until the system that trains men for profit instead of for usefulness and safety is swept into oblivion.

J. Sevier

[To be Continued.]

Public Safety versus Railway Profits. II. The Fireman. (1913)

From the July 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Continued from last issue.]

 

We will now look into the conditions of the spare firemen and firemen of the trunk lines, and in doing so we shall be concerned with men that are actually working the trains.

The spare fireman is a man that has been “passed” to act as a fireman when needed, but who is not always engaged in firing. When he is not doing so he is booked “shed duty as required,” and as often as not goes back to cleaning or other shed work. We can briefly pass him bye, because when firing he is under the conditions of a regular fireman.

His working hours are ten without a break, as a rule, and his pay is anything from 3s. to 4s. a day when employed firing. But he must exceed five hours in order to get this. When on “shed duty” the wage is something less (usually 3s. 6d.), which is another instance of the shameless robbery of these men, seeing that it is not through their fault that they are “put back” in the shed, or “cancelled.” Once a man is passed for firing he should be treated and paid as such.

As a rule the spare fireman’s week is six days. Occasionally, however, it is seven days. He is usually on shunting work, but is sometimes put on long trips—a common practice on the M.R. The period of spare-firing is about two or three years, then the man undergoes a further exam. for a regular fireman.

His promotion generally follows in the order of seniority, but the company “reserves the right of choice for promotion irrespective of seniority”—a clause which obviously leaves plenty of room for jobbery.

Once a man is passed as a regular fireman he is always at work on engines, either on or off shed ; so in looking at his working conditions we shall commence to get to grips with the indictment that has already been levelled at the companies: that the men are overworked and underpaid, which are circumstances not consistent with public safety.

Let us briefly look at his conditions. Ten hours constitute his working day. This, for a man standing over a furnace which (according C. I. Bowen Cooke, of the L.N.W., in his book “British Locomotives”) developes a temperature of 5,027 degree Fah., is excessive.

To give some idea of the nature of the work let me quote from an article, “A day’s work on the footplate,” which appeared in that capitalist, organ, “The Railway Magazine,” Oct. 1909, and in which the author says : “With 14½ on (a moderate load) I fire up every two minutes, and sometimes oftener.” That this is no exaggeration is shown by the fact that on some of the big engines the coal consumed is about 50 lbs. per mile.

Before leaving the shed the fireman has to make up his fire, assist in oiling, clean and trim his lamps, fetch oil for his driver, and in many cases clean his “front” and otherwise assist his driver to get the engine ready to back on the train. By this time he must be “squared up” and have steam up to anything between 140 to 225 lbs per square inch.

To get the engine ready to leave the shed half an hour is allowed ; to get “on train” from shed another half hour generally, but sometimes only a quarter. In “British Locomotives” Mr. Cooke (Chief Mechanical Engineer L.N.W.) says (p. 353): “Firemen should come to work before booked, and make all preparations with comfort to himself and his driver”—a thing all firemen have to do, for to get an engine ready in a proper manner to ensure safety in the time allowed is impossible, and many firemen “sign on” as much as half an hour before booked in order to make these preparations.

After an engine has run a trip one way “the fire must be cleaned, etc., in readiness for the return journey.” (“British Locomotives,”.p. 370). In the running, when not actually firing, “the fireman must assist his driver in sighting the signals.” (Rule 139.) This is the way that he “learns the road.”

After the return journey is completed and the engine is “on shed,” it has to be “put away,” which means thoroughly cleaning all the parts affected by fire, “turning” the engine, filling the tank, and locking up the tools, etc., reporting any losses of same. For this he is allowed half an hour, which is quite inadequate. He then “signs off,” and is at liberty for nine hours (eight on the L.B.S.C.) from that time. But “in cases of emergency” he may be called out before he has had nine hours off. No matter what “turn” he is booked, after nine hours have expired from his “signing off,” he is the “property” of the company employing him, and is liable to be “called out” at any time. If he is not at home when he is required he is cautioned or reprimanded, and often fined or suspended, for “not being available for duty when required.”

The man’s turn, as a rule, varies daily, and he does not know what turn he will be until the previous day (the Midland and the L.N.W. keep their men fairly well informed of their turns). As aforesaid, his working day is ten hours, but often circumstances compel him to work overtime, especially when starting his career as fireman on the main line, for which, of course, he is paid. Often a fireman does twelve hours or so, then has nine hours off, for two and three days together, the result being that he is tired before commencing his day’s work. This, by the way, being consistent with the companies’ ideas of “safety,” to say nothing of Rule 6 and the dangerous way he may have to cross running roads during the day’s work to carry out the detestable rule 35.

Anyway, his week must not exceed six, or sometimes seven, days (which is quite enough), so after his nine hours off periods he is given a rest of something like sixteen to twenty hours, but only nine of them are his—he is company’s property for the rest of the time, for which he receives nothing.

Of course, anyone with a whit of sense can see that the “men only drive and fire for about four hours per day and are paid ten” (“A Day’s Work on the Footplate,” “Railway Magazine,” Oct. 1909), and the statement of Mr. J. Gooday (Gen. Manager G.E.R.) and his directors, who consider that the “time the men are on duty counts only in the actual running” (“Railway Magazine,” March 1907), is mere piffle, and is only intended to poison the mind of the man in the street, who regards such statements, emanating from such journals and gentlemen, as gospel truth.

It will be seen that the life of a fireman is worry from beginning to end, with bad rest, bad coal, bad engines, bad conditions generally, and bad pay—with which I will deal later.

Now we come to conditions which are rather peculiar to most sons of toil, but which play an important part in dividend making as applied to the Loco. Depts. of the trunk lines. I refer to “lodging,” one of the biggest curses that can befall the loco. man, whether driver or fireman. The sum allowed for a “lodge” is 1s. 6d., and if it exceeds twelve hours, 2s. 6d. The latter price, however, is easily wangled by “calling out” the man a minute or before the twelve hours have expired.

The “main line” men are affected by this, on some lines more than on others. On short lines it is unknown. The men working the long distance goods trains are generally safe for a “lodge out,” because they can only get one way by the time their day is up. They, therefore, on their scanty wages, have to keep two homes going, to say nothing of making a smoke as the result of the bad coal supplied. (See “British Locomo­tives,” p. 346.)

The fireman’s wages vary from 3s. 6d. to 5s. 6d. per day, according where and by whom he is employed—a good average through the country being about 30s. a week. A main line man might get somewhere about 35s. if he is lucky; but besides “lodging,” time worked that he is not paid for, and time at home “waiting” after his nine hours are up for which, as I have said, he gets nothing, and many other expenses connected with the calling, he has to run something like 950 miles.

The wages are nothing like sufficient, neither are there enough men by half, as the long-distance engine working and “lodging” will show. And engines work daily double journeys of 180 odd miles.

The usual term of firing is from twelve to sixteen years, and it is a period of excessive robbery from beginning to end. And while such conditions prevail, and such a set of men are worked as they are, the “welfare and safety” of the travelling public is impossible.

J. Sevier

[To be Continued.]

Public Safety versus Railway Profits. III The Driver. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

[continued from last issue.]

How often has one gone on any busy station and seen a crowd of people gathered round a large engine just about to “get away” with a world famous train ! And how often have we heard very harsh and untrue things said about the men thereon, especially in the neighbour­hood of August 1911, by the master class, and even by many misguided workers !

“The men have fine jobs and get good money, and they ought not to be allowed anywhere where beer and spirits are sold, nor to smoke, for the responsibility of these men is great, and every precaution should betaken.” That is what I have often heard from “gentlemen,” and that, no doubt, expresses the ideas of many people on the subject.

I will attempt to show what a “fine job” and what “good money” falls to the lot of the engine driver.

As regards beer, Carrie Nation herself could not have said anything stronger ; besides, it implies that the majority of accidents are due to drink, which is not the case—though doubtless there have been times when a loco. man has been at fault in this respect.

I am not advocating the “Standard’s” “right to get drunk.” I agree that “every precaution should be taken.” But to debar the men from having any beer or tobacco is not precaution, but only tyranny. Real precautions cost money, and hence lower dividends, so they are not taken.

At the commencement of these articles I stated that in order to cope with the dangers of their calling, all men of the running department should be assured of a decent living, decent conditions, perfect machinery, good education, and encouragement. All this is essential to making a man thoroughly efficient. But all, alas! is sadly lacking.

The fireman who has done about sixteen years swinging the shovel first undergoes a very stiff exam, to see if the fire has “killed” his eyes. If such is the case he is ruthlessly cast aside, but if he gets through he is in for an exam. of the engine that no one has taught him—unless it is his driver, who only tells him what he has had to find out for himself. If he passes he is then a “spare driver” : i.e., he drives if there is a job, but if not he has to go firing, with a corresponding reduction in pay. He is usually “spare driving” about four years, and then, after passing more exams, and tests, he becomes a full-blown driver.

Let us look at this man, whom we perhaps have seen with a pipe on as he sits down for a minute or two before running something like 350 miles. Upon his presence of mind and vigilance depends the safe running of the train, and one would think that, to keep him fit for a task that must tax him to the utmost, he above all men would be assured of decent conditions, pay, and rest. But far from this is the case.

The driver’s hours are ten, and there is plenty of overtime. And besides being “in steam” at home, for which he is not paid, he is a victim of “lodging out.”

It will be quickest, perhaps, to describe a driver’s day’s work. His first duty is to “sign on.” He must then read the notices—whether they concern him or not he must read and know them—and sign a book saying that he has read them. He then proceeds to get his engine ready. “Everything that could possibly go wrong must be examined” (“British Locomotives,” p. 348). At the same time he must oil the whole of the working parts. Often he must make a shunt to get water and coal. Having done all this, he “whistles up,” and goes right away to back on to his train at a terminus or wait for it at a road-side station.

From signing on to “right away” half an hour is allowed (in the interest of safety) which is far too short a time in which to do the work satisfactorily on the big engines of to-day. This is well known to the officials, as Mr. Bowen Cooke says that the statement that the firemen should come on before booked applies equally to the drivers. (“British Locomotive,” p. 383.)

Often only a quarter of an hour is allowed to get on the train, and this is the first the public sees of the driver—when he has been at work an hour and a half.

When the driver backs on the train he delivers a “ticket” to the guard, who times the train throughout the trip, stating whether he is early or late at various points and why. And if the driver is not “to time,” and no “satisfactory” excuse is forthcoming, it means a fine or suspension, even if the engine is vastly overloaded.

Another examination of the brake apparatus is made here to see if it is all right on the train, in accordance with rule 3d Vacuum Appendix, and the guard tells him what load he has on, and the brake-power under his control.

The average express-train load throughout the country is about 350 tons behind the tender on passenger, and about 45 waggons (average capacity 10 tons) or about 750 tons on goods trains. (These waggons, by the way, are loose coupled, and have no brake-power provided to “hold” them, except it be a 10- or 20-ton egg-box). Even this seems, in the eyes of those jealous guardians of the “public safety,” the railway directors, to be too much, for within the last few weeks a goods guard on the Midland Railway was dismissed for refusing to take a train with insufficient brake-power, according to that company’s own rules. To have taken the train would have directly affected the driver in working it, and woe betide him if he lost control over it !

We must now consider the “homework” a driver has to do to properly work his train. He has an Appendix consisting of about 1,200 pages, with the working time-table, which he must know—for he dare not take his eyes off the road while he is running. Weekly notices are issued to him in reference to any alterations of signals and repairs to the road, and he must be prepared to act on them. Many a “day off” of a driver is taken up in learning all this printed matter, which is, in effect, part of his work, and for which he receives nothing.

We must not, however, forget the Rule Book, containing over 260 rules, which it is impera­tive he must know.

Still now the signal is “off,” the flag waved and whistle blown and we are on the move. Through rain, snow, fog, wind, and boiling sun this frail hero is now “doing his duty,” ever mindful of what he has behind him, and knowing only too well what it means if he does not get over the road to time—at speeds which are sometimes criminally excessive. But we are a queer people in a queer system.

Besides driving his own train the driver must be prepared to safeguard trains travelling on the opposite road (Rule 191c), and occasionally to assist the fireman, either manually or viva-voce. He must make no “unnecessary” noise in the working, nor must smoke be emitted from the engine, for either of these offences are rewarded with a fine or suspension, and in the case of smoke it falls on the fireman as well, for “being concerned with driver in making a smoke when working train” (“British Locomotives,” p. 346.)

After he has worked one way according to written orders, the driver “comes off” the train and gets into a siding or the nearest loco. shed, and there “another examination must be made by the driver in readiness for the return journey” (“British Locomotives,” p. 370). The return trip is performed as before, after which the engine is taken to the shed and again examined, and put away.

When the driver leaves his train the guard gives him back his tickets, which he then has to copy out on to a “way-bill,” also stating what coal and oil he has had, what coaches attached and detached, and make out a report of any irregularity in the day’s work.

This bill sometimes takes half an hour to write out, and then the driver has to enter in the “repair book” whatever he may have found wrong with the engine during his examinations and in the running. He then finds out his turn for the next day, “books off,” and goes home.

From the time of arriving on the shed half an hour is allowed to get clear away and “book off,” but it usually takes nearer an hour.

Such is a very brief outline of a day’s work on the footplate. The number of hours worked by a driver in a week actually on the job amounts to anything between 60 and 80, to say nothing of the work of memorising he has to get through at home.

Now a word as to the pay. “Spare” drivers, as a rule, get 5s. 6d. per day, and when firing 6d. less. The “registered” driver usually starts at 6s., and continues at this for three years or so, until he has advanced to occasionally getting a “running” job. Many companies then “bracket” the pay of drivers. If a “bracketed” man runs six miles he is entitled to 7s. a day; if he runs less he only gets 6s. And, needless to say, the mileage is made up as a rule so that he only gets the 6s, I know of a case where one mile is deliberately cut out of the mileage table in order to “dish” drivers out of 1s. a day. From A to B is three miles, but the return trip over the opposite pair of rails is only given as two, so the driver making that journey, though he actually runs six miles, is only allowed to book five !

Generally when a man is properly “on the road” (i.e., does little or no shunting), his wage is 7s. a day. Occasionally 8s. is the highest wage of a main-line driver in this country, and this, with all expenses to be paid, including “lodging” away from home, is shamefully inadequate.

The average shunting and local drivers’ wage is from 36s. to 42s. a week, and on the main lines it is higher where the mileage rates are in force. Long distance engine working is a favourite dodge of the companies’ to save additional engines and men ; so, as a general thing, many companies lay it down that 150 miles shall be a day’s work. But owing to the long distance working, many men get 1¼ , 1½, or 2 days in one, which looks very nice—on paper.

The men, however, are worn out after these long trips, and where they are in vogue, usually follow a long trip by a short one. This often means 9 hours off after having worked 12, 13, and sometimes even 14 hours on the job, which is clearly a menace to public safety.

Other companies have the “trip” system—so much for the trip—which on a number of lines means hours worked for nothing at all. A few companies work on “classification,” paying different rates for different trains worked ; so many a man’s hours are paid at two or three different ratings in one day.

Anyway, the average “crack” driver’s earnings are a little less than £2 10s. per week, for which, as in the case of the fireman, something like 950 miles must be run.

The safety of the driver or the public is not allowed to stand in the way of the sweating of the railway servants and the heaping up of profits. Signals are placed anywhere, and not in the best position to be read ; and many of them cannot be seen until one is quite close to them. On most lines no difference is shown by night between a “home” and a “distant” signal, nor are the slackening notice-boards illuminated. In the “interests of public safety” the driver has to guess where these notices—in fact, many lines discard them altogether. The same applies to water trough, and crane notice boards, and also gradient boards. Chance rules the road. The driver is even placed on the wrong side of the engine to see the signals and station work himself, and he has to ask his mate to look for him. Even in the matter of stopping a train the “actual” brake-power is not known : only the “absolute” power is shown when running, and the actual power at the driver’s command often falls short of that shown on the brake gauge. Nothing is told him as to where to apply the brake—he has to find this out from his own experience.

A further example of the elaborate precautions taken to procure safety is found when, in long-distance working, the driver has to leave the regulator and swing the shovel because the half-starved fireman becomes exhausted. And again in the common practice of putting a young and inexperienced fireman on a heavy job in order to save a few pence—which re-acts on the driver. At the best his hands and mind are over-crowded, and it is murder to impose these additions to his duties.

Now that we have briefly looked at the conditions under which our enginemen work, we can truthfully say that their lot is a hard one, and that it is a period of continual overwork. Any child knows full well that such a state of affairs cannot exist side by side with safety. A study of what is here laid bare will show that the conditions of labour of the men upon whom the safety of those using the railways depends constitute a public scandal. But there is still more speeding-up in the air so far as the Loco. Dept. is concerned, which will make railway travelling still more dangerous. And until the railway magnates, together with all other property owners, are dispossessed, and the railways, together with all the other means and instruments of production and distribution, become socially owned, profit will be the first consideration, and the public welfare and safe services quite a secondary matter.

J. Sevier

                                                                 [To be Continued.]