Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 2, 2025
His freckled face and his tawny shock of red hair rose above the gorgeous plaid of the clothes like a prairie sunset, and as he pranced off down the street he was clearly proud of his job. This pride never left him. He knew all the switchmen in the railroad yards, all the girls in the dry-goods stores, all the boys on the grocers' waggons, all the hack-drivers and all the barbers in town.
Some one signed a solemn compact in which the engineers bound themselves to support the switchmen paying them as often as the engine-men drew money and the switchmen went out. They struck vigorously, and to a man, and remained loyal long after the Brotherhood had broken its pledge and cut off the pay of the strikers. In this battle the switchmen were the bravest of the brave.
A large committee appeared in my office a few mornings after. To my surprise there was a representative from every branch of the service, passenger and freight conductors, brakemen, shopmen, yardmen, switchmen, and so forth. These had always come through their local unions.
At the annual convention held at Atlanta, in the autumn of that year the engineers dropped the sympathy-striking switchmen from the pay roll, at the same time increasing the pay of striking engineers from $40.00 to $50.00 a month. At the end of the first month of the strike the lines were pretty well drawn. There was no neutral ground for employees.
After a slow ride, of nearly eight hours, in what, in Germany, is called an express train, through a rain and clouds that hid from our view the Tyrol and the Swabian mountains, over a rolling, pleasant country, past pretty little railway station-houses, covered with vines, gay with flowers in the windows, and surrounded with beds of flowers, past switchmen in flaming scarlet jackets, who stand at the switches and raise the hand to the temple, and keep it there, in a military salute, as we go by, we come into old Augsburg, whose Confession is not so fresh in our minds as it ought to be.
The fat, black cat seemed to have completely disappeared. "I've had the switchmen and trackmen keep a lookout for some time past," the agent told Nan, for Mr. Bobbsey did a large business in shipping lumber over the railroad, and many of the men were his friends.
Switchmen, yardmen, firemen, had quit their posts, and they or sympathizing gangs of toughs stoned and cursed the men who took their places.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking