By
August Hutchinson
If an employee sued a
railroad to address an injury of his, he rarely got what he was looking for. As
history Professor Walter Licht writes, “in the early years, the courts ruled in
favor of the railroads in practically all employee liability suits. Judges
generally applied the common law principle of implied contract, [which] held
that an employee engaging to serve a master accepted all conditions of such
service, including all the ordinary risks.” Some state governments did hold
companies responsible for the accidents of their employees (e.g. Georgia as
early as 1855), but that’s about as far as the concept of employer liability
had gone in everyday 19th century legal life.
This doesn’t mean that
no relief was available - it just came from the railroads on a completely
voluntary basis. Even before medical associations rose, companies would often
fund the medical care of injured employees and keep them fully or partially on
the payroll, or would give them a flat grant. If a man died, railroads would
often fund burial expenses and give some money to the widowed family. While a
number of the managers certainly had charitable impulses triggered by the
unfortunate loss of a fellow human being, a number of others saw providing
medical care as a way of boosting loyalty and the company’s public image. And
most railroad companies, whether acting altruistically or not, would take the
opportunity to make aid contingent on waiving the right to sue them.
If a railroad’s money
managers weren’t feeling particularly benevolent, or a railroad refused to
provide compensation (like the New Haven & Hartford almost always did), the
last place a worker could turn was his labor group. These began forming medical
aid program in the sixties, like the Locomotive Engineers’ Mutual Life
Insurance Association, established in 1867 to provide assistance both to
disabled members and to dead members’ families. Generally speaking, trainmen
also collected donations for disabled or deceased comrades.
Companies took the
first steps toward their own systematic medical aid in the sixties. Early on,
the Central Pacific created the first railroad hospital association. All
employees paid about fifty cents per month, and the CP would cover the medical
costs of any non-Chinese employee suffering from almost anything other than a
venereal disease or a pre-existing condition. In the same decade, railroads
like the Chicago & North Western contracted with local physicians to care
for accident victims.
Then came the B&O
with another innovation in the railroading world: a mutual benefit plan.
Employees would pay a premium contingent on his income and his job’s risk
level, and receive a daily payout when injured or sick, the amount of which was
based on the same criteria. If he died, the family would receive a lump sum of
money. In addition, the B&O contracted hospitals in major cities, and
though it wouldn’t pay for an employee’s board costs, it would pay for all his
medical care. The only catch: anyone who sued over an injury claim
automatically lost all benefits.
 |
| This Advertisement from The Journal of the National Association of Railway Surgeons serves as a reminder of the sorts of things that railroad surgeons carried with them. Anotheradvertisement promoted Listerine as an anti-septic usable “by injection or spray in all the natural cavities of the body” since, it claimed, “there is no possibility of poisonous effect through the absorption of Listerine.” |
With the rise of
railroad medical practitioners came the rise of railroad medical practice. One
railroad doctor of the era complained that “these operations out in the woods
or on the back porch of some filthy house are sometimes criminal.” So, to
improve on-site or near-site treatment, railway surgeons developed emergency
medical packs to be carried on all trains. They also established important
(albeit slightly primitive) screening tests for employees to ensure that they
had the basic faculties necessary to execute their jobs. Most importantly, they
used a ticking pocket watch to test the ability to hear, and a Snellen chart
(the one with the big E at the top in most doctor’s offices) to test the
ability to see. Railroads even gave west-coast America its first antiseptic
operating room, which cut major surgery fatality rates from 30-40% to 6-7%. And
when public health advocates cried for better sanitation in passenger cars, the
Pennsylvania, in the eighties, began using a disinfectant, created by its
chemist. Then, in 1899 it established a department of bacteriological chemistry
to refine the disinfectants and to examine the cars’ drinking water. Such
practices spread; by 1914, ~66% of all railroads performed sanitary
inspections.
Clearly, the story of
railroad safety is a story of imperfect progress. The Safety Appliance Act and
subsequent legislation dramatically reduced injuries and deaths caused by
coupling, but it didn’t guard against defective couplers. And some railroads
still managed to break the law anyway. Bridges and ballast and boilers and
rails and heating systems and the research process improved, but without
celerity. In spite of hiring practices, a portion of railroaders always had
erred and a portion always will err, with or without intent to do so. For the
longest time, trainmen had to rely purely on corporate benevolence or expensive
private insurance to fund the repair of their oft-acquired wounds. Then,
finally, the railroads established their own systematized coverage plans and
fueled the creation of a community of doctors especially capable of treating
injured trainmen. Of course, even by 1910, railroads still weren’t paragons of
safety - if they were, the ‘Safety First’ movement would not have begun that
year, or been known for the very significant impact that it had. But it’s
important to recognize the accomplishment of unprecedented improvement, and all
its imperfections; it’s also important to recognize the agents of that
improvement, and all of their imperfections as well.
Write
to August at write2hutchinson@aol.com
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