A Newsletter of the White River Valley Museum January 1996

The Road to Nationalization The Northern Pacific Railway at Auburn Yard, 1914-1917 1914 The guns of August lashed out across the low countries of Europe, the million-man British Expeditionary Force landed on the Continent, and the 27 million men of the French Army moved to check the German advance on Paris. But for Auburn, and most of the rural America, the beginning of World War I was small news. The Globe Republican had better things to report. The front page covered Auburn's daily count of vagrants at the Police Department's "Hotel de Gink", it asked for clues on pet poisonings in South Auburn, it reported which luckless souls managed to have their cars smashed by the reckless trolleys of the Puget Sound Electric and it covered the story of the bathroom fire in I. P. Iversen's home. The growing tide of rail traffic caused by the war demanded responses from American railroad managers, responses that in the final analysis, they were not quick to make. With a long tradition of private systems and almost no state-run systems to speak of, the United State's nationalization of the railway systems did not come until months after America's entry into the war. Even then it was not really accepted as the correct response to the crisis. "Many believed, even as late as 1917, that the superior efficiency of private control offset the inclination of individual railroads to pull apart..." Prior to America's entry into World War I the American Railway Association (ARA) attempted to curtail rivalry between competing systems to avert car shortages and ensure efficiency. At the same time, Congress increased the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to deal with the priority, routing and shortage problems, but in the end, both the ICC's and the ARA's measures proved to be too little, too late. In Auburn, by the close of 1916, the yard had handled 5,000 more rail cars over 1915 levels, 15,000 over 1914. Across the NP as a whole, the numbers reflected a staggering trend. In 1914, loaded freight cars had racked up 286,684,515 miles on the NP. By the close of 1916, this number had increased nearly 100 million miles, climbing to 364,028,734. The incredible amount of material on the move during these years created a car shortage, and the destructive practice of keeping cars "captive" began around the country. Simply put, in areas where business was heaviest, in ports or industrial centers, cars from many railroads tended to collect, and stay, not returning to their home road for months on end. On the NP in Auburn, this problem was typified when clerks and switchmen in the yard began to notice loads of wheat arriving, stacked under tarpaulins, in gondolas rather than the usual box cars. Then on flatcars. Next, Washington's trademark crop, the almighty apple, began to arrive in coal cars. "Good apples, too, some of the men about the yards state" as noted the Globe Republican. Shortly after the apples started arriving, so did a few Special Agents to help cut down on theft. Just months after the United States entered the war in late 1917, the number of home cars to total cars on the average American system had slipped to just 48 percent (a healthy mixture being about 70 percent). In addition to the inconvenience of inappropriate containers for shipping perishable cargos, this "hoarding" of each other's cars was causing the railroads a loss of revenue, since no carrier could charge the same per diem fee using cars it did not own as when the "home" line's trains moved goods in its own rolling stock. Next, Washington's trademark crop, the almighty apple, began to arrive in coal cars. "Good apples, too, some of the men about the yards state" The NP's officials moved to protect their road the only way they knew how: they embargoed. All shipments east of the Twin Cities, as well as all shipments to lines south of Kansas City, Missouri were stopped. In a peace time economy this response would have been texbook. With the war growing, it was perhaps a move toward quagmire for the business of American railroads, and it was a major step toward their nationalization. The non-cooperation that would kill America's railroads had begun in earnest. 1917 On the night of January 24, 1917 a report came in that over 1,900 cars of eastbound freight were filling sidings from Paradise, Montana to Cheney, Washington. The local divisions had run out of motive power. The hoped-for remedy was announced the same month. The NP would buy 25 new locomotives from the American Locomotive Company for use exclusively on its western lines. As costly as that purchase might have been, it was nothing compared to the bills being sent to the governments of Europe. Auburn's Globe Republican stated that American banks were calculating the cost of the European war at 105 million dollars every 24 hours. The war's cost since 1914 was estimated at 75 billion dollars, 67 billion in excess of the cost the entire American Civil War, formerly the most expensive conflagration in history. Still, the Railway had to find new ways to try to keep up with the demand. The simplest if not always the kindest actions was to work the crews longer. Thus, promptly on March 1, the rip track forces found themselves working a ten hour day, six days a week. Business continued to grow. February 1917 saw an increase of 2,500 cars handled over February 1916. George Fenner, second trick operator at Auburn Depot made a count of trans passing his window that February. His final tally: 270. Perhaps to add another benefit to long hours spent at the yard, Puget Sound Division Superintendent J.J. McCullough implemented a novel plan. Unused parcels of land around the Auburn Yard were doled out for NP employees to use as vegetable gardens. Overnight, competition broke out between the would-be farmers over who would be crowned "Potato King". March brought even more work to the rip track. Foreman Windley and his carmen found themselves facing repairs to 120 service cars, stripping down 50 double-deck stock cars for emergency lumber and shingle use, as well as trying to keep up with the already heavy flow of worn out and damaged equipment that staggered into Auburn daily. In the meantime, the crew assigned to re-open the local gravel pit staged a strike. The dozen or so men demanded a 30-cent a day raise, to $2.20. Unfortunately no one in Auburn had authority to grant such a request. Strikers found themselves thrown off the property as the NP went looking for a new crew. A similar incident occurred on a steel gang re-laying rail in the yard. Fifty men, all Italian immigrants, went on strike when their foreman fired one of their number and refused to reinstate the man. Again, the striking men were let go and the railway went looking for fresh workers. At the same time these two groups were fired in Auburn, St. Paul announced that all section crews, hostlers, engine wipers, oilers, coal dock workers and general laborers, would now be paid $2.00 per day. As usual, it was already too late. For months now the yard's employees, skilled and unskilled, had been leaving for higher pay elsewhere. For the NP, the workers lost now might never be replaced, for beginning that April, any able-bodied unmarried man aged 18 to 45 was eligible for military service. On April 6, after three years, millions of European casualties, the sinking of the Lusitania and unrestricted submarine warfare on the part of the Imperial German Navy, World War I and conscription came to the United States. Engine wipers hired during World War I were often women, c1918, PO-27 Auburn and her citizens working for the NP Railway were suddenly caught up in the patriotic fever which swept America. At Auburn's Terminal Theater an over capacity crowd (400+) came to hear a speech in support of the draft by Representative Paul Houser and to listen to the wife of Auburn's car dealer sing the Star Spangled Banner. Soon the Globe Republican would be printing "Wilson's Appeal to the Nation." In it, the President asked for the support of the nation to get through the tremendous crisis at hand. In one section entitled, "Eyes on the Middlemen" the President spoke of America's railway laborers and managers. "...the railways are the arteries of the nation's life and upon them rests the immense responsibility of seeing to it those arteries suffer no obstruction..." Given the situation, it was a tall order. America's entry into World War I exacerbated the railroads' already critical shortage of workers. Testimony to this fact was that work on one of the NP's major double tracking projects in Montana came to a stop for over two months due to lack of laborers. Already hemorrhaging employees at Auburn Yard, the NP was about to lose more. In addition to losing skilled workers to higher paying jobs in Seattle and Tacoma, the railway began losing workers to the armed services. Almost as soon as war was declared, NP men in Auburn were enlisting. Thus, the yard had replace men who enlisted when it had to find enough workers to replace the 50 strikers lost in March. On May 2 Puget Sound Division Superintendent McCullough issued a circular describing what was to be done to remedy the crisis. "All employing officers are to make full use of female help in offices and elsewhere where women can do the work instead of male employees. To that end present employees are requested to present applications from their female relatives and in all vacancies and new positions no male applicants are to be employed when female help can be obtained to do the work required: callers clerks, checkers, time keepers, all office and desk work, or any other work women can do and are willing to do." It was quite a bombshell. The Superintendent ended with another. "Female employees are to receive the same salary and the same working conditions such as promotions, now given to males and are to be given any assistance to enable them to become familiar with the duties they assume." Far from cowering in fear at arrival of women, Auburn actually seemed to enjoy the change. At the NP's stronghold of manhood, the massive backshop at South Tacoma, the Railway might as well have told the crews it was going to give all their jobs to a screaming horde of Wobblies and Bolsheviks. The shop men did not wait long to voice their disapproval. Taking flight from reality, they issued a statement which read in part "There is no shortage of men -- if the railway would pay a living wage." The employment of women was simply another greedy capitalist plot. "...a sinister attempt to bring down the existing wage scales and lower the standard of living of American wage workers." They closed with a statement that was probably the crux of the matter, at least they saw it. "Such a course must inevitably degrade and debase the homelife of the nation and wreck its domestic ideals." South Tacoma had spoken, but as angry as the craftsmen may have been, they did not strike and no individual, at South Tacoma or elsewhere, was ever reported to have left the NP because of the new policy. The savvy foreman fell back on that most time-honored of railroad practices: nepotism. Far from cowering in fear at the arrival of women, Auburn actually seemed to enjoy the change. Women began to come to the depot, Yard Office and rip track with applications in hand. Miss Anna Morgan became agent McKee's first hire and Mrs. R.H. Keene became the first woman at Yard Master Iversen's Yard Office. Both hired on within days of the new edict. Foreman Frank Windley at the rip track seemed to have a harder time in both finding and keeping female clerks. Miss Eugenia Uebelacker from Ellensburg hired on in mid-May only to resign shortly thereafter to get married. The savvy foreman fell back on that most time-honored of railroad practices: nepotism. His new clerk, at least while she was on her summer break from school, would be his daughter Bessy. Whatever the men at South Tacoma might say about the new hiring policy, Auburn was embracing it, even changing it to conform to long-standing NP traditions. Auburn was keeping it a family business. Soon all the other issues faded before the overwhelming task of keeping trains moving over the road during wartime. Then, on May 9, a 75-foot flag pole was raised at the Yard Office. "I.P. Iversen was to make a patriotic address, and Waymaster Clyde Rowe was to sing the Star Spangled Banner, but something went wrong with the scheduling, and the pole was erected without these aids to patriotism." At the top, a 5 by 8-foot American flag could be seen from every part of the yard. With its unfurling a competition of sorts got underway. On May 11, W.J. Gregoire and his associates at the transfer shed unveiled their own flag pole, 125 feet high, with a 14 foot flag. Next the round house too weighed in. Like the yard office, the dedication of the round house's flag pole came without "...the formality of oratory or pyrotechnics, but filled with genuine patriotic impulse." The flag pole itself, a mere 102 feet, was not the tallest but the round house crew had surmounted it with something novel, a halo of electric lights atop an 18-foot flag. Wartime also brought changes to the NP's passenger service. In spring, Vice-President George T. Slade announced that the pride of NP dining cars, The Great Big Baked Potato, was to be discontinued, as "...an economic war measure." Clearly, having to carry all those oversized spuds was slowing down the North Coast Limited. In addition, the employee's vegetable plots in the Auburn Yard again made the papers. "J.W. McKee thinks being a "potato king" is a job that is likely to be overworked this summer so he is laying...plans to be a "bean king". He has about an acre under cultivation south of the Ice House and has gone heavy on the beans: Navy Beans, Butter Beans, Kidney Beans, String Beans, Stringless Beans, Boston Beans, Pork and Beans, Mexican Beans. Every kind of beans Mac ever heard of he has planted. He sent for his father-in-law, D.C. Pretty of Mount Vernon, and he will take active charge of the bean farm while Mac loafs around the depot and tells how he is cutting down the high cost of beans." Cleary, having to carry all those oversized spuds was slowing down the North Coast Limited. May also saw a full scale wheat rush underway, with 100 cars a day hustling through Auburn. The yard also set a new upper limit on the total number of cars handled in 24 hours. Over 2,000 cars flew through on May 28, as many as had been handled in the preceding two weeks. June 1 The Globe Republican predicted that "May's showing in all departments will be a record breaker by big odds." Anyone who thought they would get a break from railroading was clearly fooling themselves. "Nothing short of death or serious sickness will get a man a leave of absence now-a-days." From June 22 to June 26, eastbound traffic continued to skyrocket. Ten manifest trains a day left the Auburn Yard. "In the palmiest days gone by six or seven was considered a big rush, but the demand now on freight traffic is the greatest now in the history of the company." I.P. Iversen, when asked how the yard was doing by the Globe Republican's reporter on July 6, replied "I've got 20 minutes to do an hour's work in, so you'll have to excuse me. Come around after the War is over and I'll visit with you." The Auburn Yard looking south, c1914, with A Street to the left and C Street to the right, both lined with trees and open-space PO-59 The yard also lost a few Special Agents that year, mainly due to their own negligence. In the middle of the night Special Agent J.K. Jensen stepped off an Everett-bound freight only to fall through a bridge deck, breaking a leg. Later that year Special Agent C.H. Rose cleaning an "unloaded" revolver, managed to shoot himself through the left thumb. Special Agents were not the only ones hurting. On December 4, at 5:00 a.m., Auburn Yard's switchmen lost their shanty. "The fire was discovered shortly after the night crew had lunched and left their rain-soaked apparel hanging about a right good fire to dry. Not only were these garments dried beyond recognition, but likewise the contents of 30-odd lockers containing the working suits of several men on duty at the time. Otherwise the loss was insignificant. The shanty was a collection of bad-ordered boxes [box cars] that were still in bad order and should long ago have had the attention of the Health Officer. It was more appropriately dubbed "The Snake House" by its occupants." There was one more surprise that December, the last for 1917. On December 27 came the news that American railroads were no longer on their own. All the important systems across the country were now under the control of the Federal Government's Director General of Railroads, William McAdoo. Nationalization in the form of the United States Railroad Administration had arrived.  by J. A. Phillips, III [Source references for this article are available at the museum. Many of the news items mentioned are from the Auburn Globe Republican, 1914-1917, available for research in the museum's Leslie Newspaper Library]   Top  Home   Information  Exhibits   Events Programs  Articles  Fun & Games  Store Last Update: January 27, 2003