Oral History Program Irwin Ruth Interviewed by John Thompson 14 July 1974 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Irwin Ruth Interviewed by John Thompson 14 July 1974 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed Kelley Evans, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Ruth, Irwin, an oral history by John Thompson, 14 July 1974, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Irwin Ruth. The interview was conducted on July 14, 1974, by John Thompson, in Ogden, Utah. Ruth describes his experiences in communications as a telegrapher for the railroads, particularly Southern Pacific. He also discusses his experiences in France and Belgium during World War I, and the increase in railroad traffic during World War II. JT: Would you please tell us about your early life - where you were born and what you did when you were a little kid? IR: Well, I was born in Kimball, South Dakota, a country town near the Missouri River. My parents previously had come down from Minnesota and filed so, a tree claim. JT: What's that? IR: Well, it's a claim that the government would allow you 160 acres if you prove up on it with several conditions connected with it. Such as you had to plant a certain number of trees, which in the plains country, was used for windbreaks. Well, they filed on this claim. I was just a young child there, and I don't know the exact year we came down there. It must have been - well, I was born on the property, so it would date from sometime before 1889. That's when I was born. JT: How long did you live in South Dakota? IR: Well, my father was a traveling man for a wholesale grocery company for Sioux City, Iowa. My mother, previous to marriage, had been a schoolteacher up in Winona, Minnesota. And there were one sister and two brothers born up there prior to coming down to this tree claim in South Dakota where I was born. We lived there probably until 1 1895, when we finally moved to Mitchell, South Dakota, where there was a college and the older children had better school advantages. JT: Are you the youngest? IR: No, there are three behind me. That's where I grew up and went to school until I was 16 years old. In the meantime, I had been learning telegraphy at the Chicago Western Depot. JT: There in Mitchell? IR: Due to the agent of the railroad being our neighbor. He encouraged me to come up and learn telegraphy. Which I did every day after school. I went up there and practiced with a young man who was called a helper on the railroad. A station agent had a young man assigned him by the railroad to do the heavy lifting in the warehouse, and so forth at the warehouse depot. And he was learning telegraphy also, and between the two of us, why I possibly learned faster than he did. I used to go down to the Western Union Telegraph Company office and worked with the manager down there and became proficient with telegraphy. JT: This is when you were 16? IR: Yes. JT: Were there many other boys of your age working on the railroad at this time? IR: At this particular time, I was the only one. I wasn't employed by the railroad. I just was learning telegraphy there with this other young fellow. They used to pay him $15 a month to help the agent. And I used to work as a messenger for the Western Union Telegraph Company in vacation time, from school in the summer for several years. I had an offer to 2 go to work as a telegrapher for the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, at Cedar Rapids, Iowa. JT: Was that your first job with the railroad? IR: Yes. And I worked for them about five months when I had an offer to go to Cloquet, Minnesota, for the Western Union Telegraph Company, where Mr. Gregory, who previously had been the manager of the office at Mitchell, South Dakota, had been sent to assume manager of their office. I left home in 1906. This along about 1917, when I was going on 18. JT: Was the telegraph, Western Union, part of the railroad? IR: No, they were two separate companies. JT: Did they rent from the railroad? IR: They usually, in a big city, their office is usually separate. But in smaller cities around the country, they usually had an agreement with the railroad to work together, because the lines follow the track. Yes, that's right, they worked together. So I worked at Cloquet possibly for six, seven months when the Western Union put out a notice for someone to bid on a night press job for the Grand Forks Herald, in Grand Forks, North Dakota. As I had studied in off hours the Phillips Code, which is really an abbreviation of many words. JT: Kind of like shorthand? IR: Yes. Which made the sending and copying of anybody working as a press operator very fast because you had to write out the full text of the word while others were sending it to you abbreviated. Like, for instance, the word "the" "t-h-e". The abbreviation for that was just the letter "t". And there were so many which you had to write the whole word out. 3 Whoever was sending it, they abbreviated all that, whether it was me at one end, or receiving at the other end. JT: Why didn't they just use the Morse code? IR: Well, it is a Morse code, just an abbreviated code. JT: And they still use that? IR: Yes, but it isn't like it used to be because everything is principally mechanized nowadays. JT: Teletype? IR: Teletype and so forth, and that's practically done away with the expert press telegraph operators we used to have years ago. Up in Seattle, for instance, where I was working for the Western Union, they used to get assigned Seattle to New York you'd get a bonus of two cents per message more than you'd get on other telegraph lines. JT: What was your wage? Do you remember that? IR: Oh boy, I was just trying to think. I know we went out Grand Forks, North Dakota, where I was working, there were 14 telegraph operators and I worked at night copying the press report for the Grand Forks Herald. And they went on a strike. This was 1907, 1908, and I went out with them. JT: What were they striking for? IR: That's what I was trying to think, probably striking for higher wage. Wasn't clear what we struck for then. I wasn't dry behind the ears yet. And meantime we had been out several days, I went down to the Great Northern Railroad and hired out to them. Together with several telegraph operators and with that left the Western Union temporarily. In the meantime I worked for the Great Northern Railroad for about two years through North 4 Dakota principally, Devil's Lake. Then I was promoted to a wire chief at Minot, North Dakota. JT: What was the main job of a wire chief? IR: Well, a wire chief had the responsibility of keeping the wires in proper working order because there were so many things that caused a break in the wires, such as windstorms and snowstorms that you had to patch wires with other wires in order to keep the circuits open. And in addition, you had supervision over anywhere from five to 15 telegraph operators under you. And I worked on that position for a number of months. JT: How big was the stretch you had to cover? IR: Oh probably 2,500 miles. Branch lines and main lines and so forth, and that covered two and part of three railroad divisions. JT: Is that how you'd go and check the lines, is by the railroad cars? IR: No, no, you have big switchboards here that the wires all come in, and at that time we had what we called multiple sets, where you had several circuits on one wire working due to your multiplex machinery. JT: If you saw something on your switchboard then you'd send somebody out to check it out? IR: Well, on the switchboards where all these wires come in, there was Western Union wires. And railroad wires come in there, not constantly but very frequently. When there was serious interruptions, and when that occurred, why you with the wire chiefs at other points started to reconstruct these circuits around where this trouble was. And that came up all the time. And then this Wheatstone, that was one of the machines we had. Oh, Billy, what's this other one? I hadn't thought about it for years. It's on the end of my tongue and I can't say it. But anyhow, they had to have constant supervision in order to have 5 communication through from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Seattle, Washington. It was a very nerve-wracking position at times. JT: Did you like the job? IR: Yes, I liked the job. But due to severe winters up in that country, North Dakota and Montana in particular, I decided I wanted to go to the Pacific coast. I had heard glowing tales of the weather, and so forth out there. So I obtained a pass and finally got relieved temporarily and went to the Pacific Coast. And after passing over the Cascade Mountains. JT: What year was this? IR: 1909. And I was going down the west slopes of the Cascade Mountains and seeing all the green trees and absence of snow, I decided that I did not want to go back to North Dakota. I had brought all of my personal belongings, comprising one suitcase and a typewriter with me. Whereupon I went to work for the Western Union again. JT: Where? IR: At Seattle. After I had been working about two months, the manager, Mr. Joe Smart, came around one afternoon and said, "Sonny, I'm going to have to let you go. I have a black card on you." JT: What's that? IR: It meant that they had traced you down and found that you'd been out on a strike in Grand Forks, North Dakota... So I left their employ and went over to work for the Postal Telegraph Company. JT: Who sent out that card, the black card? IR: Oh that came out in the general office that they use for handling those things. 6 JT: Is that company policy to let people go like that? IR: Yes. JT: Nothing you could do about it? IR: No, not at that time there wasn't. There were no unions and there was nothing you could do. So I received my pay and went over, practically across the street, to work for the Postal Telegraph Company. They were a smaller company but they had quite an extensive business, especially out of Seattle and other cities. And I worked for them several months from 2 pm to 10 pm, when one day I came to work and the manager said, "You can only work four hours today. Mrs. Wilson will assume your position because she has recently arrived from Vancouver, B.C., and has working rights with the Western Union with the Postal Telegraph Company" - due to her working during a strike several years previous. JT: Were many women working at this time? IR: Not too many. JT: This, I take it, is still 1909 and 1910, right in there? IR: Yes. Well, I came to work from 6 p.m. and worked until 10 p.m. for two or three days, when I met an old friend of mine, William Turner, who was a manger for W.F. Turner an Sons Butter and Egg Commission House of Rockford, Illinois. He used to have a plant in my hometown in Mitchell, South Dakota, where I used to deliver Western Union messages. He said, "What you doing here?" Well, I told him I had been working for the Postal and Western Union and they had just reduced my hours on account of a woman relieving me. And he said, "Well, give me the details." I gave him the details, and he said, "I do considerable business with both those companies." Running sometimes $3-400 a 7 month in message fees, and he said, "Who is your superintendent?" And I told him a Mr. Forehand. JT: This was a low grade job at that time? IR: Well, I wasn't over anybody. I was under their wire chief. He said, "You come down to the office tomorrow afternoon, and I'll see what I can find out." Which I did. I returned the next day in the afternoon, and he said, "Tomorrow you go back to the Postal and they'll put you on full time." He told me he'd been talking to the superintendent. “Well," he said, "they had been forced to give this woman, if she'd work during the strike..." In those days they called them scabs. Due to the political nature of this instance, they felt it was necessary to put me back to work. So I went back the next day, and the woman took the four hours, which I had relinquished. She came in around six at night, and she was pretty mad, of course. Well I stayed on that job for about short six weeks when another friend of mine from Minot, North Dakota, Mr. William Aberly. We met at the Hotel Seattle one day, and he was going to California, and he wanted me to go with him. So, after a week or two of coaxing, I quit the Postal Telegraph Company, and we went to San Francisco on the old passenger steamer Queen. Off of Astoria Star, down in Oregon, we ran into a storm. And this ship, with several others, went around in circles for about three days before the storm lifted. It's a wonder we didn't get wrecked. Astoria Bar is caused by a peculiar push in the wave formation. The sand all piles up under the water out there for quite a ways, and the ships come along and run into that and some of them get wrecked. As Mr. Aberly had quite an excess of money on him, he insisted that I stay with him at the Saint Francis Hotel, in San Francisco, which we did for possibly five weeks until the money ran out. It cost a lot of 8 money in those days. The money didn't have the value that it had later. Whereupon I went to work for the Southern Pacific Railroad, March 10, 1910. JT: What did you work as, telegraph man? IR: Yes, as a telegraph operator which continued over a period of years ending November 1, 1956. JT: That's when you retired? IR: Yes. The service of the Southern Pacific Company was quite varied. I was sent to Third and Townsend Streets, San Francisco, superintendent's office. And later sent to Dunsberg, California, another superintendent's office, where I worked until 1913, then was promoted to train dispatcher. JT: What was that job? IR: Well, train dispatcher has charge of all the trains on his district. I'm the railroad master, to keep the freight trains moving against the passenger trains and the meeting and passing of them is a very important job. Each superintendent's office really has a train dispatcher's office comprising of five to six or eight train dispatchers handling trains over his district, usually comprising of three to 600 miles. However from 1917 the First World War was progressing, and I enlisted in the signal corps, which later was the 91st Division. JT: Army? IR: Yes, army. We were sent to Camp Louis for training. And probably six months later, we were sent to France and Belgium during World War I.I have probably walked over a big share of the cobblestone roads of northern France and Belgium during this period and wore out many a pair of shoes with the signal corps. JT: What was the function of the signal corps? 9 IR: The signal corps' function was to solve and handle radio communication between different units and to relay telephone wires out ahead of the division and to connect with the adjoining division. Both of which had communication telegraph to the rear with the army corps, which was the top command at that time. Laying wire ahead of the division is a very hazardous job, and we had several casualties due to snipers taking out men. JT: Were you given any protection? Did you have your own arms? IR: We had arms, but when fellows up in trees were sniping at you, you didn't have much chance. JT: The regular land infantry wouldn't send a patrol or something for protection? IR: No, we were ahead of them. You had to do all that on your own. We had a wagon and a horse and some rolls of wire and so on, and we were out probably two and three miles, sometimes, ahead of the infantry division. It wasn't so hazardous until we got close to the German lines. When we ran into snipers sniping at us, we didn't know where they were coming from. We knew they were up in the trees but we didn't know just where. JT: Where you ever hit? IR: No, I had a lot of close calls but I was never hit. I had some of my pals hit, though. However this all culminated in the peace settlement on November 11, 1918, where we were reversed and had to hike back to the coast of Belgium, which was a month and a half walk. JT: You never rode, huh? IR: No, we were there from the latter part of December 1917 to spring 1919. Where the railroads finally were able to prepare and assemble enough equipment to take our troops out of Belgium and down to France. We were billeted down there in the LeMans District, 10 principally for about six months before transport was available to bring us home across the Atlantic. Well, that's just a little skimming over what happened. JT: What did you do when you got back to the States? Did you go back to work for the railroad? IR: Yes. Our outfit was billeted into Camp Mills, Long Island, for a month or two when we were sent to Camp Fremont, California, on the troop train and discharged there in late 1919 or early 1920, I forget, whereupon I assumed employment with the Southern Pacific Company where I still had my seniority. After several weeks of visiting relatives and friends, I was sent to Ogden, Utah, in late 1919. JT: Still as a telegraph man? IR: No, as a train dispatcher, dispatcher officer, where I remained until my separation from the service in 1956. JT: You were here, then, in 1923? What do you remember about that depot fire? IR: I was right there when it happened. JT: Is that right? What do you remember about it? IR: It was in February, February 1922 or '23. The dispatcher's office was up on the second floor in the depot. Upstairs there and it looked out over the tracks. There was also sort of a third story to that depot where it was kind of a dormitory for crews off the dining cars and so forth, to spend their time pending returning on their run. One afternoon, about six o'clock, I would say, that second floor of the building began to fill with smoke. JT: Were you up there then? IR: Yes. And a whole lot of the smoke was coming down through some plaster which had broken in the ceiling of the telegraph office, which was adjacent to our office, and the 11 smoke was pouring in. So I told central to call the fire department and police department, and we had to commence getting out of there. So I got a hold of our assistant superintendent on the phone. He was home. I told him what was going on, and he came down and we made arrangements to move our office, with our train sheets and everything, to an adjacent building. It was used principally by the dining car, the UP and SP dining car departments. And they made room for us to get our lineman to bring all out wires over to that building so that we could continue the operation of trains on the railroad. That fire burned out the inside of the building, and we were in temporary quarters for, I don't know, a year, year and a half, while they were building another one. I think they had 1923 on the cornerstone there, when the cornerstone was laid. JT: What do you think caused the fire? IR: Well, my idea of the fire being caused was, previous to this fire there had been some little fires in that same quarter on the third floor. It was determined that they were caused by men smoking. And this fire had no other reason but to believe it probably was caused by the same thing. They'd go to bed and smoke while they were in bed reading or something, and first thing you know, they'd fall asleep and get a fire going. That was it. So that's all I ever heard. JT: Was the railroad in Ogden at this time pretty busy? IR: Oh yes, the railroad was a very busy place. We had four to six passenger trains run west from here every day, which we received from the UP and the DR&G railroads. And then during World War II, it was worse. We used to have anywhere from 10 to 30 military trains west out of here every day with troops or ammunition or both, and the operation of trains on the railroad was a very hazardous job. 12 JT: How were your working conditions? IR: Well, our working conditions were as good as was obtainable at that time. We worked eight hours unless some emergency came up and we worked longer, if somebody was sick or something like that. But all the dispatching of our trains was done both by telegraph and by telephone, and due to the hours of service law which prohibited train crews from working over 16 hours a day for train and engine crews. It was come upon us to send out relief crews on some day to relieve these crews which could not make their terminals in 16 hours. That added up to the complexity of handling probably 40 to 50 trains on a railroad in a district of 150-200 miles. That used to be pretty tough to work down there. JT: What were you paid? Do you remember? IR: Oh gosh, let me go back here. I wasn't paid enough, I know that... I believe the pay at that time was $150 or $160 a week. JT: A week? That seems like pretty good wages for then. IR: Well, it wasn't as much as the engineers got on the railroad, but we were battling for more wages. There were so many fellows that couldn't take it. They'd get sick and have to go to the hospital. They'd have nervous breakdowns. JT: Was your job considered one of the better ones at the time? It was an administrative job, right? IR: Well, I was train dispatcher, then I was assistant chief train dispatcher for quite a period of time, or when the chief train dispatcher was sick or absent I was usually called upon to assume his position. I was just trying to think of that pay level there. I can't tell you. 13 JT: What was the main product you remember hauling from Utah? Was there one main item or crop? IR: You mean freight commodity? Well, the Southern Pacific Railroad's business at this point was... Well, the Southern Pacific Railroad from California, we'll say, was comprised of handling all through freight. In the summertime it was many fruit trains, but we handled all the commodities that were manufactured in California for the east coast. Likewise, returning from the east to the west, it was usually all through freight, nothing original in Utah. It was all through freight business. JT: Do you remember hauling, or the railroad hauling, sheep down to southern Utah for the winter? Or Wyoming? IR: Well, I remember we hauled sheep out here from the mountains. They'd be up in the mountains here in the summertime, grazing, and when fall came we drove them out to the salt flats out here, the lake side. Several shippers there. They had several thousand head of sheep, and they would contract for a certain number of livestock cars to handle their sheep out to western Utah. And fall, why, they would likewise return them from out on the grazing areas in western Utah to the mountain districts here... That was kind of mixed. Some of them, they shipped them out there in the wintertime. JT: The huskier ones? IR: Well, it all depends. They get permits from the government to run so many sheep in certain territories. Why the ones that got the earlier contracts, they took their sheep out there. But if they couldn't get the contracts, they couldn't get the good grazing district. Why they were, some of them were brought in and they were fed in these mountains around here. The lower ones if the weather permitted. It is kind of a complex situation 14 because they used to have a lot of trouble out here if the snow came down low and heavy, and the sheep couldn't get forage. But the majority of the sheep were set out on what we call the salt flats. Flats of salt grass and the sheep like this. In the northern Utah, we used to have a line out here called the Lucin Cutoff. They abandoned that line during World War II because the navy wanted the rails. JT: Who ripped it up? IR: Well, the SP. We had the line running from Corrine to Lucin, Utah, which we called the Lucin Cutoff. And we used to operate a local freight train there daily until business got very poor and they abandoned it to handle just one train a week. Whereupon World War II came along, SP wanted to abandon that line altogether. Well, the military would not give permission. They said they needed it in case of emergency, but the navy wanted the small rail that was on this line. JT: The rail was not standard? Small gauge? IR: Yes. Well, yes it is a small gauge. The gauge was all right but the weight of the rail was light. It was only, oh what was it? I forget the weight of it? JT: It would have to carry a lighter load than normal? IR: That's right. JT: This was just between Corrine and Lucin? IR: Yes, but the war came on. The United States Navy wanted that rail for their arsenal guard out in Hawthorne, Nevada. So it was finally determined that SP could sell them the rail. Prior to that, the army didn't want to relinquish it. So the rail was taken up. The SP took it up and sold it, sent it out to Nevada. They had a little rail yard there with small engines to 15 handle their ammunition in and out of it. They couldn't get any small rail. This is the only one they got. So that line was ripped up during that time and no more Lucin Cutoff. JT: Did you work during the Depression or were you laid off? IR: I was working. I had enough seniority that I wasn't laid off. JT: Train dispatcher still? Kept that job right up until the time you retired, huh? IR: Oh yes. It just happened, I guess. The time that I came here from California, why their labor turnover was very good. Train dispatchers didn't stay here very long, some of them. Because the complexity of the job, it was too hard on them, and they kept getting new ones. So as it turned out, why I accumulated seniority which perhaps otherwise I wouldn't have accumulated. JT: In terms of local things, what do you remember about the Bamberger line? IR: Well, the Bamberger, that's another subject that I didn't have much to do with. That ran from Salt Lake to Ogden. JT: Did you ever ride it down to Lagoon and that? IR: Oh I used to go down every morning and go swimming down at Lagoon? JT: Before you went to work? IR: Oh when I first came here, myself and another young fellow, we used to go about 10 o'clock in the morning. We'd get on the Bamberger. We were going to work in the afternoon, at four o'clock, I guess. We used to go down to Lagoon and go swimming for a couple hours or so and come back on the Bamberger. JT: How much did it cost you? IR: Oh I couldn't tell you at that time. I suppose it cost 40 or 50 cents one way. I've forgotten. JT: Did you like it? 16 IR: Oh yes, it was very convenient. They had a train coming and going out of here seems like about every hour or two. They had quite a business there. Especially on holidays and things like that. Then there was another railroad, the UIC, run from Ogden to Preston, Idaho. Utah-Idaho Central. That used to run out of here. That was great. That had quite a little business for a while, but as time progressed, why they couldn't make ends meet. They finally folded up after the automobile put them out of business. And especially trucks would haul grain and so forth. We used to haul 40, 50 empty cars out on this Lucin cow line up to Park Valley way for a load of wheat. Well, as the years went on, why the truckers got in and trucked all that stuff. They could truck that stuff cheaper than the SP could haul it, furnish the equipment and haul it. It used to go principally to the west coast. And so that ended the UIC. And we used to handle a lot of grain off this old line, what we called the old line, the Lucin cow line. They used to have quite an acreage out on the... Oh, I was trying to think of the name of some of those towns. I haven't thought of them for so many years. We used to handle 40 and 50 empty cars out there to load grain in. And finally that died out. The truckers could truck that cheaper than you could handle it. JT: How about the Ogden Rapid Transit Company? What do you remember about those lines? IR: Ogden Rapid Transit - the streetcars and that. Oh in town here? Oh, the streetcar system in Ogden used to be very efficient according to my likes, but that, like other small railroad lines, that was discontinued due to the automobile. I used to get off work at midnight and always catch a car down here at the depot and get off up here at the 25th and Taylor Avenue. JT: They just went to the odd-numbered streets, right? 17 IR: Well, yes and no. They came up, there's a lot of streets they didn't go up at all. There's the 25th Street line and the Washington Avenue lines. Oh they used to come up 23rd and I don't think that entered into it at that time. It was just according to where it was convenient to the most passengers that were going to work. JT: Did you like them better than the buses today? IR: Well yes. Of course those who didn't live on the streetcar line, they had to walk two or three blocks to get to it. They weren't as content with it as I was where it was pretty near at my back door. But as time went on, the automobile took over. People who had more than 10 cents in their back pocket, why they bought a secondhand automobile and drove to work. The load of the passengers on the bus got lighter and lighter all the time. First thing you know, they were discontinued. All because of the mechanical era we were in. That was too bad.. JT: Were there any major accidents while you were down here in Ogden? IR: Oh boy, that's pretty hard to recollect right now. But we used to have a lot of accidents. Freight trains would have anywhere from 10, 20 cars derail due to possibly a broken rail or broken wheel on the car, which ran out of lubrication and became white hot, broke in two, causing the car to leave the rail. That caused numerous other cars to leave the rail. JT: What would you say contributed to the decrease in accidents? Better equipment or better maintenance checks? IR: Well, that's kind of a disputed subject. You go to certain places down on the railroad and they'll say that you've got just as many accidents now as they had before. Even though you have national laws which require the railroad to keep equipment and stuff in proper 18 shape. But they still have them. You don't hear about them too much, but they keep it on papers. But they do have them. I hear about them. You see, in recent years your freight equipment is transformed, mostly wood equipment to steel frame equipment. All your boxcars are pretty near all steel framed. And it used to be all wooden framed. And the weight of a train is possibly two times more than it used to be with the wooden equipment. And they haul now 100, 150 loads in a train at 50 and 60 miles an hour. Well, all that is mechanical, it's metal, something has got to give every now and then. And when it gives, look out. They have it out here in different places, maybe a broken axle or a broken rail or something. And where years ago, when maybe five or 10 cars went off the track, why now there's 40 and 50 cars that go off. They're going at such speeds, the engines can't stop. Maybe going down the hill out here in Nevada, in the mountains, and something gives way under it. Boy there's bent rails and every other thing underneath that. And then the railroad is principally double-tracked, and those cars would go over and block the other track and there is no train movement. It's going to be curtailed way back as far as it can until they can open up a track. The railroad has equipment, what they call a wrecker. It's a machine that has big cranes on it to lift cars and cars full or working equipment. Men go with it, and they have a dining car and everything. They'd be out there trying to clear a track anywhere from 10 hours to maybe two days. They had caterpillars with them. They'll push these cars off the track in order to open up another track. No matter what's in them, they'll push them out of the way, those big heavy cars, in order to get a track open and get your trains moving again. Well, after they get a track open again and the congestion finally gets cleared up, then they 19 have what they call a work train. It'll go out there and commence picking up these cars that are knocked over. And they'll put them on other flat cars and bring them to the shops in town if they can. And if they're damaged too bad, they may leave them out there and burn them out there on the prairie there, if they're not worth the time and labor to bring it back. Of course it's mostly steel cars now. It's a little different than it used to be when they were wooden. But the wreckage of some of those derailments used to be something terrific, and of course a lot of them would be off the rail but they wouldn't be turned over. They'd have a system where they'd try and pull them back on a good rail again with their engines. But it's terrible when you some of these great big 140-pound rails twisted up just like a matchstick. You know there is so much weight behind the engine of the cars that derailed that you just couldn't stop. It's so terrible. It's a good thing to be away from. They still have them. You don't hear too much about them on account of making scheduled time with a lot of these trains. You know, all they have to make a speed in order to accomplish the scheduled time. You know, all these railroads have a scheduled time, from San Francisco to Chicago, for instance. Chicago to New Jersey and New York, for instance. And they do everything to maintain that schedule. Hence accidents are creeping in all the time. I was reading in the paper where they sold these tank cars that have some inflammable acids in them. They get derailed and they burn, and they burn houses all around them. It's very dangerous business when something like that happens. As long as the business is such as it is, those things are going to happen because competition is very keen on these transcontinental railroads trying to maintain these times. It's not only keen with the railroads, but it's keen with the truckers, I guess. Oh yes, that enters into it. They're 20 bending all their time and help to get from the one coast to the other. Of course now, some of the larger railroads have air transportation. Like the SP has air transportation from Southern California to New York. Overnight for perishables. There is lots of that going on now. And it's a dog-eat-dog game there, I'll tell you. JT: Thank you very much for your time. IR: Oh there's so much I haven't thought of that comes up. I've forgotten in all the period of years. JT: Any last things you'd like to say? I mean, looking back on it now, are you glad you worked for the railroad? IR: Yes, I'm glad I worked for the railroad and the experience I've had and the people I've worked with, officials and fellow workers. I have never regretted working for the railroad because so many of the officials on the railroad, SP in particular, that I was personally acquainted with, and they got to work to the top, and many of those are pensioned and gone too. I'm still breathing. JT: Were there any strikes here in Ogden? IR: Not in our department. There were some strikes down in the yard and so on, and a lot of mechanical department carman and trainman, and things like that, shop men. They've had strikes down there but we were concerned with those. Oh, there's a lot of stuff... JT: Oh, I found out that the thing about the black card was very interesting. Did that ever come back up again when you were in Ogden or after the war? IR: Oh no. That was just in the Western Union. Oh, I've been in northern California train robberies. I can remember a train robbery on train number 6 one night down at Delta? JT: The Wild Bunch? Butch Cassidy and those? 21 IR: No, not those. These were another bunch of them up in the Northwest. I was trying to think of their names. I was working one night as a dispatcher, and their operator at Delta said that the train robbers had stopped so-and-so, and that they've got the train and they've taken all the mail out. JT: What year was this? IR: Oh I would say the summer of about 1915. JT: Was anybody hurt? IR: No, nobody hurt, but it go so that they had another one or two. I wasn't in on it to get the particulars, but it got so all these train crews, the company used to furnish them firearms for a period. This was up and down the coast of San Francisco. That's all mountainous country and in those days it was fairly wild country, too. And they used to have a lot of petty robberies going on. There was a number of train robberies. The only one I remember in particular was the one I was in on. But no one got hurt. They got all the mail and the express they wanted. They had some more with them, and they was very prominent, and there was two brothers. Anyway they got away with what they wanted and left, and told the train not to leave for a certain time or somebody would plug the engineer from the woods there. I don't know how true it was. Anyway they was there about an hour before they could get going again. All their mail and express was gone. That happened quite often. It's kind of a rugged country all the way. JT: How did they stop the train? Did they pile stuff on the track? IR: Oh I don't know. I guess they put some red lights down there or something. I've forgotten now. But this operator at this Delta, the come in on the phone to me and said, "Number 9 has been standing up here for about 20 minutes now. I don't know what for." But we found 22 out just about two minutes later that these train robbers had stopped them and had taken over the train. That's all there was to it. They took what they wanted and got out. After that there was talk among the crews and so on about what they would do if they were held up. It got to a point where the SP used to furnish them some guns there. Whether they ever had a chance to use them, or whether that intimidated any future robbers, I don't know. But that was wild country up through northern California and southern Oregon. That's all mountainous country and it's a wild bunch of people at the sawmills and so forth. Their personnel, some of them, they were pretty tough men in those days. In fact when I first went up there, there wasn't any highway, only a dirt road between San Francisco and Portland. The State of California had surveyors out surveying the proper route for the state highway. Nothing but a crude dirt road at that time. There was very few automobiles up there at that time. There was a few, but they cost too much money... JT: Thank you very much, Mr. Ruth. 23