Oral History Program Luther Wyatt Interviewed by John Holloway Thompson 15 July 1974 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Luther Wyatt Interviewed by John Holloway Thompson 15 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. 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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. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Wyatt, Luther, an oral history by John Holloway Thompson, 15 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 Luther Wyatt. The interview was conducted on July 15, 1974, by John Holloway Thompson, in Ogden, Utah. Wyatt discusses his experiences on the National Mediation Board, which he retired from in 1968. He was a mechanic for the Southern Pacific Railroad before that and has been active in labor issues. JT: Could you please tell us a little about your early life? Where you were born and where you grew up? LW: Well, John, there’s nothing remarkable about it. I usually facetiously refer to it that I was born under the shade of a fig tree in Memphis, Hall County, Texas, at 3:30 in the morning on the date on June 11, 1902. I don’t know of anything too exciting, a bit like Lincoln’s background. It’s just relating the short and simple annals of the poor. I had come from the working class, mostly railroading, but I have done a little bit of everything in trying to get my feet on the ground. I finally gravitated into railroad work as a call boy in the summer of 1917. JT: Fifteen years old then. Did you go to school? LW: Yes, I completed the eighth grade. One reason I am so happy to hopefully add something to the work that you’re trying to do in this history review that may save some young fellow coming along the route that I have come – some of the hard knocks that I have had to endure in the educational way. Coming up as I did, why, it was quite a feat to achieve an education. My main concern was the battle of bacon and beans, and being from a common and usually poor family, I not only had to worry about my own plate, but the plate of my family. So my education has been wherever I could pick it up. 1 And it isn’t easy. Today I guess I’d be termed completely a misfit and out of luck with the great stress that is put on education today. So I don’t know hardly where to begin and where to end in this thing. I can only mention this, that the major part of my work over my adult life has been on the railroads, and finally after coming to Utah in July 1935, and going to work for the old Ogden Union Railway and Depot Company, in due time I became the local representative of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, which is one of the seven mechanical crafts on the railroad. JT: Excuse me, sir. What did you do when you were a call boy? How did you start to work for the railroad? Why the railroad? LW: Well it was a case of economic necessity. JT: Was that the only job available at the time? LW: That was the job that had a little more attraction than the other work, which I had been doing, which was working in harvest fields and working on farms, working from sun up to sun down for $1 a day, $6 a week. And the railroad job had a little more attraction. This job offered me a salary of $45 a month for seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The shift alternated every two weeks, and it went in reverse. That was long, of course, before the advent of any of our so-called fringe benefits. But it was a job, and it seemed to offer some hope of permanency of employment, and that it about all. JT: Was this is Memphis, Texas? LW: No, this start was in LeGrande, Oregon, on the Oregon Washington Railroad and Navigation Company. The old OWRN. JT: How did you get up there? Your family move? LW: Yes, my family moved there. We left Texas and migrated to Oregon – Portland, Oregon 2 – when I was about eight, seven or eight years old. So I actually grew up in Oregon. JT: Was that move an economic move also? LW: Yes, that was an economic move. My father had been in the mercantile business in the south, and he came out to Oregon, originally into Portland and later into Vancouver, on account of exploring around. We finally ended up in Redmond, Oregon. That is in the central part of Oregon, 20 miles from Bend, in 1910 or around there. He went into the pool hall and recreation business. Established the first one in Redmond, Oregon. At this time, there was the Union Pacific and the Great Northern Railroad were building, extending their lines from Shaniko Cone, Oregon, to Bend. It was quite an interest in the fight between the two railroads and who would get to Bend, Oregon, first... JT: You remember that fairly well? LW: I remember that most distinctly because there’s one fact that stands out clearly in my mind. Was when the rail laying crew come through Redmond, they were within 20 miles of their destination at the time, and Jim Hill, the great empire builder’s boy, Louie Hill – Louis Hill – was with the crew. And there were a bunch of us tow-headed country kids there at this big celebration when they were coming into town laying track, and they were making some kind of a record of the amount of rail, ties... they put down, and this was all done by brute strength and awkwardness. We hadn’t, of course, none of our modern rail laying equipment. Why, I can remember this so plain, that Louie Hill got a group of us kids around him, and he had a big sack, something like a salt sack, full of nickels. He broadcast those nickels, and us kids were scrambling for them, and in my attempt to pick up some nickels that were laying between the ties, one of the exuberant boys didn’t complete a leap frog jump and knocked me into a tie, and I lost two of my 3 front teeth in the scuffle. So it sticks out very plain. And later on, a few months later, the track was completed and the big celebration of driving the golden spike. That feat was performed by Jim Hill, the old empire builder. JT: You saw him? LW: And I was one of the tow-headed kids at this celebration that happened in Bend, Oregon. And to the best of my remembrance, it was along 1910 or ‘11, but I was there at the driving of the golden spike. I’m getting kind of out of continuity here, but to give you some idea, to corroborate this statement: later on in my life as I was working as a federal labor mediator with the National Mediation Board, I was on a labor case in St. Paul, Minnesota on the Great Northern Railroad, that involved the conditions and concerned wages and working conditions and fringe benefits. Bud, who was then president of the Great Northern Railroad, became interested personally in my modus operandi in trying to bring these people together in an agreement – the carrier and the organization representatives. And he invited me, after finally the agreement was consummated, he invited me up to his private office for a little chat. And in the course of the conversation, I got to looking around this big, spacious, fine-equipped office of his, and I noticed hanging to the picture molding clear around his room, various scenes, historical and otherwise of the development of the railroad. And as I walked around the room, there was a picture depicting the driving of the golden spike in Bend, Oregon. Mr. Bud asked me if that picture had a particular significant, and I said, “It sure does. Come over here, and I’ll show you why.” And I said, “I’m that tow-headed kid standing in the front row.” And I was quite conspicuous. I had my hair cut off in what we used, at that time, to call a pig shave. And my mother had started me out in a white celluloid collar 4 that we wore. We wore them because she could wet her finger and handkerchief and wipe the dirt off the collar. And I got tired of the collar. I took my tie off, and this collar was hanging on, so it was easy to identify myself. JT: Did you see the picture before? LW: No, it was the first time I seen the picture. I have seen pictures of the driving of the spike with Jim Hill, but it was the first time I had seen this particular picture where I was included with the spectators. JT: That’s a coincidence. What did you do as a call boy when you started out on the railroad? LW: Well, my duty as a call boy, you work close on that job with the yardmaster and the crew dispatcher when the dispatcher calls a train. By calling a train, I mean he furthers the movement of the train that came in, and he puts out a call on it – that train number soand-so, I’ve called it to leave the terminal at a specified hour. My duty as a call boy was to get on my bicycle and pedal to those trainmen’s homes, and rap on the door and tell them that they were called and to leave town at a certain time. At that time, it was before the telephone had been used to any extent on calling train crews, and the telephone was not too reliable in placing a call. So, many times, if a trainman didn’t feel like going out on a telephone call, he would just simply say he didn’t get the call. So the call boy would go in and make his call and have him sign a book that he received the call. And that was my duty. JT: How long did you stay on that job? LW: Oh, I imagine I stayed there, probably about a year. Not much longer than that. JT: Were the working conditions good...? 5 LW: I wouldn’t know. There were no such things as working conditions. As I mentioned, our hours were before the advent of the eight-hour day on the railroads. JT: Whose bike was it? Was it your bike, or the railroad’s bike? LW: It was my bike. I furnished the bike that I had bought secondhand for $7, and it took me longer to pay for that bike than it later on took me to pay for an automobile... JT: What did you do after that job? LW: Well, I think I was kind of a boomer, going wherever, hopping from one job to another. I think after that, as I remember, I went up to Portland, Oregon, and worked in the shipyards. This was the period of World War II. I worked in the shipyards building steel ships. At that time, too, I had another unique experience of being, at that time, employed, on the building of the last wooden ships that were built for the United States government towards the conclusion of World War I. I don’t know, I stayed with that and then I got back to railroading again for the Southern Pacific. I went in as a bona fide apprentice in the mechanical department of the car department of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Actually they set up for four-year apprenticeships but the big shop strike of July 1, 1922, came along and interrupted that. JT: Your apprenticeship? LW: Yes, I was out of work again due to the strike for quite some months. So it actually took me a period of close to six years to complete this four-year apprenticeship. JT: Did you strike? LW: Yes, I went out. JT: Was that mainly over money, wages, or what? LW: That was almost wholly over wages with the carrier cutting wages back. 6 JT: Was this up in Portland? LW: Well, this was national, but this episode happened in Portland. JT: Was this your first confrontation with strikes and the labor movement? LW: This, my first, actually my first confrontation and experience of a strike. I had been, of course, exposed to unionism and become part of it working in the shipyards, which were all organized at that time under the steelworkers. And in banging around the country picking up jobs here and there in construction work, I had belonged to the construction workers, building trades, as a laborer, and of course coming from the ranks of a working mother and father, why I was labor oriented. With the strike, the big shop strike of 1922 was my first actual experience of being affected and adversely affected for quite a long period of time. It was during this absence from the railroad during the strike, I did all sorts of other things wherever I could make a dollar. You must remember back in that time, we had no welfare, we had no relief, we had nothing, only charity, direct charity. JT: Why, with no relief and that, do you feel that the majority, if not all the people that struck in this case were loyal and believed in their cause then? I mean, they must have had a pretty firm belief in something if they wanted to scrounge around just to get money. I presume most of the men were married and that. LW: Well, I think yea. I am glad you asked that, John, because I think that at that time there was definitely more dedication to organized labor and the labor movement than there is today. You realized how hopeless and helpless your situation was by trying to battle the conditions by yourself. You realized that you had to have some help, and it didn’t take long for you to appreciate that in unity there was strength. And more, especially when they start taking away what you have already won through bargaining. And that was the 7 great cause of the shop strike of 1922, was cutting the wages back by the terrific amount of, in some instances, 20 and 25 percent. JT: From what I’ve learned, the ‘20s were a big type of boom time, and then the Depression hit in ‘29. But in ‘22 and so on, they cut the wages? Why was that? Because it was four or five years after the war now. LW: Well, actually, John, we were in a slump in 1921. Jobs were hard to get. I’ve pounded the streets of the Pacific Coast from Seattle to San Diego hunting the elusive job. JT: That surprises me because I got the opinion after the war, you know, we were fed up in Europe, so we came back, so the veterans got out. So then, I understood for a year or so, 1919, 1920, there was a big – all these veterans looking for jobs. But then, I thought, by ‘22 it stabilized and, you know, prosperity came back. But it wasn’t. Was that out there in the Northwest or was it like that all over the nation? LW: That was nationwide. That was more or less worldwide. And I’m surprised that the school, the nature of Weber College, that they’re not getting a little better labor history and economic history than apparently they’re teaching. JT: Well, I’m not talking against the school. Maybe that’s just my own fault. That’s the way I understood it. LW: Here is, I think, one of the greatest books. This is a recent one, and this will tell you something. This is American Labor. It is put out in a pictorial format. This, I think, is one of the grandest books I’ve ever come across. You know, following the idiom philosophy, the old Chinese proverb that one picture can tell a much as 1,000 words, and they certainly do it in a fine way in a labor book of this kind. I would like to see, and I intend to do so, to put it in Weber College’s library on the mailing list of such people as the 8 Charles H. Curr Publishing Company in Chicago. To really give you a true picture of labor history as recorded and related by people just like me that were part of the labor movement. And part of the movement before we actually had one, before we had an organized labor movement. JT: How long did that strike last? LW: Oh, the strike officially lasted – well, actually, it never ended. It just, on most of the railroads, there are some of the railroads that called off the strike. The Baltimore and Ohio stands out prominent in my mind. They called it off about eight months after the strike started. JT: Personally for you, how long did it last? LW: The strike, in my case, lasted for a little over a year. JT: You didn’t work for the railroad for a year then? LW: During this time, I was doing whatever I could get anyplace else. And I’ll tell you why it lasted that long – because there was a stigma attached to returning to the railroad. It was the stigma of “scab.” And you can go on any railroad in this United States today, and go down to the yard, and they’re pretty well eliminated. Father time has taken them off. But those that stayed in and did not honor the strike, did not honor the picket lines, and came in and took those jobs from those that walked out and tried to make conditions better, and retain the conditions they had when the stigma of scab was hung on to them, that stayed with them their entire life on the railroad. And the same thing prevailed in the switchmen’s strike of 1920. Those people that stayed in and did what we call “finding” and “scabbing” never lived long enough to live down that stigma. JT: Now a scab – this was if you struck and I came in and got your job. I would be the scab. 9 LW: You would be the scab. You would be a traitor to the labor movement. Just to give you an idea how those things work, and stuck, John – I came to Ogden and went to work, as I mentioned earlier, for the OUOR&D Company in 1935. I hadn’t been in the yard two days until I knew every man in the Ogden terminal that had stayed in during both the switchman strike of 1920 and the shop strike of 1920. JT: Fifteen, 12 years later. LW: So, you can see that we did have solidarity at that time that just doesn’t exist today. JT: When you went back, I take it about 1923, then you went back there? LW: Yes, it was all in 1923, early in 1923. Because I finished along in 1925, and my memory may be a little hazy, but I remember going out as a full-pledged mechanic. Had served my time, had took the job as a journeyman mechanic on the Southern Pacific at Grants Pass, Oregon. JT: And you stayed there until you came out here? LW: I stayed there for several years. From Grants Pass, I went up, still with the Southern Pacific, transferred up, onto a log run in Timber, Oregon, which was a branch of the Southern Pacific out of Portland, which is out in timber country, and whose primary business was hauling logs to the mill and transporting finished forest products. JT: So, you’re a repairman now? LW: Yes, I was a journeyman mechanic in the Carmen’s craft. And along the way, the sequence went then from Timber, Oregon. I got cut off there, laid off when the mill shut down. There was no longer a need for our services. There were two of us working running the car department of timber. And from there I went on a temporary vacancy with the Spokane Portland and Seattle Railroad as a one-man car department in 10 Astoria, Oregon, which was the western terminus of the SP&S Railroad. And I was there for quite a number of years. I worked there during the so-called Hoover Panic. And it was later, I worked there from I guess 1927 until about 1934, first of 1935. JT: You weren’t laid off at all during the Depression? LW: No, I wasn’t laid off at all. I was one of the lucky ones. They cut it down to one man. They dispensed with – we had two machinists and one car man and several engine watch men. Of course that’s back in the steam engine days. Everything was steam powered then. And I stayed there until I left of my own volition on January 1, 1935. And I returned to the South for a while after that, back to the land of my origin, Texas and Oklahoma, Nate Valley, Texas. Worked in the oil fields for a little while for the Phillips Petroleum Company. I didn’t like that, so I came on back then heading back to the Northwest, and I stopped in Ogden. And my reason, things were pretty tough at that time. We hadn’t pulled out of the panic yet, the Depression of the late 1930s. JT: Late 1920s, you mean? LW: Late 1920s, and it was still with us. Actually I had served my apprenticeship under the man who later, and was then, the master car repairman of the Portland Division of the Southern Pacific Railroad. A man by the name of Ben Wagner. I knew if Ben had a job anyplace under his jurisdiction that he could work me, and that he would give it to me. I had proven myself and my ability with the Southern Pacific, so that I was sure he’d trust any kind of mechanical work to me. I came in here and unfortunately my protective friend and benefactor had died two or three months before I came. But I finally wiggled my way into a job using a few little sharp practices, and maybe stretching the truth and bending it around a little bit. I got my feet on the ground again. 11 JT: Here in Ogden? LW: Here in Ogden. JT: Why did you stop here? Just look nice? LW: Well, one of the reasons, yes, I liked Ogden from the first time I seen it. I came down with a bunch of us kids, and I guess maybe you’d call us probably – at that time maybe we was the forerunner of the anti-establishment. We came, there were four or five of us, came down through here on an automobile a barn-storming and doing whatever we could to disrupt operations and fighting to the best of our ability, we thought, for the cause of labor. We had worked our way down taking every division point from Portland on a Union Pacific south and got into Ogden, Utah. I liked the geography here. I liked the climate. I liked the – I liked everything that I saw in Ogden. I didn’t like what I seen going on in the railroad yards. But the people I’d met, I was a part of and could relate with that, was packing the banners, doing the picketing. We had a great deal of empathy, and I could relate with them. I wanted to be a part, and I always had that desire later on when I went back to the Northwest again to resume employment, this time I believe with the Union Pacific. I always had the notion of sometime I wanted to come back to Ogden. I did accomplish that as a knight of the road via boxcar in 1935. JT: Here in Ogden, how did you get involved in labor? Were you on any more strikes between…the one in 1922 and before you came here? LW: No, I was never permanently involved. We never had a railroad strike since that, outside of those little flare-ups during World War II that we stopped by the court process of injunction in a matter of hours. JT: You hired on here as a mechanic then? 12 LW: I went to work here as a mechanic. Yes, with the OUR&D, which was jointly, still is jointly owned, by the Southern Pacific and the Union Pacific railroads. But the OUR&D was known as a terminal company then and for many years after that, and did the yard and switching operations for both the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific Railroads. JT: How did you get involved in labor down here then? LW: That was, it was almost a natural that I’d become involved in it because I had a labor background before coming to Ogden. We were in the throes of establishing a bona fide unionism in the Ogden terminal, and that came about by an amendment to the Railroad, Railway Labor Act, in effect June 21, 1934, which outlawed the company unions, outlawed the yellow dog contract, and made it legal and permissible and, actually in effect, encouraged the railroad workers to come into a bona fide organization, labor organization, or organize one of their own. And we were going through the throes of these growing pains when I came to Ogden. I had this labor experience in back of me, and I was devoted to the labor movement and the cause of my fellow man. In due time, why, the people I worked with elected me as their representative. JT: Right in 1935? LW: In 1935. It could have been, I think it was a very few months after I came here. We had, of course it wasn’t that simple – we had factions in the yard. This was a big yard, and there was a large personnel at that time of around 1,400 worked for the OUR&D company. Of that number, there was, oh upwards of 400 that worked in the car department. And there were factions all over the yard. JT: How were the working conditions here in Ogden? What were you paid? LW: Oh, at that time, the rate of pay when I came here, as I remember was 60 or 68 cents 13 an hour. JT: Now at this time the brakemen, engineers, they were still paid the eight hours for 100 miles – on that pay schedule? LW: The eight-hour day was well established when I came here. JT: I’m presuming now, did you have a steady work shift now, like 9 to 6 or something? LW: Well, actually, when I came here we had a thing known as an extra board, and the work the extra man got was very erratic. You worked when the other man with a regular job laid off. And I had that condition to contend with for about two years after I came. The force was large enough, and the extra board small enough, that we could eke out a pretty good living. And betimes too, in that two-year period, that like peak times of moving fruit, grain harvest, they would need extra forces, and there would be part of that. Maybe two or three months or even longer that we would have regular employment. Then, of course, the younger man got cut off, and we ended up finally on the extra board. Or if there were too many laid off, you’d end up in the street. And that went on for two or three years, maybe longer than that before I accumulated enough seniority to work the year around. What my services were as a labor representative were interrupted from the time I started. The boys here in Ogden elected me as high as they – the highest office they have here is the local chairman or the business agent, probably better known to you as local chairman of their protective board. From there, I went to the general committee. JT: Excuse me. Before I ask you some more about labor, could you tell me what your job was as a mechanic? LW: The job actually at the Ogden terminal was repairing, inspecting, and dispatching trains, 14 cars. JT: All train cars, or just engines? LW: No, we had nothing to do with the engines. The engines was taken care of by the machinists. JT: Machinists – that means his job is to work on the engine. You worked, well like a brakeman on a train? They’d get a hot box or something, then it would come into the station. Would you repair this type of stuff? LW: Yes, and it was part of our purpose to keep this hot box from happening. JT: Grease and stuff? Rags? LW: Well, not grease, you use oil. You use oil in a journal box. At that time it was lubricated by oil-soaked waste, and the waste was made out of both cotton and wool. High-speed trains, we found that the wool waste – and that is a shredded fabric soaked in oil – would hold up better around the bearing than the cotton waste. The cotton was pretty generally used in lubricating the journals on passenger car wheels, or freight car wheels I mean. JT: What year did you retire, sir? LW: Well, I retired January 1, 1968, from the National Mediation Board as a federal labor mediator. JT: From the railroad itself? LW: I resigned from the railroad itself in 1955 to take an appointment on the staff of the National Mediation Board as a labor mediator. JT: Could you tell us a little about your labor experiences with and for the railroad – or for your workers between, say, 1935 and when you retired, or when you resigned? 15 LW: Well, my work – to lead up to it – my work continued with the labor organization from the local level to a system wide level, in the mechanical crafts on the Union Pacific Railroad. JT: Did you have some major objectives when you were elected to this post? LW: Well, some of our early objectives, which are recorded in history today, number one was the eight-hour day. That happened before I came to Ogden. What happened after I came to Ogden that the foundation was laid for before I came here was the passage of the Railroad Retirement Act. Which was, actually it was passed in the close of 1934, declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935. The carriers and the organizations got together, and they entered them, and in 1937, in August, it was back in the carrier. The carrier had challenged the constitutionality of the 1934-35 act, and the Supreme Court sustained their position. Later, after the advent of President Roosevelt, he called the labor representatives and the carrier representatives together, after the Supreme Court had declared the act unconstitutional, and put the burden on these people to come up with an agreement they could live with, with respect to the Railroad Retirement Act. JT: Were you in on this at all? LW: No, I was in only on the local level. And the organizations and carriers did come up with an agreement which was never challenged. And the thing started, actually the operation legally of the Railroad Retirement Act started in August 1937. It is interesting to note at this point we did have people that were absorbed from the carriers, various carriers, private pension plans, that started receiving benefits in late 1934 under the then Railroad Retirement Act, and their benefits continued. So that is number one. Then the next big change, advancement, that came along was the vacations with pay. That was 16 another hard-fought one. JT: That one was still on the local level with you? LW: I was working on that long before I came to Ogden – on both of these moves at the local level. I continued in Ogden, and that was one of the great things that I didn’t think when I came to Ogden, that I’d ever live long enough to see my working-class brother in overalls get a paid vacation. JT: Is that right? LW: And that went on the books along about 1941, as I remember offhand. JT: One or two weeks’ vacation a year? LW: We started out with six days. We were on six days a week then. We started out with six days a week...paid vacation for those that qualified. Then our next step, our next advancement we got, as I recall, was after we had gone on 40-hours a week, was 10 days’ vacation for those who qualified. And by qualifying, I mean you had to have so many years of previous service, compensated service, with the carrier to qualify. And for those that qualified, the next big step was two weeks and gradually the thing has been brought up to, right recently since I left, the National Mediation Board, January 1, 1968, has been increased now, I believe, to a maximum of six weeks’ vacation – paid vacation. And the next big advance was the Unemployment Insurance Act. And, mind you, all of these things were promulgated and started and pushed and advanced by organized labor. The standard railway labor organizations came in and laid the basis of this through the process of collective bargaining around the conference table, and the results of their bargaining were later enacted into law. JT: When you got the National Mediation Board appointment in 1955, was this like, you 17 were a representative for the Brotherhood of Carmen, the Brotherhood of Brakemen, all these groups? LW: Yes, I was a representative, still a representative, but I’ve resigned the job. I was serving on the general committee at the time. Actually these are civil service appointments. At the time I made application, I did it mostly for kicks. I didn’t have any idea that I’d qualify for the job anyhow. I took the examination, and there was 640 some odd applicants. JT: For one position? LW: Yes, there was one hole at the time, as I remember. I was the one, finally, that was selected. It’s a probationary thing, six months, when you go in to the job. But where the labor part comes in, the policy of the National Mediation Board is set up as one of the pre requirements – you must have had at least five years actual experience administering labor agreements affecting a large number of the prerequisites. And I had that experience, and I don’t know what else – only probably been an unusual hobo, might have carried some weight with the board, the background. But that is, it was a civil service examination, and when I went to the board, the job paid the handsome salary of $6,300 a year. JT: This was in 1955. LW: 1955. I actually took about a $3,000 cut in my pay when I accepted the appointment. JT: What were some of your experiences with the board in 1955? LW: Well, we had really some unique experiences. The first case that I went in on – I went in practically cold as far as the board was concerned. You go into Washington, and after the board interviews you and passes on you, you’re sworn in, and they leave you 18 fumbling around at that time through the office, through the files, and try to get a little bit acquainted with some of the procedures of the Mediation Board. That’s about all of the indoctrination that you got at the time I went to the board, as recent as 1955. And you’re given a case, and you stick it in your briefcase, and away you go, out in the field, out on the firing line to see what you can do. JT: So you become a mediator between the railroad workers and the railroad management? That was your job, settle disputes and stuff? LW: Major disputes. The Railway Labor Act is broken into two sections. There are major and minor disputes, and how this classification or distinction got in there was through Supreme Court rulings referring to a dispute that affected wages, rules, and working conditions as major disputes. Also representation would come under major disputes. In the application of these agreements, and the problems arising under the application coming under minor disputes, and those things are so recognized in the Railway Labor Act. There have been boards set up when the act was amended, known as the National Railroad Adjustment Boards. There are four of those boards known as the first division, second division, third division, and fourth division of the National Railroad Adjustment Board. The first division handles disputes of the operating employees; the second division handles disputes of the mechanical crafts; the third division would handle disputes of the clerical crafts; and the fourth division some clerical and mostly supervisory personnel. JT: Was it usually just one man from the board sent out to mediate? LW: Well, usually, yes. Usually one man unless you’re in a complicated dispute. Why the thing even then would be set up with the first probing to see what you could do to get 19 the parties together – be one mediator go out. He would do the very best he can, and if he sees no chance for progress at the time, the board has the option of sending another mediator in, sending the first mediator out and sending another one in, or leaving the other mediator and sending another one in to work with him, or recessing the thing. A lot of it would depend on the board’s action on what the board would report. For instance, I can tell you about my own experience. When I was sent out on a job, the job would be either the board designates its cases and differentiates, a representation dispute, where it’s the employees are trying to overthrow the union or trying to gain a union, or trying to gain a union representation, or where there’s a raid by one union over another trying to take the contract. Those are known as representation disputes, and they come under an R docket number. And agreements, those relating to wages, working conditions, are the A cases, and are so docketed under that title. JT: Is there one dispute that you remember as a major one that you’re glad you had a settlement in? Which one? LW: There was one and it involved – It was one of my cases that happened not too long before I retired from the boar. I was called in, I was interested, and it has a lot of human interest to it. I was sent up into Alaska on what is known as the White Pass and Yukon Railroad. It is a narrow-gauge railroad that runs from Skagway, Alaska, to White Horse, Canada. What makes it interesting is that Skagway was the jumping off place for the 1898-99 gold rush up into the Klondike. Well, anyhow, they had this dispute representative, involved all of their employees, and they were all represented at the time by the Teamsters. JT: What year was this, about 1968? 20 LW: No, it was about 1966 or 1967, along in there. There had been several mediators up on the job, but they couldn’t get anyplace. What made the thing almost an impossibility to do anything with was the fact that these people were all working under construction contracts or longshore contracts instead of railroad contracts in the railroad pattern, and they couldn’t jar the Teamsters loose. They would have no part of a railroad agreement. On the basis that there was too much seasonal work up there on this railroad when, as a matter of fact, they had, while the railroad was a narrow-gauge road, it then had splendid equipment, and they kept this road open all winter round, year around. It is the lifeline between White Horse and the interior of that part of Canada. But I was sent up on the work – at the time I was down working in Pascagoula, Mississippi. I was on a sticky case down there on one of the southern railroads, and the board sent me to Alaska. The only reason I can think of why they’d send me to Alaska was my labor background. And when I went in, I finished up in Mississippi, and I headed for Alaska, and I flew into Juneau, and had to go fly from Juneau into Skagway in a bush plane. And I will never forget this. I flew up what was known at the time in one of those Groman Goose workhorse airplanes that were used generally up there in this bush service. The cockpit was pretty well open. It was raining hard. I got soaking wet, and when we set down in Skagway, the first reception I got was the Teamsters committee met me. The first thing they told me was, “Mr. Mediator, we advise you to get the carrier’s representative out of town and move this mediation out of here before somebody gets killed.” And I was in no mood at the time to even think about refereeing a murder. I wanted some dry clothes. I was soaking wet. I got out of the airplane soaking wet, and 21 got up to the hotel. When I opened my suitcase, everything in my suitcase was soaked. But anyhow, I eventually got on some dry clothing, and I started sizing up the situation. And when the mayor of Skagway came to me, he encouraged me the same way to move the mediation out of Skagway. He was real fearful that somebody would get killed. The somebody was the carriers’ negotiator for the White Pass and Yukon Railroad up from Vancouver, British Columbia. And I looked the situation over for a day or so and decided, in the best interest of getting the parties together, that I would move it. So I moved it down to the state capital at Juneau, Alaska, and used a portion of the federal courtroom. Tempers were running hot. The parties had been fighting, and this dispute had been going on for months and months. At the time I went up there, the railroad was completely shut down. The carrier got scared and locked them out. The railroad was shut down, so the first thing we did was get an interim agreement, got the railroad running again. And we did this without any injunctions. We did have the good help of the then-governor of Alaska – JT: Hickel? LW: I can’t really – I was going to say it was something like that, but I can’t recall. Some of you students later would want it. I have a copy of my reports of every case I ever worked for the board. But anyhow, with the help of the governor’s office and his labor commissioner, we got the railroad running again, and through a lot of hassles and hard bargaining, why they continued there in Juneau for almost a month. I wasn’t accomplishing anything. I recessed the thing, had the board recess it, and I did some other work there on some airlines in Juneau while I let these parties cool off. I brought them back together. Finally, how I got the agreement – after I solved, the carrier was 22 pretty too easy to convince that a carrier-type agreement was to their advantage. I finally convinced the Teamsters by showing them the overall advantages, with the fringes and all that accrued to these railroad contracts over the outside contracts, the construction contract. Finally it boiled down to this – that the Teamsters representative said, “If you can sell the thing to the troops, we will buy it.” So that necessitated again going back. I had to go back to Skagway. JT: Talk to the workers? LW: Talk to the organization or people, men that were doing the work. I brought the carriers, sent the carriers’ people back up to – as a matter of fact, their executive offices in Alaska were at – they had supervisory personnel in Skagway. Their headquarters, of course, were in Vancouver, Canada. And I got back up there, and the way I worked these things in narrowing, the union talk was on one side of the muddy main street of Skagway, and the carriers’ officers were on the other side. And I worked back and forth, narrowing the issues down as best I could, back and forth between the parties. This thing continued on this last day there all afternoon and all night up to almost 3 o’clock in the morning. I finally got the parties together at 3 o’clock in the morning, signed the agreement, signed, sealed, and delivered a railroad-type contract. I left the parties, these same parties that six or seven weeks prior to that were going to kill each other. They had vowed to kill each other. And I left them that night in the Sourdough Inn after the consummation of the agreement with arms around each other, drinking and singing, “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” to one another. That is one of the interesting. More human – there were so many things to start with. JT: That’s a pretty good accomplishment. 23 LW: I’ve had more human, and there were so many things. To start with, you had to start in right from scratch and sell the parties on adopting a type of agreement that had proven itself over the years on the railroads in the states. And it was further proven that it was the right way to go because I was in Seattle two years after that, close to two years, and there was two men came up to me in the lobby of the hotel as I was registering... and introduced themselves. I didn’t recall who they were offhand, and they mentioned that, “We are the labor representatives that you helped as a mediator get our first agreement – railroad agreement up in Skagway, Alaska, two years ago. We’ve renewed it once and we’re back in here to renew it again. And we’re not having any trouble at all. It’s just a question now of how much wages we can get out of it.” JT: After you retired from the board, what have you been keeping active in now? What labor-movement type thing? LW: Well, I’ve been keeping actually, I’m still engaging in labor relations work as a private consultant. Helping generally anybody that wants help I’m capable of rendering. But to date the people that have come to me for help are local union representatives, and the difficulties they are having with the application of their local agreements. JT: So it’s not just railroad people but any labor people? LW: Well, presently I’m serving, and I have been for shortly after returning to Ogden as an active member of the Northern Utah Central Labor Council – I serve on that executive board, and I do the work that would normally come before a labor executive board. But I think one of the most rewarding organizational jobs that I did or have been a part of since returning home, I’ve been instrumental in organizing the Ogden Area Retired Railroad Employees Club. We’re attempting to bring and have quite a substantial 24 membership, around 300 now, where there was once nothing. We have an active organization that’s primarily a service organization interested in legislative and political action. A year ago last February, I was instrumental in bringing together, the first of its kind in the United States, a coalition of all retiree groups in Utah that have seen fit to date to come in with us. We have established the Retiree Federation of Utah. We presently have at this end of Utah every bona fide organization that I know of that is a bona fide retiree organization, from the Weber College of Emeriti Association to the gandydancer, the track worker on the railroad. The outside labors of the building trade, and to me that has been one of my most rewarding organizational things that I have been a part of. Today we sit around the conference table with such people as Dr. Leland Munson to the representatives of the labor class, craft, or the building trades, and the retired section worker on the railroad. I think it’s a wonderful demonstration of what people can do working together, how people can help people by being united and working together. JT: That’s good, sir. LW: I would like to close this little talk that it’s been my experience that there is no such thing, John, as a generation gap. I don’t know if you feel there’s any gap at all, only a difference in our age with you and me. We both contemplated at least having sufficient material things to live a fairly comfortable physical life. We both share in having the means of all of the things medical, social, and all the things that go to making a full and whole life. I see no generation gap at all, as I say. I see only a difference in our ages. I am sure I am interested in most of the things you’re interested in now, and if there was anything that I would have to criticize the younger generation on, I could darn sure cure 25 that by reflecting back on just what you were doing when you were that age. So generally, I’ve had nothing but admiration, and I hope as long as the good Lord gives me strength to stay here that I have people like you and your generation to work with. JT: Thank you very much. LW: Well, to give you some idea, there in that lower shelf there are more than 300 railroad agreements and airline agreements that I’ve had something to do with in getting the parties together. I have the record of every bit of that mediation from the sticky representation cases – Oh, for example, one of the first cases that I went on was in Louisville, Kentucky, when the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers were trying to take the contract away from the firemen whose representative was the Firemen’s Craft on the Louisville and Nashville railroads. Those are one of the most sticky, hard things to work with that a mediator can possibly be encountered with. Personalities and tempers really fly in those. There are some real interesting things in the L&M case. There was a representation hassle in the Braniff Airways involving the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks, and the Teamsters union. That case had gone from where I started, it was back to the Supreme Court when I left the board. So I would be glad to loan any of these reports in reviewing this that you or your constituents up at the college might want. In the process of trying to overcome my colossal ignorance, I have completed two correspondence courses in American law and procedure. The last one was a LaSalle course. When I came to Ogden as a hobo in the hobo jungles, I was carrying around that encyclopedia, Chadman’s Encyclopedia of Law. I realized this, years ago, that most of our great labor battles would probably be fought out on the battlefield of tort law. So I 26 started many years ago trying to acquire some semblance of a law education. JT: Well, sir, thank you very much for your time and your information. 27